United States Foreign Relations Israel

When Shiite Muslim terrorists hijacked a TWA jet and took 39 Americans hostage in Beirut four years ago, then-President Ronald Reagan's public stance was clear: There would be no negotiations with terrorists. But in private, the U.S. position was quite different.

Israel and the Palestinians on Sunday accepted a U.S. proposal aimed at lifting the Israeli army's monthlong siege of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat inside his West Bank headquarters. The deal, based on a proposal by President Bush, would release Arafat from weeks spent trapped on two floors of his shattered offices in Ramallah and defuse one of the most contentious issues dividing the two sides. Palestinian officials said they expected the siege to be lifted as early as today.

Stanley Sheinbaum was finally feeling better. He had been in his sickbed in the Regency Hotel for a week. But the news had just flashed on television that President Reagan was ordering the State Department to open a formal dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Sounding breathless, Sheinbaum pronounced himself greatly relieved. The day before, with much different emotions, he had watched PLO chairman Yasser Arafat's televised speech at the special session of the U.N.

One day after Saudi Arabia's crown prince prodded President Bush to do more to restrain the Israeli military, the American leader Friday stressed his commitment to the Jewish state. "We will not allow Israel to be crushed," Bush said. But even as he emphasized his intention to stand by the longtime U.S. ally, he repeated his demand that Israel withdraw its troops from Palestinian territory it has occupied during its recent incursion into the West Bank.

The Mossad agents were on the run, winding through the crowded streets of Khartoum, one step ahead of Sudan's secret police and their Libyan allies. The Israeli spies had been betrayed by Sudanese informants, their cover as European businessmen blown and their station--disguised as a private business office--compromised. They had managed to salvage only their secret communications gear before speeding off into the dark. Their destination: Milton Bearden's house.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III asked Morocco's King Hassan II on Saturday to nudge the Palestine Liberation Organization toward a compromise on peace talks with Israel, but the king--a longtime U.S. ally--offered no immediate commitment to help, U.S. officials said. Baker met with Hassan on the first leg of a three-day tour of North Africa aimed at enlisting more Arab governments in his Middle East diplomacy.

An American teenager who fled to Israel after a Maryland slaying and became the focus of an international tug of war has agreed to plead guilty to murder here, U.S. and Israeli officials said Tuesday. Samuel Sheinbein, 19, will enter the plea in a Tel Aviv courtroom next month in connection with the 1997 killing of Alfred Tello Jr., whose body was found dismembered and burned near Sheinbein's home in suburban Maryland.

Iraq fired missiles into the civilian populations of Tel Aviv and Haifa early today in a thunderous retaliation as the United States and its allies bombed Iraq and occupied Kuwait for a second day with relentless fury. The Iraqi missiles injured six or seven Israelis, none seriously, officials said. Although Israel reserved the right to respond, it mounted no immediate counterattack. President Bush, "outraged" by the Iraqi attack, reportedly promised vengeance.

The Clinton administration, concerned that it had hobbled its top diplomat in Israel in the midst of the worst violence there in a decade, restored the security clearance of Ambassador Martin Indyk, the State Department said Tuesday. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reinstated Indyk's right to use classified information "in light of the continuing turmoil in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza [Strip] and for compelling national security reasons," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

In an act sure to help repair tattered U.S. relations with Israel and American Jewish leaders, President Bush urged the General Assembly on Monday to unconditionally repeal its controversial 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. "To equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of Jews in World War II and, indeed, throughout history," the President told the General Assembly.

Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia delivered a stern warning to President Bush on Thursday that the United States would face what a top Saudi advisor said were "grave consequences" if it does not rein in Israel. Abdullah, the de facto ruler of the desert kingdom, spent five hours at Bush's ranch in central Texas, the informality of the setting barely masking the divisions in Washington's relations with one of its most important Middle East partners.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell traveled to Damascus and Beirut on Monday for talks aimed at averting a wider Middle East war, and the United States explored the possibility of holding a conference to forge a final peace among Israelis, Palestinians and moderate Arabs. Powell, on a high-stakes mission to defuse 18 days of heightened hostilities since an Israeli offensive began in the West Bank, appeared to run into initial setbacks on both fronts.

President Bush, showing his exasperation as Israeli tanks continued to roll through the West Bank, demanded Saturday that Israel withdraw "without delay" from the Palestinian cities it has occupied in several days of outright war. "I don't expect them to ignore [me]," he said. "I expect them to heed the call." After aiming those sharp words at the Israelis during a news conference here, Bush followed up with a 20-minute phone call to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Since the shock of Sept. 11, President Bush has pursued a sharply focused foreign policy agenda with single-minded zeal: Terrorism was civilization's mortal enemy, he said, and his historic mission was to stamp it out, beginning in Afghanistan and moving on to Iraq. "My job isn't to try to nuance," Bush said recently. "My job is to tell people what I think. And when I think there's an axis of evil, I say it. I think moral clarity is important."

The United States may hope to enlist Arab nations to help negotiate a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians, but Arab leaders are so furious with the West, they have discussed boycotting meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell when he visits the region this week. The message of anger and frustration was delivered Saturday in the form of a communique after an emergency foreign ministers meeting of the Arab League.

A week ago, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Israel's biggest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, he envisioned an open-ended assault on Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers--one that might run as long as America's post-Sept. 11 campaign. Now the retired general's plan has been undermined--in part by his own miscalculations, in part by opposition from President Bush, an ally whose anti-terrorist crusade he identifies with his own.

President Bush, visibly angered by the reported hanging of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, broke off a cross-country trip Monday to return to the White House, saying: "There is no way that I can properly express the outrage that I feel."

Leaders of the major industrial democracies, declaring the new U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East a matter of "overriding importance," called Tuesday for suspension of both the Arab economic boycott against Israel and the Israeli policy of building settlements in the occupied territories. In a firm endorsement of the American plan for opening Arab-Israeli peace talks, which Secretary of State James A.

Declaring that "enough is enough," President Bush announced Thursday that he is dispatching Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the Middle East next week in a bold but risky bid to end the raging violence and get Israel and the Palestinians back to the peace table. "The storms of violence cannot go on," Bush said in a Rose Garden speech that included a series of stern messages for Palestinian and Israeli leaders as well as for regional players in the escalating crisis.

For more than 14 months, President Bush tried to steer clear of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a seemingly endless tangle that has consumed serious diplomatic energy from every president since Richard Nixon. But conflict avoidance didn't work. The crisis got worse, not better, and was threatening to sink Bush's effort to build a worldwide coalition against terrorism and "rogue" nations such as Iraq. So Bush changed course.