Monday, Jun. 10, 1974

The Miracle Worker Does It Again

Trim in his gray Finnish army uniform, General Ensio Siilasvuo inspected representatives of five nations facing him in Geneva's Palais des Nations last week. Groping for nonmilitary words that would truly express the emotion of the moment, the commander of the United Nations peace-keeping forces told them that they were taking "a giant and courageous step" that heralded "a new era of trust, justice and peace in the Middle East."

With that, Siilasvuo invited representatives of Israel and Syria to sign the disengagement agreement between their countries that U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had successfully negotiated during a month of difficult and dramatic shuttle diplomacy. Major General Herzl Shafir signed immediately for Israel. Syrian Brigadier Adnanwajih Tayara, presumably because his government was still uneasy about dealing with an enemy of 26 years, would sign only after newsmen had been cleared from a gallery overlooking the chamber.

The ceremony did indeed symbolize a giant step. As Siilasvuo reminded the signatories and the U.S., Soviet and Egyptian delegations accompanying them, "a good deal more remains to be done." But remarkable achievements had already been scored--first an Egyptian-Israeli disengagement, next a more complicated Syrian-Israel pullback. The two agreements, limited though they were, made it possible for the first time in years to envision a lasting peace settlement in the Middle East. Both represented extraordinary accomplishments for Kissinger himself, who had once more demonstrated the effectiveness of his unique brand of personal diplomacy. If the settlements seemed to prove Kissinger's apparent indispensability, they also showed--to the obvious discomfiture of the Soviet Union--that the U.S. had become essential to the shaping of a border peace agreement.

Silent Guns. The words of Kissinger's remarkable disengagement deal between Israel and Syria were quickly translated into heartening action last week. On the Golan Heights, where 1,200 artillery duels have been waged since the end of the October war, the big guns fell silent. According to a Syrian military communique, "all fighting stopped at 2:15 p.m." (Damascus time) --exactly half an hour after the ceremony in Geneva ended. Israel reported that one of its soldiers had been killed in the final round of shooting and two others injured.

Next day, International Red Cross representatives began the first big step decreed by the agreement, an exchange of Syrian and Israeli prisoners of war. Israel held a total of 408 P.O.W.s, including a handful of Iraqis and Moroccans who had been captured last fall while fighting on the Syrian front. The Syrians had 65 Israeli soldiers and airmen, and three Druze civilians. Carefully obeying terms of the agreement, each side first released wounded prisoners --12 Israelis, 25 Syrians and one Moroccan--for repatriation; after that, the able were to be freed. Last to be returned, within ten days after the signing, were bodies of the military dead.

The prisoner exchange was greeted on either side with joy. At airports in both Damascus and Tel Aviv, weeping, surging crowds welcomed wounded soldiers who hobbled or were carried off Red Cross airplanes. Kissinger himself celebrated the end of hostilities in the Israeli capital by unexpectedly planting an exuberant buss on the cheek of retiring Premier Golda Meir. Recovering her composure, Mrs. Meir chided the Secretary of State, "I didn't think that you kissed women too"--a reference to the spate of pictures showing Kissinger being hugged by Arab leaders.

The Secretary of State's tour de force was truly breathtaking. In a month abroad he had logged 24,230 miles, visited Jerusalem 16 times and Damascus 13, and made side trips to Algiers, Alexandria, Amman, Riyadh, Cairo and Nicosia.* Praise for Kissinger was all but universal. In the U.S., a Harris poll taken before disengagement was announced showed that 85% of Americans questioned considered that he was doing a "good to excellent" job. It was the highest rating ever recorded for anyone from the Executive Branch.

The New York Times, which had editorially questioned his right to a Nobel Peace Prize last year for arranging the controversial cease-fire hi Viet Nam (seepage 41), decided last week that "by his tireless diligence and unswerving devotion to the cause of peace, Secretary Kissinger has without question earned the honor now"--although Times Columnist James Reston, among others, had doubts about the propriety of a Secretary of State's being so tied down to a single problem for so long a tune. Mrs. Meir hailed the fact that "children on both sides of the border can sleep well without terror. This is what we hope for our people and for our neighbors." Said she to a beaming Kissinger: "I don't know how you have done it, but you have done it." In Cairo, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat grandiloquently described the Secretary's diplomatic achievement as "a miracle."

