Trying to Sell the Deal

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger undertook another Middle East shuttle last week, this time between the State Department and Capitol Hill.

Kissinger's mission was to sell Congress* on the soundness of the Sinai accord he had worked out between Israel and Egypt. Since the agreement includes not only massive sweeteners in the form of U.S. aid but also the stationing of U.S. civilian technicians in the Sinai to monitor the truce electronically, Kissinger and President Ford are seeking a congressional resolution of support. Such a resolution, they hope, will not only silence domestic critics but also provide tangible support to Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who are both being hounded by vocal critics.

Shopping List. Even though White House mail is running 10-to-l against sending Americans to the Sinai, the Administration hopes to win a 70-to-30 vote of approval in the Senate and to get 300 or more votes in the House. The Middle East aid package may come in for some trimming. At present it calls for as much as $650 million for Egypt and $250 million for Syria and Jordan in aid, plus approval of a $350 million air defense system for Jordan, most of which involves 14 batteries of Hawk surface-to-air missiles. The largest item is up to $2.2 billion for Israel. As Defense Minister Shimon Peres prepared to fly to Washington this week to complete negotiations, one of his aides joked that the shopping list would include "everything that begins with the letter a--a tank, a missile, a plane ..."

Though some congressional critics think the aid total too high, particularly for Israel, the opposition Kissinger faces is mild compared with the criticism that Egypt's Sadat is getting from his supposed Arab friends. Syria's President Hafez Assad called the agreement "a serious attempt to fragment and weaken the Arab front." George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was more vitriolic. Habash, who is boycotting the Palestine Liberation Organization because he considers the P.L.O. too moderate, predicted that the Arab masses would soon "turn Sadat and his agreement into an irrelevant moment in the history of their modern struggle." From Baghdad, the Voice of Palestine radio reported that Egypt's President had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, but Cairo quickly termed the broadcast a lie, and shut down Voice of Palestine broadcasts from Cairo in retaliation.

Sadat fought back shrewdly, brushing off charges that he had gotten too far out in front of other Arab nations. Especially sensitive to criticism from Damascus, which gained nothing in the latest round, Sadat told an interviewer: "Ford is personally working on a disengagement on the Syrian front. Syria knows there are particular matters we agreed on with the Americans." Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy said flatly that there would soon be a new disengagement on the Golan Heights. That prompted Israeli conservatives to demand--and get--a special parliamentary session for this week to debate the issue.

Expiring Mandate. Some sort of new negotiations between Jerusalem and Damascus seem unavoidable nonetheless. The mandate for United Nations peace-keeping forces on the Golan expires Nov. 30, and if their stay is not extended, the possibility of hostilities will increase sharply. Assad, who is clearly keeping a negotiating door open, has indicated that he will not accept a limited Israeli withdrawal. Although he is anxious for an agreement, Assad obviously is taking a hard line to prevent Arab radicals from accusing him of appeasement. Rabin says that while Israel is willing to move back considerably from its present Golan lines, it will insist that strategically important Mount Hermon remain demilitarized.

Preliminary discussions leading to a new Syrian-Israeli agreement may well get under way some time next month as the Israeli and Syrian foreign ministers make separate visits to Washington, with Kissinger acting as their go-between. Negotiations over Golan, however, promise to be considerably tougher than those over Sinai. At least initially, Jerusalem is expected to resist anything more than minor adjustments. From Israel's viewpoint, as a high-level Jerusalem official told TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin with extraordinary candor, deliberate delay is especially advantageous:

"Given nonacceptance of Israel by the Arabs, we have been maneuvering since 1967 to gain time and to return as little as possible. The predominant government view has been that stalemates are to our advantage. Our great threat has been the Rogers plan--and American policy to move us back to the old [pre-1967] armistice lines. The current agreement with Egypt is another nail in the coffin of that policy.

"We realize that the entire world is against us on the issue of borders and that we are terribly dependent on one nation for sophisticated arms. Nevertheless, we have been successful for the past seven or eight years, and we may have to go on maneuvering another ten. If the present interim agreement were to give us only six months rather than three years, we would still buy it because the alternative is Geneva. And Geneva means more pressure to go back to the 1967 borders. The interim agreement has delayed Geneva, while at the same time assuring us arms, money, a coordinated policy with Washington and quiet in Sinai. Relatively speaking, we gave up a little for a lot." Stalemate can no longer be a tenable policy, nor may it prove to be profitable, if the U.S. continues putting pressure on Israel to reach agreements while adding carrots to make concessions bearable.

* Chuckled Humorist Art Buchwald of the latest shuttle: "It won't be easy. In the Middle East he's treated as the Secretary of State of the most powerful country in the world"; in Washington, on the other hand, "Henry is just another pretty face."

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