The Eleventh Shuttle: Is Peace at Hand?

The prospects for a settlement in the Middle East rise and fall as erratically as the Dow Jones averages. Last week the peace market suddenly turned bullish. Failure to agree on a Sinai pact would simply be "unthinkable," said an Egyptian official. "Let's get it over with," Israeli Chief of Staff Lieut. General Mordechai Gur added gruffly.

When Henry Kissinger's last effort at shuttle diplomacy broke down last March, hopes for peace plummeted, and many diplomatic analysts predicted a new war by 1976. But so swiftly have negotiations progressed in the past month that by last week all sides were forecasting a new interim settlement between Egypt and Israel by Sept. 1.

Israeli Hawk. In Washington, euphoric officials were defining pessimists as those who thought the chances of getting the long-sought agreement were only 98%; the optimists were 99.9% certain. In Jerusalem, which feels that it is being pressured into giving up more than it wants to, officials were less sanguine; but they nonetheless put chances of success at perhaps 80%. "Henry has done it," sighed one Israeli hawk. "He's got us to give up everything we refused to give up in March and more. The deal is as good as signed, sealed and delivered. Only one or two sticking points remain."

Secretary of State Kissinger had vowed that he would resume his shuttle only if a Sinai accord was 90% certain. Now his eleventh such effort at personal mediation is imminent. He is expected to leave Washington this week and to stay in the Middle East no longer than ten days. His schedule was cleared for all of this week, and the State Department has reportedly reserved the Secretary's usual sixth-floor two-room suite in Jerusalem's King David Hotel.

Kissinger himself was a study in cool. In two speeches last week, he scrupulously avoided talking about the Middle East, dwelling instead on such subjects as Portugal, American unity and international law.

Back in Washington, however, his top aides for the Middle East--Joseph Sisco, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Alfred Atherton, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs--talked about little else. They spent nearly every waking hour conferring with two teams of Israeli officials, determining just what the U.S. would give in money, arms and political guarantees in exchange for Israeli concessions to Egypt. One team talked about money. Discussing political angles down the hall was another team that included Israeli Ambassador to Washington Simcha Dinitz and Mordechai Gazit, the top civil servant in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's office. An unflappable, subtle and cautious man with a pro nounced aversion to ambiguity, Gazit has been called by Henry Kissinger, not altogether kindly, "Mr. Dot-the-I's-and-Cross-the-Ts." Having left some minor loopholes in their last agreement with the Egyptians, the Israelis are determined not to overlook a thing this time around--hence Gazit's presence. "We just want to be sure of the wording this time," says one Israeli military man. "It doesn't mean we have an agreement but if we do get one, God forbid, we want the words to be right."

Fear of Flying. The Israeli moneymen seem to have won their point, and the Ford Administration was preparing to offer a great deal (see box page 24). "To state it crudely," TIME'S Jerusalem bureau chief Donald Neff cabled, "it appears that since the U.S. cannot negotiate peace in the Middle East, it will buy it."

American discussions with the Egyptians were equally crucial, if less intense, and President Anwar Sadat was satisfied that his country had got what it wanted. "Last March, Israel blocked Kissinger's attempt to mediate a Sinai settlement in order to force the Secretary into resigning," he said. "The Israelis thought a new Secretary of State would take office and require six months to study the file of the case. And by the time the six months were up, we would be in the American presidential election year and nothing would happen."

High marks must go to U.S. Ambassador to Cairo Hermann Eilts. A slight, crewcut, Arabic-speaking diplomat, Eilts has developed a close working relationship with Egypt's President Sadat and his Foreign Minister, Ismail Fahmy. Though he has a profound dislike of airplanes--he once drove two days from Aswan to Cairo just to avoid the one-hour flight--Eilts nonetheless made seven intercontinental trips between April 2 and last week, carrying messages between Sadat and Kissinger.

Though some problems remain that could turn success into failure, the outline of the Sinai settlement is already clear. The prospects are that the agreement will follow these lines:

> Israel would give up the Mitla Pass and almost all of the Giddi Pass, retaining only some foothills at its eastern terminus (see map following page). The passes are the keys to the Sinai. North of them is soft sand; south of them are towering granite mountains. Any army that wants to move across the peninsula is almost compelled to go through the two passes, and Israel's General Staff has hitherto considered them indispensable to the country's security. Since the October war in 1973, Jerusalem has spent $60 million fortifying nature's own impressive defenses, honeycombing the black granite with miniforts and electronic gear that can detect MIG planes preparing to take off from Egyptian fields on the other side of the Suez Canal.

