Shamir to Insist Plan Be Revised : U.S.-Israel Ties Would Survive Rebuff, He Says

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir will insist during an official visit to Washington this week on modifications in the latest American Middle East peace initiative, confident that even if the amendments are rejected and Israel formally rebuffs the plan, it will not damage ties between the two allies.

“I am sure there will not be any change in our relationship because the relationship between Israel and the United States doesn’t require always a true convergence of views and opinions,” Shamir said in an interview.

“It is a fact that there is no agreement, and there never was agreement between Israel and the United States about such vital issues for us as, for instance, the problem of the borders of the state, of the status of Jerusalem and other similar issues,” he added. “And in spite of it, the relations have been very friendly and very good.”

Most Challenging Visit

Shamir spoke to reporters from The Times and the Washington Post before leaving on what is seen here as his most challenging state visit since taking office 18 months ago, and possibly the most important one in his political career.

It follows more than three months of violent unrest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip--unrest that Shamir said was clearly the “trigger” for the American plan that was formally unveiled to Jordan on March 3 and to Egypt, Syria and Israel the following day by Secretary of State George P. Shultz at the conclusion of his peace shuttle in the region.

Shultz asked for definite answers to his proposals to coincide with Shamir’s scheduled arrival in Washington on Monday.

But the prime minister has already rejected the Shultz deadline, and in comments to the Israeli media and leaders of his rightist Likud Bloc political movement, he has blasted the substance of the plan as well.

Only Signature Acceptable

“The Likud should go to war . . . over the Shultz plan,” he told his party’s Knesset (Parliament) faction last week. In an interview published Friday in the independent daily newspaper Haaretz, he said, “The only word I approve of in the Shultz document is his signature.”

Shamir’s recalcitrance earlier prompted 30 U.S. senators, including some who have been among Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress, to criticize him and his party as stumbling blocks to peace. Their assessment came in a letter to Shultz that was leaked to the U.S. press, and it was seen in Israel as an unprecedented public slap by the legislators.

In Shamir’s interview with the two U.S. journalists here, he was clearly anxious to present a different face to America than the one he has shown at home. While standing by the essence of his objections to the Shultz plan, he struck a much more conciliatory tone toward it, stressing what he called the “large common ground” between his ideas and the American proposal.

Appearing relaxed and at times jovial during a nearly hourlong conversation, Shamir also tempered the harsh criticism he has leveled at American Jewish leaders, the media and even his political arch-rival, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Peres, leader of the centrist Labor Alignment that is part of the “national unity” coalition government with Likud, has said it would be “unforgivable” to miss what he describes as the historic opportunity offered by the American plan to try to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Blocked Peres’ Efforts

But Shamir has blocked the foreign minister’s efforts to force a formal government response to the American initiative, using his position as Israel’s leader to prevent the issue from coming to a vote in the Cabinet pending what he describes as one more attempt this week to convince the Reagan Administration that it should change the plan.

Shultz has repeatedly described the U.S. proposal as so delicately balanced and interlocked that no significant change is possible without destroying the initiative completely.

“I know this argument,” Shamir commented in the interview. “But it’s not my impression that it is impossible to introduce some changes.”

The American plan envisions an international conference chaired by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to open by mid-April. There would follow by May 1 the opening of direct negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation regarding terms of a 3-year interim administration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Negotiations on the final status of the territories would begin Dec. 1, before the onset of the transitional period.

The interim arrangements are meant to appeal to Israel, while the international conference and the promise of final status talks even before the transitional period begins are designed to answer Jordanian concerns.

(PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has rejected the U.S. plan, according to the New York Times. In an interview last week at his headquarters in Tunisia, Arafat said the PLO would no longer settle for indirect representation through a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation as suggested by Shultz, the newspaper reported.)

Objects to Timetable

In the interview, Shamir repeated his objections to the international conference and the peace plan’s timetable.

“I cannot accept a real conference with the participation of all these factors mentioned in the initiative,” he said. “It’s one of the problems. . . . And there are other elements--the sequence of the various stages of the negotiations and the essence of the solution we have to find in these negotiations.”

He asserted that concessions Israel has already made entail serious risks to the country. And he objected specifically to abbreviation of the interim arrangements from the 5-year “autonomy” period envisioned in the 1978 agreements that Israel signed with Egypt at the Camp David presidential retreat near Washington.

