"Elevator Diplomacy" Stalls

Sadat halts autonomy talks as the violence grows

After yet another round of negotiations on Palestinian autonomy in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzlia, U.S. Special Middle East Ambassador Sol Linowitz flew to Cairo late last week to commiserate with Anwar Sadat. The Egyptian President greeted his "good friend Sol" in an uncharacteristically morose mood. Later that evening came the reason, and the shocker: Sadat requested an indefinite postponement of the talks, which were supposed to produce an autonomy agreement by May 26.

After exhibiting patient optimism over the past three months, when the talks have seemed hopelessly stalled, why had Sadat now decided to stop them? One theory was that he did so as a way of putting pressure on the Israelis to make a gesture of good faith that would get the negotiations moving again. In Cairo, there was speculation that Sadat might have some kind of dramatic initiative in mind. Sadat has repeatedly declared that "a new situation will arise" unless meaningful progress is achieved by the target date. Some Egyptian officials believe the only way to salvage the negotiations is for President Carter to call Begin and Sadat to another Camp David summit.

The latest series of ministerial-level talks had been kept alive only through a frantic bit of "elevator diplomacy" by the tenacious Linowitz, who shuttled between the Egyptian delegation on the fourth floor of the Dan Accadia Hotel in Herzlia and the Israeli delegation on the second floor. But it was not enough. The talks came close to collapse last week over one of five key issues on which Egyptian and Israeli views diverge: security in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.* Egypt has proposed a formula providing for security matters to be shared by the proposed Palestinian council, Israeli authorities and Jordanian patrols. The Israelis insist that they must maintain full military supervision over all security questions.

Nothing better illustrates the difficulties of the security issue than the spiral of violence and counterviolence that has whiplashed the West Bank in recent weeks. A day after a Palestinian youth was shot and killed in a schoolyard scuffle with Israeli soldiers, Arab terrorists two weeks ago opened fire on a group of Jewish settlers returning from evening prayers in the city of Hebron, killing six and wounding 16. In retaliation, Israeli commandos last week staged two coastal raids into southern Lebanon. They ambushed a Jeep carrying four commandos of the Palestine Liberation Organization and killed four civilians in another car near a Palestinian refugee camp.

Immediately after the Hebron attack, a round-the-clock curfew was imposed on the city's 50,000 Palestinian residents. The mayor of Hebron, Fahd Qawasmi, the mayor of nearby Halhul, Mohammed Milhem, and the Muslim religious judge of the Hebron area, Sheik Rajab Bayud Tamimi, were blindfolded and put aboard an Israeli helicopter, which deported them to southern Lebanon.

The military curfew did not include the 4,000 Jewish settlers of Qiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Following the funeral of one of the attack victims, gangs of Jewish settlers, many carrying automatic weapons, rampaged through Hebron, firing into the air, smashing windows in homes and cars owned by Arabs, and attempting to break into stores. Israeli soldiers on the scene made only intermittent attempts to curb the violence.

The mayors of Ramallah and Nablus were also threatened by the Israelis with expulsion from the West Bank if they talked to each other or to the press. Israeli officials said the mayors would be held responsible for any unrest in their towns. Censorship was imposed on East Jerusalem's Arabic newspapers, which are circulated throughout the West Bank.

Even some Israelis blamed the Begin government's settlements policy for igniting the troubles. Earlier this year, Begin's Cabinet approved the construction of Jewish settlements in major Arab urban centers such as Hebron. For more than a year, squatters from Qiryat Arba have illegally occupied the former Hadassah clinic in Hebron, where the attack took place. Israel's former Army Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, who is now secretary-general of the opposition Labor Party, argued in the Knesset last week that the Hebron attack would never have occurred if Begin's government had removed the Hadassah-clinic squatters as he had promised. Former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, in a television interview, charged that "some of the activities of the new settlers" had played a major role in the West Bank disturbances.

Meanwhile, at P.L.O. headquarters in Beirut, patience was running short. The P.L.O., which took credit for it, served notice that the Hebron attack was just the beginning--a bellicose attitude that could do nothing but make the situation worse. From now on, said P.L.O. leaders, priority will be given to armed struggle against Israel within the occupied territories rather than diplomatic activity. The shift, the P.L.O. suggested, was because of apparent erosion of U.S. support for a solution to the Palestinian problem and P.L.O. disappointment that Western Europe has yet to follow through effectively on its initiative to recognize Palestinian rights.

TIME has learned from Arab sources that Jordan has agreed to permit P.L.O. commandos to cross its borders into the West Bank and has formed a special Jordanian command organization to supervise the Palestinians while their commandos move through Jordan. This means Jordan would permit P.L.O. guerrilla operations--provided that Amman is notified in advance and that the attacks are mounted inside the West Bank. Such a Jordanian decision would reflect both King Hussein's dismay over the state of U.S.-Jordanian relations, which he said last month were the poorest since he assumed the throne 27 years ago, and his conviction that the autonomy negotiations are at a dead end.

* "The other issues: Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, control of water resources, powers to be exercised by a Palestinian autonomous council, the role of East Jerusalem Arabs in an autonomy plan.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.