It takes a special kind of chutzpah to send to Ameinu, the successor organization to the Labor Zionist Alliance, an article containing the following passage:
“If the clandestine Oslo Accords, in 1993 negotiated out of the spotlight, fostered a wan hope for peace, an illusion which Israel’s enemies knew brilliantly to exploit, five years earlier Sweden was the inescapable venue for the media spectacle that brought Yassir Arafat to a conference table to gambol with “the Stockholm Five.” Remember them? An economist, a Princeton history professor, two women administrators from the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, and, astonishingly, the president of the American branch of the Labor Zionist Alliance. This quintet of self-appointed, arrogant interlopers from the American Jewish scene, without authorization from any official Israeli or American governmental agency, in the full glare of publicity and with the approbation of their Swedish hosts, proceeded “to negotiate” minimal terms which might theoretically enable the PLO to meet conditions set by the United States for recognition as a legitimate “partner” in the quest for peace. The cost: Arafat’s hollow, halfhearted recognition of the State of Israel.”
My first instinct was to toss this misinformed article into the round file and thank its author for submitting it, while politely declining to publish it. But why allow ourselves to be outdone in the chutzpah department? Such an essay might offer readers, an opportunity for what they call at my daughter’s school a “teachable moment.” After all, must everything that our organization publishes slavishly reflect some party line or doctrinaire point of view? Should our publications not serve to spark critical thinking and debate among our readers, at least within some reasonable limits?
We’ve published the views of Labor Knesset Member Colette Avital and other prominent Israeli figures from Israel’s security, intelligence and diplomatic establishment arguing that Israel must, in its own best interests, initiate a pragmatic dialogue with Hamas, dropping counterproductive pre-conditions which, had they been adopted with other Arab parties, would have prevented any peace talks—and peace treaties—from coming to fruition (think Egypt and Jordan, and the peace talks with Syria in the 90’s, which laid the groundwork for what may be a future Syrian-Israeli peace treaty). On this view, the most solid foundation for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations is one that co-opts Hamas into the process. Recent examples of this view have emanated from the likes of former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Israeli Foreign Minister (Labor) Shlomo Ben-Ami. We’ve also published the contrary perspective of Labor Knesset Members like former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh who have maintained that Israel must isolate and pressure Hamas while backing and negotiating peace with Fatah.
Who’s right? Today’s unconventional minority view may well become tomorrow’s received wisdom (and government policy). We have witnessed such a transformation in recent decades with the very idea of negotiating with the PLO, supporting the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and even talking peace with the Arab states. (I’m old enough to remember when that proposition was considered fantasy, or heresy, in the American Jewish community and in Israel). We would ill serve our readers if we did not capture the political ferment not only among progressive Zionists in Israel and America, but among prominent Israelis who are not identified with the left, who are embracing ideas, on “realist” pragmatic/security grounds, which have long been associated with political progressives in Israel.
With this commitment to pluralism and debate in mind, I opted to publish Haim Chertok’s “Does Europe Hate the Jews and Israel? The Other Stockholm Syndrome”—and to stand up for those he dubs “self-appointed, arrogant American Jewish interlopers” who tried to do their part to advance the cause of Arab-Israeli peace. There are many teachable moments arising from Chertok’s essay, but the most important is his mischaracterization of the role played by five prominent American Jews, including the President of the Labor Zionist Alliance—as Ameinu had been known for decades—in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s historic recognition of Israel and acceptance of U.S. terms for initiating peace talks.
Stanley Sheinbaum, Yasser Arafat and the Role of Unofficial Negotiators in Peacemaking
I had the good fortune to spend several afternoons recently in Los Angeles with Stanley Sheinbaum, the retired economics professor and celebrated progressive activist who organized the groundbreaking American Jewish meeting with Yasser Arafat in 1988. Sheinbaum recounted the story to me, a tale whose main points have long been part of the public record, published in numerous newspapers and journals at the time.
