Toward the Showdown

Both sides sensed that the final showdown was at hand. "The next six months," said Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, "will be decisive in our destiny." Some Israelis fear that a misstep could mean the end of the Jewish nation. Despite such qualms, Israeli Premier Golda Meir's Cabinet last week agreed to return to peace negotiations with Egypt and Jordan, and the Knesset endorsed the decision by a 77-27 vote. The nays came from representatives of right-wing parties.

The far from unanimous vote was one of many indications that the talks, under the guidance of United Nations Mediator Gunnar Jarring, will be difficult and drawn out. It is not simply that the issues are "deeprooted, passionate and complex," as Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban said. More significantly, the parties to the talks have been antagonists for so long that they are more prone to nurse old grievances than to nurture new opportunities.

Israel quit the talks last September in protest against the movement of Soviet-made missiles along the Suez Canal during what was supposed to be a standstill ceasefire. In the 113 days that elapsed before Mrs. Meir announced that her government was ready to resume negotiations, Israel tried to get the U.S., its principal ally, to agree: 1) to institute a long-range program of military aid and economic assistance; and 2) to recant on Secretary of State Rogers' policy that Israel must return to its Arab neighbors all but "insubstantial" pieces of territory captured during the Six-Day War of 1967. The U.S. agreed to provide $500 million in aid, principally jet fighters, electronic equipment and tanks, but refused to change its stand on the occupied territories.

Another reason for delay was a running debate within Israel's Cabinet on the question of negotiations. One faction, including Eban, Deputy Premier Yigal Allon and Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, heir apparent to Mrs. Meir (TIME, Dec. 14), favored a quick return to the Jarring talks. Another, ted by Mrs. Meir and her principal Cabinet adviser, Israel Galili, was skeptical of this approach and held out--fruitlessly--for removal of Egyptian missiles from Suez in return for Israel's reappearance. Defense Minister Dayan wavered between the two sides.

Egypt seems amenable to the talks largely because Sadat's new government is not nearly as anxious as the late Gamal Abdel Nasser to spearhead the causes of the Arab world. Though the Cairo government is heavily mortgaged to Moscow for weapons. Sadat is anxious to spend money on such pressing domestic needs as water systems and Cairo's creaking mass transit. Last week he issued a presidential order ending the policy of "sequestration," under which Nasser's socialist government a decade ago began seizing lucrative private properties from thousands of Egyptians and foreigners.

Something Less. Progress in the negotiations, if any, is likely to come with glacial slowness. Jarring will likely use his 38th-floor office at the U.N.'s Manhattan headquarters as his base. Initially at least, he will confer separately with the U.N. ambassadors of Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Eventually, Israel hopes to move the talks closer to home--say to Cyprus or Geneva--to elevate them to the foreign minister level and to hold them face-to-face.

Even if the amiable Jarring manages to keep the talks going without another breakdown, the difficulties are immense. Eban maintained last week that "the words 'not negotiable' are not in our vocabulary." Nevertheless, Israel is expected to be unyielding on retaining Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights. The Israelis are holding out for a package agreement in which such items as borders, withdrawal from occupied territory, demilitarized zones, exchange of prisoners of war, the rights of Palestinian refugees and possible supervision by outside peace-keeping forces will be negotiated en bloc. Egypt, adopting a "programmatic," one-step-at-a-time approach, wants an agreement on Israel's withdrawal from occupied lands before it negotiates further. But Mrs. Meir, in a speech to the Knesset, emphasized that until the whole package is tied up in a signed peace treaty, "not one Israeli soldier is going to be withdrawn from the administered territories."

Despite that tough position, a U.S. diplomat in the region noted: "The reports we got are that within the Israeli government there is a slight majority in favor of taking the risk of exchanging territory for guarantees." Dayan now appears to be one of them. "We have demanded total peace, and this the Arabs were not ready to grant us," the Defense Minister has said. "The Arabs have demanded total withdrawal, and this we are not willing to accept. So let us have an arrangement that would give us something less than total peace and something less than total withdrawal." It sounds reasonable enough, but reason does not often prevail in the Middle East.

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