Sadat Changes Course

Discouraged over the peace talks, he turns to domestic problems

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has always displayed a knack for mercurial decisions. He spun full circle last week, confounding friends and enemies alike. With the May 26 target date for an agreement on Palestinian autonomy just around the corner, Sadat abruptly suspended the talks. His reason: Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had said that security in the West Bank and Gaza "must remain exclusively in Israel's hands, and nobody else can interfere." But after a telephone talk with his friend Jimmy Carter, Sadat told the People's Assembly in Cairo on Wednesday that negotiations with Israel would resume despite a "formidable gap" dividing the Egyptian and Israeli positions. Then, 24 hours later, Sadat reversed himself once more. His new view: negotiations could not be resumed until Israel refrained from passing legislation that violated "the spirit and laws of Camp David."

Begin lashed back at Sadat's suspension of the talks as "incomprehensible" and insisted that Israel would have to agree on when and where negotiations should resume. The cause of the latest flap was an apparent misunderstanding by Sadat of some doings in the Israeli Knesset.

The Egyptian leader declared that the Knesset had, almost covertly, passed a bill affirming that Jerusalem will forever remain undivided as Israel's capital. Sadat interpreted the measure as an Israeli ploy to keep the subject of Jerusalem's future out of the talks, even though the predominantly Arab eastern sector of the city was occupied by the Israelis, along with the West Bank and Gaza, during the 1967 Six-Day War. Declared Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Boutros Ghali: "The fact that Israel passes such a law shows that the will to find a political solution [to the Palestinian problem] does not exist."

The matter was not quite so simple. The Knesset did indeed give preliminary approval to a bill declaring that the integrity and unity of the Holy City shall never be impaired. But the offensively worded measure had been submitted by Geula Cohen, a right-wing firebrand M.P. bitterly opposed to the autonomy negotiations. In approving her bill, the Knesset sent it along for review by its law committee, which will probably bury it discreetly. Nor has Begin ever kept secret from Sadat his view that Jerusalem is the "eternal, indivisible" capital of Israel. Thus the Cohen bill should not have been that much of a shock.

Sadat, however, may have regarded the timing of the measure as a violation of the Camp David spirit. In addition the Egyptians are angry over Israel's tough security clampdown on the West Bank following a Palestinian commando assault on Jewish settlers in Hebron in which six Israelis were killed. And like many other governments, Egypt is both irritated and confounded by Israel's determination to press ahead with the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Plans for two additional settlements in the northern portion of the West Bank were announced last week.

Tensions actually eased somewhat in the West Bank last week as the Israeli army pulled its troops out of most Arab towns. In an effort to control Jewish hardliners, Israeli authorities cracked down on one of the leading troublemakers, the American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane. They arrested Kahane after learning of his plot to take revenge against Palestinians for the Hebron ambush. Barring more surprises, Sadat's decision made it virtually certain that the autonomy talks would remain deadlocked until well after May 26. That in turn raised speculation about the possibility of pursuing other roads to a wider Middle East peace. One such course is outlined in a Western European proposal to supplement U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 with a new resolution calling for the Palestinian right to self-determination. (Resolution 242, passed in 1967, calls on the Israelis to return to the prewar borders; it also refers to the Palestinians only as a "refugee problem.") Sadat has always rejected the idea of multiparty conference under U.N. auspices because he does not want the Soviet Union to have an important role in the Middle East negotiations. But in the light of recent events in Israel, Ghali said cryptically, "Egypt will be studying different alternatives."

Britain's Deputy Foreign Secretary Sir Ian Gilmour visited Cairo last week and later reported that the notion of a Western European initiative had been "very warmly received" by top Egyptian officials. Gilmour stressed that any Western European action would be "complementary to and not a replacement of the Camp David peace process. But he also noted that because the interests of Western Europe and the Middle East were so "deeply intertwined"--not least where oil supplies are concerned--the Europeans could not afford to allow the peace process to languish in limbo during an American election year.