To refer to Stanley Sheinbaum and his colleagues—including Labor Zionist Alliance President Menachem Rosensaft—as “self-appointed arrogant interlopers…without authorization from any official…American governmental agency” is not only to misrepresent the basic historical facts, but to commit a triple error. First, Sheinbaum was indeed acting with the full authorization of the Reagan Administration. Second, it ignores the fact that it was the Reagan and incoming Bush Administrations which sought negotiations with the PLO in order to launch an unprecedented and vitally necessary Palestinian-Israeli peace initiative.
Third, it misunderstands the vital role which “independent” third party intermediaries often play, usually with the covert approval of governments, in facilitating peace talks between enemies, who require preliminary explorations of the possibilities to be conducted at arms length by unofficial interlocutors. Third party intermediaries enable political leaders to explore the viability of a formal negotiation process with reduced risks. “Independent” negotiators often report back to their affiliated governments, who then act accordingly based on new information they glean.
I first witnessed this process at work when my father, also an economist, led an American Jewish delegation of academics on behalf of American Professors for Peace in the Middle East in 1975 which met with the leadership of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the PLO and Israel—well before any Arab party had peace agreements, or conducted peace talks, with Israel. While living in Jerusalem, I joined the group’s debriefings with Israeli leaders, and learned later about its report to the U.S. State Department. The group was divided among those who believed that a turning had begun among the Arabs and the PLO towards genuine co-existence with Israel, and others who remained skeptical, viewing as tactical only.
My father found among the Arab leaders with whom he and the delegation met a conception of “two Israels”: “There is the actual Israel,” he wrote in “Arab Conceptions of Peace,”* “with which the Arabs fight wars, sign armistice and cease-fire agreements and conclude separation of forces and interim agreements, though not full peace treaties which would lead to ultimate normalization of relations. There is also in the Arab mind the mythical Israel—the illegitimate stranger in the region—which will eventually be destroyed by a process of attrition, isolation and withering away in the face of the moral imperatives of history, PLO vengeance and the element of time working on the side of the Arabs.”
My father was among those who assessed basic Palestinian and Arab attitudes toward Israel as unchanged, despite what he termed “a marked change in tactics.” Nonetheless, he had concluded already in 1975 that a tactical change could result in a strategic change, that changes in underlying motives might be sparked by modifications in means, leading him to raise the following questions:
“Can step-by-step negotiations bring with time a shift in Egypt’s image of the mythical Israel, as Israel presses for tangible components of peace in return for territorial concessions? Can the shift in tactics lead ultimately and perhaps inadvertently to a shift in objectives, as Egypt begins to derive substantial economic benefits from the reconstruction of the Suez Canal area, the influx of Western and Arab investments and from a possible reduction in the huge military budget? Finally were this shift to materialize, can it have a spill-over effect on Syria and the PLO, with whom the geopolitical problems are more complex than those with Egypt?”
My father pondered these queries shortly after Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy had told his delegation that President Sadat’s belief was that “peace involving economic and diplomatic relations is not the responsibility of this generation.” Only two years later, Sadat arrived in Jerusalem, recognized Israel, and a year later, signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state inaugurating full diplomatic and economic relations. My father was among those who recognized that despite the rhetoric he heard from the Egyptian Foreign Minister, forces were at play in Egypt to which the U.S. and Israel should carefully attend, which they might apply to Israel’s, America’s and Egypt’s advantage. The Israeli government subsequently did just that when Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman pursued peace with Egypt, as did the U.S. when President Jimmy Carter helped them reach that goal at Camp David.
Unofficial third party intermediaries have played a similar role to Sheinbaum and company with Syrian-Israeli peace talks. During the last two years, a “Track 2” unofficial Syrian-Israeli-American negotiation process has taken place behind the scenes. The unofficial Israeli negotiator, former Israel Foreign Ministry director-general Dr. Alon Liel, met with Abe Suleiman, a Syrian-American from Washington, D.C., who is close to Syrian President Bashar Assad. They were brought together by Geoffrey Aronson, an American analyst from the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, under the auspices of the government of Switzerland, represented by Nicholas Lang of the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Neither the Israeli nor the Syrian were official representatives of their governments, but both reported regularly on their talks’ progress to government officials in their respective countries. Their meetings produced a breakthrough framework for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria, resolving many of the issues which had derailed the official talks under Prime Minister Barak and Bashar Assad’s father during the late 1990’s.
