Word: shamir
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Arab leaders were not alone in suggesting that Saddam could be lured into behaving with more restraint. In the spring of 1984, Teicher accompanied Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan's special Middle East envoy, on a visit to Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told Rumsfeld that Israel considered Iran, not Iraq, to be the greatest threat in the region. According to Teicher, Shamir proposed the construction of an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Israeli port of Haifa as a goodwill gesture. When the U.S. relayed the offer to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, he refused to pass it along...
...they have ever been. Yes, the U.S. is committed to pushing extra hard for Israeli flexibility, to pay back Arab governments for their support of the coalition and to cement American credibility in the Arab world. But even Israel's No. 1 patron cannot make Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir budge unless he chooses to. And he does not. "We shall stand firm," says Shamir, against "attempts to establish a new pattern of Middle East arrangements...
While the U.S. has been fighting a ground war, the Israeli leader has been preparing for a diplomatic one. "There will be an effort to use political means to snatch from Israel what could not be snatched from us by force," Shamir told his party, adding that nothing would shake his refusal to cede land for peace. The Palestinians' feverish support for Saddam made any compromise over the West Bank and Gaza far more unlikely. And Shamir feels that the restraint he displayed in the face of the Scud barrage entitles Israel to freedom from Washington's heavy hand...
Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat rendered Shamir's obstructionist policy all the more workable by alienating the West, his Arab bankrollers and the Israeli peaceniks. "The Palestinian path no longer goes through Arafat," says a senior U.S. diplomat. Some of the chairman's supporters suggest he may have to step down to restore the Palestinians' shattered credibility. Even that might not help. Though the Arab regimes pay lip service to their cause, blind attachment to Saddam has cost the Palestinians respect and sympathy everywhere. At the same time, the war has intensified the naked hatred between Palestinians and Israelis...
...Palestinian problem is another matter. The gulf states are quietly urging Syria to normalize relations with Israel. "Bilateral relations are the way to go," says a Saudi assistant to King Fahd. "Not only because ((Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak)) Shamir won't agree to an international conference, but because we don't want to reward the P.L.O. Syria's revolutionary credentials are impeccable. If Syria comes to terms with Israel, the crazies will be less able to scream. If we ourselves did it, you can bet that Libya and the P.L.O. would move to destabilize...