In Brussels, meanwhile, the NATO Foreign Ministers listened politely to Secretary of State Edmund Muskie's argument that they should do nothing that might interfere with the Camp David peace process. As a group the Western Europeans are not prepared to remain inactive until after the U.S. elections. Some, including British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, favor an immediate thrust toward a U.N. resolution recognizing the right of Palestinians to a homeland in return for acceptance by the Palestine Liberation Organization and all the Arab states of Israel's right to exist within secure frontiers. Says a ranking British diplomat: "I don't think we're going to let this one die a natural death. We really do believe we can help by just keeping up the momentum until such time as the U.S. is able to pick up the ball again."

The Egyptians appear to share the European dismay that the U.S. has not done more to push Israel toward compromise. Since the last round of autonomy negotiations ended in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzlia two weeks ago, Cairo's negotiators have grumbled about the timid conceptual approach adopted by the U.S. at the bargaining table. Despite his valiant efforts to find common ground between the two sides, U.S. Special Middle East Ambassador Sol Linowitz has been criticized in Cairo for failing to rise above an arbitrator's role and assume a more forceful position in the negotiations. The Egyptians complain that the Americans have not produced specific compromise plans that might lead to eventual agreement on the five core issues: 1) internal and external security for the West Bank and Gaza; 2) control of land, including the status of Jewish settlements; 3) water rights and distribution; 4) the role of East Jerusalem Arabs in an autonomy plan; and 5) the nature of the powers to be held by an autonomous Palestinian council.

Sadat apparently received firm assurances from Carter last week that the U.S. was now prepared to take a more aggressive role in the negotiations. Those promises at first led him to agree to Carter's argument that Egypt should stick with the negotiations. As he said during his speech to the People's Assembly, "It is obvious that by May 26 we shall not reach definitive results, and I consider this very dangerous." But, he added, "it is our responsibility to complete the work of Camp David." When he learned later that afternoon of the Knesset's action on the Cohen bill, Sadat felt incensed if not betrayed. Following a strategy session with aides the next day, Sadat directed his Foreign Ministry to issue a statement denouncing the Israeli parliament's action and to halt all plans to resume the negotiations.

Sadat also moved dramatically last week to strengthen his domestic position. As a prelude to his parliamentary address, which had been billed as "a momentous and historic speech that will chart the odyssey of Egypt's reconstruction," Sadat announced the resignation of his Premier, Moustafa Khaki, 60, and the rest of the Cabinet. Sadat said he himself would take over as Premier, with Defense Minister Kamal Hassan Ali, 58, becoming Foreign Minister and chief negotiator in any future autonomy talks. There was no evidence of ill feeling between Sadat and Khalil. The outgoing Premier had expressed a desire to return to private life and care for his wife, who is in poor health.

During his rambling, four-hour speech Sadat talked at length about strife between Egypt's 2.5 million Coptic Christian minority and Muslim fundamentalists, which has grown more strident with the rise of Islamic militancy. He announced a ban on ecclesiastical groups that "seek to spread political dissension," an obvious reference to Islamic demonstrations against both the peace treaty with Israel and the presence in Egypt of the former Shah of Iran. He assured the Copts that they had nothing to fear. Said Sadat: "Our Islam is not [the Ayatullah] Khomeini's Islam. Khomeini's revolution is not an Islamic revolution because murder, vengeance, and tampering with the bodies of the dead are alien to Islam." To show that he was serious about his promise of establishing a more democratic form of government, he announced the abolition of martial law, which has technically been in effect since the British imposed it in 1914.

Of more down-to-earth benefit to the Egyptian people was Sadat's disclosure that taxes were being reduced (a tax on movie tickets, for example, was abolished), the minimum wage was being raised from $22 to $28 a month, and prices of 77 basic commodities were being lowered. Such measures will hardly transform the lives of Egypt's 42 million citizens, who subsist on an average income of $300 a year while coping with an inflation rate of 35%. But coming at a time of foreign policy disappointments, the announcement may have bolstered Egyptian morale at a critical moment.

Sadat now realizes that his differences with Begin are virtually irreconcilable, and that he is unlikely to have a more flexible government to deal with until after the Israeli elections, scheduled for next year. He also knows that Carter will probably not put strong pressure on the Israelis for the duration of the U.S. presidential campaign and thus that the peace process will remain bogged down for at least six months. Those are as good reasons as any for turning his attention to Egypt's staggering domestic problems. As a West German expert put it, "Sadat is shoring things up. He is not in any immediate danger, but his action this week shows he sees the amber light just ahead."

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