Middle East: At Last, a Way Out?

IT was just after dawn in California when the word flashed halfway round the world to the Western White House in San Clemente that Israel had accepted the U.S. proposal for a limited cease-fire and negotiations in the Middle East. Fittingly, the architect of that proposal, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, was one of the first top U.S. officials to hear the news. Coupled with Egypt's acceptance the previous week, and that of Jordan, Lebanon and five less directly involved Arab states, Israel's agonized decision signaled a chance for reason and diplomacy in a cockpit of the world too long ridden by irrational hate and frequent gunfire.

The signal came not a moment too soon. Only the day before, Israeli jets near the Suez Canal shot down four Egyptian air force MIG-21s, killing one of the pilots. Though all parties prudently refused to admit it, TIME learned that some Soviet flyers were involved in the incident, the first in which Soviet-piloted MIGs have been shot down--an event fraught with awesome consequences and feared by the U.S. and Israel since the Red air force began to fly missions in Egypt nearly four months ago.

At 7 a.m., an hour after Rogers received Israel's affirmative, President Nixon was awakened and told the good news. President and Secretary of State journeyed together to the San Clemente Inn for an impromptu press conference. "We do not underestimate the difficulties," said Nixon. "It will require moderation, flexibility and a willingness by both sides to accept something less than their maximum positions." But, he added, with a pleased Rogers at his side, "there is now some hope."

The President's qualification was well chosen, for the possibility of peace after nearly a quarter century of constant hostility and frequent war touched off new varieties of shock waves. At week's end, Israel's coalition cabinet was on the verge of splitting under the pressures of consent to the U.S. plan. Syria, Iraq and Algeria refused to follow Egypt's President Nasser and the other Arab nations in giving diplomacy a try. The Palestine guerrilla movement, accustomed to warring with Lebanon and Jordan over its freedom to make rocket and hit-and-run attacks on Israel, suddenly found itself at odds with Patron Nasser as well. In Amman, 3,000 guerrillas marched through the streets waving guns and shouting "Nasser, Traitor!" For all sides, the possibility, however remote, of abandoning conflict as a way of life seemed as unsettling as shedding a painful but familiar neurosis, though, of course, for Israel the fears for its security are genuine enough. The reactions were, in a backhanded way, a testimony to Rogers' achievement, even if the ultimate goal of a negotiated peace in the Middle East should prove unattainable in the weeks and months ahead.

Why Nasser Said Yes

The U.S. initiative, based on a United Nations Security Council Resolution passed five months after the 1967 Middle East war, calls for at least a 90-day ceasefire, which could commence as early as this week or next. It would be accompanied by negotiations presided over by U.N. Mediator Gunnar V. Jarring, whom U.N. Secretary General U Thant hastily summoned to New York from his home in Viken, Sweden. Eventually, if Jarring and the representatives of Egypt, Jordan and Israel are successful, Israel will pull back from territories captured in the '67 war, while the Arabs will finally acknowledge Israel's right to exist behind secure and mutually agreed borders.

Nasser was given first option to accept or reject the proposals; before he did either, he flew off to Moscow for 19 days of consultation. Soviet leaders informed him that they would not help Egypt drive the Israelis away from the Suez Canal or recapture Sinai. Not only were the Russians worried about a possible confrontation with the U.S., but they also seemed to fear a loss of prestige among Arabs if the U.S. forced them to stand down in an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter. Deprived of Soviet help in recovering Sinai by force, Nasser decided to negotiate for it.

Then it was Israel's turn to respond. Actually, the government of Mrs. Golda Meir had little alternative but to accept the Rogers proposal. Not only had Egyptian approval placed Israel under the burden of going along, but the U.S. was also putting pressure on Jerusalem to respond, just as the Soviets had leaned on Nasser. As Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said: "We are strong enough not to be forced into accepting dictates of enemies or friends, but we are not strong enough to dispense with our allies."

