Elusive Camelot

Geneva recedes, and a U.S.-Israeli showdown looms

The Geneva Conference on Middle East peace, which was recessed in 1974, has since assumed the mystique of some diplomatic Camelot: in Geneva, some day, somehow, Israelis and Arabs will shake hands, sit down together and hammer out a permanent agreement ending 29 years of constant tension and frequent all-out war. That vision had taken hold in many capitals, notably Washington. But last week, as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance concluded his eleven-day swing through six Middle East states,* a Geneva Conference was clearly impossible by October, highly unlikely any time in 1977, and in general seemed more remote than ever.

Even Vance, who all along has been much less optimistic than his boss, seemed disappointed by the problems the U.S. faced in even getting the sides together on how to negotiate. Said he bluntly: "There are wide gaps." Among the widest:

Territory The Israelis told the Secretary of State that they were prepared to withdraw toward their 1967 borders on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. That was nothing new. But what of the all-important West Bank of the Jordan River, on which the Arabs (and Washington) want a home for the Palestinians? Israel's hard-lining Premier Menachem Begin not only continued to insist that Israel must keep the West Bank but went even further than that: he announced a tough additional condition against "foreign rule" there. By that he meant that Jerusalem would not even go along with creation of a West Bank Palestinian enclave under Jordanian sovereignty--a formula that Begin's Labor predecessors had been prepared to accept.

Procedure The sides remain deeply split on the mechanics of Geneva. Begin demands face-to-face Arab-Israeli talks without any preliminary negotiations. The Arabs want ample advance negotiations, with the U.S. acting in an honest broker role to iron out the tough issues ahead of time and thus avoid a calamitous breakdown. Vance largely agrees. Said he last week: "I myself believe the more that can be resolved [before Geneva], the better we will be."

Palestinians On this "mother issue," as Syria's President Hafez Assad calls it, the two sides seemed wider apart than ever. The Arabs insist on Palestinian representation in Geneva. But Begin last week reiterated Israel's refusal to deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he called a group of "demented genocidists."

It is the Palestinian issue that shows most clearly how the Carter Administration is moving more toward Arab than Israeli views, increasing the likelihood of a U.S.-Israeli clash despite the artificial joviality surrounding Begin's recent U.S. visit. The U.S. now accepts the Arab argument--with softer qualifications than before--that Palestinians should be included in negotiations. Moreover, Washington is searching for some way to open a dialogue between the U.S. and Yasser Arafat's P.L.O.--if the Palestinians are willing to accept the terms of an American push for peace.

The Israelis are nervous about this. In the course of two days of discussions with Vance in Jerusalem, Begin repeatedly took up the Palestinian issue, which seemed to bring out all his emotional righteousness. At one meeting he harangued Vance with passages from the P.L.O.'s 1968 charter, which declares the Balfour Declaration and the partitioning of Palestine to be "null and void." "Imagine," remarked Begin sarcastically, "the State of Israel is deemed null and void."

At a dinner in the Secretary's honor, in a 22-minute toast, Begin drew a parallel between the P.L.O. and the Nazis, and described the P.L.O. philosophy as "an Arabic Mein Kampf [which was] a danger to all free nations." Vance, in a brief, measured nonresponse, acknowledged that Washington was taking "a more active approach than you would prefer" in attempting to steer the two sides into negotiations. Vance urged his hosts to take a chance for peace and to accept "the risks of a course which can bring greater rewards, but which also leads down paths that are unfamiliar."

The Carter Administration's warming toward the Palestinians startled the Israelis. In a sense, that was repayment --intentional or not--for Begin's surprise move after his talks with Carter last month, when the Israeli Premier legalized three more Israeli settlements on the West Bank almost as soon as he got back to Jerusalem.

The U.S. is committed not to deal with the P.L.O. until the P.L.O. recognizes Israel's right to exist. That U.S. commitment was made in secret by Kissinger in September 1975 as part of the agreement that produced the second Sinai disengagement.

But Jimmy Carter, since his call in Clinton, Mass., last March for a Palestinian homeland, has been overriding that commitment with subtle but unmistakable overtures to the Palestinians. Responding to the President's initiative, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd recently got Arafat to send Carter a message pledging Palestinian moderation; Fahd himself delivered it during his White House visit in May. Carter has continued the indirect dialogue: in an interview with TIME earlier this month, he reiterated his position urging the P.L.O. to accept the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for recognition of Israel's existence in exchange for the return of Arab territory.

Vance was advised first by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy and then by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal that Arafat, who had been shuttling between Arab states almost as rapidly as Vance himself, was "tinkering" with changes in the longstanding P.L.O. stand against Israel. Vance flashed the news to Plains in a midnight cable, and Carter again urged Palestinians to agree to Resolution 242, in order to make possible "discussions" with the U.S. and participate in a Geneva Conference.

Arafat and the Palestinians will consider the matter at a Central Council meeting of the 55 key leaders of the Palestine National Assembly, in Damascus. So far the Palestinians have demanded that Resolution 242, which refers to them only as unspecified "refugees," be rewritten to describe them as Palestinian nationals. Carter insists that they accept the resolution as it now stands, although he already assumes that they have more than refugee status.

That means a hard decision for Arafat: recognition of Israel is the strongest diplomatic card he has to play and undoubtedly he would like to get plenty from Israel for spending it. But if the Palestinians do finally accept Israel after all these years, the decision will make an American-Israeli collision inevitable. Begin seems convinced that the U.S. will not have to pressure Israel. Carter no longer agrees on this point, and has begun to leave open the possibility of applying pressure.

Some old Middle East realities have been changed. The three famous noes adopted by Arab heads of state ten years ago in Khartoum--no direct negotiation with Israel, no recognition, no peace treaty--have been quietly set aside. But they have been replaced by three Begin noes --no negotiation involving the P.L.O., no return to Israel's pre-1967 borders, and no foreign sovereignty over the West Bank.

At the moment, the Arabs are wondering whether Begin's noes are final, or just initial bargaining positions. TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden, traveling with Vance, was told by a senior Saudi diplomat that "if Israel's attitude is to procrastinate, delay and then reach a settlement, that is one thing. But if they intend to delay so as not to have a settlement, that's quite another."

In sum, what has Vance's trip accomplished? The only specific achievement was to get the parties to keep talking in New York next month at the U.N., but then the foreign ministers all show up there every year anyway. There are even some mutterings (former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban was among the mutterers during a U.S. visit last week) that, with Geneva increasingly unlikely, some form of Henry Kissinger's "step by step" diplomacy, much derided by the Carter Administration, might become necessary once again: partial, modest agreements rather than the rush to Camelot. -

*Touching down in five countries on three continents--Israel, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Great Britain--in a single day for summary conversations on his homeward leg, Vance eclipsed Henry Kissinger's previous shuttle record of three countries in one day.

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