> American technicians, presumably anywhere from twelve to 100 civilians, would probably be stationed at the Umm Khisheib early warning installation above Giddi Pass and at six or seven other sites within the two passes or just to the west of them. They would probably be joined by Israeli technicians on the east side and Egyptian technicians on the west side; all would man electronic reconnaissance and surveillance gear. The Ford Administration, which would prefer that U.N. forces take on the potentially dangerous task, is decidedly cool to the notion of such American involvement. But Israel has insisted and may well get its way. "An attack through U.N. lines does not carry the symbolic gravity that an attack through American stations would," observes an Israeli official. "With Americans between the two armies, each side would hesitate to attack, and the American presence would express America's belief that war will not serve either side." Another Israeli says: "The main Sinai roads toward Israel will be in American hands. We can trust those hands."

However Jerusalem explains the proposal, the net effect of the extraordinary arrangement would be to place American hostages in the Sinai, assuring U.S. involvement in case of an attack by either side. Kissinger last week pointed out that even if the Administration gave in, as now seems likely, it would still have to seek approval in Congress, which might say no. Indeed, the proposal immediately revived memories of the Viet Nam involvement, which started with just a handful of U.S. observers, some of them civilians. Congress has always been exceedingly partial to the Israelis, but it might be wary of this dubious proposal. "Let the Israelis do any intelligence gathering that may be necessary," said Senator Henry Jackson, one of Israel's staunchest friends. "I don't want Americans there." But should Congress reject the provision, warns one Israeli official, "no presence, no pact."

> Israel would give up the Abu Rudeis oilfields on the Gulf of Suez. The fields now pump 36.5 million bbl. of oil a year, roughly 50% of Israel's total domestic needs. Without the crude, Jerusalem would be even more dependent than it is now on its chief foreign supplier, Iran, which has been growing increasingly critical of Israeli policy in recent months. The cost in foreign exchange would be $350 million per year, a critical sum for a country that is already running a deficit of $3 billion.

The Israelis would retain use of a road through the Abu Rudeis to supply their troops stationed at Sharm el Sheikh, the strategic point controlling access to the Gulf of Aqaba. One Egyptian suggestion to avoid clashes between the forces had been to give the Israelis 24 hours' use of the road and the Egyptians the following 24 hours. The Israelis, however, want the Egyptians to build a new access road.

> The U.N. buffer zone separating the two sides now averages only six miles and narrows to as little as two miles. It would be considerably widened to an average width of 30 miles. This would greatly reduce the threat of accidental clashes between the two armies. Israel would pull back approximately 25 to 30 miles from its present "Blue Line," and Israeli guns would be 25 to 45 miles from the Suez Canal, out of range of Egypt's vital waterway and the new settlements President Sadat plans to establish on its banks. The lines would be drawn, however, so that Israel would retain the big Bir Gifgafa airfield.

> Egypt, under an unpublished part of the pact, would pledge to renew annually for three years the mandate of the U.N. Emergency Force now in the buffer zone. It would also allow Israeli cargoes through the Suez Canal, soften its anti-Israel propaganda, pledge not to support efforts by other Arab states to oust Israel from the U.N., and temper its current economic boycott of firms doing business with Israel. Sadat, of course, has already reopened the Suez Canal and twice extended the mandate of the U.N. buffer force. Under the same unpublished codicil, Israel would apparently accept the principle of negotiating a similar interim agreement with the Syrians, and perhaps the Palestinians as well. This arrangement for linkage between the two Israeli frontiers is understandably vague, but seemingly enough for the Egyptians to say privately to both the Syrian and Palestinian leaders that Cairo has not sold them out. "Sadat will not take a unilateral step in the forthcoming agreement," states Clovis Maksoud, who has served for the last year and a half as the Washington special envoy to the League of Arab States. "If an agreement is reached in the next few weeks, then it would have to include credible linkage acceptable to Syria."

Though a rough truce line in Sinai has been agreed upon, this must still be drawn more precisely--practically rock by rock--before Kissinger can return to Washington with a signed pact. Also undecided is whether Egyptian troops would be allowed to follow the Egyptian flag into the Mitla and Giddi passes. Israel wants a guarantee that the passes be demilitarized if its forces pull out. Cairo is insistent that it owns the territory--"Sinai is ours, ours, ours!" proclaims an Egyptian officer--but seems willing to bend and accept demilitarization anyway. The Israelis, many of whom no longer regard Kissinger as their friend, believe that he has not told either side all the concessions that the other side is prepared to make and has a few goodies, like an Egyptian concession on the passes, in his pocket for both. "It's clear that Kissinger wants to keep some things to himself," says an Israeli close to Rabin.

