Winding Up War, Working Toward Peace

It turned out to be the costliest and most dangerous engagement in 25 years of Middle East tension, and its fearful consequences were still not fully calculated. Last week the Yom Kippur War (as Israelis call it) threatened to involve not only Israelis and Arabs, but Russians and Americans as well, in a bewildering and exhaustive kaleidoscope of crisis. The week began with a seemingly firm display of East-West detente: a joint Moscow-Washington resolution introduced in the United Nations that called for a stop to the fighting and the commencement of peace negotiations. By midweek, the big powers had seemingly edged a step toward the brink of nuclear confrontation: the Russians made moves toward unilateral action in the war zone, and the U.S. responded with worldwide military mobilization. By week's end, however, the two superpowers were once again cooperating in trying to work out a firm ceasefire.

Bad Omen. Globally, the near-confrontation has clouded the future of what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger last week called "a very unique relationship" in which "we are at one and the same time adversaries and partners in the preservation of peace." In the Middle East, it was a bad omen for the future of an international peace-keeping operation that would be difficult enough as a result of three weeks of furious and bitter fighting.

On the diplomatic front, the week began with a 40-hour visit to Moscow by Kissinger, who was dispatched by President Nixon at the Russians' request. Kissinger and Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev in six hours of talks hammered out the terms of a joint resolution aimed at stopping the war. At 10 Sunday evening, delegates and staff members of the U.N. Security Council--some still dressed in tuxedos or sports clothes--hastily assembled to hear the terms of the draft resolution and vote on it. The U.S.-Russian measure called for an immediate cease-fire in place on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. The broad-ranging Resolution 338 also called for implementation of U.N. Resolution 242 (see story page 53), which had been passed after the Six-Day War of 1967 as a first step toward peace in the region. Finally, Resolution 338 called for peace negotiations under "appropriate auspices." To some this indicated the U.N., to others the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Scali and Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik, who wore nearly identical blue silk ties, each spoke in support of the resolution. Scali abhorred the "grave risks for the peace of the world" if the fighting continued--a warning that was to be underlined dramatically three days later by the superpower confrontation. Malik stressed that "time will not wait." The resolution passed, 14-0, with China not participating. The Chinese refrained from voting all week to protest "the collusive scheme" of the two superpowers.

Within twelve hours after passage, both Egypt and Israel announced their acceptance of the ceasefire; Syria followed suit a day later. But there was evidence that the Israelis at least really wanted the fighting to continue to a decisive conclusion. Well aware of Israel's fury over the sudden attack and fears of an imposed settlement, Kissinger, on his way home from Moscow, stopped over for four hours in Tel Aviv for discussions with Premier Golda Meir. The Israelis assumed, particularly after President Nixon had ordered a massive resupply of arms and ammunition to replace equipment destroyed on the battlefield, that the U.S. was amenable to continued fighting until Israel had won an absolute victory in Sinai. While as suring Mrs. Meir that no secret deals to impose a cease-fire had been made in Moscow, Kissinger stressed that the U.S. genuinely wanted an end to the war as quickly as possible.

Hostage Army. One reason the peacemakers had a difficult time silencing the guns: worry by both sides about the fate of prisoners. Israel had seized an estimated 1,300 Arabs but had lost a sizable number of its own men as battlefield captives. At week's end the Arabs had given the International Red Cross in Geneva the names of 48 Israelis taken prisoner; Jerusalem insists that the true total is closer to 300. At any rate, soon after the cease-fire was supposed to take effect, Israeli armored forces on the west bank of the canal resumed their ranging forays from Port Suez to Ismailia. The apparent aim was to surround and trap 20,000 Egyptian soldiers of the Third Army (see following story). Deprived of help from Cairo, the army would likely become hostages for the speedy return of the missing 300.

The cease-fire violations demonstrated one serious flaw in the American-Russian resolution: it had made no provision for peace observers. On Tuesday, the Security Council reconvened and voted for a new resolution--with Peking again not participating--that directed Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to speed observers to the scene.

In fact, although its presence had been all but forgotten, the U.N. did happen to have a token force of observers already in place: the 220 officers and men, from 16 countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Ireland, who belong to the ineffectual United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization. UNTSO, which has been keeping a lonely vigil along Israel's borders since the end of the 1967 war, is essentially a reporting service. Its members, from their bunkers along the Suez Canal or on the Golan Heights, are supposed to flash the details of any truce violation for U.N. consideration. As the cease-fire began, small groups of UNTSO observers in Jeeps bearing blue U.N. markings were sent out into the desert to find the new lines; they were treated with scarcely concealed contempt by the Israelis.

Test of Will. Not content with the promise of a U.N. peace-keeping force, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat also called upon the Soviet Union and the U.S. to send troops. The quick affirmative response from the Kremlin touched off the near confrontation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that President Nixon later insisted was the most ominous big-power test of will and nerve since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Washington had flatly turned down Sadat's request for U.S. intervention. From the White House point of view, it was unthinkable for major powers with conflicting interests to enter the Middle East dispute. Said a State Department spokesman: "The last thing the U.S. wants to see is Soviet troops back in the Middle East. The only thing worse than that would be American troops in the Middle East."