Most Israelis are convinced that Nasser is only playing at peacemaking. The Israelis wanted some ironclad guarantees from the U.S. on the circumstances surrounding the ceasefire. Israel's basic opposition was that a 90-day cease-fire was long enough to give the Arabs an opportunity to improve their military positions but too short to achieve a permanent settlement. Israel preferred a cease-fire of undetermined length, or else demanded peace-keeping monitors--other than U.N. forces, who failed to keep the peace in '67--to police it. The U.S. has stressed to Israel that if Egypt and the Soviet Union should move men and missiles up to the Suez Canal, Israel can bomb the new sites. Washington believes that that license will not be needed, however. The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a tacit agreement that neither will try to change the military balance during a ceasefire. For the Russians, this means no advance toward the canal. For the U.S., it consists of not providing the additional jet planes that Israel has requested.

Achieving a cease-fire may prove far easier on the Suez front than on Israel's northern and eastern borders. In Jordan, King Hussein's power has been considerably diminished by Palestinian guerrillas living in his country. There, as in Israel, the Cabinet debate was intense last week before the King finally cabled Nasser that "we accept what you accept and reject what you reject." But consenting to the cease-fire is just about as far as Hussein feels he can go. Hussein has already informed the U.S. embassy that he does not intend to be responsible for the guerrillas. The Jordanian army will not support guerrilla attacks moving over the Jordan River into Israel or allow the commandos to fire across the river themselves. But whether even these promises can be enforced is doubtful. The same is true of Lebanon to the north, from where the commandos operate with impunity in defiance of the fragile Beirut government. Indeed, the Palestinian irregulars could prove the thorniest obstacle to a peace treaty (see box page 22).

Israel's Doubts

Israel, in its debate on a ceasefire, was concerned not only about the Arab leaders' ability to keep the peace but also, surprisingly, about U.S. intentions. After the 1956 Suez crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles threatened to vote for U.N. sanctions against Israel unless the Israelis acceded to U.N. demands that they evacuate territory in Sinai and the Gaza Strip captured during the fighting. President Eisenhower informed Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion that the U.S., in return for withdrawal, would support Israel's right to passage through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran.

On the strength of these assurances, Ben-Gurion ordered Mrs. Meir, who at that time was Israel's Foreign Minister, to inform the United Nations that Israel would withdraw. After Israel carried out the withdrawal, however, nothing more was done. Nasser refused to let Israeli ships transit the Suez Canal, and he eventually trained the guns of Sharm el Sheikh to block the Straits of Tiran and deny passage to the Israeli port of Eilat--an action that caused the 1967 war. Israeli policy has since become more pragmatic and more demanding, and Israel seeks firmer assurances before making such moves as the Rogers proposal contemplates. "The ghosts of '57 are walking the corridors of power here this week," said one Israeli official.

The item on which the Cabinet divided was the question of withdrawal not only from Sinai and Gaza but also at some point from the Golan Heights and other territory captured in the third Israeli-Arab war in '67. Israel's political peculiarity for 22 years--some call it the national weakness--has been its "wall-to-wall" Cabinets drawn from broadly differing political factions in order to demonstrate and preserve national unity. Mrs. Meir's Cabinet includes six members of the right-wing Gahal Party who are the foremost hawks in Israel's hawk-dove debates over occupied territories (see box page 23). Gahal, which also holds 26 of the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament, believes that the territories should be permanently retained to insure Israel's security. Against the advice of even some of his own party members, Gahal Leader Menahem Begin last week chose to make the withdrawal issue a matter of party policy.

Pressures on Egypt

"The Rogers plan is not an initiative for peace," maintained Begin. "It is an initiative for Israel's destruction." The Polish-born Begin, who was commander of the Jewish terrorist group Irgun Zvai Leumi in pre-independence days, appeared to be digging in his heels for both principle and politics. Elected to the first Knesset after independence, he has been Labor's principal opposition ever since, occasionally with effective results. Shortly before the 1967 war, Begin forced Premier Levi Eshkol to give up his added post of Defense Minister to the more aggressive and knowledgeable Moshe Dayan. In the current crisis, Begin sensed that acceptance of the Rogers plan could lead to new elections; his opposition was designed in part to publicize Gahal's position to prospective voters.

