Yassin, My Son

Negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt is an extra assignment for Swedish Diplomat Gunnar Jarring; his regular job is serving as Swedish Ambassador to Moscow. Last week, with the Middle East talks deadlocked again, Jarring flew from New York to the Soviet capital to spend Easter with his family and catch up on embassy work. Were the talks really that stalemated? Well, Jarring confided to U.N. friends before he left, the trip was partially a bit of "constructive inaction" designed to prod the protagonists.

Jarring's calculated inactivity may be in vain. As far as he is concerned, Israel must make the next move by indicating its willingness to withdraw from occupied territories. Israel has no intention of withdrawing behind any frontiers that it does not consider safe. When Foreign Minister Abba Eban visited Washington two weeks ago, in fact, he told 40 Senators that alternative proposals suggested by Secretary of State William Rogers, including an international peace-keeping force, were not adequate substitutes for secure borders.

Psychological Warfare. Eban's unusual appearance fueled the growing U.S.-Israeli dispute over the peace talks. It also persuaded Rogers to visit Capitol Hill himself for a rare rebuttal. No fewer than 67 Senators appeared for the meeting, the first such session since 1950. Rogers spent 90 minutes explaining that: 1) the U.S., although it favors the return of all but insubstantial pieces of captured Arab territory, has no intention of pressuring Israel to withdraw from occupied lands before peace terms are mutually agreeable; and 2) the Middle East nations will have final approval on the makeup and disposition of any international peace-keeping forces.

Rogers' appearance did much to salve feelings between the U.S. and Israel, but it left the Jarring talks on dead center. Nor are they likely to move unless one of the parties makes a major adjustment, and at this point the burden is on Israel. In the U.S. view, Israel should make concessions on borders rather than place a futile reliance on geography.

The longer they fail to do anything, the greater the chances for a renewal of fighting along the Suez Canal. As it is, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and his lieutenants, in what may be a psychological-warfare gambit designed to pry concessions out of the Israelis, are warning that their military leaders are growing ever more restive. As part of the same gambit, Sadat disclosed last week that rich new oil discoveries in the western desert will help finance Egypt's armed strength henceforth. At the same time, the Egyptians sought to give the impression that Russian military shipments were being stepped up.

Actually, however, Sadat appears more interested in peace than war; it was Sadat, after all, who went a long step beyond his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, by assuring Jarring that Egypt is finally willing to recognize Israel's sovereignty. The Israelis doubt his sincerity, and they could be right. But so far Sadat has gone out of his way to give the impression that he is less intent on fighting than on solving Egypt's massive domestic problems. By word and gesture, he has set out to shift Egypt's mood from belligerent pan-Arabism to constructive nationalism.

Egypt's ideological shift is best characterized by a production called Yassin Wal-adi (Yassin, My Son), which has been doing S.R.O. business since it opened two months ago at Cairo's Miami Theater. The play emphasizes Egypt's pharaonic history, which predates Islam by several millenniums. Written by Playwright Fayez Halawa and staged by his wife, Tahiya Karyouka, Egypt's premiere belly dancer before World War II, the play is an allegory of Nasser's life.

Yassin, a well-known character from Egyptian folklore, exhorts fellahin, delta fishermen and peasant women to shuck apathy and inertia. As the plot unfolds, obstacles appear in his revolutionary path. A mustached obesity in a red fez resembles the late King Farouk. The 1967 war with Israel is represented by crashing drums and flashing strobe lights. At the climax, his task of revitalizing Egypt uncompleted, Yassin-Nasser dies. "Do not be weak," he tells his people, "you have to stand."

At this point, Mother Egypt, played by Miss Karyouka, announces that she is pregnant again, a symbolic resurrection drawn from the legend of Isis and Osiris. As the play ends, cast and audience join in singing a patriotic song, Egypt, My Country.

By Western standards, Yassin, My Son is mawkish. But TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott reported last week after viewing it: "By emphasizing the eternity of the Nile, the antiquity of Egyptian civilization and the perennial fertility of hope in an otherwise ominously dark world, it stresses the values of nationalism to the disparagement of pan-Arabism. There are no incantations of SA3 missiles, no hymns to third world brotherhood, no songs about Islamic solidarity."

The Real Hawks. The play, which will soon tour Alexandria and Nile Delta towns, has helped polarize Cairo's growing debate between nationalists and pan-Arabists. Arguing the Egypt-first case along with Sadat is Al Ahram Editor Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, who recently predicted that Egypt would have to fight the next war with Israel without help from other Arabs; he also suggested that Cairo discard the old Arab shibboleth that the U.S. is its principal enemy and try to neutralize U.S. policy in order to isolate Israel. Meanwhile, Dr. Hussein Fawzi, a humanities scholar, former rector of Alexandria University, came under attack from the pan-Arabists for snorting during a TV talk show in Cairo last month: "And who said 1 was an Arab?"

The principal supporters of continued pan-Arabism in Egypt are members of Nasser's old political organization, the Arab Socialist Union, which at the moment is more hawkish than the army. Their champion is Vice President AH Sabry, and their strategy in attacking nationalists like Heikal and Fawzi seems clear. "They want to go on record as hard-liners as an investment against the day when the peace effort flops," suggests a diplomat in Cairo. "They will then be in a position to say to Heikal and Sadat: 'We told you so.' " Should that day come, the response will be more crashing drums and flashing lights --this time in earnest.

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