Offensive for Peace, Warning of War

Arabs talked of peace and hailed 1977 as the year for a Middle East settlement. Israelis warned of war as they watched Syrian peace-keeping forces in Lebanon inch closer to the country's southern border. Both sides in the Middle East conflict seemed sincere enough last week in their expressions of hope and fear. But it was also clear that both were engaged in a certain amount of posturing--aimed not so much at each other as at the incoming Administration in Washington.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat spearheaded the Arab peace initiative. Convinced that only the U.S. can work out a Middle East settlement, he hopes to win the same kind of support from President-Elect Jimmy Carter that he had from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Sadat also intends to make the prospect of ending the state of war so attractive to the West that the Israelis will have to accept. As one Egyptian official put it last week, "If the Israelis appear to be refusing to end the war, I wonder if they can again get $5 billion from the American Congress."

Free Movement. Within the past three weeks, Sadat has met with 33 U.S. Senators and Congressmen visiting the Middle East. Confirming what he had said to TIME (Nov. 29), he told one delegation, headed by Connecticut's Democratic Senator Abraham Ribicoff, that he was ready to go to a Geneva conference "without preconditions," and would sign a peace agreement with Israel. Sadat's plan also calls for total Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied since 1967, as well as United Nations peace-keeping forces to patrol the frontiers and guarantee free movement of ships in the Aqaba Gulf.

The timing of Sadat's initiative was not dictated merely by the necessity of wooing the new Administration. For one thing, Syrian armed might has resolved that distracting obstacle to peace, Lebanon's civil war. For another, the October Arab summits at Riyadh and Cairo left Western-oriented moderates--principally Sadat, Syrian President Hafez Assad and Saudi Arabia's King Khalid --in undisputed control over Arab strategy. The so-called rejectionists like Iraq and Libya, which oppose a permanent settlement with Israel, emerged largely discredited.

The Syrians, moreover, have even been able to put diplomatic pressure on the battered Palestine Liberation Organization. In what Arab sources interpreted as a bitter concession, the Palestinians last week accepted a "half-a-loaf" settlement they had consistently refused when the U.N. General Assembly voted 90 to 16 in favor of establishing a separate Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. Previously, the Palestinians had always vowed that they would accept nothing less than the elimination of Israel as a state.

Some Israelis were angered that their government had allowed the Arabs to seize the initiative. In a surprisingly harsh attack on Premier Yitzhak Rabin, Tel Aviv's popular afternoon daily Yidiot Aharonot portrayed "Sadat, the tongue-tied illiterate" as "setting the world's imagination on fire," while Israel's leaders "with their perfect English" always seem to lag far behind. Concluded the editorial: "Would that we had such boors" as Sadat. Rabin indicated that he was ready to negotiate with Arab leaders, but otherwise the response from Israeli officials was skeptical and even derisive in tone. In the U.N. Assembly debate on Palestine, Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog spoke contemptuously of "those soothing sounds emanating from various capitals in the Middle East."

Beyond their concern about being outcharmed by the Arabs, the Israelis were plainly worried about Syrian troop movements in Lebanon. Although Defense Minister Shimon Peres acknowledged that Syria had not yet crossed the "red line" (the undefined demarcation point, usually considered to be the Litani River, beyond which Israel feels its security would be threatened), Rabin's government issued several tough warnings to Syria to stay out of the sensitive area and dispatched a show of reinforcements to the border.

Lose Face. Israeli fears were heightened by an announcement last week that Syria and Iraq had agreed to defuse their own border tensions. That would mean that at least one of Syria's two divisions on the Iraqi border could be redeployed closer to Israel. The Israelis were also concerned about reports that Syria was moving antiaircraft missiles into Lebanon. Israel considered that a threat, since no planes have been involved in a major way in the Lebanese fighting. Both Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Ambassador to Israel Malcolm Toon cautioned Israeli officials not to push Damascus too hard, lest Syria feel it had to respond to the challenge or lose face. Privately, American officials said they did not believe that either Israel or Syria would make a move along the border that would risk an outbreak of war. On the other hand -- despite Kissinger's statement that prospects for a settlement are better than at any time since 1948--they do not expect a great deal from Sadat's peace proposals, at least for the time being. Said one senior Administration official: "The U.S. at the moment is not a major player. We are encouraged by Riyadh, the effect in Lebanon and the comments of Sadat, but it's very clear it is not the business of this administration."

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