“The autonomy was regarded by us as a test,” he said. “And this was the concept: That if it will work well, and there will be a peaceful and fruitful cooperation, there will be a different atmosphere, an atmosphere of mutual confidence, and it will be easier for the parties to find an agreed (permanent) solution.”

Bringing New Proposals

Shamir said he will bring new proposals to Washington with him, but he refused to discuss them in any detail.

Israeli critics charge that Shamir only wants to delay a formal answer on the peace initiative in the hope that the Arabs will reject it first, thus relieving him of the onus of saying no.

“Not at all! Not at all!” he said, responding to the charge. “I’m taking into consideration mainly our interests and our concerns.” He added that “it is not my intention to prolong unnecessarily the discussion.”

Shamir also rejected the contention that the real issue surrounding his objections to the Shultz plan is his opposition to trading any West Bank or Gaza Strip land for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Shultz, in remarks to a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday, said that a Middle East settlement is impossible without a substantial Israeli withdrawal from those occupied territories.

Adheres to Camp David

Sidestepping the question of land for peace, Shamir would only reiterate Israel’s commitment to the Camp David agreements, arguing that they contain “everything that is necessary for real, serious and effective negotiations.”

Virtually the entire Arab world rejected the Camp David pact from the beginning, and even the Egyptians now say that it is outdated in its approach to the problem of the occupied territories.

If the Reagan Administration refuses to bend on modifying its new peace plan, Shamir said, “I will come back, I will convene the government, and we will decide.”

Shamir appears in a strong position to block both Washington and his political rivals at home.

“The question is not only to bring the Arabs to the negotiations,” he reminded his interviewers. “The Israelis have also to come to the table of negotiations.”

‘Power to Resist’

In an interview with the English-language Jerusalem Post this weekend, he was even more direct. “My power to resist is very great,” he noted. “There will be no international conference without us.”

The current coalition government here is so evenly split over the issues that Labor has said it will be necessary to go to the public in early elections before November, when they are scheduled. But Peres has already said that the political risks of trying to force early elections are so high that in practice, the only way the date can be advanced is by agreement between the two major blocs.

That means Shamir can effectively forestall early elections as well, and he hinted in the interview that he is in no hurry to go to the polls.

“We have some problems, and there is a dilemma if this government will continue its activity with the same composition that we have,” he said. “If we arrive at a negative answer, the decision will be to go to elections.”

Prefers Fixed Election Date

However, he added, in principle, “I think that the best way for a democracy is to have elections on the date fixed by the law. . . . It is important for the stability in the country.”

Shamir backed away from his recent strong criticism of American Jews.

“I don’t have a conflict with them,” he said with a laugh. “My conflict is with the Arab countries.”

Early this month he told a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations here that it was “un-Jewish and very dangerous” to join in criticism of Israel and the force it is using against the Palestinian demonstrations in the occupied territories. “Every critical statement of a Jewish leader does much more harm than many violent demonstrations in Gaza and elsewhere,” he said.

Tempers Press Criticism

Similarly, he tempered his remarks about the press, which he had previously accused of bias and of doing unjust damage to Israel.

“I have nothing against the press when it expresses opinions about political solutions and political positions,” he said in the interview. Asked if the press had been fair, he responded, “It’s now better than before, but it depends on how you make your judgment.”

Shamir described Palestinian unrest in the territories as “more or less the same” as the violent 1936 Arab rebellion here against what was seen as a sympathetic policy toward Jewish immigration into what was then British-ruled Palestine.

“I remember it very well,” said the Polish-born Shamir, who immigrated as a young man in 1935. The rebellion caused “many casualties . . . and much suffering to all parts of the population. But the Arabs failed.”

Rejects Grievances

Shamir rejected the suggestion that legitimate Palestinian grievances might also be a factor in the current unrest.

“It’s a conflict between the Jewish people and the Arab world about our right to live here as an independent and free people,” he contended. “It’s not a question of legitimate or non-legitimate grievances.”

He said the Palestinians should not be regarded as “a stateless or homeless people” because there are already more than 20 Arab nations, including one, Jordan, in which the Palestinians make up a majority of the population.

“For us,” he argued, “this is the only piece of land we have.”