The Peres gambit - Shimon Peres's role in bringing about the Israeli-PLO peace negotiations

National Review, March 7, 1994 by Joel Bainerman, Barry Chamish

BElT SHEMESH, ISRAEL

ACCORDING to the Labor Party's chronology of the Israel-PLO accord--most details of which were ironed out near the beginning of February in Cairo--progress toward the deal began only after the party assumed power.

In this official scenario, Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin started the "Gaza-Jericho First" ball rolling at an academic conference in 1992, and the idea was subsequently pursued for a year at a Norwegian university through the offices of Terje Roed Larsen, a social scientist who had been doing research on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

But a closer look at the activities that led to the signing in Washington last September tells a radically different story.

In January 1990, Science Minister Ezer Weizman (today Israel's president) met with PLO officials in London. He returned to Israel and reported his meetings to Labor Party head Shimon Peres, who was then a member of the National Unity Government, an uneasy coalition formed after the 1988 elections had failed to give either major party a solid plurality.

Peres was enthusiastic but knew that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, of the hard-line Likud Party, would never go along. He decided that the only way to exploit the opening was to bring down the government. He assigned the task of keeping the PLO talks alive to his aides Adi Tamir and Nimrod Novick, while asking his deputy Yossi Beilin to join him in breaking up the ruling coalition.

Step one in the plan was to force the ultra-orthodox Shas Party, headed by Interior Minister Arye Deri, to leave the coalition. Peres, as finance minister, was well placed to do this. He had gathered indisputable proof of Deri's large embezzlements and bribe-taking. Beilin approached Deri with the findings and gave him a choice: quit the government or face the legal consequences. Deri chose to lead Shas out of the coalition.

Next, a strong issue was needed as a pretext for a no-confidence motion. This was supplied by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in February 1990. He asked the Israeli government to support a plan, bearing his name, which implicitly put Jerusalem up for negotiations, a state of affairs both he and Peres knew Shamir could never support.

Shas once again was the instrument: it shocked its supporters by backing the Baker Plan, thereby bringing down the National Unity Government. The party eventually reneged and returned to the Likud fold, but Peres had gained the cover he needed to leave the coalition.

Labor was now in opposition and Peres began planning a victory in the next national elections, scheduled for 1992. Meanwhile, in June 1991 Yossi Beilin traveled to Cairo, leading a delegation of six Labor members of the Knesset. He disappeared from his group for several hours without explanation. Had they known why, they might never have signed on for the Egyptian junket.

What Beilin did was go to the King Hotel to meet two high-ranking PLO officials, Said Kamal, the PLO's representative in Cairo, and Mahmud Abbas, a special envoy from Yasir Arafat. Beilin handed Abbas a written message from Peres, which asked the PLO leader to use his influence to persuade Israeli Arabs to vote en masse for labor in the 1992 national elections. In return, if Labor was elected it would immediately freeze settlements in the administered territories, adopt a land-for-peace diplomacy, and cancel the law prohibiting meetings between Israelis and members of the PLO.

The last promise is significant. Beilin and Peres were both well aware that the former's meeting with Kamal and Abbas was against Israeli law, which as members of the Knesset they were sworn to uphold. Peace activist Abie Nathan had already sat in prison for violating it. Beilin was consorting with the enemy on orders from his superior.

By January 1992 it was becoming clear to Arafat that Shimon Peres would likely lose the party's leadership to Yitzhak Rabin after the elections. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sent a delegation to Jerusalem to meet with Peres and find out if the deal that Arafat had been offered would be valid if Rabin took over the party. Peres assured the Egyptians that nothing would change, though clearly he knew Rabin would never play along with secret deals with the PLO.

On January 17, James Baker met with Mubarak and told him that the U.S. would begin a campaign to force Israel into freezing settlements. This message was transmitted by the American ambassador to Nabil Shaat, Arafat's diplomatic advisor.

Two days later Beilin was in Cairo on his second known secret mission. Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by Yehoshua Meiri of the Hebrew daily newspaper Hadashot entering the lobby of the Ramses Hilton Hotel. Meiri watched him enter a room, followed a few minutes later by Nabil Shaat. Beilin's secret was out, and two Egyptian newspapers, Al-Gomhouriya and Al-Wafd, disclosed details of the meeting. According to Shaat, who felt free to talk since the story was out, Peres had upped the stakes. If the PLO rallied Arab voters behind Labor, helping it to oust the Likud coalition from power, his government would support an "independent autonomous entity" led by the PLO, i.e., something resembling a Palestinian state.