Pulling Back for Peace

Black spirals of smoke dirtied the blue sky over the Suez Canal last week, and the thud of explosives shattered the desert stillness. They were the tocsins of peace, not war The smoke was from stores being burned by the 40,000-man Israeli force before it withdrew tanks and guns from a bridgehead west of the canal captured last October. The explosions were from the captured or unused ammunition and mines that were being destroyed.

All this activity signaled the beginning of Israeli disengagement from Egyptian territory west of the Suez Canal under the terms of the agreement worked out by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It also marked the first time in almost 20 years that Israeli forces have voluntarily pulled back from captured Arab territory.

Early Beginning. Israel appeared ready not merely to obey the letter of the disengagement agreement but to exceed its requirements. The withdrawal from the west bank, which is supposed to take 28 days to complete, was actually begun two days early. At the same time, Israeli forces voluntarily handed back six wounded Egyptian prisoners captured since the October truce and made plans to return 89 other unwounded Egyptian P.O.W.s taken prisoner along the cease-fire lines.

In the discussions at Kilometer 101, where technical talks on the disengagement have been taking place between Israeli and Egyptian military men, Israeli Chief of Staff General David Elazar promised that his men would return civilian facilities and roads intact. But captured military equipment was being trucked back to Israel.

In Jerusalem, the sense of accommodation was equally evident. As a new Knesset was sworn in--with Premier Golda Meir* as its oldest member taking the oath first--the Labor-dominated government won easy approval (76-35) for the disengagement agreement. In addressing the Knesset, Mrs. Meir announced that Israel does not consider the eventual pullback line in the Sinai --to be reached 12 days after the west bank retirement is finished--as a permanent border. "It has been our position from the start," she said, "that the separation of forces is not the ultimate goal, for we are prepared to negotiate with Egypt on a durable peace within defensible borders." The message was very clear: Israel was willing to withdraw its forces even farther in its pursuit of peace.

Israeli good will was reciprocated by Egypt: within twelve days after the west bank retirement is completed, it will draw more than 60,000 men and nearly 600 tanks out of Sinai. President Anwar Sadat undertook a five-day, eight-nation tour of the Arab world to explain the agreement. Egypt would live up to its terms fully, said Sadat to other Arab leaders. "Creating doubt does not serve our cause," he said. Significantly, Sadat credited the U.S. for playing a principal role in attaining disengagement. "For every change in the American position," he said, "it is necessary for the Arabs to make an identical change toward the U.S." This was a hint that the Arab oil embargo against the U.S. for supporting Israel might soon be removed. Kissinger, in a Washington press conference last week, indicated that this could happen even before the 40-day disengagement is completed.

Stubborn Syria. Sadat's first stop on his 11,000-mile tour was Syria, which Kissinger also visited briefly before returning to Washington last week. Both men went to Damascus to investigate the prospects of a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel along the Golan Heights. U.S. diplomats are not notably optimistic about achieving a speedy accord. For one thing, the territory involved is smaller than that in the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, and thus there is little elasticity in either position. Israel, which has long insisted that it has to hold the Heights to protect kibbutzim in Israeli territory below from Syrian shelling, also demands a list of P.O.W.s captured by Syria in October, along with guarantees that they are being treated humanely. Far from being accommodating, Syria so far has steadfastly refused the information and has boycotted talks called in Geneva to discuss disengagement. Syrian President Hafez Assad, moreover, is not as free to negotiate as Sadat was.

Negotiations are also likely to be conditioned by Kissinger's penchant for face-to-face negotiations. So successful has the Secretary of State been in the Middle East that he has become a status symbol: Arab leaders now want to talk to no one lower. Both Kuwait and Abu Dhabi recently refused to see Assistant Secretary of State Joseph J. Sisco when Kissinger proposed sending him to give a briefing on the Egyptian-Israeli talks. But Kissinger, for the next month at least, is booked for Western Hemisphere consultations, including discussions with Panama on the status of the Panama Canal, a meeting with Western Hemisphere foreign ministers in Mexico City to discuss mutual problems and talks on oil in Ottawa with Canadian officials. It will be difficult for the Secretary to return to Middle East matters until early March, by which time the thing that Kissinger fears most, a loss of momentum in negotiations, may have occurred.

Unreconstructed forces are already at work in the Middle East to slow the progress toward peace talks. Iraq's government-controlled press last week characterized Cairo's agreement as leading to "complete surrender to Zionism." The Tripoli newspaper New Dawn, in an editorial reportedly written by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, called the recent negotiations a "theatrical play" produced by Washington and Moscow

More dangerous insofar as progress goes, are the Palestinians on the Arab side and the right-wing opposition in Israel's parliament. Much to the embarrassment of Fedayeen Leader Yasser Arafat, who was in Egypt at the time, a rump session of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Executive Committee last week passed a resolution proclaiming "no to American peace and victory for the Palestinian people." A renewed campaign of terrorism could touch off Israeli reprisals, destroying Mrs. Meir's policy of accommodation.

Costly Mistakes. The Israeli parliamentary opposition, led by Onetime Underground Fighter and Terrorist Menachem Begin, has already spoken out against that policy. During last week's parliamentary debate on disengagement, Begin leveled his attacks squarely against Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who had first proposed the pullback and has since said: "In my estimation, Egyptian faces are truly turned toward peace." But if Dayan should be mistaken, warned General Ariel Sharon, the armored-force hero of the October war who resigned his commission last week to take a Knesset seat, it could be a fatal miscalculation for Israel. "Mistakes of this kind," he said bitterly, "have already cost us 2,600 fatalities and thousands of wounded men."

Dayan may ultimately prove to be right and Kissinger able to maintain momentum for the same reason: Sadat and Mrs. Meir, the two most prestigious Middle East leaders, are both backing the disengagement agreement. If that situation continues, peace indeed has at least a chance to be the final harvest of last week's earnest beginning.

*Who is now 75, and, despite a recent case of shingles, is in good health.

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