This process has helped pave the way for third party mediators who are now acting to pass messages back and forth between Syrian and Israeli leaders Assad and Olmert, to help each determine when, whether and under what terms to embark on a public negotiation process. There can be no doubt that “independent negotiators” have played a highly constructive role in enabling governments to pursue peace agreements. When official talks have failed, the fault lies elsewhere, including in political limits which prevent official negotiators from making the concessions on both sides which unofficial negotiators may learn are necessary for bridging gaps blocking an agreement.
Other causes of such failed peace efforts include the inconsistent behavior of both parties in maintaining conditions conducive to public support for a protracted negotiation process—or in permitting a negotiation process to become so protracted and gradual that it is increasingly subject to assaults by opponents in both societies. On the Israeli side, the political power of the settler movement has insured that even as governments talked with Palestinian leaders about a two-state solution, settlements were expanding and land expropriations continued, rendering the possibility of separating Palestinians and Israelis ever more problematic. On the Palestinian side, the power of extremists has undermined the Palestinian leadership’s ability to make good, in a consistent manner, on its promises to abjure terrorism.
Unofficial Negotiators and Their Governments: Sheinbaum, the Reagan Administration and the PLO
Chertok’s charge against the American Jewish “independent” negotiators who met with the PLO ignores the fact that it was the Reagan and incoming Bush Administrations which sought to initiate a dialogue with the PLO. It misrepresents the historical context of these seminal events which led to PLO recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, its recognition of UN Resolution of 242 and renunciation of terrorism, three conditions which, updated to include acceptance of past agreements, remain central to Israel’s and America’s current peace efforts with Palestinian President Abbas and the PLO.
By the time Sheinbaum and company met with Arafat in December 1988, the first Palestinian intifada had been raging for a year. Israel’s harsh response had prompted the U.S. to “sharply criticize Israel’s heavy use of force,” and “an overly close relationship with Israel became a liability in its relations with nearly every other nation,” reported Time magazine on December 26, 1988. Reagan’s Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, had crisscrossed the globe carrying an American Mideast peace plan predicated on an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the creation of a “homeland” for the Palestinians and an international peace conference to realize these goals.
But who would negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians? Shultz soon reached the inescapable conclusion that the PLO could be the only authoritative representative for the Palestinians. But the PLO also had to meet the three conditions if the U.S. would enter into dialogue. Moreover, the PLO had just convened its national council in Algiers in November 1988 and for the first time had accepted U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for withdrawal of all forces from territories occupied after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, imply a recognition of Israel and require negotiations between all the parties to establish a just and lasting peace. The PLO’s failure to explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist and to renounce terrorism in the Algiers resolution remained obstacles in the way of US-PLO talks. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Sten Andersson had recently visited Israel, witnessed the violence in the occupied territories, and then met with Secretary Shultz in Washington. Shultz did not explicitly say he wanted the Swedes to act as intermediaries, but Andersson left the meeting with no doubt that Schultz would welcome his help in bridging the gap between US terms for opening a dialogue with the PLO and the historic, tantalizing, but still inadequate declarations that the PLO had issued thus far.
Swedish Foreign Minister Andersson concluded, after talking with Israeli politicians, that the best way to determine whether Arafat would meet the Reagan Administration’s conditions for a dialogue would be to invite a group of American Jews to explore the issue with Arafat in Stockholm. Enter Stanley Sheinbaum, who had a relationship with a Swedish undersecretary. For his first meeting with Arafat’s aides on November 21, 1988, Sheinbaum enlisted two other American Jews: international attorney Republican Rita Hauser, and Drora Kass, the American executive director of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. That meeting resulted in new language from the PLO which took a major step towards meeting U.S. conditions. Swedish diplomats showed Shultz the new PLO statement, but the Secretary deemed it not good enough.