Mrs. Meir had the necessary votes without Gahal both to approve the Rogers plan and continue the government. Public support, it turned out, was also solidly on her side. But for the sake of unity, she offered Begin the choice of abstaining and staying in the Cabinet, or even voting against acceptance and staying in. After four Cabinet meetings that lasted a total of 20 hours, however, Begin was unmoved. The Cabinet voted 17 to 6 in favor of accepting the resolution. Gahal, having cast six votes against acceptance, pondered whether to leave the coalition.

One mild satisfaction for Mrs. Meir in the course of the heated Cabinet meetings was the fact that Nasser was under some of the same pressures. The march of 3,000 guerrillas of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and of the Action of Palestine, who denounced

Nasser by name for the first time, was followed by a larger demonstration in Amman: 25,000 people joined a protest march under the aegis of Yasser Arafat's Al-Fatah guerrilla group. Arafat spoke to his followers at the close of the march and promised them that "the revolution will take orders from no one." He did not, however, make any mention of Nasser. In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraqi marchers carried posters reading "DOWN WITH ABDEL NASSER."

Along with his other troubles, Nasser may also lose money because of his decision to negotiate. Libya was two days late with a $12 million subsidy to Egypt this month; since Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is undecided about negotiation, the delay might have been a pointed notice to Nasser to negotiate with care, if at all. Egypt can ill afford such a slight. King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott learned in Cairo last week, has apparently withheld $25 million due Egypt for war support because the King is angry that Arab disunity is keeping the punctured pipeline through which his oil flows from being repaired.

Nasser did not let guerrilla attacks go unanswered. The Egyptian government suddenly announced that it was "temporarily" refusing use of its powerful transmitter to two guerrilla stations, "The Voice of Asifa [Storm]" and "The Voice of Palestine." In place of commando propaganda broadcasts and coded messages to guerrilla leaders, Cairo radio broadcast recorded music. One of the first songs played: a popular Arab melody called Do Not Forsake Me, Lover. In Syria and Iraq, meanwhile, Soviet diplomats made discreet calls on government officials. The Arab leaders were quietly informed by their Russian visitors that Moscow supports Nasser and a cease-fire and that any nation that did not was in danger of losing military and political assistance from the Soviet Union.

The Russians, in a sense, were acting like lawyers for their Arab clients; so, too, in an international-adversary situation, was the U.S. on behalf of Israel. It is precisely this echo of ordinary law practices in world affairs that intrigues Rogers and leads him to approach his duties from a lawyer's point of view. Rogers' approach to the law is low-key and cautious. In private practice, where between Administrations he earned $300,000 a year in corporate law (among his clients: the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press), Rogers was noted for his deftly understated approach to problems. "I never believed in forcing the other fellow to come to my office," he says, "even when the law was on my side. I didn't mind going over to see him, just so long as I got what I wanted." Rogers' legal hero is a legendary Manhattan criminal lawyer named Max Steuer whose clients 50 years ago included Tammany Hall leaders and the Teapot Dome Scandal's Harry Daugherty. "He never raised his voice," says Rogers admiringly, "but he usually won."

Rogers' ability attracted Nixon when both men were new in Washington and Rogers, as counsel for the Senate Executive Expenditure Committee, was busy exposing Truman Administration "Five Percenters" who had accepted bribes on Government contracts. Years later, when Nixon became Presidentelect, he decided to offer his old friend the Secretary of State's job. In Miami, accepting the Republican nomination for President, Nixon had said: "After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation." When he introduced his new Cabinet to a national television audience one night in December 1968, Nixon recalled this statement with regard to Bill Rogers. "I wanted a Secretary of State in these next four years," he said, "who would be the best negotiator in the world, if that was possible. His judgment is good. He is cool. He is a superb negotiator."