Considering the residual hatred that had built up between Syria and Israel over the years, Sadat's commentary on Kissinger's heroic labor was not too wide of the mark. Among the eight key points that Kissinger has managed to work out in a typically imaginative, subtle and complicated agreement:

> The opposing armies, in the course of 20 days, will pull back to carefully defined and separated positions. Each side's forces will be strung out in three zones whose dimensions were not spelled out in the published agreement but were quickly leaked. The first, 6.3 miles deep, may contain no more than 6,000 troops, 75 tanks and 36 "defensive" artillery pieces; the second, also 6.3 miles deep, may contain 450 tanks and unlimited defensive artillery; the third zone, 3.1 miles deep, carries no limit on forces and equipment, with the exception of missiles.

> Between the milltary zones a buffer zone varying in width from 1.3 miles to 3.7 miles will be manned by 1,250 United Nations troops. They will be charged with maintaining the cease-fire and seeing that it is "scrupulously observed." Along with this U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, 30,000 or more Syrian refugees will be allowed to return to their land; Syrian civilian administrators will run the buffer zone.

> In addition to returning all of the 154-sq.-mi. bulge captured in the October war, Israel will also surrender roughly 30 sq. mi. of Syrian territory captured during the Six-Day War of 1967, including Quneitra and the villages of Rafid and Butmiya. Some of this land behind the "purple line" (named for its usual color on Israeli military maps) had been planted hi potato fields and apple orchards. The surrender of the territory marks the first time that Israel has ever been persuaded to give up land worked by its settlers.

In return for this highly symbolic concession, however, Israel will retain a military position on Mount Hermon and on three hills--A vital, Berntal and Hermonit--overlooking Quneitra. Israeli forces will thus have excellent defensive positions and observation posts above the Damascus plain.

> The cease-fire will be supervised by high-flying U.S. SR-71 supersonic reconnaissance planes, which also patrol the disengagement line between Israeli and Egyptian forces in the Sinai. On the ground, however, there are to be no U.S. or Soviet troops included in the new U.N. observer force, which has an initial mandate of six months.

Kissinger called the negotiations between Israel and Syria "the most difficult and most complicated in my experience." The 34-day hegira was a typical Kissinger operation, clouded hi secrecy that was occasionally lifted by calculated leaks and above-the-clouds backgrounders by a "high Government official." For the Secretary, the extended negotiations presented special psychological and physical hardships. Psychologically, he was becoming the victim of his own success; each achievement made the succeeding goal more difficult to reach. Physically, he worked at a pace that left aides and accompanying newsmen limp with exhaustion. Days began with early breakfasts in the King David suite he shared with Nancy Kissinger. Those few quiet moments were soon followed by conferences, cables covering a range of other State Department business, fast glimpses at news summaries and furious airport runs. He communicated with President Nixon as often as five times a day, even though this was clearly the Secretary's show. Kissinger tends to eat irregularly and compulsively under pressure. At the end of the trip, he was visibly stouter.

As he had done in the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations, Kissinger first tried to map out a disengagement line. The initial Syrian proposals, which called for the immediate return of all the territory captured by Israel since 1967, were quickly dismissed as unrealistic. But he was able to get the Israelis to make early concessions--among them, the return of Quneitra--that they had previously regarded as ultimate concessions, to be granted in return for face-to-face peace negotiations with Syria.

The Secretary of State alternately massaged the Israeli negotiators and pressured them. "If there is no agreement," he would tell them, "you will not be blamed. The American people will understand. You have been forthcoming." But then, according to one Israeli Cabinet Minister, would come the pressure: "Not direct, crude pressure, but the kind of pressure that says 'I will leave for Damascus at 11 o'clock. Give me your position.'" Privately, Kissinger told the Israelis that he was pressuring them because he was being pressured himself. He sighed: "You should see the cables I'm getting from the President."

