Four Questions for Israel

...At the same time, it should be stressed that opposition to returning to the pre'67 boundaries is not restricted to Rightwingers or to religious fanatics...

...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Little of all this is ever reported in the foreign press or treated on television abroad...

...The alienation of parts of the American Jewish community is perhaps the worst nightmare...

...The situation is being openly discussed in the Israeli media and by the public...

...Experts estimate that soldiers have been guilty of "excesses" in less than 10 per cent of the cases where force has been used...

...the distance between the Jordanian border and the sea, just north of Tel Aviv-was about 10 miles wide...

...Young girls and old women spit at them, shout obscene curses and participate in other provocations...

...Israel thus still faces four questions: How can it correct its image in the West, which wants order to be restored with kid gloves...

...In uncharacteristic contrast, the Palestinians have developed a sophisticated and smooth-working propaganda machine around the Palestine Press Service in East Jerusalem and some of the Arab newspapers...

...That is what the PLO seems to want, but apparently it is too much even for the organization's supporters...

...The ultimate objective would be the implementation of a settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which in effect provide for Israel to be granted secure borders in exchange for departing from the disputed territories...

...Tens of thousands-maybe over 100,000-Arabs from the territories work in Israel's construction industry, farming and factories, and in services ranging from hotels and restaurants to municipal sanitation departments...

...In Israel, sectors like construction have felt the impact of the strikes, but overall workers from the territories make up less than 10 per cent of the manual labor force...

...Some who disobeyed had their shops burned down at night, and that has sufficed to keep businessmen inline...

...Regardless of their outcome, in December Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation would start another set of talks limited to one year aimed at a "permanent solution," or Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories...

...Actually, the Arabs appear to have gotten somewhat tired, and the economic strain has also begun to take its toll...

...What steps can be taken to control disorders without tying down too many soldiers and officers...

...Labor may agree that this is the only way out of total paralysis in the Cabinet...

...Yet Israel is keenly aware that combining an already existing impression of political intransigence with the impact of TV coverage of the events in the West Bank and Gaza could have disastrous tangible consequences in the U.S...

...Calling early elections and thereby delaying any answers may be Shamir's "solution...

...The clandestine leaflets distributed in the territories have instructed workers to stay home-and the torching of local buses plus the massive blocking of roads leading from villages to highways to enforce those instructions have been a major cause of the clashes between local youths and soldiers arriving to restore order...

...Shutting down every municipal office, hospital and local police station would also result in administrative chaos...

...Whether or not at least some of the differences separating these men on issues such as creating a Palestinian entity are more apparent than real, both know that elections are at most seven months away here and are positioning themselves for the contest...

...Commanders have declared that they consider this unacceptably high...

...For Israeli hawks this was a confirmation of their argument that any pullout from the land occupied in 1967 would merely be seen by the Palestinians as the initial step in wiping out the Jewish State completely...

...In these circumstances sentiment has been growing among politicians and the man-in-the-street for closing the West Bank and Gaza to unrestricted press coverage...

...The call for public employees in the territories to quit their jobs, for example, would send home all teachers at a moment when another leaflet has urged opening the high schools closed down by the military government because of their students' riots...

...Secretary of State George P. Shultz had to shuttle not only among Israel's immediate Arab neighbors but also between the top members of its coalition government-Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, leader of the Likud bloc, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the Labor Party...

...But local commanders, from the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and up, have the right to temporarily close off any area of operations to civilians, and they have been using it increasingly to keep the media out...

...After an initial call for a complete general strike in the territories, the clandestine leaflets "permitted" shops to open for three hours daily...

...Foreign correspondents have come to look upon them as bona fide conveyors of information, and until quite recently they were in fact fairly reliable, mixing only a small amount of biased misinformation with genuine news...

...Many of them have opened small stalls in the markets to make up a part of their lost income...

...Meanwhile, most Israelis are still greatly concerned about the country's image abroad, and what they feel is unfair foreign media coverage of the Army's handling of the unrest in the territories...

...Still others fear both the brutalizing effects of the use of force against civilians and the scars this may leave on the more sensitive soldiers...

...Visits of American Jewish leaders reporting how the U.S...

...Others worry that violations of the orders indicate a breakdown of discipline in the ranks...

...Israeli officials attribute this to the use of force...

...A poll in one of the evening newspapers, though, showed the Israeli public favored the American plan by a surprising 51 per cent to 41 per cent...

...By the second week of March there was a considerable lessening of the disturbances in the territories...

...Several commentators are worried as well that the frustrations caused by the conflict between the Palestinians' provocations and the demands for restraint may engender hostility toward the civilian authorities...