The Soviets obviously felt otherwise. Both U.S. and Western European intelligence networks picked up signs of Russian military activity: mobilization ordered for two mechanized divisions near the Black Sea and a halt in Soviet military transport flights to Egypt and Syria. The cutoff in the flights carrying military supplies suggested that the giant Soviet planes might have been diverted home for troop movements. Intelligence experts feared that the Russian units might be sent in--at Sadat's urgent request--to help rescue the beleaguered Egyptian Third Army.

Washington's response to the Soviet moves, after a midnight meeting of the National Security Council, was a worldwide military alert. Kissinger at his press conference described the alert as a purely "precautionary measure." He added, in words directed more to the Soviets than to his Washington audience: "None of the issues that are involved in the observance of the cease-fire would warrant unilateral action." Even as he spoke, the Security Council was considering yet another Middle East resolution, which would authorize Secretary-General Waldheim to create an emergency force to police the cease-fire rather than merely observe the two sides.* Kissinger had proposed that the resolution be amended to exclude the representatives of the Council's five permanent members (the U.S., U.S.S.R., China, Britain and France).

The Secretary of State was already aware that the Soviets would go along with his proposal. Anxious Security Council delegates, who had been listening to Kissinger's press conference over transistor radios or watching it on TV, quickly accepted his proposed amendment. Altogether, a force of 7,000 men was authorized to serve as a buffer between Israeli and Egyptian armies.

In addition to such longtime peacekeepers as Austria, Finland and Sweden, the United Nations Emergency Force could include soldiers of ten other nations drawn from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the East bloc. France protested its exclusion, but was voted down. Britain also wanted to join, largely to recapture some of its onetime role as a Middle East power broker. In the end, the British grudgingly went along with Kissinger's proposal.

Equitable Spread. Most significant, Russia's Malik voted for the revised measure, although he demanded that the peace-keeping force be geographically equitable and not limited to NATO nations. The resolution passed, and at week's end 900 U.N. peace-keepers on Cyprus were being airlifted to Egypt. Two hundred Finns among them were immediately rushed to the city of Suez as a buffer.

In Moscow, addressing a Soviet-sponsored World Congress of Peace Forces, Brezhnev announced that Russia was also sending its own force of a hundred or so civilian "representatives" to keep watch on the ceasefire, and he invited the U.S. to follow suit. Later the same day President Nixon at his press conference indicated that the U.S. would do so, but only under U.N. auspices.

Unlike 1967, when cease-fire positions were fairly clear, this time the sprawling battle lines mean a difficult assignment for the peacekeepers; in some places, the lines are almost impossible to find. But in a hopeful sign at week's end, U.N. representatives persuaded Israeli and Egyptian field commanders to meet in order to delineate temporary bounds and possibly to agree on localized pull backs.

The U.S.-Soviet aim, presuming that the cease-fire holds and detente continues, is to provide the auspices not only for limited withdrawal but for broader, long-lasting peace negotiations as well. Even before last week's eyeballing, Kissinger said at his press conference, he and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin had been holding preliminary conversations about "the site, the participation and the procedures" of talks. Both sides, declared Kissinger, have an opportunity "to determine their own fate in consultation and negotiation--for the first time in 25 years."

What, if anything, did the war achieve? If the U.S. and Soviet Union do sponsor peace negotiations, it has broken the long no-war, no-peace stalemate that so disturbed the Arabs. The Syrians and Egyptians, in fighting manfully against the supposedly better-trained Israelis, restored a measure of much-needed national pride. By giving its Arab allies both materiel and moral support, the Soviet Union regained much of its prestige in the Middle East (see box page 38). A small winner may well be Jordan, which retrieved diplomatic recognition from Egypt and Syria and oil subsidies from Kuwait in return for a handful of casualties.

Key Issue. Israel, on the other hand, faces the real prospect of losing the peace after winning the upper hand in the war. The cost to the tiny country in both men and money was enormous, and the government's preparedness for war will be a key issue in the forthcoming elections to the Knesset (see story page 48). Israel stands to lose a few more friends in the world, either because nations fear an Arab oil cutoff or because they see Israel--despite the Arab surprise attack--as the real aggressor for having held onto territory captured in 1967 and thereby provoking the Arabs to fight to take it back. During the combat, both Nigeria and Ethiopia, the latter a longtime diplomatic ally, severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

The U.S. gained little or nothing from its support of Israel. American prestige in the Arab world has never been lower, and it is unlikely to rise much unless and until the U.S. leans on Israel to do some serious peace negotiating. The war even damaged Washington's relations with its Western European allies. Spain and Greece flatly refused to let the U.S. use bases in those countries to help resupply Israel. West Germany issued a stiff protest to the U.S. when American tanks were transferred to Israeli ships in German harbors. Expressing the Administration's pique, State Department Spokesman Robert McCloskey mentioned "allies going to some lengths to separate themselves publicly from us." President Nixon, in an acerbic comment on Europe's concern for Arab oil, said that Europeans "would have frozen to death this winter unless there had been a settlement."

All in all, it is beginning to look as if waging the peace will prove to be at least as traumatic for all parties involved as was waging the war.

* In 1957 a similar force was deployed in Sinai and the Gaza Strip to prevent a confrontation between Egyptian and Israeli troops. But when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded its removal in May 1967, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant acceded. The way was thus cleared, as it turned out, for Israel's preemptive attack on Egypt that began the Six-Day War

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