Still Looking for a Breakthrough

When Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin flew to Washington last week for talks with President Ford, his El Al jetliner landed at New York's Kennedy Airport. Rabin then boarded a U.S. military jet for the hop between Kennedy and Andrews Air Force Base outside the capital. "Please don't call it the shuttle," an Israeli diplomat jokingly implored TIME Correspondent Strobe Talbott as Rabin disembarked at Andrews. Despite the effort at humor, the Israelis were in no mood to link Rabin's trip to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's long-playing diplomatic shuttle between Cairo and Jerusalem, which ended in a stalemate three months ago.

Following closely upon Ford's summit meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Salzburg, Rabin had flown to Washington both to learn the results of that meeting and to explore the possibilities of a second-stage disengagement agreement in the Sinai. Two intense days of talks between Rabin and the President and Secretary of State were less than totally satisfying to either side: they concluded with only an agreement that Kissinger would return to the Middle East once more in midsummer for talks before he is scheduled to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Europe. What might happen after that is unclear: Rabin, like Sadat, discouraged the idea of Kissinger's resuming his shuttle. The main reason: it would tend to promote unrealistically high expectations, and exacerbate the crisis condition.

Meeting newsmen at the conclusion of the White House talks, the Premier wearily discouraged speculation that any Middle East peace breakthrough was imminent. "I don't believe I have received all the answers I want to know," he said. "Egypt has not facilitated the movement toward peace." Rabin was disappointed to learn from Ford that Sadat was not yet willing to make one political concession on which Israel insists --namely, a definite commitment to a specific, long-range time framework for any second-stage disengagement in Sinai. Egypt would like any extensions of the interim agreement on the Sinai to be for an indefinite period of time. Israel insists on signing such an agreement for a specific period of at least three to five years. In return, Jerusalem would be willing to accept Cairo's pledge not to use force during the life of the agreement, rather than the formal declaration of nonbelligerency that Israel demanded during the unsuccessful shuttle.

Sign Language. Rabin and his government were unmistakably worried about the "reassessment" of U.S. Middle East policy that the Administration ostensibly has been carrying on since the shuttle talks collapsed. So far, the reassessment has resulted in the tabling by the White House of Israeli requests to purchase such sophisticated U.S. weapons as F-15 jets and Lance surface-to-surface missiles. The Israelis were buoyed by the recent letter of support signed by 76 Senators. But relations between Washington and Jerusalem have nonetheless cooled to the point that Rabin's entourage held conversations at Blair House last week in lowered voices, cryptic references, Hebrew military slang and even sign language because the Israeli secret service believed the rooms were bugged. One Israeli official cited a crude Arabic expression--translated roughly as "there is a nose on our tail"--to explain the need for caution.

The strained relations between the two governments also aroused a few suspicions (quickly denied in Washington) that U.S. intelligence, in order to embarrass Rabin, might have leaked stories to the effect that recent Israeli troop withdrawals in Sinai were not what they seemed to be. At the end of Ford's meeting with Sadat, the Israelis, as a token of their interest in peace, announced that they were thinning out their 7,000 troops in the Limited Forces Zone in the Sinai. As it turned out, the Israelis had earlier reduced their forces to about 3,500; in some sectors, military units had never been brought up to the strength allowed under the 1974 disengagement agreement. Washington was aware of this fact from satellite reconnaissance, but according to Cairo, did not bother to tell Egypt. Some critics accused Israel of fakery by timing the announcement of something that had already been done to coincide with the Salzburg meeting. In fact, this was not really an embarrassment to Jerusalem; Rabin, in announcing the thin-out, made a significant public commitment to keep Israeli forces in the Sinai reduced. Moreover, the Egyptians refused to make political capital of the disclosure.

Publicly President Ford avoided any hint of what he and Rabin were talking about. At one point, when newsmen in the midst of a Washington drizzle asked him about progress, Ford looked at the sky and said straight-faced, "It's a nice day." Privately he and Kissinger tried to convince Rabin that Israel should give up the Mitla and Giddi passes in the Sinai as well as the Abu Rudeis oilfields as part of a disengagement agreement. If Israel agreed, the U.S. was likely not only to be more generous with military and economic aid, but to put its endorsement on any agreement. Appearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week, Kissinger said: "I believe that a final peace settlement in the area will require some sort of American--I don't know whether I want to use the word guarantee--but some sort of American assurance as to the viability and security of the state of Israel." Rabin declined such assurance. "We can't entrust our defense to anyone else," he said. Israeli concern was scarcely lightened last week by the news of an agreement in which Egypt, already deeply in debt, will use $1 billion advanced by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to purchase arms in Britain.

Irritating Visit. Egypt considers the arms defensive. Sadat wants peace in Sinai to protect the Suez Canal, and he would undoubtedly welcome a U.S. guarantee. It would mean that Egypt could reach an informal agreement with Israel but would not be bound by a formal treaty or a politically unpalatable pledge of nonbelligerency until there was also agreement on the Syrian front and on the Palestinian issue. Some kind of understanding would protect moderates like Sadat from attacks by radical Arabs, notably the hard-lining Palestinians. In Tripoli last week, Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is feuding with Sadat, met with George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Ahmed Jabril of the P.F.L.P.--General Command, both of whom are far to the left of Palestine Liberation Organization Leader Yasser Arafat. With Gaddafi, Habash and Jabril they denounced Sadat's disengagement policy, insisted that Suez was properly the "canal of the Arabs" and not Egypt's alone, and warned against "an American plot in the Arab world."

Irritating the radicals was a visit by Syrian President Hafez Assad and a retinue of his Cabinet ministers to Amman. Assad, the first Syrian head of state to visit Jordan in 20 years, flew to Amman to discuss increased military coordination between the two countries. He also sought to ease continuing strained relations between King Hussein and the P.L.O. The visit was something of a triumph for the Jordanian King, whose standing in the Arab world has been steadily reviving since last year's Rabat summit, where Arab leaders accepted Arafat rather than the King as sole spokesman for the Palestinian cause.

Triple Rates. Sadat's principal argument in the face of extremist accusations is that moderation pays off. The newly reopened Suez Canal, in addition, handled 54 ships in its first full week of operation, including one U.S. freighter, the 21,000-ton Spirit of Liberty. None contained cargo for Israel, as far as was known. The volume of traffic satisfied canal authorities, although they worry that triple insurance rates, in force as long as there is no formal peace, may discourage business and limit toll revenues, which Egypt hopes will reach $450 million annually.

Despite their desire for business, however, canal authorities last week abruptly turned away one prospective customer. Abie Nathan, onetime Tel Aviv hamburger king who lobbies for Arab-Israeli friendship aboard his "peace ship" Shalom in the Mediterranean, sailed the 110-ton vessel into Port Said. Nathan hoped to make good on a pledge to sail through to the Israeli port of Eilat. He was refused passage and escorted back to sea by the Egyptian navy.

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