Mission to the Middle East

Rarely had Cyrus Vance been so ebullient. In the hours after his Boeing 707 took off from Washington for the Middle East last week, the Secretary of State was still basking in the glow of the Camp David summit. After 20 months on the job, Vance had finally helped score an important foreign policy achievement for the U.S., and he was justifiably proud. Wearing a sweater and slacks, he sat in the aisle talking to reporters for more than an hour. But as the plane flew eastward into the night the mood began to fade. And by the time the Vance mission ended some six days, three countries and 14,000 miles later, it was obvious that despite Camp David's great accomplishments, some major questions remained unanswered. What kind of peace was possible? Would the moderate Arabs eventually accept the summit proposals? How much trouble could radical Arabs cause?

The first difficulties came from Israel's Premier Menachem Begin, who almost immediately began raising objections to what Vance had thought was an agreed-upon moratorium on new Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Next, both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whose support is crucial to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, openly criticized the Camp David agreements. Other protests arose like a sandstorm, not only from such radical states as Libya, South Yemen and Algeria, and, of course, the Palestine Liberation Organization, but also from Syria and such moderate and normally friendly states as Bahrain, Qatar, North Yemen, Kuwait and Lebanon.

While Egypt's President Anwar Sadat broke his homeward journey in Morocco to see one of his closest Arab allies, King Hassan II, and Jimmy Carter conferred with Sudanese President Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, four hard-line Arab states and an assortment of Palestinian liberation groups assembled in Damascus for the third so-called Steadfast Summit. The theme: Fight Sadat--and topple him if possible.

Two of the hardliners, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and P.L.O. Boss Yasser Arafat, even undertook a sudden trip to Jordan to try to persuade their longtime enemy, King Hussein, to boycott the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations. It was an extraordinary idea--Hussein and Arafat had not met on Jordanian soil since 1970, the year that the P.L.O. virtually seized control of Amman until the King attacked and expelled them. Hussein quickly rejected the new ploy. "The King," said a Jordanian official, "will not respond to any appeals or pressures, and his moderate stance remains the same."

Even so, the effort served to prolong the already drawn-out and heated Damascus meeting. Finally, late in the week, Syrian President Hafez Assad asked Vance to delay his scheduled arrival in Syria by 24 hours, until after the hardline Arabs had gone home.

Despite all this turmoil in the Arab world, one of the two Camp David agreements, the "framework" setting forth a timetable for a peace settlement between Israel and Egypt, was proceeding on schedule. The loose end, recognized but unresolved at Camp David because Begin said he did not want to be the one to "sell out the settlers," is the question of whether the Israelis will dismantle their 17 settlements in the Sinai, as demanded by Egypt. Begin cautiously left that for the Knesset to decide.

There was some noisy opposition in Jerusalem to the Camp David frameworks. Rabbi Haim Druckman, a member of Begin's ruling coalition, accused the Premier of "absolute surrender." But such extremists are a small minority in the Knesset and in the country at large, as Begin himself discovered when he returned to Jerusalem late in the week to a hero's welcome. Beaming like a proud father, he told his cheering countrymen: "We have brought you a peace agreement with security and honor."

Israel's Labor Party opposition strongly backs the Begin government on the Camp David accords. As Opposition Leader Shimon Peres told TIME: "We shall vote for peace, as this has been our national goal since the establishment of the State of Israel. The proposed agreement is the best this country could have achieved ... Israel was [never] a territorial or a commercial ambition. It was a dream. We will carry on, and fulfill our long desired social goals." Former Premier Yitzhak Rabin also supports the accords, although he noted drily that "Begin is the only Israeli leader who could have signed such an agreement, since he doesn't have a Begin in opposition to his Cabinet."

Among the backers of the peace plan were even some Israeli residents of the Sinai settlement of Yamit, who declared that they did not wish to become an obstacle to peace. The Knesset is expected to approve the removal of the Sinai settlements this week. That action would be followed by peace talks between Israel and Egypt, leading to a treaty within two to three months.

