Sustaining the Momentum of Peace

At Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the heavy iron gates were trampled down by a crying, shouting mob. The homecoming Israelis who debarked from the DC-6 chartered by the International Red Cross were literally passed hand over hand above the crowd to joyous relatives. Attending dignitaries, led by retiring Premier Golda Meir and her successor Yitzhak Rabin, had to scramble for their safety as well as their dignity. At Damascus International Airport, meanwhile, 10,000 delirious people, ignoring streams of water played on them from fire-engine hoses, broke through cordons of paratroopers who attempted futilely to hold them back. Finally, the Red Cross-chartered Swissair 747 had to stop short to avoid running over people. Thus last week did Israelis and Syrians react to the repatriation of uninjured prisoners of war --382 Arabs and 56 Israelis--under terms of the disengagement agreement worked out by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Almost everywhere in the Middle East there was euphoria and rejoicing as the cease-fire held and negotiations on details proceeded. On the Golan Heights, United Nations troops from Canada, Poland, Austria and Peru moved in to begin keeping peace as Syrian and Israeli forces started pulling back from the cease-fire line. Syrians cheered as Israeli units prepared to pull out of Quneitra, only to discover the retreating troops were leveling the remaining buildings hi the bombed-out city to hamper reoccupation. The speedy pace of the withdrawal had been set in Geneva, where Syrian and Israeli officers completed their technical agreements on cease-fire lines and the thin-out of forces in four days instead of the five allotted under cease-fire terms. "They were not as jolly as the Egyptians," one Israeli representative said of the Syrians. "But they certainly knew how to obey orders."

In Egypt, there was another display of rejoicing. President Anwar Sadat chose the seventh anniversary of the start of the 1967 Six-Day War to visit his troops on the east bank of the Suez Canal. Sadat clambered up a 50-ft. embankment to visit one of the Bar-Lev Line strongpoints established by Israel after the '67 war and recaptured by Egyptian forces last fall. He told his assembled troops, standing at attention beside their tanks in the desert: "October 6, dear sons, has changed the history of the world militarily, economically and politically." One sign of that change: an advance party arrived from Washington to plan the first visit of a U.S. President to Cairo since Franklin D. Roosevelt's trip in 1943. This followed the successful end of the U.S. Navy's minesweeping operations in the Suez Canal; some forces will remain, however, to supervise the six-month task of removing wrecked ships from the canal and reopening it to traffic.

A Dilemma. Amid all the delight over Kissinger's Middle East miracle, one group remained dourly uncertain. At Arab League headquarters in Cairo, 177 shirt-sleeved delegates of the Palestine National Council--a parliament of Palestinians hi exile--gathered to debate their next move. All the delegates also belong to the Palestine Liberation Organization, a conglomerate of six guerrilla organizations led by Yasser Arafat, which faces a dilemma: How can it continue to hold out against Israeli presence hi its homeland and at the same time withstand pressure from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia to join the movement toward peace?

One problem for the National Council is that the P.L.O. is dangerously split. Arafat and some other leaders, notably Saiqa's Zuhair Mohsen Nayef Hawatmeh, whose Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was re sponsible for the Ma'alot massacre (TIME, May 27), prefer to take what they can get and establish an autonomous mini-Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan, the Gaza strip and the Hemmeh region.

But three fedayeen groups are op posed, including the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Its leader, George Habash, was barred from Cairo last week by Egyptian officials be cause he also wants to overthrow such conservative Arab leaders as President Sadat's friend and ally, Saudi Arabian King Faisal. Arafat could easily win a vote on the mini-Palestine issue. Meet ings droned on, however, as he sought to shape a consensus without losing dis senters. "Wishes are one thing," Egyptian Editor Salah Gawdah observed last week, "but what is feasible is another."

The opposing P.L.O. factions at least agree on two points. They will not send a delegation to the peace talks in Ge neva unless United Nations Resolution 242 is amended; this resolution, which has been considered the keystone to peace efforts hi the Middle East since 1967, refers to the Palestinians merely as a "refugee problem." Said the P.L.O.'s Gamal Sourani last week: "The world must understand that ours is not a refugee problem. It is a national and political problem."

The P.L.O. refuses to recognize Israel as a state, although it might be willing to coexist if a Palestinian state can be created, much in the same way that capitalism and Communism coexist.

Israel, for the moment, returns the snub. Taking over as Premier last week, Rabin announced his willingness to negotiate with all Arabs--except Palestinian terrorists. The future of the West Bank, he said, should be decided in consultation with Jordan's King Hussein, as head of a Jordanian-Palestinian state. Rabin's Cabinet won approval in the Knesset by a narrow 61-51 vote, with five abstentions and three absentees; Israeli political observers predicted that the new Premier will have to strengthen his own government before he can undertake negotiations with any of Israel's neighbors.

That will involve soothing some cynics who have considerable political power. Golda Meir, noting that her successor had had to say yes to almost everyone to get enough votes for parliamentary approval, told a friend: "If Rabin were a girl, he would be in trouble." Snapped hawkish Opposition Leader Menachem Begin: "We haven't seen a dovecot like Rabin's Cabinet since Noah's ark. I consider it a national duty to bring this government down."

Despite Begin's threat, Rabin's government appears strong enough to survive. Most Israelis are willing to give it a chance to run the country; many also feel that the government will become stronger as Rabin and his newer team of ministers become more familiar with the handles of power. That is one hopeful contribution to the continuation of the Middle East's peace momentum. So, at week's end, was the decision reached by the Palestine National Council in Cairo. The delegates, in a pro forma resolution, vowed to keep struggling for the liberation of all of Palestine. At the same time, they also endorsed Arafat's realistic idea of seeking to establish a Palestinian "national authority" over any portion of occupied territory that Israel evacuates.

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