"Whom Did It Help?"

The Knesset concludes an exercise in pointless provocation

The Camp David peace process was subjected last week to the most severe punishment that it has endured since the whole effort began in November 1977 with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's famous trip to Jerusalem. The battering was no less troubling for the fact that it was largely gratuitous. First, at an "emergency session" in New York, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly, as expected, for a resolution affirming the right of the Palestinian people to establish a sovereign state. The resolution also demanded that an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem should begin within the next three months. The U.N. action served only to increase Israel's sense of isolation and beleaguerment.

A day later, the Israeli Knesset gave final approval to a provocative bill that affirmed the united city of Jerusalem as the country's capital. The gesture was symbolic, since the western portion of the city has served as Israel's capital for 30 years, and the Israelis have occupied the rest of the city since the Six-Day War of 1967. But the bill's effect, as with so many of the dubious actions that have attended the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was to strengthen Israel's enemies and to confound its allies. Lamented Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, a disappointed opponent of the bill: "Whom did it help? I see what confusion it has created, even among our friends."

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat responded swiftly to the Knesset's bill on a unified Jerusalem. He denounced the vote as a violation of the spirit of Camp David and indefinitely suspended Egyptian-Israeli negotiations on Palestinian self-rule. Sadat also sent a secret message to Begin, presumably stipulating a number of conditions that Israel must agree to before the talks could be resumed. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called for a summit meeting of Arab heads of state to deal with the latest Israeli move.

In Washington, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie reacted sharply to both the U.N. resolution and the Knesset vote. The General Assembly's action, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, amounted to nothing less than mischief making, while the Jerusalem bill was "a diversionary tactic." Privately, Administration officials were even more concerned about the drift of events because the provocations and counterprovocations, which to some extent seemed to be outside the control of the participants, raised serious questions about the durability of the U.S. Middle East peace policy in the national-election hiatus. U.S. policymakers have to wonder whether the U.S. can afford to stand by ineffectually as Middle East tensions rise.

The days preceding the inflammatory Knesset action were a time of fear and anger for the Israelis. On Sunday, in the Belgian city of Antwerp, one or more Arab terrorists hurled two hand grenades at a group of 40 European Jewish children and youths on their way to a holiday in the Ardennes. A French boy, 15 was killed, and 18 others were injured, some critically.

On Monday it became known that U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim md told an Arab League dinner in New York that the Palestinians "have a right to self-determination, including statehood." With that unprecedented advocacy of the Palestinian cause, it seemed to the Israelis, Waldheim violated his position of evenhandedness. On Tuesday the General Assembly voted, 112 to 7, with 24 members abstaining, to endorse the right of Palestinians to form a state. The resolution made no mention of Israel's right to exist, but asked the Security Council to consider sanctions against the Israelis if they do not begin a withdrawal from the occupied territories by Nov. 15.

In essence the Arab states and their allies who offered the resolution failed in their maneuver, since its initial purpose had been to gain Western European support and thereby isolate Israel and the U.S. more drastically than before. But the Western Europeans did decide to abstain, reducing the number of members supporting Israel and the U.S. to five: Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Norway. Nonetheless, the most visible effect of the U.N. action was to arouse the defensive ire of Israel's right-wing nationalists. When the European Community's emissary, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Gaston Thorn, reached Jerusalem later in the week on the first leg of a fact-finding trip to the Middle East, Begin told him bluntly that Israel would reject any European peace plan that proposed a role for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Israelis were in a defiant mood on Wednesday evening when the Knesset, by a vote of 69 to 15, approved the controversial bill concerning Jerusalem. The bill's passage was a triumph for Geula Cohen, 54, the Zionist firebrand and opponent of the peace treaty who had introduced the bill earlier this year in an effort to embarrass the Begin government. Having broken with the Prime Minister over the Sadat peace initiative, she repeatedly interrupted the speech that Begin gave after his return from the Camp David talks in October 1978. Ejected from the chamber, she explained at the time: "It's not that I can't control myself. I don't want to." Last week she was jubilant, declaring that her bill had made sure that "Jerusalem is not a subject for bargaining."