And although Begin was arguing about whether the Camp David negotiators had agreed on a three-month or a five-year moratorium on new settlements in the West Bank, there was no doubt that he had agreed to at least a short halt. When the fanatical right-wing Gush Emunim, vowing that it would build "ten settlements for every one forced to be removed," sent 200 of its supporters to start a new community near the West Bank town of Nablus, the Israeli army forcibly removed them.

By the time Cyrus Vance stepped into the blazing afternoon heat of Amman last week, the exultant mood of Washington was far behind. At the royal palace he met with King Hussein for more than two hours. Vance argued that a fundamental change was about to take place in the West Bank, whether Jordan participated or not, and that it would be "a great mistake" for Hussein and other Arab leaders to pass up the chance to help break the deadlock with Israel. As Vance expected, Hussein remained noncommittal, but U.S. officials hoped he would reach a favorable decision by the time he makes a scheduled trip to the U.S. next month.

On his arrival in Riyadh the next day, the Secretary of State was ready to make an airport statement, but the Saudis did not supply him with a microphone. The message was none too subtle: they were ready to hear him out, but only privately. In a meeting with ailing King Khalid (who is due to arrive in Cleveland this week for treatment of a heart condition) and with Crown Prince Fahd, Vance explained the Camp David agreements point by point, answered questions and urged the Saudis to join the peacemaking process. Saudi support, or at least neutrality, is considered crucial to the future negotiations. But the Saudis had publicly described the Camp David results as unacceptable, and they remained adamant. There was no "final verdict" except an assertion that some kind of dialogue should continue.

What had happened was that the Camp David agreement had caught the moderate Arabs by surprise. They had expected failure, followed by a reconciliation between Sadat and most of the Arabs, and then probably an Arab summit conference. On this premise, in fact, Hussein had been planning to meet with Sadat during his stopover in Morocco. But the successful conclusion of the summit changed everything.

The moderates, under the leadership of Hussein and Khalid, concluded that the Israelis had made no real concessions. They noted that the Camp David agreement ignored such Palestinian questions as the establishment of a homeland for refugees, as well as the P.L.O.'s claims to being the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, as agreed by the Arab states at the Rabat summit of 1974. Like many other Arabs, Khalid was particularly angry that the whole question of Jerusalem had been skirted at Camp David; he was almost livid when he heard that Begin was boasting that Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel.

The hard-line Arabs at the Damascus meeting were overjoyed that Jordan and Saudi Arabia were not endorsing Camp David. The Arab world's break with Sadat now appeared complete. President Assad said of the Egyptian leader: "He has turned his back on Arab history, he has given up Jerusalem ... Who would have imagined that one day Sadat would describe us as his enemy and Begin as his friend?" Arafat, whose organization will presumably be pushed toward increased guerrilla activity by the Camp David agreement, declared: "As for Sadat, the traitor who sold Jerusalem for a few burnt sands of the Sinai, he is doomed."

In public even moderate Palestinians opposed the Camp David agreement. But in private, one West Bank political leader said last week: "Don't believe all the strong words you hear. If Hussein should become involved, we will move forward with the agreement." The trouble is that anyone who voices such sentiments publicly just now is inviting immediate retaliation by the P.L.O.

The anger of the P.L.O. and the other radical Arabs against Sadat was plainly relished by the Soviet Union. Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, who denounced the Camp David agreement as "nothing but the illusion of a settlement," will presumably continue to back the P.L.O. with arms and money, though not to such a degree as to make it a serious military threat in the area. The Soviets would certainly welcome the overthrow of Sadat, and over the long run they would like to see more radical regimes come to power in such influential countries as Saudi Arabia and Iran. But for the present, they are moving with considerable caution.

If Sadat was affected by the widespread Arab criticism last week, he didn't admit it. "When I signed the first Sinai disengagement with Israel in 1974," he told reporters last week in Rabat, "they all attacked me. When I went to Jerusalem, they attacked me more than ever. If I survived that, I can survive now."

