The Middle East: Statesmen Speak and Guns Answer

IN recent weeks, despite continued bitter clashes in the Middle East, U.S. diplomats have detected what seemed to them a few faint signals for peace amid the customary klaxons of war. Both the private and public utterances of the Israelis and of some Arab leaders suggested that, after three years of an increasingly bellicose confrontation, the two sides might be weary of war and amenable to a settlement--if only it could be arranged in a face-saving manner for both. Washington, which has been anxious over the erosion of its own role in the Middle East and the ominous intrusion of the Soviets, decided to test the prospect for a negotiated settlement. Last week Secretary of State William P. Rogers called a major press conference to announce that the U.S. "has undertaken a major political initiative, the object of which is to encourage the parties to stop shooting and start talking."

As if in mocking answer to Rogers' call for peace, the most severe fighting since the 1967 Six-Day War broke out between the Israelis and the Syrians on a 45-mile front along the occupied Golan Heights in Syria. Still, the situation might have been even worse. Originally, the State Department had been expected to announce last week that the U.S. would supply Israel with additional warplanes. But U.S. diplomats feared that the warplane announcement, even if it were accompanied by a peace initiative, would imperil the chances for a Middle East solution. American diplomats in Arab countries warned that anti-American riots would ensue that might serve as a pretext for Arab guerrillas to again attack, and perhaps even topple, King Hussein's shaky government in Jordan.

Rogers decided to hold off the aircraft announcement. Even so, the tenor of his remarks was plain: if the Arabs fail to show a willingness for peace and the Soviet military buildup continues, the U.S. will supply more aircraft, though not perhaps as many as the 25 Phantoms and 100 Skyhawks that Israel wants.

In the press conference, Rogers refused to spell out the terms of the U.S. proposals. He feared that Arab leaders would find it politically impossible to agree with the U.S. initiatives if the terms were made public. Actually, the American message had already gone out to the Middle East principals, including Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and to such interested parties as the Soviet Union, Britain, France, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Libya. In capital after capital, the terms of the U.S. initiative leaked out.

Nothing New. The U.S. suggested that both sides accept at least a 90-day ceasefire. For its part, Israel should agree to evacuate territories captured during the Six-Day War. The Arab states, on the other hand, should acknowledge Israel's right to exist and agree to respect its borders. Accepting an Arab point of view, Rogers suggested that the two sides did not need to engage in face-to-face talks. He stressed that they could negotiate "in the same city, or in adjacent buildings, or on different floors of the same building, or different rooms on the same floor." The negotiator overseeing the exchange would be Gunnar Jarring, the Swedish Ambassador in Moscow, who has tried before to bring the two sides together.

The Rogers proposals represented nothing really new. He said the same thing last December in a Washington speech. His ideas are patterned on the November 1967 resolution of the U.N.

Security Council that was the basis for Jarring's efforts at peacemaking.

The important factor, however, was the timing. Premier Golda Meir of Israel, Rogers noted, had informed the Knesset in Jerusalem that her government accepted the principles of the U.N. resolution. Foreign Minister Abba Eban hinted that Israel would be willing to make surprising concessions once negotiations began. Even hawkish Defense Minister Moshe Dayan allowed that "we are ready to give up a great deal for peace, and that includes territories." Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, meanwhile, had pointedly emphasized in a May Day speech that "we have not closed the door completely with the U.S." During a recent television interview, moreover, Nasser acknowledged that he could agree to secure borders for Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories.

Even so, the initial response to Rogers' initiative was hardly promising. Even before Washington's proposals circulated, Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan had rejected any idea of peace with Israel. Later, Syria and Iraq, neither of which has relations with the U.S., also rejected the American proposals. Algerian President Houari Boumedienne and Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, who was paying a call in Algiers, jointly decried the idea of "providing legitimacy to Israeli aggression."

Three-Day Battle. The strongest comment came from Nasser, who was touring Libya. In Benghazi's thronged sports stadium, he delivered a warning to Washington. He seized on the substance of the U.S. note, which apparently did not specify Israeli withdrawal from "all" occupied Arab territories. "If the Middle East conflict is to be settled either militarily or politically, we shall make no concession of one inch of Arab territory," he said. "It is being said that an offer has been made for an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and the West bank of the Jordan but not from the Syrian Golan Heights. Egypt will accept no compromise at Syria's expense." Nasser also bragged that Egypt, which has a shortage of jet pilots, will soon receive "hundreds of new planes from the Soviet Union and will soon have equality in the air."

Nasser and leaders from six other Arab nations had just concluded a three-day summit in Tripoli that had served as a great pep rally for new efforts against Israel. They discussed the lack of action on the eastern (Syria-Jordan) front, and Libya's new strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, pointedly criticized "the absence from the battle of some Arab forces." Even as the Arab leaders conferred, the Syrian army, as if stung by the criticism, started strong attacks against Israel. Massed artillery began the offensive with bombardment of Israeli positions. Under the cover of the barrage, Syrian tanks launched the first armored charge against Israeli troops since the 1967 war.

Israeli guns broke the initial attack by destroying several Syrian tanks, but bitter fighting continued for three days. In raids that could be seen and heard from Damascus, Israeli jets bombed and strafed two large military camps in the capital's outskirts. Israel lost one plane but claimed five Syrian MIGs shot down in swirling dogfights. Finally, Israeli armor roared into Syria, overran six positions, knocked out 20 tanks and took 38 prisoners. At week's end, Syria admitted 81 dead and 143 wounded. Israel said that it lost eleven killed and 34 wounded.

Minimum Demands. One near casualty of the fighting was an Alitalia DC-8 with 103 passengers and crew aboard that landed safely in Beirut after it was hit in one wing by a rocket or cannon shell while flying at 31,000 feet over Damascus. The airlines incident dramatized the fact that the situation in the Middle East has become so deadly that both sides need to soberly reconsider their positions. In Israel, at least, a reassessment appears to be under way. The Israelis said nothing about the U.S. proposals, but Premier Golda Meir summoned Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin home from Washington for a Cabinet meeting. In the past, Israel has stuck to the demand for face-to-face talks and a binding peace agreement before it would be willing to consider withdrawal from Arab territory. But many Israelis, including important members of the government, now agree that the time has come to formulate a bargaining position that would state the minimums rather than the maximums that Israel could settle for.

As for Nasser, who may be more reasonable about the U.S. proposals in private than in public, he faces a situation in which he must either seek an accommodation with his Israeli enemies or fall further into dependency on the Soviets. Nasser is not likely to commit himself before he tests the Moscow winds. He plans to fly this month to the Soviet Union, where he will have talks with Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev as well as Premier Aleksei Kosygin, Foreign Secretary Andrei Gromyko and Marshal Andrei Grechko, the Soviet Defense Minister.

Hope in Danger. So far, the Soviet reaction to the U.S. initiative is uncertain. Rogers reported only that Russian Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, who was summoned to the State Department for a briefing, listened "politely and thoughtfully." But in Paris last week, where he was conferring on the Middle East with French officials, Deputy Foreign Secretary Vladimir Vinogradov was asked if peace was any closer. "Everybody hopes so," said the Soviet diplomat, "including us."

In the past, many Western diplomats have suspected that the Soviets have been content with chaotic conditions in the Middle East, since the absence of peace binds the Arabs to the Russian cause and alienates the Arab world from the U.S. Yet the perils of the heightened crisis are so evident that one of the best hopes for peace may well be a growing Soviet awareness that the present situation is too dangerous for Russia's own interest.

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