Begin Brings His Plans For Peace

Menachem Begin has been to Washington before, though never as the leader of the one nation in the world to which the U.S. currently allots more money, more aid and more concern than any other, regardless of size. If the Israeli Premier's meeting this week with President Carter could be held before an audience, the event would be S.R.O. For at stake in this summit meeting is not only the future of the unique relationship between Israel and the U.S., but the prospects for any major progress toward a Middle East settlement.

The Administration had openly shown concern about--and had warned against--the hard-line policies of the new Premier's government. But at his press conference last week, the President went out of his way to indicate that Begin would get a warm reception. Said Carter: "I think that [he] is trying to bring with him an open mind and an ability to go to a possible peace conference with all items being negotiable." Begin was equally conciliatory. Boarding an El Al 747 jet with his wife Aliza, he said at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport: "I am leaving for the shores of America with a good hope in my heart."

Carter had a chillingly unsuccessful meeting with Begin's predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, last March, and warm ones with four key Arab leaders: Egypt's Anwar Sadat, Syria's Hafez Assad, Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd. Despite serious and perhaps insurmountable policy differences with Israel, Administration officials are doing their best to downplay the prospect of a clash between Carter and Begin. "There will be significant differences of opinion," says one official involved with the advanced planning, "but they are not going to be throwing chairs at each other."

Anticipated Proposals. By contrast with his Labor predecessors, Begin has managed to plug almost all leaks from Jerusalem about the proposals he is bringing to Washington. The Premier spent nearly three hours with his Cabinet before flying to Washington, explaining what he intended to tell Carter. He gained an endorsement and also insisted that the ministers keep quiet at home until the Premier had a chance to present his ideas at the White House.

Administration officials concede that they have no precise notion of Begin's proposals, but they expect him to present two separate plans:

First, they anticipate that Begin will say he is ready to go to Geneva to negotiate a comprehensive settlement that will include withdrawal from the Golan Heights (although Israel would maintain the high points), plus pullbacks in Sinai. U.S. officials expect Begin to propose to keep the Gaza area as well as a stretch of land connecting El Arish and Eilat with Sharm el Sheikh at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. Although Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan will not be along, Washington believes that it will hear once again Dayan's ideas for a solution to the West Bank problem. These include continued Israeli settlement, with the right of Jews to buy property anywhere, the Jordan River as the Israeli defense line, and open bridges to Jordan. That plan, however, is considered by Washington as basically a sanctification of the status quo. Says one State Department expert: "Carter would have to say, That's impossible, we can't sell that to the Arabs.' "

Washington also believes that Begin will present a second, fall-back position. Diplomatic experts predict that the Premier will offer concessions on the Golan Heights and Sinai but defer any movement on the West Bank until the Arabs show good faith in their responses to these prospective deals. At Ben-Gurion Airport last week, Begin talked about an ultimate time when there would be "Israeli ambassadors in Cairo and Damascus and, vice versa, an Egyptian and Syrian ambassador in Jerusalem." Egypt's President Sadat proposes that relations with Israel could be fully normalized within five years of a settlement's being reached. Begin called that time span "unacceptable."

Since winning the election, Begin has talked expansively about peace, apparently seeking to counter charges that Israel has become intransigent about a settlement while the Arabs were cooperative. He seems to believe that his proposals can be the basis for convening a Geneva conference in October. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, in his trip to the Middle East scheduled for August, will probably insist on a later start.

The U.S. believes, as do the Arabs, that rather than throwing everything into a Geneva donnybrook, key issues should be settled first. Washington still insists that if there is to be a settlement, the Israelis will have to agree to withdraw from unspecified but major portions of territory captured since 1967; some kind of permanent homeland for the Palestinians, preferably in league with Jordan, will have to be established; and the Arabs will have to agree to full diplomatic recognition and relations with Israel. Carter has indicated that he will not use economic or military aid to Israel as a lever. Given the power of the Jewish lobby in Congress, as well as the genuine need to maintain Israeli strength for bargaining with the Arabs, he can hardly say anything else. But pressure there will undoubtedly be.

Unlike his dour predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's new Premier is outgoing, courtly and affable. He has an irrepressible urge to press flesh; probably no other Israeli politician has shaken so many hands or bussed so many cheeks. He is aware that Rabin's last visit to the White House was flawed by the lack of personal rapport between Rabin and Carter. To prevent that kind of psychological impasse, Begin and his aides have worked for weeks discussing not only what he should say to the President but how to say it and when. Thus Begin may well arrive in Washington this week" holding substantially the same positions as Rabin did, but the man and manner will be vastly different.

Begin has already impressed Israelis--including many who were appalled by his victory--with his chivalrous public demeanor. He has effusively lauded the outgoing Rabin for his service to the country. Begin has kept on-most of Rabin's aides and generally treated them as equal coworkers. One aide accustomed to Rabin's brusque hellos still cannot get over the fact that when he arrives in the office every morning, the early-rising Begin gets up from his desk, walks over and greets him with a handshake. Says the aide: "I've been tempted to tell him that I'm just an employee, not a visitor."

Carrying on a personal custom he has maintained for 29 years, the Premier last week began holding open house on the Sabbath at his residence. No previous Premier ever did this. "It's not my home; it's yours," Begin earnestly told several hundred visitors who showed up for the first session. Begin as a good politician is constantly visible attending bar mitzvahs and berit (circumcision rites), or praying at the Wailing Wall. Unlike Rabin, a secular-minded sabra, Begin is a deeply religious man who seems quite comfortable with yarmulke, shawl and prayer book. The Premier even paid a preflight call on his old antagonist Golda Meir at her home near Tel Aviv to secure her blessing for his White House talks.

Begin has shrewdly presented to Israelis an image of himself as a paternalistic statesman--partly by stopping loose postelection hints about annexing the "liberated" West Bank, which he invariably calls by its biblical name, Samaria and Judea. Says Philip Gillon, columnist for the Jerusalem Post: "Begin's basic views don't seem to have changed at all, and that is very worrying. But he has stopped shooting off his mouth as if he were still in the opposition. He has stopped seeing himself as an ex-underground fighter and has begun to see himself as the leader of the nation." Even some Arabs appear to be intrigued. Says one leading Egyptian official: "Rabin and [Labor Leader Shimon] Peres tended to sit in fixed positions, stalling for time and keeping the diplomatic front frozen. Begin seems to like a war of movement, probing and feinting, feeling out the other side's strength. Frankly, we prefer that."

Style aside, Begin's unchanged position that Israel must maintain some form of control over the West Bank is unacceptable to the Arabs. By offering what amounts to an American outline for peace in the Middle East, Carter has avoided so far the ominous possibility of another war, but he has also raised expectations, particularly on the Arab side, dangerously high. Meeting in Athens to compare notes on neutral ground, TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff and Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn agreed that Washington's strategy carries great risks in case of failure.

"No matter how exaggerated are Arab expectations of Carter's influence on Israel," Neff and Wynn cabled, "these nations sincerely believe that the only road to peace leads through the White House. The danger for Carter is that if he fails to produce peace, he will be blamed vehemently by the Arabs and the region will be set perilously adrift, possibly toward war. In a bewildered, bellicose mood, Israel quite conceivably could defy Carter's considerable leverage on that small country by opting for war. The Arabs have everything to gain if Carter's peace plan works. But if it does not, they will consider the failure a deliberate lack of will on the part of Carter and the U.S., leaving them with no choice but to turn their backs on the West and take up other strategies."

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