Kissinger's approach in Damascus had to be somewhat different. In light of the long history of U.S. support for Israeli aims, President Hafez Assad and his government were initially suspicious of Kissinger's moves and aims. Thus the Secretary had to take pains to reassure Assad that the U.S. really did have Arab interests at heart. During the talks Kissinger discovered that Syrian staff work was poor and that Assad had the habit of haggling over positions he had previously appeared to accept.

For Syria, the discussions were a particularly terrible travail. Explained one high government official last week: "Here is a country that has been isolated from the rest of the world. On top of the political aggravations it faced was its psychological withdrawal into itself. Its physical relationship to Israel made the drawing of a line through the Golan Heights--on the other side of which were Israeli settlements--a tremendously difficult experience. Every step along the way was very tough. Time and time again the Syrians had to go through the process of resisting what was needed to get an agreement and then facing the consequences of not getting an agreement. The negotiations were difficult and emotional not because they were yelling and screaming but precisely because they were not yelling and screaming."

Three times during the course of the marathon negotiations, U.S. officials disclosed, the shuttle talks wobbled on the verge of collapse. The first occasion was on Saturday, May 18, when Kissinger was attempting to work out lines of disengagement. Momentarily convinced that the task was hopeless, he ordered his entourage of 62 aides, security men and newspeople to board the U.S. Air Force Boeing 707 in preparation for a flight from Jerusalem to Cairo. But the Secretary flew back by way of Damascus for one final talk with Assad, who suddenly agreed to Kissinger's "blue line" demarking the cease-fire line behind which Israeli forces would withdraw. Negotiations continued.

Five days later came another impasse. This time the problems concerned the size of the various zones and of the U.N. forces that would patrol them. Israel wanted a force of 3,000 blue-helmeted U.N. peace keepers; Assad wanted no more than 300 and insisted that they be referred to as "observers." But after a five-hour talk with Kissinger, the Syrian President agreed to accept "over 1,000 troops," who would be an "observer force." Kissinger also smoothed negotiations over zones by introducing his own compromise proposals.

No Sentry. The final roadblock was the issue of Palestine. Assad, who had first demanded that the Palestinians be mentioned in the final communique, dropped that requirement as discussions approached a climax. But he adamantly refused to act, he said, as a "sentry" to keep the fedayeen out of Palestine, meaning that he would not monitor commando raids on Israel from Syrian bases. On Sunday night, May 26, Kissinger and his aides met and concluded that the task was "hopeless." Next morning the Secretary had another meeting with Assad, who seemed reluctant to see the negotiations peter out. "You know," he said, "this is really very painful, and it is really a pity. It is going to be very hard to revive this."

Worried by that same ominous thought, Kissinger flew back to Israel. He had managed to obtain at least an oral promise from Assad that the fedayeen would be policed. He convinced Israeli negotiators that they should eliminate their demand for a clause specifically forbidding paramilitary forces to operate across the buffer zones. Instead, he substituted a secret protocol to the effect that Washington will not oppose Israeli retaliation in the event of future raids. The Israelis accepted this. Armed with their affirmative response, he once more sped back down the Judean hills to Ben Gurion Airport and made the 126-mile flight back to Damascus to wrap up the agreement. "We've got it," he was finally able to cable Washington. In a follow-up telephone call, Kissinger and his White House liaison, Brig. General Brent Scowcroft, discussed obliquely which end of the line would make the formal announcement. Said Kissinger: "Can I assume you want to?" Answered Scowcroft, who had already checked with the Oval Office: "You can assume we want to."

Toward the end of the talks, Kissinger received some timely assistance from Russia's Andrei Gromyko, who invited himself to Damascus while the Secretary was there. The Soviet Foreign Minister arrived so suddenly that his plane had to be put into a holding pattern for 20 minutes while Syrian officials were collected to receive him. The Russians were nervous--with reason --about being overshadowed by Kissinger, but Gromyko's talks with Assad actually helped Kissinger along. They emphasized to both sides the big-power interest in the negotiations and underscored old Middle East fears that the superpowers might one day impose a settlement together if the Arabs and Israelis were unable to do so themselves.