...instead, the focus tends to be on the soldiers' reactions to violence...

...This was undoubtedly a factor, too, in the tough public stand Shamir took during his March 15-18 visit to Washington...

...Syria insisted on a separate Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) delegation and a Security Council veto...

...More significantly, where the PLO had in the past said it would recognize Israel if Israel recognized the PLO, now it upped the ante to complete withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem first...

...While formulating his new Middle East peace initiative, U.S...

...The new factor on the scene, the stonethrowing youngsters and their local leaders, went further: They told foreign newsmen that their goal was to take all of Palestine and turn it into an Arab state...

...The officers see their actions primarily as protecting the troops' morale...

...Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak endorsed the Shultz plan right away...

...Conversely, will the Israelis feel secure after giving back all the areas that even moderate Arabs demand...

...The problem is more complicated in the case of local businesses...

...Many newspapers, echoing politicians of the Center and Left, warn of possible cutbacks in political, military and economic support...

...For the first time many of them are openly criticizing "leaders abroad who don't know the real situation here...

...Indeed, this very substantive issue is at the heart of the chances for any Israel-Arab peace effort: Will the Arabs accept border changes satisfying Israel's minimum security needs...

...How can the public's deepening split over the future of the West Bank and Gaza be resolved...

...Although the whole process would be launched "under the auspices" of the five permanent Security Council members-the U.S., Britain, France, the USSR, and China-that forum could neither dictate to the bilateral committees doing the actual negotiating nor veto any agreement they might reach...

...Most moderate Israelis, while ready to compromise on the territories for true peace, object to a wholesale retreat out of a genuine concern for the Jewish State's survival...

...In addition, there is concern that maintaining law and order in the territories is taking precious time away from the Army intended for combat training of regular and reserve troops...

...The main points of the plan Shultz finally presented to Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus, and Cairo are by now wellknown...

...and Western Europe...

...Israeli suppliers have suffered a spate of bad checks from the hard hit Arab shopkeepers, yet a substantial number of them have used their savings to maintain their credit, and many Israeli wholesalers have continued to supply their West Bank and Gaza customers even if they cannot pay regularly...

...The continuation of the disorders has highlighted how interconnected the economies of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza have become...

...public, media and Congress are reacting to the present troubles have a considerable effect even on Right-wing politicians, despite self-righteous declarations that neither foreign nations nor Jews living abroad have a right to tell Israel what to do in matters vital to her security...

...There has been much bitterness because the compensation promised striking workers and businessmen has never materialized...

...Few Jews in Israel would be willing to go back to a condition where the country's "waist"-i.e...

...Six months of talks seeking to establish an "interim solution," or threeyear autonomy scheme, for the West Bank and Gaza would begin in May between Israel and "each of its neighbors...

...Jordan, after relenting on its retreat from a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, wanted the Security Council participants in the opening conference to have the authority to direct the bilateral negotiators...

...Furthermore, orders from the PLO leadership abroad, publicized by the leaflets and by broadcasts from Arab countries, are getting contradictory and putting a growing burden on the population...

...And how can the deadlocked government deal with the U. S. Secretary of State, who is determined to set a Mideast peace plan in place before he has to leave office in eight months...

...But since the Arab workers depend on their Israeli wages, absenteeism has never exceeded 50-55 per cent, and by the beginning of March was almost back to normal...

...Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Chief of Staff Dan Shomron have stated that they think such a move would be undesirable and impossible to implement effectively...

...The PLO's position was made clear when it ordered local Palestinian leaders to reject Shultz' invitation to meet with him...

...It merely shows again that the power of the PLO leadership is limited in the territories...

...In Israel, Peres went along but Shamir accepted only the two-tier solution principle and shortening the autonomy period from five years to three-and he qualified this by opposing the rigid timetable for starting the second tier on the grounds that it would eliminate any incentive for the Arabs to make autonomy succeed...

...Yet even the Army's strongest critics today point out that no one who has not been on patrol duty in the troubled areas-and certainly not the swollen corps of visiting journalistscan realize what the troops have to endure...

...Those to the Right feel the Chief of Staff and the Army Judge Advocate General have been too harsh in their orders stipulating restraint on the part of the troops...

...This does not mean, Israeli experts warn, that the disorders are now coming to an end...

...Israeli sales to the West Bank and Gaza are estimated at roughly $900 million annually, a small fraction of the country's industrial output...

...Sometimes for eight hours a day they are pelted by rocks, homemade fire bombs and various metal projectiles...

...And unfortunately Israel's public relations and information services seem woefully inept at getting across the whole story...