The Administration was hardly half a year old before Nixon seemed to have forgotten what he wanted. Rogers and the President retained their old friendship; the Secretary of State, moreover, always has entree into the Oval Office. But Rogers seemed called on less and less for advice on international problems and became more and more a ceremonial figure. Henry Kissinger, the global strategist, was omnipresent at the White House, and he fascinated Nixon with his dissertations on power. The State Department under Rogers figured in presidential decisions usually, and often wisely, on the cautious side.

When the North Koreans in April 1969 provoked the U.S. by shooting down an EC-121 surveillance plane over international waters, Rogers persuaded the President to suppress his temptation to strike back. During negotiations over the future of Okinawa, Rogers argued strongly that future American relations with Japan would improve if the U.S. did not tie release of the island to economic concessions to Japan. When Biafra collapsed, Rogers persuaded the Administration not to damage African relations by bypassing victorious Nigeria in a precipitous rush to feed the starving Biafrans alone.

Criticisms of State

Kissinger in public is politely laudatory of Rogers. Privately, however, and with justification, Nixon's national security adviser has been heard to echo a criticism voiced about the State Department by John Kennedy: one reason that the White House is forced to lead in foreign policy is that State has often provided weak and predictable responses to problems that trouble the U.S. Government. As Rogers has become more familiar with his job and his department, this deficiency has been reduced. The State Department's policy planning group, reporting to the National Security Council, has begun to suggest options and answers that please even Kissinger.

But the State Department men are under certain inevitable restraints when it conies to policymaking. One reason is Rogers' legal concept of his job: he sees himself and them more or less as advocates, with the President of the U.S. as their client. Critics maintain that Rogers really does run the department like a law office, trying, says one, "to keep his client, Richard Nixon, out of trouble." Rogers accepts the criticism. "My interest," he says, "is having the President succeed. If he succeeds, the country succeeds." At the same time, the State Department can be only as independent as a President allows it to be. President Nixon considers foreign affairs his strong suit and wants to make his own foreign policy, aided by Henry Kissinger. Thus the grand strategy emanates from the White House. Rogers' assignment is day-to-day operations.

By Rogers' estimate, the State Department, whatever its role, has been moving effectively in many areas. "When I first testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee," he says, "there was skepticism about the non-proliferation treaty. It has since been ratified. There was skepticism about SALT. We have since made a lot of progress. We have entered into the era of negotiations. We have encouraged the West Germans to negotiate with the Soviets. With our British and French allies, we are talking to the Soviets about the easing of tension in and around Berlin. The Warsaw Pact countries have indicated that they would be willing to talk about mutual force reductions, and the next NATO meeting will concern itself with that. We are talking to the Chinese Communists. All this is progress."

Indeed it is, and State Department men who remember the demoralizing days of John Foster Dulles and Joe McCarthy count another kind of progress. Two months ago, Nixon Counsellor Clark Mollenhoff, who has since returned to a journalist's job with the Des Moines Register, made a request to State Department Deputy Undersecretary William B. Macomber Jr. for the names of the 250 department employees who had presented Rogers with a petition critical of the U.S. position in Cambodia. Rogers had been unhappy about the petition, but he had promised that no signer would be penalized. Rogers called Mollenhoff on the telephone: "To begin with, when you have a request of this kind, don't ever go to my subordinates without my knowledge. Ask me. As for the list, you won't get it."

A frequent criticism of Rogers is that he is not a good administrator. He was saved at State, however, by finding someone who was. Elliot Richardson, recruited from Boston, filled the job of Undersecretary so effectively that he won even Kissinger's kudos. Rogers was understandably upset over insinuations that it was Richardson who really ran the department. One reason he has so far not found a replacement in the eight weeks since Richardson was promoted to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare may be to dispel such rumors.

