Another Hitch in Disengagement

"It has taken eight years for the Israelis to withdraw ten miles. Now they want another five years for another 20 miles. At this rate, it will take them 50 years to get out of Sinai."

That was the rationale offered by one Egyptian spokesman last week for a diplomatic move by Cairo that caught Jerusalem and Washington by surprise. With the latest mandate for the United Nations peace-keeping forces in the Sinai due to expire this week, Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy announced that Egypt would not agree to extend it unless immediate progress is made hi reaching a second-stage disengagement agreement with Israel. Fahmy's threat raised the possibility that the blue-bereted U.N. wedge between Israeli and Egyptian forces in the desert peninsula might have to be pulled out, that peace negotiations might break down, and that an inadvertent step by either side might lead to another Middle East war.

Fahmy's warning reflected Egyptian exasperation at the indecisive results of recent talks in Bonn between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin (TIME, July 21). Egypt had hoped this latest in a long series of Sinai discussions would produce an agreement under which Israeli troops would withdraw to the eastern edge of the strategic Mitla and Giddi passes. Instead, Rabin asked for further "clarifications" from Cairo.

Empty Bluff. In Cairo's view, the Israelis are stalling in order to keep negotiations churning on through 1976; in an election year, Washington is unlikely to lean heavily on Jerusalem to make any settlement that would displease American Jewish voters.

The Egyptian move was wholly unexpected, especially since Kissinger seemed to be making progress toward the kind of agreement that Cairo wants. U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Herman Eilts, who apparently had no inkling of Fahmy's announcement, flew from Cairo to Washington the same day for a Kissinger briefing on the Secretary's talks with Rabin. Kissinger himself called the move "disturbing" and "extremely unfortunate." Israelis insisted that the Egyptian threat was an empty bluff by Cairo to increase Washington's pressure on Israel. In any case, Rabin told the Knesset, "Israel is not a country that makes a practice of accepting dictates." Rabin sent Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz back to Washington to confer again with Kissinger on the two principal points still outstanding in any Sinai agreement: the extent of the Israeli withdrawal and the details of an electronic early-warning system around the passes. Kissinger is trying to bring the two sides to a point where there will be accommodation enough between them for him to attempt a final ten-day shuttle next month.

Rabin's don't-push-me attitude is obviously bolstered by Israel's national mood. Recent polls indicate that 60% of Israelis want to hold on to the Mitla and Giddi passes. Last week some of the 20,000 people at a rally sponsored by the right-wing opposition Likud Bloc stoned the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to protest American pressure on Israel to make concessions. They carried signs with anti-Kissinger statements. Read one: "Dr. K.--we shall not win you another peace prize with our blood."

Arabs are equally emphatic that Israel must give up some occupied territory--and give it up soon. In Jeddah last week, where they gathered under the auspices of Saudi Arabia's King Khalid, representatives of 40 Islamic nations approved a resolution to expel Israel from the U.N. General Assembly for foot-dragging on withdrawal and refusing to deal with the Palestinians. Anwar Sadat flies to Kampala, Uganda, next week for a meeting of the Organization of African Unity, at which motions similar to the one adopted in Jeddah will be introduced--but probably voted down. Many black African nations are annoyed because Arab oil states have raised prices but given them inadequate help to combat the resulting inflation; they also lament the loss of Israeli technical-aid programs that they had cut off to demonstrate their solidarity with the Arabs.

Another anti-Israeli resolution will surface--and will probably be approved--at a meeting of nonaligned nations next month in Lima, Peru. Actually, it seems unlikely that Israel could be thrown out of the U.N. entirely, since the U.S. is committed to cast a Security Council veto to prevent that from happening. But Israel could be suspended from the General Assembly as South Africa was last year.

Ominous Precedent. At week's end the big unanswered question was whether Egypt would go ahead with its threat and demand the removal of the U.N. troops in the Sinai. The whole problem of ending the mandate, as one Israeli diplomat in Jerusalem put it, is "a plate of legal spaghetti." Legally, the U.N. Security Council supervises both the peace-keeping forces in the Sinai and the observers on the Golan Heights, and last week Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim began summoning Council members to discuss how the mandate could be kept alive. Practically speaking, however, the U.N. troops could not remain in place if one side demanded their ouster. If they were forced out by Egypt, the situation could be ominous--and there is a disturbing precedent. In May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded a similar pullout of U.N. forces for their own safety in the face of "Israeli aggression" and Egyptian defensive moves. The late Secretary-General U Thant complied. Eighteen days later, the Six-Day War erupted. The Israelis were betting that Cairo would back down, partly because of fail-safe ambiguities in Fahmy's letter, partly because they are convinced that Egypt is not remotely prepared for another war. Jerusalem even suspected that Fahmy was a straw man setting up the issue so that Sadat could knock it down.

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