Aboard Dr. Henry's Shuttle

Algiers to Alexandria to Jerusalem to Damascus, then back to Alexandria to Amman to Jerusalem to Damascus. Only one airplane flies that kind of Middle East shuttle: Air Force Two, with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger aboard. Last week and this week, the blue and white Boeing 707 was once again flying its circular itinerary as Kissinger attempted to work out disengagement between Israel and Syria. This time, it was not a smooth flight.

Egyptians dubbed Kissinger "the magician" after he piloted a similar shuttle to a disengagement agreement between their forces and Israel's last January--and they were certain that he could do it with Syria and Israel. In Alexandria, where the weather was cooler than in Cairo, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat received Kissinger and told newsmen that "my friend, Dr. Henry" would get his agreement. Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy effusively estimated the chances at 80%. But others were not so sure, least of all the Kissinger party. "The two positions are still far apart," said one high U.S. official. In Damascus, students marched in a May Day parade carrying banners that read "We reject all peaceful settlements" and "Kissinger is a cheap American Jewish conspirator." In Jerusalem, waiting to greet the Secretary, one Israeli commented: "The magician is returning. We just hope he is not bringing black magic."

The principal problem facing Kissinger is that the Golan Heights, the geopolitical area he has to work with this time, is smaller and more difficult to sort out than the Sinai desert of Egypt. No armies are trapped there to add urgency to negotiations; rather, there are civilian settlers on both sides, which makes discussions more complicated. Both nations, moreover, have made seemingly irreconcilable demands. Syria insists that Israel, as a first step, return all of the 154-sq.-mi. "bulge" that it captured in the October war along with portions of Syrian territory captured in 1967, including Quneitra, the principal settlement of the Golan. Damascus also demands a timetable for the return of all territory it lost in the Six-Day War --a total of 772 sq. mi.

Overriding Concern. Israel is prepared to give up only the bulge as an initial step. "Quneitra is possible," says an Israeli negotiator, "but not in the first stage. First we want to establish Syrian intentions." Israel's overriding concern, of course, is that the Golan Heights overlook vast reaches of northern Israeli territory. In the past, Syrian gunners have periodically raked Israeli kibbutzim with artillery stationed on the strategic heights. For that reason, Israel has established new settlements on the Golan --one more was dedicated last week--as a symbol of its determination to continue to occupy the territory.

Two other uncertain elements figure in Kissinger's negotiations. One is the fighting around Mount Hermon, now in its third month. The battles on the mountain began as a Syrian "fight and talk" ploy to keep pressure on the negotiations by showing the Israelis that disengagement would be cheaper than continued occupation. But the Mount Hermon fighting is building in intensity and could get out of control. Israel last week lost five men; the week before, 14 were killed in one day. Kissinger this time also has to consider the Soviet Union, which played no significant part in the Israeli-Egyptian disengagement but firmly demands a voice in this round.

Aware of Moscow's feeling, Kissinger prefaced his fifth Middle East trip in seven months last week with a stopover in Geneva for nine hours of discussions with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The Secretary flew on to Algiers for brief talks with President Houari Boumedienne with only a negative promise from Gromyko. The Russians did not endorse any particular series of disengagement proposals. They merely agreed, one U.S. official reported later, "not to work against the concept of disengagement."

What will probably be Kissinger's lightest moments of the trip came in Egypt, where he touched down to "help define the framework" of the forthcoming talks. The greeting was warm for the Secretary and especially for Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, who was traveling on a diplomatic mission with her husband for the first time. "You are among Henry's family here," Sadat told her. As a wedding gift, he presented the couple a portrait of Kissinger done from photographs by Egyptian Artist Etimad el Taraboulsi (who last week was commissioned to do a companion portrait of Nancy Kissinger).

In Israel, after a one-hour flight from Alexandria, Premier Golda Meir insisted on meeting Nancy Kissinger before any official business in order to present her own wedding gift: two ancient Roman vases, one of which was a "tear cup" in which were supposedly collected the tears shed by brides over traveling husbands.

Moral Cynicism. But officially, Jerusalem still bristled because the U.S. had assented rather than abstained* on a one-sided United Nations censure of Israel for raiding suspected fedayeen hiding places in Lebanon following the massacre at Qiryat Shemona. Pickets carried signs outside the King David Hotel, where the Secretary of State was staying, attacking "Mohammed Ivanovich Kissinger." "This was moral cynicism," said one Cabinet-level Israeli diplomat angrily, "the sort of action we would expect from the French." To Israelis, the vote was a symptom of the new U.S.-Arab friendship, which Kissinger is constructing, they fear, at Israel's expense. Another unsettling point was that last week's meeting came at an unpropitious time. Israel is still undergoing a domestic political crisis resulting from the widespread disenchantment with its leaders' conduct of the Yom Kippur War. Golda Meir is a caretaker Premier; the Labor Party's Premier-designate, Yitzhak Rabin, selected to succeed her two weeks ago, was still trying to form a coalition government. Thus Kissinger's initial discussions involved a strange coterie of old and new Israeli power wielders. They included both Mrs. Meir and Rabin, along with Information Minister Shimon Peres, who narrowly lost to Rabin in the party vote for Premier and as a result will probably become either Defense Minister or Foreign Minister in a Rabin government, if one can be formed.

Ending the first sequence in the latest round of shuttle diplomacy in Damascus last week, Kissinger was hailed by Damascenes as "al mu'allim," literally the boss who makes things happen. Kissinger was not so sure the title fit, although it was difficult to discern whether Dr. Henry was genuinely worried or he was merely orchestrating results in a lower key now to prepare for more impressive results later. There was already "the shape of an agreement," admitted one spokesman aboard Air Force Two at week's end. But he cautioned that everything depended on how willing--or how pressed--both Israel and Syria were to make the difficult decisions to accept less than they wanted.

* In twelve similar votes on Israeli conduct since the Six-Day War. the U.S. has cast two vetoes and abstained five times; it has voted yes five times, mainly on U.N. measures disapproving such serious Israeli excursions as the shooting down of a Libyan airliner and the government-endorsed skyjacking of a Lebanese commercial plane last year.

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