Trouble's in the air as Bibi and Yasser are due to arrive in Washington

By Abraham Rabinovich

JERUSALEM -- WERE HE A MARRIAGE COUNSELOR, Bill Clinton would doubtless suggest to the troubled couple he will be receiving this week in the Oval Office to cut their losses and search for happiness with a more suitable partner.

He will not have that choice, however. Nor will Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who have been unable, after a year and a half of fitful dating, to produce the right chemistry. President Clinton's two visitors will come, separately, clutching not wish lists but complaint lists: a poor way to embark on a life voyage.

The Israeli cabinet's decision this week linking further Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank to fulfillment by the Palestinians of some 50 conditions -- including conditions everyone knows the Palestinians will never meet -- provides Netanyahu with the key for shutting down the peace process if he wishes. He could do so on the defensible grounds that the Palestinians are not meeting their written commitments.

However, his statement after the cabinet meeting that these conditions do not constitute an ultimatum permits him just as easily to turn the key in the other direction. If it is not really an ultimatum then the conditions are not really conditions. Few people in Jerusalem, Gaza or Washington -- perhaps not Netanyahu himself -- would be willing to wager their life savings on how he turns that key.

To Dr. Ahmed Tibi, Arafat's political advisor, the list is chutzpah wrapped in provocation. "They ask us to halt incitement? What about the settlers' radio station broadcasting incitement against the Palestinians from morning to night?" As for the demand that the Palestinians hand over to Israel terrorist suspects, Tibi says, the Oslo accords specifically obviate the need for extradition if the suspected perpetrators are in Palestinian prisons.

The demand that the Palestinian Charter be amended to eliminate threats to the existence of Israel is likewise a distortion of reality, asserts Tibi. The charter was amended in 1996, he said, and the previous Israeli government was directly involved in formulating the wording of the Palestinian decision.

The long complaints list, says Tibi, is proof that the Israeli government is trying to sink the peace process in order to evade its own obligations, particularly the overdue West Bank pullback.

David Bar-Illan, a senior advisor to Netanyahu, says that the formulation of the conditions is not an attempt to trip up the peace process but to ensure that it can move forward safely.

The change made to the Palestinian Covenant in 1996, he said, had merely consisted of a broad statement annulling all anti-Israel articles without stipulating which articles specifically were being referred to. As for terrorist suspects, none of the 34 whose extradition is being sought by Israel is being held in prison, said Bar-Illan, and a number were actually serving with the Palestinian security forces.

"Arafat's inaction on the terrorist and covenant issues makes us wonder whether he really means to make peace or whether he is using peace as part of a plan to destroy Israel in stages," said Bar-Illan.

Israeli Gen. (res.) Oren Shahor, former coordinator of government activity in the territories, said that apart from the question of the merits of the Israeli demands was the tone in which they were voiced -- "the music," in his words. "If this is supposed to be a partnership it has to be a dialogue between partners -- not orders handed down by a ruler to subordinates."

Israeli political scientist Ron Pundak, one of the architects of the Oslo accords, regards the Israeli demands as legitmate but not the stipulation that Israel will not withdraw unless the Palestinians first comply with the Israeli conditions. "The Palestinians have to meet their obligations but it should be done simultaneously with the Israeli redeployment." The Palestinians, he noted, also have a laundry list of Israeli commitments which they say have not been met.

On the question of extradition of terrorist suspects, Pundak says that regardless of the written obligation in the Oslo Accords Arafat can no more be expected to hand over Palestinians to Israel than to expect Israel to hand over its citizens to the Palestinians. "If you go with a microscope over every article you may be looking for a way to get out of the agreement."

At the moment, said Pundak, Netanyahu has the ability to implement the redeployment or not to implement it. What did Pundak think his decision would be?

"I don't think he's decided what to do. Even though he looks confident when the press is around, I think he's very confused. The burden is so heavy that he has a right to hesitate. But he has the historical obligation to decide."