Keeping the Talks Alive

Israel and Egypt inch back toward the bargaining table

After a troubling hiatus of suspended peace talks and intensified violence in the occupied West Bank, Israel and Egypt last week began to inch back to the bargaining table. In quick succession, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin both accepted Jimmy Carter's invitation to send their top negotiators to Washington in early July. There was little cause for celebration; everyone knew that formidable differences remain on the issue of Palestinian autonomy and that no major concessions are likely to be made by either side before the U.S. election. Moreover, the European Community's resolution in Venice had introduced an unpredictable new factor. But at least it was a way of keeping the peace process turning over, if only in slow motion.

Even though he had been the one to break off the negotiations last month, Sadat was anxious that talks resume among the three negotiators: Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamal Hassan Ali, Israeli Interior Minister Yosef Burg, and U.S. Special Envoy Sol Linowitz. Sadat still had plenty of misgivings about the Israelis, and he demanded last week that they stop setting "preconditions or faits accomplis." Translation: he remained upset about Israeli demands that the future of Jerusalem should not be discussed, and angry that the Israelis were forging ahead with plans for more Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But Sadat is also convinced that his best hope for an eventual peace settlement lies in a Carter victory at the polls and, ideally, a Begin defeat in next year's scheduled elections in Israel. So he wants to help Carter by emphasizing that the American President's chief foreign policy accomplishment, the Camp David agreement, is still alive. Says one Egyptian official: "We're at a stage where we just have to keep things from breaking apart."

In the West Bank, the population remained tense following the terrorist attacks on two Palestinian mayors two weeks ago. An Israeli policeman in the Old City of Jerusalem was shot and wounded by a sniper, the first such incident within the Old City in several years. Obstinately, Begin defended the "inalienable right" of Jews to live wherever they wish in the West Bank. He announced that Israel will build ten more settlements in that area, after which it will concentrate on strengthening and enlarging existing settlements. He claimed that Carter had once endorsed such a strategy--an assertion that the State Department quickly disputed. For their part, the Israelis reacted angrily to Secretary of State Edmund Muskie's comment that the Jewish settlements are an obstacle to peace.

In the meantime, Anwar Sadat made an abortive effort to mend fences with his old allies and bankrollers, the Saudi Arabians, who had broken with him over his negotiations with Israel. Sadat announced that he was ready to go to Riyadh to talk with the Saudi leaders, but the Saudis quickly rebuffed him and brought an abrupt end to his proffered friendship. In a stinging speech the next night, Sadat reverted to form and assailed the Saudis as well as Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Syrian President Hafez Assad. Shouted Sadat to a meeting of provincial officials: "I will never surrender Egypt's will to make her own decisions to the lunatic Gaddafi, the bloodthirsty Hussein, the traitor Assad or to the Saudis, who are at once afraid of the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Iraqis and even their own shadow!" Having thus dispensed with Arab adversaries, Sadat made plans to retreat to his Ma'mura resthouse near Alexandria for the duration of the summer.

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