
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990                   TAG: 9006140479
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEACE TALKS

THE DOVE of peace remains an endangered species in the Middle East. On its first working day, the right-wing Israeli government made clear that its priority is not negotiations. Rather, it is to dig in. More money will be spent on Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and Soviet Jews may be moved there too.

The new government also may intensify Israel's crackdown on unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan, a member of the Cabinet's defense committee, advocated exporting leaders of the intifada.

As prime minister of the previous government - in which the Likud group shared power with the more moderate Labor Party - Yitzhak Shamir offered a proposal for peace that he, among others, did not take seriously.

According to his plan, Israel would negotiate with representatives the Palestinians themselves had chosen, but Israel would have to approve those choices. After the U.S. State Department and some Arab leaders had reworked the proposal to make it feasible, Shamir posed other conditions to halt progress. When a Palestinian terrorist raid followed, this became Shamir's pretext to demand that Washington stop its own talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Collapse of the Likud-Labor coalition a few months ago gave Labor's Shimon Peres a chance to form his own government with some of the splinter parties that proliferate in Israel. He failed; Shamir then succeeded, and immediately hardened his position still further. Land for peace, he now says, is out of the question. As for Washington, on whose intercession the whole peace process depends, Shamir declares that its dialogue with the PLO encourages terrorism.

Shamir says he would like to deal directly with moderate Arab countries. That is fine in itself, but it would do nothing to settle the most pressing problem, that of the Palestinians in the occupied lands. Israel can dilute their presence with more settlements; but the Palestinians will remain a conquered and subjugated people, and Israel a colonial power.

Those blunt facts contradict Israel's vaunted commitment to justice and democracy. The contradiction nags at Israelis' sense of national identity. Until such issues are resolved, Israel can have no peace - either in the territories or in its inner being. Lacking a government prepared to pursue peace, what chance is there?

by CNB