In the beginning Begin himself had dismissed the bill as unnecessary and ill-timed. He argued that the Israelis had always regarded Jerusalem as their "capital," even though before 1967 they were referring only to their own (western) portion of the divided city. Similarly, there seemed no need to decree Israeli domination over occupied East Jerusalem, where in fact some 80,000 Israelis now live in six housing developments among the basic population of 112,000 Arabs. As the Cohen bill gathered momentum in the Knesset, however, the ruling Likud coalition found it impossible to vote against a measure that so embodied Jewish aspirations. So did most opposition Labor members. They complained that the government had demonstrated its tactical incompetence by letting the bill become a dominant issue. As a group they may have agreed with former Foreign Minister Abba Eban that the bill would impose "a stiff burden" on the peace negotiations. But in the end most of them decided to go along with it.

For most Israelis the bill was a way of letting off steam, a shaking of the fist at what they regard as a frontal attack on their right to the city of Jerusalem as the focus of both their nation and their faith. What took place in the Knesset was a clash between the demands of rational diplomacy and the inner needs of national identity. The nationalist needs prevailed.

In other legislative action last week, the Knesset passed a bill that forbids public expression of sympathy for a "terrorist organization," meaning the P.L.O., and another that gives the Interior Minister the right to revoke the citizenship of anyone committing a "violation of allegiance" to the state of Israel. The measures were directed at Israeli dissidents and at Arab university students who have demonstrated for Palestinian rights. In a separate development, Begin's Justice Minister, Shmuel Tamir, resigned last week as the erosion of the Likud coalition continued.

The Knesset vote on Jerusalem did not appear to have damaged irreparably the peace negotiations, but the Carter Administration was worried about the next step Begin was apparently ready to take: the long-threatened transfer of the Prime Minister's office from West to East Jerusalem. Such a move would once again be as pointless as it would be provocative, but Begin seemed determined to do it. Washington feared that this step would particularly anger Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arabs, causing them to ask: If the U.S. is unable to stop such a calculated insult to the Arab nations, how can it be trusted to do anything? But most of all, Administration experts feared the effect that such a move could have on the peace process. Here again the answer would depend on the one man who is most crucial to the peace process: Anwar Sadat.

The Israeli maneuvering on Jerusalem is coming at a time when Sadat's foreign policy appears to be subtly changing. At the U.N. last week, for instance, Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Butros Ghali, forcefully denounced Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and later voted with other Arab states on the Palestinian resolution. There are also signs that the Arab boycott against Egypt is beginning to give way. In June there were 68,000 foreign Arab visitors to Egypt, nearly twice as many as in the previous June; most were from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government has not yet re-established relations with Egypt, but unofficial contacts are increasing. Sadat still sometimes heaps scorn on his erstwhile Arab brothers, but he has warned Egypt's newspapers not to make unnecessary attacks on the Saudis, and in recent weeks has directed most of his vitriol against Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi and Syrian President Hafez Assad.

Sadat decided to send his negotiators back to the peace talks last month after the U.S. assured him that the Cohen bill on Jerusalem would never reach the Knesset floor. He was privately, and understandably, miffed by Washington's miscalculation. He was also dismayed by the size of the Knesset vote, which underscored the reluctance of most Israeli politicians of whatever stripe to negotiate the future status of Jerusalem. But Sadat still seemed determined to stick with the peace process. For one thing, he believes that this may help Jimmy Carter be reelected, and that a Carter victory would be to Egypt's benefit. More important, he does not wish to give the Israelis a pretext for reneging on their promise to restore the last segment of the Sinai to Egyptian control by April 1982.

Despite the wrangling over Jerusalem, most diplomats still believe the nature of Palestinian autonomy is the most serious unresolved issue. The Egyptians want to build the foundation of a self-governing Palestinian state; the Israelis envision a limited Palestinian "authority" in the West Bank and Gaza that would handle only those matters that Israel does not judge to be vital to its security or even its peace of mind. For their own reasons, both sides want an agreement. The problem is that the ultimate Israeli objective is not compatible with the ultimate Egyptian goal. Finding a way to reconcile those conflicting positions may be the diplomatic challenge of the decade.

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