In Moscow last week, the disengagement agreement was hailed, astonishingly, as a Soviet-Syrian accomplishment. There was no mention of Kissinger's efforts in Soviet press reports. Instead, Tass insisted that "the Soviet Union has tangibly contributed to the achievement."

Kissinger's most telling argument in Jerusalem and Damascus was that the only alternative to disengagement was war. Both sides had to agree--particularly after contemplating the possible horror of an escalating war of attrition along their common border. Inevitably, though, there was grumbling on either side. Complained one Israeli foreign affairs expert: "This agreement is not a good one from the legal point of view. It is imprecise. It is open to interpretations. But when you take into consideration other factors--such as Israel's relations with America and Egypt, and Egypt's relations with Israel and Syria --and if you take into consideration the constant spilling of blood on the Golan Heights--nearly 250 casualties since the end of the war--then from Israel's point of view the disengagement agreement with Syria is a positive achievement."

Back to Brooklyn. The Israeli Parliament eventually accepted that argument after a fierce eight-hour debate. Opposition members decried the agreement. Said Likud's Shmuel Tamir: "We have surrendered to the Syrians. We might as well board ships and leave for Brooklyn. What this agreement does is bring war closer." Golda Meir, dressed in a light blue suit and white blouse (Israel's national colors) for her last appearance as Premier before giving way to Yitzhak Rabin (see story page 42), marked the occasion with a sober 30-minute speech. Ignoring demonstrators in the galleries who shouted "No retreat! The state of Israel lives!", she stressed Israel's opportunity to help create "a mutual possibility for bringing about a positive change of great value in relations between Israel and Syria." The Knesset approved a resolution to accept disengagement, 76-36.

President Assad probably had the authority to accept or reject disengagement on his own, particularly since he had the approval of his army leaders for whatever strategic steps he took. But Assad also included the ruling Baath Party in the final approval. He convened a meeting that included 21 members of the party's high command and 125 Baath National Congress delegates. After a reportedly heated ten-hour debate that lasted into the night, they gave the President their unanimous approval.

The Syrian press was nervously reserved over such a major turnabout in national policy. Elsewhere in the Arab world, reaction was mixed. Baghdad Radio announced curtly: "Syria has concluded a disengagement agreement with the Zionist enemy." But Beirut Columnist Michel Abu Jawdeh, reflecting a widespread moderate viewpoint, offered "1,000 mabruks [congratulations]" to all concerned for concluding the agreement. The most favorable reaction was in Cairo. For Egypt, Syria's acceptance of disengagement vindicated Anwar Sadat's brave policy of seeking peace and putting trust in Henry Kissinger.

With a cease-fire secured, the next major step will be a resumption of the Geneva peace talks, which may resume in July. A major issue that must be faced in Geneva is the future of the Palestinians. This question deeply concerns not only the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, but also King Hussein of Jordan. Until the October war, Hussein had insisted that only he could negotiate with Israel for the return of the Jordan West Bank, the sector of old Palestine that was captured from Jordan by Israeli forces in 1967.

In November, however, 17 Arab League nations voted to designate the P.L.O. at Geneva as the representative of the Palestinian people. Last month, under prodding from Sadat and Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, Hussein gave in. "If it is the unanimous will of the Arab countries that the P.L.O. should alone shoulder the responsibility of recovering the West Bank and Jerusalem," Hussein said, "I will bow to their will and consider that I have been relieved of my responsibilities."

22% of Palestine. The King's statement suddenly put pressure on P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat. Up till now, his organization has been split. Some fedayeen organizations, including Arafat's own Fatah, are reconciled to accepting the existence of Israel and attending the Geneva talks. At least initially, they would accept as a homeland the "22% of Palestine" composed of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Hemmeh region. But other groups, notably George Habash's Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, refuse to agree to anything but the abolition of Israel and the creation of a secular state for Arabs and Jews.

