Numbers Out of A Hat 
by Charles Krauthammer 
May 17,1998

The Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her peace team 
went to London to negotiate territorial withdrawals with Prime 
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu The Israelis came to the meetings 
with maps. The State Department side came in with a number.

The Israelis showed which hill here and which ridge there they 
could safely afford to give up. Added up, it came to 9 percent of 
the West Bank. The US side said: No. It must be 13.1 percent.

Now, the relation of the latter number to anything in the real world is
purelycoincidental. It was picked because Arafat already has 26.9
percent of the territories, and 13.1 would produce a nice round number:
40.0. (And State accuses Netanyahu of lacking seriousness in these
talks.) But even more significant than the absurd arbitrariness of this
number is itsvery existence. Under the Oslo Accords, these interim
"further redeployments" are left to Israel's discretion (unlike the
"final status" talks, at which Israel and the Palestinians will together
negotiate their final borders).

Indeed, just 16 months ago the Clinton administration reaffirmed this
principle. At 11 p.m. on the night of Jan.15,1997,as Netanyahu's
cabinet was agonizing over the proposed withdrawal from Hebron, it
received an urgent memo from then ambassador,Martin Indyk, stating the
official US position that:
further redeployment phases are issues for implementation byIsrael
rather than issues for negotiation with the Palestinians. The letters of
assurance which secretary Christopher intends to provide to both parties
also refer to the process of further redeploymentsasanIsraeli
responsibility.

Sixteen months later in London, Albright tells Israel that its 9 percent
is no good. The withdrawal must be 13.1 percent - or else she walks
away. She gives Netanyahu three days to give his answer. He tells her: I
don't need three days. The answer is no.

So now we have a crisis. And though it was manufactured by Stateto
putpressureon Netanyahu, it reveals instead a crisis of credibility
for this administration: How can Israel make ever more dangerous
concessions to the Palestinians when the assurances it receives to
offset those concessions are so perishable?

Last week at the National PressClub, Albright gave a hastily arranged
speech to explain her position. Its essential, tendentious theme was
that all of the problems in the peace process are traceable to
Netanyahu.Everythinghas gone to pieces, she averred, "in just two
years." You don't need to be a CIA codebreaker to understand what that
means: Netanyahu was elected prime minister two years ago this month.

The historic Hebron withdrawal, in which Netanyahu single-handedly
brought Likud and the Israeli Right into the land-for-peace Oslo
process, received nary a word. That's because the only praise offered in
her speech was reserved for Arafat.

Albright credits him for making "substantial changes in his negotiating
position." He had wanted a 30 percent Israeli withdrawal but was willing
to accept 13.1. How generous.

But the US position is that under the Oslo Accords Arafat has no say one
way or the other in the size of these withdrawals. He picked 30 percent
out of a hat. It appears nowhere in Oslo; It appears nowhere anywhere.
He could have picked 60 percent.

But Albright did not just praise Arafat for changing his negotiating
position on an issue the US has declared is not his to negotiate. She
also studiously omitted any reference to the solemn commitments Arafat
made in previous negotiations and has systematically violated: He has
not changed thePalestinian charter calling for Israel's destruction;
he has refused to extradite terrorists; he has built an army more than
twice the size that Oslo permits; his Palestine Authority Conducts a
continuing and vile media campaign ofanti-semitic and anti-Israel
incitement. The list is long.

On all these, utter silence.

However this crisis ends, Israel needs a US assurance that afterthis,
it will not he browbeaten yet again over yet another interim
redeployment - that this 9 or 11 or 13 percent withdrawal is the very
lastuntilIsrael and the Palestinians determinein "final
status" talks the permanent frontier between them.

The assurance is needed. But the question remains: Are the assurances
this administration gives as Israel enters life-and-death negotiation
worth the paper they are written on?