A Substantial Piece of Peace

"We are making remarkable progress toward an agreement--and toward a nervous breakdown. It's going to be a race to see which will be achieved first." Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was only half-joking as he described the status of Middle East peace negotiations last week. But as his latest shuttle between Alexandria and Jerusalem approached its conclusion, there was an air of conviction that the long-sought interim peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will be initialed this week.

On Israel's part, the accord means yielding several thousand square miles of the barren but strategic Sinai Desert, won during the 1967 war. On Egypt's part, it means virtual acceptance of a state of peaceful coexistence with Israel, 27 years and four wars after the founding of the Jewish nation. Says Egyptian Presidential Press Spokesman Tahsin Bashir: "If this process continues, relations between the Arabs and Israel will never be the same again."

Equally important, the agreement commits the U.S. to an unprecedented and significantly expanded role in Middle Eastern affairs. Through a detailed series of public and thus far secret agreements that Jerusalem demanded in exchange for its territorial concessions, the U.S. has offered Israel what amounts to an unofficial security pact, one that all but mandates American intervention in case fighting should break out again. Says one high Israeli official: "This is a defense agreement between the U.S. and Israel--even if the text doesn't say that outright."

The public agreements between Egypt and Israel, only 2 1/2 pages long, are prefaced with an agreement to avoid force in settling disputes. They cover these areas:

TROOP SHIFTS. Israel will give up the strategic Giddi and Mitla passes, which will become part of a demilitarized buffer zone patrolled by the U.N. Emergency Force. Israeli troops will move from twelve to 30 miles eastward; the Egyptians will advance two to nine miles eastward. The buffer zone between them will thus be greatly widened, reducing the chances of an accidental clash. Israel, however, will retain mountains overlooking the eastern part of the two passes, the large Bir Gifgafa airbase just northeast of the Giddi Pass, and the Umm Khisheib electronic monitoring station northwest of the Giddi Pass.

ABU RUDEIS OILFIELD. Israel will give up the 72 oil wells along the Gulf of Suez that now provide about half its petroleum. It will also give Egypt a narrow corridor of land along the gulf running south to Abu Rudeis. Israel is building a road around the oilfields so that it can supply its forces further south at El Tur and at Sharm el Sheikh, which controls the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. But in a unique and symbolically important part of the agreement, Israel will share parts of the existing road inside the Egyptian corridor until its own road is completed. In any event, Israeli forces will virtually surround the oilfield, which will be a material hostage to Egypt's good intentions.

U.S. TECHNICIANS. American technicians, numbering somewhere between 100 and 200, will man four or five electronic listening posts in the area of the two passes, the corridors through which either army would have to move in event of hostilities. At the Umm Khisheib underground complex, they will be able to monitor flights and communications as far off as Cairo. Egypt is interested in developing a similar multimillion-dollar complex to keep track of air traffic and communications in the Israeli-held Sinai. The American "custodians" will be strictly neutral and will report the warlike actions of either side. Both the Egyptians and Israelis requested such an American physical presence, and Washington reluctantly consented. Congress, however, must still approve.

JOINT COMMITTEE. An Egyptian-Israeli military committee will be set up to oversee the military parts of the agreement. It will probably meet regularly at Balusa in the buffer zone. In addition, Egypt will allow non-military Israeli cargoes--but not Israeli ships--to travel through the Suez Canal.

Secret agreements of the pact include, reports TIME'S Jerusalem bureau, a number of other concessions by Egypt, which feels that it cannot alienate the rest of the Arab world by announcing them in public. Egypt promises to renew the mandate of the U.N. buffer force for three years; if one of the members of the Security Council--presumably the Soviet Union or China--should veto an extension of the U.N. mandate, Egypt would cooperate with the U.S. and Israel to recruit an alternative force from neutral countries. Egypt also agrees to reduce the volume of its anti-Israel propaganda, inside and outside the U.N., and to stop its boycott of U.S. firms (but not the firms of other countries) doing business with Israel. In addition, it vows not to participate in a war if Israel is attacked by a third country--unless Israel is the aggressor. The last point, of course, leaves it up to Egypt to define aggression.

U.S. guarantees to both Egypt and Israel are broad--and expensive. Last year Washington gave Cairo $250 million in grants and $110 million in P.L. 480 surplus food supplies; this year the requested grants will be $500 million, and the food aid will also go up. As for Israel, it will be getting a huge financial package: according to one estimate, the Administration will request $2.5 billion from Congress and is likely to get $2 billion to $2.1 billion. This is three times the annual average military appropriation for Israel (notwithstanding the extraordinary $2.2 billion appropriation to rearm Israel after the October war), and most of it is in the form of outright grants rather than loans as in the past. That request will probably include $350 million a year to compensate for the oil produced by Abu Rudeis, an additional $300 million in economic aid and nearly $1.9 billion in military aid.

Washington's diplomatic and military pledges are no less generous. The U.S. will send Israel its very latest military weapons, such as F-15 Eagle fighter planes and Lance surface-to-surface missiles (range 70 miles), which it has hitherto held back to pressure Jerusalem to compromise on the Sinai. The long lead time needed for procurement and delivery of these weapons means that the U.S. is committed to high levels of military aid for years to come. In addition, it will resupply weapons and equipment Israel might lose in a future war. On the diplomatic side, the American commitment is far-reaching. The U.S. has promised not to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as long as it refuses to recognize the existence of Israel, not to initiate any new Middle East peace plan without consulting Israel, and to consult immediately if the Soviet Union intervenes militarily in the area. To guarantee Israel's oil supply, the U.S. has agreed by implication to supply Jerusalem with oil from American stocks if such normal suppliers as Iran should renege. The U.S. has also promised to finance a huge oil storage complex for Israel.

This backdoor security treaty calls for so extensive an American involvement that Congress will undoubtedly look at it very closely. The Administration feels the commitments will eventually be accepted. But Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Senator Henry Jackson, for example, have already voiced strong reservations about sending American technicians to the Sinai, as has William Fulbright, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "If we go in there," asks Fulbright, "what answer do we have when the other superpower wants to do the same thing?" Mansfield adds: "One Viet Nam is one Viet Nam too many."

Chopping Block. Some experts discount the Viet Nam analogy. "The situations are wholly different," says Richard Ullman, director of studies for the Council on Foreign Relations and a Princeton professor. "The U.S. 'forces,' so called, are not going as advisers with military capabilities, but as intermediaries with only a monitoring capacity. We are not choosing a side and backing it." Malcolm Kerr, head of U.C.L.A.'s Near East Institute, also discounts the Viet Nam specter. But he argues nonetheless against so great an American involvement: "The U.S. has put its head on the chopping block in behalf of a very limited agreement. We may find ourselves responsible for everybody's good behavior in the region. We are in for risk for some time to come."

The risk obviously exists. The agreement increases the likelihood that the U.S. would become immediately involved in a new war, but it reduces the likelihood that a war will break out. Without an agreement, a new conflict would be more probable--as early as 1976--and it would involve extremely dangerous weapons and a renewed Arab oil boycott. It is an unhappy choice for the U.S. in either case, but the agreement at least changes--hi possibly fundamental ways--the relationship between Egypt and Israel. It is not the final, definitive Middle East peace. Israel still holds sizable chunks of Egypt's land, and the P.L.O. last week said it would try to sabotage the agreement, which it called an American plot. But it is a piece of that peace.

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