As a result of this dispute, the P.L.O. has steadfastly resisted the persuasions of Arab leaders to form its own government-in-exile. But now, possibly this week at the annual meeting of the P.L.O.'s 179-member National Council in Cairo, the organization may have to reach a decision. For one thing, with a Syrian and Egyptian disengagement concluded, the time has come to discuss the West Bank and Jerusalem. Israelis, who refuse to negotiate with the Palestinians, have already begun attempts to persuade Washington to deal directly with Hussein, thus cutting Arafat out.

Whatever negotiations do take place, it is unlikely that Kissinger will arbitrate them to the extent that he did the Israeli-Syrian discussions. At home, compliments for conjuring up his Middle East miracle were mixed last week with criticisms for remaining away so long and for tying himself down in resolving minor details. There were fears, as well, that Kissinger was overcommitting himself; whenever elements of the Middle East agreements became unstuck, he personally might have to re-stick them; whenever similar negotiations developed elsewhere, the magician might be sought out to run them.

Kissinger firmly defended his decision to remain in personal charge of the climactic discussions over apple orchards (the Israelis gave up 1 1/2 fields of apple trees) and yardage (on the final day of negotiations the Syrians were still arguing over 500 yards of the "blue line"). One reason for his decision to stay on to the bitter end was that the principal negotiators on either side were the President and Premier of their countries. This alone, Kissinger felt, required the Secretary of State's presence as mediator rather than, say, that of Under Secretary for Political Affairs Joseph Sisco. More important, however, was the specter of renewed war--and another oil embargo--if the negotiations collapsed.

Said Kissinger: "The reason we kept going was this: As an intellectual exercise, you could say, 'We can put it aside for three weeks.' But no one who was in the room with us on either side could seriously believe that this thing could hold together for three weeks, no matter how close the issues were. It was a question of maintaining the peace, a question of moderate evolution in the Middle East."

The Secretary and his aides flatly denied charges that Kissinger had worked particularly hard for disengagement in order to provide a foreign policy triumph for his embattled President. Nonetheless Nixon plans to make a ten-day visit to Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, probably beginning late next week. Sadat, confident that such a trip was in the offing, had already ordered the refurbishing of palaces once owned by King Farouk in Cairo and Alexandria for the presidential visit.

Kissinger, of course, will accompany Nixon on the trip, although some State Department hands would prefer that he stay home and attend to an overflowing In box. While he was away, Deputy Secretary Kenneth Rush, 64, the department's No. 2 man, moved from the State Department to the White House (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). In addition to replacing Rush, who ran the department while the boss was away, Kissinger needs to find new Under Secretaries for economics and security assistance. The Secretary must also reschedule postponed appearances before Capitol Hill committees, particularly to argue for $250 million in economic aid for Egypt and $100 million for Syria, which he offered as part of his rapprochement with the Arabs.

Preliminary Steps. Even while he tends to other business, the Secretary of State will have to keep an eye cocked on the Middle East. The agreements he has made so far are only very preliminary steps to peace, and he must carefully protect them. He must also see that negotiations move forward, as Egypt and Syria both expect them to. Although Israel's new government is generally more moderate toward the Arabs than was the outgoing regime of Golda Meir, it nevertheless would like the present disengagement lines to become permanent. Only Kissinger will be able to persuade Rabin and his colleagues otherwise.

Still, what the Secretary has accomplished so far, in an area that has been in turmoil since 1948, is barely short of magnificent. Though they may complain about concessions, both sides won something from last week's agreement. For Syria it was the recovery of territory and the promise of more; for Israel, among other things, it was de facto recognition of its existence, which Damascus had withheld for 26 years. The U.S. profited too. Perhaps Kissinger's most remarkable accomplishment was that while keeping Israel's friendship, he has begun to rebuild U.S.-Arab relations, which had all but withered away. That is something of a miracle.

*Kissinger's 34-day stay outside the U.S. was no record for a Secretary of State. In 1919 Robert Lansing remained in Paris for seven months during the Versailles conference.

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