Middle East Straight Talk from the U.S.

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Sweet nothings might have been the preference of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was visiting London when word of Baker's speech reached him. "It was useless that Baker raised this now, useless," he said. "We cannot accept what he said about a greater Israel or the settlement problem." Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, visiting Washington, charged the U.S. with inappropriately trying to define a final settlement while all sides still wrestled with preliminary negotiations on West Bank and Gaza elections. "The less we deal with the idea of a permanent solution, the better," grumped Rabin.

In Israel, Baker's comments fueled the fire already burning at the extreme right wing of Shamir's Likud Party. The government's hard-core hawks are apoplectic with Shamir for proposing elections in which Palestinians would chose representatives to negotiate a transitional period of self-rule. Despite the vagueness of the proposal, which the Cabinet endorsed by a vote of 20 to 6 earlier this month, they fear that their hard-lining leader is careering down the slippery slope toward an independent Palestinian state. Thirty Knesset hawks denounced the election plan as a "submission to terror." Trade and Industry Minister Ariel Sharon warned that the plan would "bring us closer to / war" and announced his intention to challenge Shamir at a Likud Party convention in late June.

Shamir has attempted to mollify his right-wing critics with rhetoric ("We will not give the Arabs one inch of land") and by increasing pressure on the Palestinians. Rabin is now nearly doubling the number of Israeli troops in the occupied territories. The government is also cracking down on the freedom of Palestinians who live in the territories but work in Israel, issuing a new requirement for work permits. This renewed toughness by Israel is being matched by an escalation in the intifadeh that has already led to greater bloodshed. Israeli troops came under fire in three separate incidents last week, only days after a soldier and three West Bank Palestinians died in the first full-scale fire fight of the uprising.

If Shamir does bow to pressure from the right, he risks losing support from the freshly engaged U.S. Responding flexibly to Baker, on the other hand, could cause a revolt within Likud. The predicament, unfortunately, gives a seasoned politician like Shamir a relatively easy out: he can complain about the pressures from both sides -- and do nothing. With tensions soaring in the territories, that could be the most dangerous course of all.