Whoever gains and loses under the terms of the proposed settlement, it is clear that the Americans will end up paying a substantial bill. When Israel first requested $2.5 billion in economic and military aid from the U.S., the slogan in Jerusalem was: "You ask for a lot and hope for a little." Now that Israel is asking for--and expecting--even more, one official in Jerusalem pointed out: "After all, Rabin is taking this ugly bride called Miss Interim Agreement. If he doesn't get a nice dowry from Papa Washington, he is going to be in trouble."

Israel, certainly, will be paying a high price for the settlement. If Jerusalem is exacting the last penny from Washington, it feels that Washington has been putting another kind of squeeze on it for months. Both Kissinger and President Ford blamed Israeli intransigence for the failure of the March shuttle, and they immediately halted further aid to Israel while they reassessed the U.S. position in the Middle East. The reassessment, originally expected to last only a few weeks, has now dragged on for five months. Though Israel's combat effectiveness has not been hurt, the country is running short of parts for tanks and planes, and Jerusalem has been made to realize how uncomfortably dependent it is on American support.

Ready or Not. The reassessment had its intended effect in forcing Rabin's Cabinet to rethink its own position; and Kissinger, sensing that the Israelis were ready to compromise, felt that it was time to resume the shuttle. He invited himself to Jerusalem, in effect saying: "Here I come, ready or not." The Israelis decided they were ready. "We couldn't exactly say he was not invited, could we?" says one official in Jerusalem. Another adds: "We could have had the same components of an agreement last March. There is no major difference in the two positions. Certainly no significant element was added last week." Except, apparently, for tentative U.S. approval of that nice dowry.

The Israelis are certainly taking a bigger gamble than the Egyptians. They are giving up some valuable territory for guarantees that Egypt could then turn around and break. Equally important, they have given up their insistence that any pact include a clear-cut declaration of nonbelligerency on the part of Egypt. Only last winter Rabin flatly declared that there would be no agreement without such a declaration. He will soon be reminded of those words. The right-wing Likud Bloc has already demanded a special session of the Israeli parliament this week to debate the agreement. The government's answer might be that it does in fact have a kind of declaration of nonbelligerency. "The agreement will make clear that although we do not have an official status of nonbelligerency with Egypt, we will be in fact in a state of no war," said Foreign Minister Yigal Allon last week. "That is good."

However the debate goes, it is far from certain that the Israelis are, as many of them think, the losers. Kissinger has argued with them for years that their security cannot be measured in miles, but must rest on an eventual accommodation with their Arab neighbors --and the backing of their friends. Of course, Egypt's Sadat could renounce the agreement. But since it benefits him as much as Israel, if not more, it is unlikely that he, or a possible successor, would do so. Kissinger's argument seems to have won over Premier Rabin at least. "I do not view an agreement as dangerous," Rabin told a group of settlers at a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. "Anyone trying to define a proposed withdrawal as a disaster for the state is only sowing panic." Moreover, he pointed out, even if the new agreement goes through, Israeli forces will still be an average 94 miles to the west of the 1967 border.

Rejection Front. Despite such arguments, Rabin will still have a hard tune convincing many Israelis. A poll taken by the newspaper Ha'aretz showed that 47.6% of his countrymen expressed dissatisfaction with his efforts, while only 37% gave approval. Though he could probably push the proposed agreement through the Knesset, he would have opposition from left, right and even the center of his own Labor Party. "This settlement bodes no good for Israel," says Zevulun Hammer, a member of the right-wing National Religious Party. "We get no political compensation for giving up territory. We expose ourselves to a security danger, and the very strong element of U.S. pressure is tantamount to a dictate from the U.S." Adds Shmuel Tamir, head of the right-wing Free Center faction: "This is not an agreement. It is unilateral withdrawal." The right-wing Gush Emunim movement is planning a giant anti-Kissinger demonstration when the Secretary of State takes his shuttle to Jerusalem. "Kissinger is a disaster," says Gershon Shafat. "His priorities are: one, Kissinger; two, the President; three, the U.S. Israel is nowhere among them."

Ex-Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who favors an overall settlement that would include Syria and the Palestinians rather than piecemeal negotiations, accepts the outlined accord reluctantly. "Acceptance of the settlement is better than rejection of it," says Eban. "Its shortcomings are very tangible and concrete, and its gains are very speculative. But if the alternative to acceptance is deadlock or war, it must be accepted."