Rogers and his staff inherited the Middle East crisis 18 months ago primarily because Nixon and Kissinger were preoccupied with Viet Nam. Kissinger's initial plan was to separate the belligerents by means of corridors and keep them apart with an international peace force; he thought the problem "insoluble." For a time, Rogers' principal concern seemed to be the military balance of power that the U.S. relied upon after Nasser repudiated an earlier cease-fire proposal in 1969. Shortly before leaving office, Lyndon Johnson had leveled the balance by selling Israel 50 Phantom jets. These took the place of French Mirages, which Charles de Gaulle withheld from Israel after the Six-Day War.

The Phantoms changed the course of the war--for Israel and for Rogers. They were superior to any other airplane flown in the Middle East, particularly in range and firepower. As

Nasser continued to attack Israeli forces along the Suez Canal in Sinai, the Phantoms allowed Defense Minister Dayan and Israeli Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev to develop a new policy of deep bombing. The more Nasser attacked along the canal, the deeper the Phantoms struck into the heartland of Egypt. Many Israelis hoped that the humiliation of such raids might cause Egypt to depose Nasser.

Soviet Response

Actually, the attacks fortified Egyptian resolve and made him stronger than ever. Arab anger over the Phantoms increased to high pitch after two raids early this year in which bombs killed 88 noncombatant factory workers at a town called Abu Zabal and 38 schoolchildren at Bahr Al-Bakar. In January, Nasser made a quick and secret trip to the Soviet Union to seek additional military equipment. The Soviet response was to provide additional MIG-21s--flown by Soviet pilots--and SA3 missiles operated by Russian crews. The Soviet intervention changed the Middle East. It had become a point of possible confrontation between superpowers. The White House let it be known that the Middle East, not Viet Nam, was America's major foreign policy concern.

To his relief, Nixon discovered that Rogers and the State Department had been performing rather handily, elaborating an effort that had really begun at the close of the 1967 war. At that time, the U.S. quietly drafted the resolution that set the terms of a peace settlement and called for the U.N.'s Gunnar Jarring to mediate between sides. Because the resolution would have had little chance of success among Arabs if it had U.S. sponsorship, Washington, therefore, turned it over to the British for presentation. Adopted in November 1967 as Security Council Resolution 242, the proposals were the basis on which Jarring tried to negotiate peace. But they were also the base on which other tries at peacemaking could ultimately be made.

The trouble with Resolution 242, it appeared--after the Jarring mission had failed and Nasser broke the cease-fire --was that too much responsibility for peacemaking was put on parties who were at war. Rogers' lawyer instincts told him that the principals were too hostile to accomplish much without outside help. On that basis, Rogers decided to let Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Joseph J. Sisco commence quiet discussions with the Russians. Chicago-born Sisco, 50, who holds a doctorate in international relations and is a 19-year State Department veteran, had begun handling the Middle East crisis during the Johnson Administration. He was promoted to Assistant Secretary for the area in one of Rogers' first appointments.

Moscow at the time had no reason to want peace in the Middle East, since it was in the process of establishing a physical presence there based on the Arab need for help. But neither did it want all-out war. Sisco's mission was to find grounds on which the superpowers might agree in behalf of their clients; he and Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Dobrynin met 32 times in a search for accord. Gradually, the two worked out a tentative agreement that included Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for an Arab promise of peace throughout the negotiations. Similar talks proceeded simultaneously at the United Nations among the U.S., Russia, Britain and France.

Rogers took a personal hand in the peacemaking last fall when foreign ministers gathered in New York for the new session of the U.N. General Assembly. In private discussions, the Secretary confirmed that the principal Arab demand was Israeli withdrawal, while Israel's primary requirement was recognition and security. Moreover, Rogers learned from Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad that the Arabs, who refused to deal openly with Israel, privately were agreeable to third-party talks like those that U.N. Negotiator Ralph Bunche conducted on Rhodes in 1948-49 to settle the first Arab-Israeli war.

