Mideast Games of Patience

...HALF AN AGREEMENT Mideast Games of Patience BY ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Avtv When he arrived in the Middle East last April 25, Secretary of State George P Shultz pledged to remain as long as a month to achieve a breakthrough in the deadlocked Israeli-Lebanese troop withdrawal talks—or about half as long as a doctors' strike had already been going on here Although the two problems may hardly appear to be in any way lelated, there is a very fundamental connection between them Both illustrate two salient features of life in the Levant First, things are rarely quite whal Ihcy seem to be, whether the issue is economic health, a doctors' strike or diplomatic negotiations, second, situations an outsider might view as intolerable are tolerated much longer than those directly affected would initially have believed possible Shultz, whose background includes scholarly training, was expected to quickly recognize the importance of these regional characteristics, and apparently he did For within two weeks he actually obtained Jerusalem and Beirut's consent to an accord Thus 11 months after it launched the projected 48-hour "Peace for Galilee" operation, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's government has agreed to pull Israel's troops out of Lebanon, provided Syna and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) depart as well The accord put off the matter of "normalizing" Israeli-Lebanese economic and political relations, that will be the agenda for another set of negotiations to begin no later than six months after the Israeli exit On security issues, however, Jerusalem can point to some concrete gains Among these is the ending of Lebanon's formal state of war against its southern neighbor, in force since 1948 In addition, up to eight joint "verification teams" are to conduct patrols—albeit under Lebanese command-in a special security zone stretching some 30 miles into southern Lebanon, and Israeli intelligence is to maintain a presence in the area Most important, men loyal to Israel's longtime ally, Major Saad Haddad, are to form the nucleus of a new Lebanese "territorial brigade" that will control a critical strip along the Israeli border, and Haddad himself is to be a deputy commander of the unit Of course, it is too early to fully estimate Shultz' effort The indications at the moment are that the 40,000 Syrian soldiers and their 15,000PLOalhes in the Bekaa Valley are digging in And despite the Secretary's repeated expressions of optimism that Damascus will eventually come along, Soviet-backed Syrian President Hafez al-Assad at present insists the opposite Yet in the Middle East, as we have noted, such rhetorical flourishes can frequently be misleading Now let's go back to the continuing doctors' strike It started with the complaint that "a majority" of physicians on the government payroll earn only about as much as unskilled municipal sanitation workers The Ministry of Finance responded by producing figures that showed "over 50 per cent of the strikers'' were among the best paid pub-he employees, and 25 per cent made as much or more than Cabinet members Innumerable subsequent statements and newspaper articles on the subject notwithstanding, there is still no firm consensus on what the reality is In any event, remembering the strong public hostility engendered by their otherwise successful job action several years ago, the doctors this time plotted their strategy carefully The Israel Medical Association established a "Health Services Company" that commenced operations in all of the country's hospitals, public health institutions and health insurance facilities (These three combined cover approximately 85 per cent of the population ) The doctors simply went to work for their own "company," and, for a fee of $ 15, offered the same care as before The Attorney General soon ruled that it was illegal to accept payment from individuals at a public medical center, but the strikers had prepared an alternative plan They shifted to weekend and emergency duty schedules at the hospitals without compensation, and opened up hundreds of dispensaries in previously rented hotel rooms and other locations Here they can and do charge the largely affordable $15 fee, while posted signs assure that the indigent will be treated free What does all this have to do with Lebanon...

...Well, even with the provisions for treatment made by the doctors, the strike is a hardship for many people, particularly the elderly, the chronically ill, and the poor in outlying areas where health insurance clinics are virtually the only source of medical care Further, no nonemergency surgery is being performed Nor is it possible to know what damage is being done because of the postponement of routine medical procedures, such as checkups In short, a situation that should not have been tolerable for more than a few days has gone on for several months without any sharp public reaction And the same holds true for what was supposed to be a brief action across Israel's northern border Despite 470 men dead and over 2,000 wounded so far in Lebanon, Israelis have exhibited a remarkable tolerance for the sporadic clashes and weekly casualty lists that continue to mark the extended conflict This attitude has confounded most predictions and contrasts sharply with, for example, the outcry that arose during the 1970-71 War of Attrition with Egypt Some would claim that Israel has lost much of its special sensitivity to human life, others that it has come to accept the costs of security—a sign of its new maturity as a nation Whatever the case, Secretary Shultz did not find in Prime Minister Begin a man under popular pressure to make peace at any price On the contrary, the Prime Minister had very good political reasons not to give ground easily, especially with respect to Major Haddad, who emerged as the principal stumbling block in the last days of bargaining with Beirut Haddad, regarded as a traitor by some of his countrymen, has become quite well-liked in Israel over the years that his Free Lebanese Forces have been fighting the PLO a few miles across the border Moreover, because the Major began to cooperate with Jerusalem before Begin and his Likud bloc came to power in 1977, the Opposition Labor Alignment feels no less responsible for his fate than the Prime Minister, a point that Labor Leader Shimon Peres made clear to Shultz Gratitude aside, Haddad's removal would have been widely perceived as a symbol of the Lebanese invasion's total failure Israel has had to give up, one by one, most of the goals Begin promised to achieve last summer No forma) peace treaty will be signed, no diplomatic representatives are to be exchanged, the frontiers will not be completely opened, and even full commercial relations, it turns out, are not to be discussed until the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have evacuated Lebanon—leaving Jerusalem little leverage to exert on President Amin Gemayel In addition, thousands of PLO guerrillas that the IDF "expelled" from Beirut and other places have returned to their haunts To justify its action at all, then, the government needed at least to demonstrate that it had genuinely insured northern Israel from terrorist attacks by permanently removing the PLO from southern Lebanon Preserving Haddad's authority in the area was therefore critical In pure political terms, Begin could not afford to let the U S persuade him to turn his back on the Major The doctors' strike is fraught with peril for the Prime Minister, too A key to his political success has been an ability to isolate the average Israeli from economic reality Although inflation is running at 130 per cent annually, for instance, the triangular wage agreements in effect between the government, the Manufacturers' Association and the General Confederation of Labor have kept workers' purchasing power from dropping more than a tiny fraction And this dip, as the governor of the State Bank recently noted with some alarm, has not been reflected in the figures for consumption Rather, Israelis are eating up their savings thanks to the government's policy of keeping the international exchange value of the shekel artifically high—which in effect subsidizes imported goods The whole fiscal house of cards could abruptly topple One or two dramatic patient deaths could evoke intense public pressure for an expeditious settlement of the doctors' walkout, forcing the government to give the physicians a sizeable portion of the 130 per cent pay increase they demand That in turn, as Finance Minister Yoram Andor has warned, could precipitate the general collapse of the triangular agreements, marking the beginning of the end of the Israeli electorate's happy dream state For now, Begin appears to have escaped any serious damage from the Lebanese adventure But on the home front his options for fighting off reality are narrowing Eliahu Salpeter, regularly reports for The New Leader from Israel is a correspondent tor the daily Ha'aretz...