Egypt's gain from the settlement would be much more obvious. It would get back some of its territory and a new domestic source of oil at Abu Rudeis, which would increase Egypt's production by about one-third and allow it even to export oil. The Suez Canal would be a little farther away from the muzzles of Israeli cannons. Sadat might even be able to begin thinking about reining in his defense expenditures, which now devour $2 billion, or 25% of the gross national product (v. $3.6 billion, or 30% for Israel). Sadat is hard-pressed even to feed his 37 million people, 96% of whom are crowded in a narrow, seven-mile strip running 500 miles along the Nile. Egypt's trade deficit has been revised upward to $4 billion this year, and short-term debts to commercial banks have risen to about the same amount.

Though Sadat can handle any internal opponents to a settlement with Is rael, his critics within the Arab world are more savage than any Rabin might face in the Knesset. Iraq, Libya and some of the radical Palestinian organizations -- the so-called Arab "Rejection Front" -- are certain to scream if a Sinai agreement is concluded while the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan remain in the hands of the enemy. The radical Arabs are already furious with Sadat for his refusal to back their attempts to unseat Israel in the U.N. They are likely to insist on bringing the matter up when the nonaligned nations hold a conference next week in Lima, Peru.

Direct Clash. So far Sadat has not allowed the radicals to seize the initiative against him. Quite the contrary. "Israel would love to be expelled from the U.N. because this would polarize American opinion against us," he said last week to Selim el Lozi, publisher of the Beirut weekly al Hawadess. "I do not understand why we are fond of playing Israel's game." He added: "Egypt's stand toward a second-stage disengagement in Sinai has not changed. If there is a new attitude or a new understanding, it is on the part of Israel." Besides, he continued, "any hesitation about agreeing to restoration of an inch of the occupied territories is, in my opinion, a grave error and even treason."

Even so, the odds are that a settlement would further split the Arab world, with Egypt and the oil-rich states, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, on one side, and Iraq, Libya and the Palestinians, with the probable backing of the Soviet Union, on the other. Moscow has been almost preternaturally silent about the probability of a settlement and a resumption of the Kissinger shuttle. In the past, the Soviet Union has insisted that the Geneva Conference was the only place for a settlement to be hammered out -- with Soviet help, of course. Moscow now seems to realize that if it blocks this accord and insists on going to Geneva instead, the larger conference would almost surely fail and the Soviets would bear much of the blame. If Moscow allowed a confrontation to build to war, on the other hand, it might risk an end to detente or even a direct clash with the U.S. At the moment, the Kremlin seems to be doing nothing at all, apparently hoping that the U.S. will fail in its efforts toward peace.

Even if an agreement is reached within the next couple of weeks, it will be some time before a new disengagement can actually be carried out. Israel would first have to complete a new defensive line east of the Giddi and Mitla passes; the Israelis say that that would take at least six months. Congress would presumably have to debate those parts of the bargain that called for American dollars and a new American presence in a volatile area, and that might take equally long. Sadat appears content to wait--as long as the draft agreement is signed soon.

Essential Step. Despite all the agony the agreement has caused, it is still only an interim settlement, and the easiest part to solve of the many-sided Arab-Israeli conflict. There is much less room for give on the Golan Heights, which are disputed by both Israel and Syria; both countries appear intractable on the issues. A solution to the Palestinian problem is nowhere in sight, and there seems little hope for compromise on ownership of the West Bank of the Jordan. Jerusalem is coveted by both sides for its religious shrines and its symbolic authority, but the Israelis are even now building apartment houses in the Arab sector of the city.

The real problem with the interim settlement, in the opinion of some Americans and Israelis alike, is not what Israel may lose in giving up part of the Sinai. It is rather that the necessity for a general Arab-Israeli settlement may be overlooked in the euphoria of success. Because the proposed settlement would run for three years, there may be a temptation, despite all pledges to the contrary, to shelve further peace efforts until the end of that time. Warns Nadav Safran, professor of government at Harvard and the author of a number of books and studies on the Arab-Israeli conflict: "It does not give us three years, but ll/2 years perhaps at the most. By the time the agreement in the Sinai is concluded and executed, the Syrians will be pressing hard; and by the time the U.S. election is over in 1976, the Israel-Syria thing will be getting very ripe. Unless we have taken further steps in the meantime, there is going to be trouble."

A Sinai agreement would certainly not be the final step toward peace in the Middle East. All things considered, it would not even be a very dramatic step. It would, however, be an essential one. If it is somehow missed, and Henry Kissinger's eleventh--and possibly last--shuttle fails, war rather than peace would almost surely be the next step.

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