Middle East Land for Peace?

If George Shultz ever had any stomach for Middle East diplomacy, he has long since lost it. He has come to deplore the region's treacherous politics and brutal methods. In 1982 he was the chief architect of a peace plan that failed dismally, underscoring for him the futility of well-intentioned initiatives in a conflict poisoned by four decades of hatred and mistrust. In 1983 the death, of 241 U.S. servicemen in their bombed-out Beirut headquarters showed him the dangers of direct intervention. Returning from the region last October, Shultz seemed ready to wash his hands of the whole mess.

Yet here he is, flying back to the Middle East this week to launch a new round of peace talks on behalf of a President with less than a year left in power. Shultz's mission is prompted less by dreams of an eleventh-hour diplomatic triumph than by a desperate need to halt the bloody cycle of Palestinian riots and Israeli reprisals that erupted last December in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The continuing violence, which has left at least 59 Palestinians dead and hundreds more wounded by Israeli shootings and beatings, has fueled a burning sense of urgency about easing if not solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has become increasingly clear that efforts to end the unrest will probably be futile unless a negotiating process leading to some form of Palestinian self- rule is started. But the latest U.S. initiative aimed at achieving that goal is stirring political turmoil in Israel. That domestic struggle could render the Jewish state incapable of engaging in serious diplomacy at the very moment when compromise may be essential.

At the heart of the debate is the principle of "land for peace," according to which Israel would agree to make territorial concessions in the Arab regions it has occupied since 1967 in return for the establishment of peaceful relations with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as with neighboring Jordan. Shultz regards such a trade-off as absolutely essential to any progress in the Middle East conflict. But the Israeli leadership is bitterly divided over the issue. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who is head of the Labor Party, is amenable to the principle. But Peres' partner in Israel's national unity government, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, is opposed to any territorial concessions. Said Shamir of the land-for-peace idea: "You can't conduct negotiations and ((can)) certainly not achieve peace by announcing every day that you're ready to accept everything."

The increasingly bitter sniping between the two top Cabinet officials led some Shamir aides to hint that the Prime Minister was considering sacking Peres. But such a move would probably force the next election, now scheduled for November, to be held much earlier. Shamir is reluctant to take such a drastic step. Yet the national unity government now exists in name only, largely because of frictions over the peace issue.