Caution Signs on the Road to Geneva

As Jimmy Carter propped for his trip to the London summit this week, he made sure he was primed not only on economics but also on the questions his European colleagues would be raising about the U.S. position on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. Once the London talks were finished, Carter planned to do some direct Middle East business on the way home. In Geneva, he was due to meet Syrian President Hafez Assad, fresh from five days of talks in Moscow with Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, another fellow who is anxious to play an important role in the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

Assad will be the fourth Middle East leader Carter has met in his presidential crash course on the intricacies of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. His tutorial started out in March on a positive note. Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was hopeful, although he and Carter never established any kind of personal rapport. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, on the other hand, was personable and positively ebullient about peace prospects. Meanwhile, the news reaching Washington about the Assad-Brezhnev talks was upbeat: the Soviets seemed eager to resume a leadership role at comprehensive peace talks in Geneva--a role that Henry Kissinger had largely ruled out for them in 1973 when he launched his step-by-step negotiations. While taking care to mute their criticisms of U.S. policy, the Soviets quickly settled their dispute with Assad over Syria's intervention in Lebanon, which had badly bruised Soviet-Syrian relations and seemed to seriously threaten the peace talks.

But last week during two days of discussions with Jordan's King Hussein in Washington, Carter's optimism about Geneva took a dive. Hussein and Carter seemed to work a strange chemistry on each other. The King, who is 41 but has held the Hashemite throne for 25 years, has a long view of Middle East affairs: he was pessimistic about Israel's willingness to make peace. Under Carter's persistent probing--more blunt than Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon had been in similar meetings--the King's pessimism moderated a bit. But Carter, who had earlier been hopeful about Geneva, was visibly downcast as he saw Hussein into a limousine outside the Oval Office.

No Conference. He told newsmen that "unless we see strong possibility for substantial achievements before the Geneva Conference can be convened, then I think it would be better not to have the Geneva Conference at all."

As it happens, that has been the view of Israel's Defense Minister and caretaker Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who, along with Saudi Arabia's Prince Fahd, is on Carter's future Middle East guest list. Peres, who became Israel's acting head of government when Yitzhak Rabin stepped down because of a family financial scandal (TIME, April 25), is expected to lead the Labor Party to a victory in Israel's mid-May general elections despite the Rabin embarrassment. In Tel Aviv last week, Peres stressed the complications involved in trying to hold Geneva talks this year. He agreed with Carter that no talks would be infinitely better than unsuccessful talks. He also warned that if the talks were begun but soon broke down, the threat of war could not be ruled out.

Why all the new caution about a Geneva Conference, which everyone involved had expected to take place this fall? For one thing, the timing had become unstuck. The political crisis and early elections in Israel this month had pushed the timetable back; Peres, if he wins, may require at least a month of delicate negotiations to put together the kind of coalition Cabinet that Israelis are used to. Beyond that, to foreign observers, the new U.S. Administration's learning processes have seemed a little uncertain. The President's habit of ruminating in public on such complex and emotionally freighted issues as defensible borders for Israel or a homeland for the Palestinians has given some of the participants second thoughts about what might happen at Geneva.

Substantial issues at Geneva may not be easily satisfied. Israel continues to demand "true peace," by which it means not only a renunciation of war on all sides but also the immediate acceptance of a flow of tourism, trade and cultural exchanges between Israel and the Arab states. Egypt's Sadat, by contrast, talks about at least five years of "nonbelligerence" before such a lowering of barriers.

The biggest complication in the Middle East peace puzzle, however, remains the Arab demand for the return of all territory captured by Israel in 1967 and Israel's determination to hold on to sizable amounts of that territory.

Jerusalem, in Israeli terms, is nonnegotiable. Elsewhere in the occupied territories, 80 Israeli settlements have been established with more on the way. Two weeks ago, Israel's government authorized the first official settlement in Masha, not far from an unauthorized, thriving settlement that Jewish hard-liners of the Gush Enumin (Group of the Faithful) set up at Kaddum. The Israeli government intends to establish at least eight more settlements in occupied territory within the next year.

Hard Attitudes. Peres, in his election campaign, can scarcely take a more pliable tack on establishing settlements and holding on to territory. The latest survey by Israeli Pollster Hanoch Smith indicates that even if there were true peace with the Arabs, 63% of Israeli voters would want to hang on to the Golan Heights, and 40% would want to keep the West Bank.

Such hard Israeli attitudes heighten the threat of conflict. But with Israel fully rearmed by the U.S. since the '73 war and the Arabs indifferently resupplied by Moscow, the Arab "confrontation states"--Syria, Jordan and Egypt--are not very well prepared for another war. Thus the real showdown in the Geneva delay is beginning to loom between Israel and the Carter Administration. Washington accepts Israel's insistence on the importance of true peace, but not its aim of retaining vast tracts of captured Arab land. If these differences between Washington and Jerusalem cannot be thrashed out, the road to Geneva could become a quagmire.

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