Escalating Battle for Peace

Most of the Middle East was bathed in sunshine, but high atop snowy Mount Hermon north of the Golan Heights an ominous battle between Israelis and Syrians raged day afterday. For the past six weeks Syrian guns have off and on bombarded Israeli installations in a concerted effort to convince Israel that it must return captured Syrian territory. But last week the diplomatic cannonading turned into a full-scale battle. Syrian commandos attempted to overrun Israeli positions held since the October war and were beaten back. Aircraft were called in on both sides for the first dogfights since last fall. Syria claimed 17 Israeli planes shot down. Israel said it lost only two and claimed three Syrian MIGS.

Alarmed by the intensity in the fighting, Jerusalem alerted its reservists on the northern front. And with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger due in the region at the end of this week to negotiate disengagement, the Israeli government sent out signals that the Secretary's assignment might be more difficult than he thought. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan went on television with a grim estimate of the situation: "When Kissinger arrives here, he may find a battlefield instead of a negotiation table."

Into this forbidding atmosphere, the U.S. Secretary of State prepared to plunge this week with all the vigor that marked his earlier Middle East success in establishing disengagement between Israel and Egypt. Building toward future peace talks in Geneva, Kissinger in Washington had already discussed the dimensions of disengagement with Dayan, who brought him Israel's concept of limited withdrawal from the Golan. Kissinger had also talked with Syria's General Hikmat Chahabi, whose outline understandably called for a greater Israeli withdrawal. But Kissinger obviously thought there was enough agreement between the two that aides talked about a Kissinger shuttle on the 45-minute flight between Tel Aviv and Damascus similar to the round of flights between Jerusalem and Aswan in January.

Political War. Perhaps Kissinger was optimistic for all the right reasons. Despite its intensity, the Mount Hermon fighting was clearly more political than military. Last week, touring the long ridge line that rings Mount Hermon, TIME Correspondent William Marmon talked to one Israeli officer who shared responsibility for the defense of the mountain. "This is a political war," he told Marmon. "The Syrians are trying to play the same game that the Egyptians played before there was a disengagement in Sinai. But we shall stay here as long as necessary." The Syrians hoped to convince Israel that they could fight as long as Israeli troops occupied the strategic mountain. Syria's message was clear: It would fight until Israel came up with a significant pullback. Syrian Vice Foreign Minister Abdel Ghani Rafii told TIME Correspondent William Stewart in a calm and strangely relaxed Damascus last week: "If we have assur ances about withdrawal and the restoration of Palestinian rights, we can dis cuss the rest at Geneva. Disengagement is the interim step."

Far from 9,232-ft. Mount Hermon and beyond the Syrian plain below, where fruit trees were blossoming in contrast to the snow above, the fighting on the mountain was already having a profound political effect. Syria's President Hafez Assad, in Moscow last week on a six-day visit, got the kind of reception reserved for much more impor tant chiefs of government. At a Krem lin dinner for Assad, Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev promised the Syrian President unlimited amounts of Soviet planes, missiles and other armament to replace Syrian losses to Israel in the October war. The reason, Brezhnev explained, was that the Russians were not able to accept the status quo in the Middle East today. The Soviet leader com plained that the "situation is still fraught with danger . . . The danger is that while there is some degree of tension the aggressor [Israel] and its patrons;[the U.S.] may try again to avoid a radical solution. It is not accidental that 'ersatz' settlement plans were recently launched. This means replacing overall settlements with partial agreements."

The Russian support of Assad had a double edge. One was an ostentatious display of diplomatic and material support of Syria until peace talks take place in Geneva--with Moscow as an equal partner to discussions rather than un der Henry Kissinger's one-man diplomacy. The other was that the Soviets, by playing up to Syria, were trying to balance their declining influence with Egypt as their chief Arab ally.

In Cairo, President Anwar Sadat last week publicly told a joint meeting of the Parliament and the Arab Socialist Union, Egypt's lone political organization, just how strained relations were between Egypt and Russia. In terms clearer than ever before, Sadat announced that Egypt would no longer depend solely for arms on Moscow as it has done for nearly 20 years. The Soviets, said Sadat, had not been generous with their arms after the war. Indeed, Egyptian aircraft losses have still not been made up by the Russians; tank replacements have come from Yugoslavia and Algeria. Henceforth, Egypt would shop around. Said Sadat,"I have taken a decision in agreement with our armed forces that we should have diversified sources of arms. This decision has been put into effect."

Spartan State. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy will have to take into account not only Cairo's increasingly independent role, but also the continuing unsettled political situation in Israel. Even while they watched the Golan Heights last week and alerted reservists to defend it, Israel's political leaders were busy trying to agree on a successor to Premier Golda Meir, who resigned two weeks ago. Labor Party leaders had a choice of selecting someone else, if the right supporting coalition could be found, or of asking Golda to continue with a caretaker government. In either case, the job would be only temporary since it would terminate in national elections in the fall.

Whoever accepts the post will have to deal not only with the handicaps of a short-term government but also with increasing Israeli discontent. Israelis are upset at the idea that having fought the war, they now have to keep their forces activated like some kind of 20th century Spartan state. There is thus a powerful impetus for making peace with Syria in order to have army reservists discharged and the economy return to normal. Another burr of discontent--and spur to negotiations-- is the desire to get back the 65 Israeli prisoners, plus the jet pilots shot down last week.

That may be a long way off. In ad dition to their problems with Syria, Israelis are angry about the growing number of guerrilla incursions into Israel.

Last week, in response to the attack on Qiryat Shemona two weeks ago hi which rampaging guerrillas killed 18 Israeli civilians, there were violent incidents in which Jews attacked Israeli Arabs in a frustrated attempt to revenge the deeds that other Arabs had committed. Such outbursts only helped to make the Middle East situation, as Henry Kissinger descends on it again, about as frosty as the snow atop Mount Hermon.

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