Sadat was convinced that he had gained a reasonable framework for negotiations on West Bank and Palestinian issues, and that he had gotten about as much as he could under the circumstances. He was also tired, as he has said before, of carrying the Palestinians around on his back for years and was glad to divest himself partially of that responsibility. If Camp David had failed, Sadat believed, he would have been under terrible pressure to go to war once again, with disastrous consequences for Egypt and its economy. In effect, he concluded that it was more important to have the support of his own people than that of the radical Palestinians, Iraqis or Libyans. Peace is popular with the Egyptians, especially when it means regaining their land in Sinai. When he returned to Cairo Saturday, Sadat received a welcome as clamorous as the one that greeted him following his "sacred mission" to Jerusalem last November.

Sadat hopes that after five years of good relations, the Israelis will realize that they do not need to maintain troops on the West Bank for their security, and that they may be willing to make further concessions to the Palestinians. Sadat even sees a chance for an agreement on Jerusalem. At Camp David he proposed a joint overall administration for the city, with two "borough" administrations for the Arab and Jewish sectors, and separate control of the holy places by the religious organizations involved. Under such a plan, he believes, part of Jerusalem could remain the Israeli capital, and part could also serve as capital of a West Bank-Gaza Strip entity to be established.

To maintain the newly restored momentum, Sadat would most like to have Hussein and at least a few of the moderate Palestinians enter into the peace talks. The Egyptians hope that as soon as the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty has been signed, the Israelis will withdraw their military government from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This, the Egyptians believe, is the kind of gesture that could improve the political atmosphere and perhaps induce Hussein to join the negotiations for a Middle East peace.

In a sense, the Camp David agreements are a new and enlarged version of the "step-by-step" approach long favored by Henry Kissinger. A full Middle East settlement is obviously unattainable at this time; so the most difficult "steps," such as Jerusalem and the future status of the West Bank, were postponed until some kind of consensus might be achieved. This is not in itself a setback for Arab ambitions; in practical terms, the Arabs have at least as good a chance of regaining East Jerusalem as they had before the Camp David agreements.

The most important single development for both Begin and Sadat is that they have secured a de facto peace. The radical Arabs and the P.L.O. can cause trouble, particularly if they can gain some cooperation from Jordan, but they cannot wage the kind of war that would endanger Israel's existence. Palestinian guerrillas can launch a campaign of terrorism, though such actions tend to rally the citizenry to the regime in power. Sadat's enemies had planned a campaign of street violence against him this fall, but it will be difficult now to rally the masses against the man who may be bringing peace to his country after 30 years of war or armed truce. Sadat could of course be overthrown. Considering his present popularity, however, it is by no means certain that a post-Sadat regime would depart very much from Egypt's present foreign policy.

Sadat would be in trouble if Saudi Arabia cut off its financial support to Egypt, currently running at roughly $1 billion per year, though it is possible that the U.S. would move in to fill the gap. The Saudis are disturbed that Sadat's policies have produced a deep division in the Arab world. But at the base of Saudi foreign policy are its relationship with the U.S., the sole guarantor of Saudi security, and its fear of Soviet and radical Arab influences. Ultimately the Saudis would be reluctant to break that bond with the U.S. or to wreck American policy in the region. Though the outcome is far from certain, it seems probable that the Saudis will quietly allow their support of Sadat to continue.

At Camp David, Sadat gave far more than he got. He failed to pin down the Israelis on the questions of eventual Arab sovereignty in the West Bank and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories; he didn't press such currently insoluble problems as Jerusalem. But he did gain some important concessions. For the West Bank, he won the long-term promise of an end to Israeli military government, an Israeli military withdrawal from nearly all points, and full autonomy for the Palestinians. For Egypt, he has all but won full Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai.

During the past ten months, Sadat has maneuvered hard to bring the U.S. into the Middle East peace negotiations as a full partner, believing that Washington should prepare its own peace plan and then press both sides to accept it. This is what happened at Camp David. Since last year, Sadat has been seeking what diplomats and journalists alike have called a "fig leaf to make compromise respectable. A generally agreed-on declaration of principles, Sadat reasoned, would provide a framework within which other Arab states could negotiate their own deals with Israel. Sadat's deal has now become the first step toward a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East. If the other Arab states remain obdurately outside the negotiating process, it could also become a totally separate peace.

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