Meanwhile, President-elect George H.W. Bush urged Shultz to press the Palestinians to meet U.S. conditions, as the U.N General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to hear Arafat in Geneva (Schultz had denied him a visa to appear at the U.N. in New York). Now Andersson invited the American Jews to return to Stockholm, to meet with Arafat himself on December 7, at the Palestinian leader’s request. This time the group was expanded to include two other American Jews: Menachem Rosensaft, president of the Labor Zionist Alliance (as our organization was called at the time), and Abraham Udovitch, professor of Middle East history at Princeton University.
Sheinbaum sought a guarantee from President Reagan that the US would enter into talks with the PLO if Arafat met U.S. terms. So in late October 1988, he met with Lt. Gen. Colin Powell, President Reagan’s National Security Advisor. Powell informed Sheinbaum that the U.S. had conveyed to the PLO through the Swedish intermediaries that if the PLO satisfied U.S. conditions the Reagan Administration would reciprocate with recognition and immediate talks. Sheinbaum maintained in his conversation with Powell that only President Reagan’s explicit assurance would bring Arafat to utter ‘the magic words.’ He put his proposal in a letter to Powell, who then used it as a basis for White House discussions on the issue. The Swedish government asked the U.S. for language for Arafat to use that would be acceptable to Secretary Shultz. The Reagan Administration drafted the wording, clearly stating the P.L.O.’s acceptance of Israel and renunciation of terrorism.
When Sheinbaum and his four American Jewish colleagues met with Arafat, he carried with him a letter on White House letterhead from President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Colin Powell assuring Arafat that the U.S. would respond favorably to a public statement by Arafat using the kind of clear and unequivocal language sought by the U.S. Understanding fully the Reagan Administration’s requirements, Sheinbaum and his colleagues worked out with Arafat and his aides language that they believed would satisfy the White House. President Reagan told Shultz that, “if Arafat delivered as promised, the State Department had permission to open ‘substantive discussions’ with the P.L.O.,” reported Time magazine on Dec. 26, 1988. After hearing of Arafat’s assurances, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering informed Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Reagan’s decision.
But Arafat did not use the exact language that had been agreed upon when he spoke at the U.N in Geneva, leading U.S. officials to call it a case of “close but no cigar.” The next day, he appeared at a press conference before 800 reporters and “accepted Resolutions 242 and 338 without coupling them with demands for Palestinian independence. He specifically named the state of Israel as having the right ‘to exist in peace and security.’…and declared: ‘We totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism,’” according to Time’s report. Shultz was satisfied, and U.S.-PLO meetings began. These paved the way for the unofficial talks at Oslo, which in turn morphed into official talks, resulting in an interim peace deal known as the Oslo Accords, and ultimately in the outline of a final peace which emerged at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001. Indeed, Stanley Sheinbaum still tells of how Colin Powell accosted him on the White House lawn just before Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton presided over the Oslo Accords signing ceremony: “You started all this!,” Powell pointed an accusing finger at him with a wry smile.
In a final irony, both Stanley Sheinbaum and Colin Powell are today among the growing ranks of those who question the wisdom of the very conditions which they negotiated with Yasser Arafat. Politically necessary as those terms may have been at the time with the PLO, both now feel that such prerequisites have outlived their usefulness when it comes to dealing with Hamas. Somewhere there may just be a new Stanley Sheinbaum—a self-appointed, arrogant American Jewish or Israeli interloper—talking quietly to a friend of the Syrian President, or to pragmatists within Hamas about the terms under which the organization would accept a long-term cease-fire with Israel, arrange for the release of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and end the misery of daily warfare in Sderot and Gaza.
Gidon D. Remba is Executive Director of Ameinu: Liberal Values, Progressive Israel, the U.S. affiliate of the World Labor Zionist Movement (www.ameinu.net).