Late last year, however, Rogers had the bitter experience that all diplomats eventually go through: in spite of reasonableness on all sides, the negotiations collapsed because of Russian reluctance. Israel, insisted the Soviets, had publicly made too much of the fact that some Rhodes talks had been face to face; as a result, the Arabs were backing away this time. Israel, meanwhile, fearful of a U.S.-Soviet deal inimical to its interests, leaked a distorted version of the discussions between Sisco and Dobrynin. To give the proper version, Rogers decided to outline the proposals in a December speech in Washington that would be an invitation to both sides to respond. Because it was too detailed and would have forced the opponents to concede too much too soon too openly, Rogers' speech was dismissed on all sides. Israel used the occasion to reinforce its request for additional jet planes; Mrs. Meir, in a September visit to Washington, had asked to buy 25 more Phantoms and 100 U.S. Skyhawks.

Washington's Arabists

One aspect of the State Department which sometimes horrifies critics like Kissinger is its insularity, meaning regional identification and area specialization by longtime hands at State, in what is supposed to be an era of modern diplomacy. But insularity can sometimes have advantages. Middle East posts of the State Department are mostly filled by diplomats whom Washington refers to as Arabists. They cabled or memoed dire forecasts of rioting, danger to American lives and property, and an end to relations with moderate Arab governments if the U.S. approved additional jet-plane sales to Israel. They also pointed out that Egypt and the Soviet Union, in fighting off Phantom raids over Cairo, were employing defensive measures.

The Arabists prevailed, and the Nixon Administration decided to turn down Israel's request rather than unbalance the Middle East. But that decision was nearly overturned after the President discovered the extent of the Russian military penetration into Egypt. Russian MIGs were stationed at airbases close to the Suez Canal. The Soviet missiles had been moved near the canal in large numbers; using improved Russian equipment, Egyptian missile crews had already shot down Phantoms for the first time, destroying four within a 19-day period. The Administration seemed to be in a mood of confrontation again, rather than one of negotiation; Nixon angrily told a U.S. television audience that the Arabs wanted to toss Israel into the sea, and Kissinger, in a background briefing for newspaper editors at San Clemente, suggested that the Russians ought to be "expelled" from Egypt.

Lawyer's Intuition

Rogers, who dislikes tough talk, pressed ahead for the cease-fire that his lawyer's intuition told him was possible. Mrs. Meir, in the course of a foreign policy review before the Knesset, had revealed that Israel was prepared to accept Resolution 242. So, it turned out, was Nasser. In a television interview that the Secretary of State raptly watched in his Bethesda, Md., home, Egypt's President said that he would agree to a limited ceasefire. On the assumption that neither leader would be able to reject proposals stipulating what each had already said openly, Rogers dispatched simultaneous notes outlining peace negotiations based on the Security Council resolution. This time he kept his proposals vague--and secret. This time, also, the U.S. enjoined Israel from commenting publicly on the proposals until Nasser had responded.

The U.S., as the advocate of Middle East peace, will now concentrate on quiet diplomacy to effect a ceasefire. Ambassador Jarring, following conferences with U Thant, will begin the more difficult task of negotiating a political settlement. Nicosia and New York are under consideration as sites where his discussions could take place.

If the Middle East negotiations turn out to be successful, the Administration might use the Rogers technique elsewhere--perhaps even in the Paris talks on Viet Nam, where the approach up to now has been hard. Says the Secretary of State: "In Viet Nam, the simple fact is that we can't negotiate if the other side is not willing to negotiate. When they are ready, they'll let us know." He adds: "When you are as strong as the U.S. is, you don't have to shout it from the rooftops. The Russians know very well how strong we are, and if we tell them something quietly, I think it does the job. Make the other side appreciate your strength. But don't be offensive about it."

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