Getting Ready To Face Carter

Both sides map their strategies

The Foreign Ministers of Israel and the Arab states will begin to arrive in the U.S. next week for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Most of them will have in mind something at least as important as the Assembly agenda: meetings with President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, for which both sides have carefully prepared their strategies.

In a rare show of unanimity, 21 Foreign Ministers of the Arab League last week adopted in Cairo what one Western diplomat called "the last hurrah for the moderates." He meant an eight-point working paper that Arab delegates will discuss at the U.N. as the basis for further resolutions. The paper states that a "just and durable peace in the Middle East" depends on the fulfillment of two basic principles: 1) Israel must withdraw from Arab territories occupied during the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem, and 2) the Palestinians have a right to return to their place of origin, to self-determination, and to establish an independent state. The paper rejects Israel's creation of new settlements on the West Bank and calls on all countries to halt emigration of their citizens to "occupied Palestinian and Arab territories." Significantly, the document distinguishes between territory occupied after the 1967 war and Israel's 1948 boundaries--a tacit admission that Israel has a right to exist as a state.

There was nothing essentially new in the Arab League position, which was not regarded as moderate in Israel. Nonetheless, some observers of the meeting note that the wording of the paper could have been far stronger. Syria's Foreign Minister, Abdel Halim Khaddam, argued that the delegates should propose Israel's expulsion from the U.N. and the adoption of sanctions against the Jewish state. But even the "rejectionist" Iraqis admitted that it was not practical to crack down hard on the Israelis. Thus they backed the moderate stance of Egypt, which was subtly supported by Saudi Arabia, whose Princeton-educated Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, 35, chaired the meeting.

Explained an Egyptian delegate: "We could not go to Washington and the U.N. leaving Carter no room to negotiate. We had to go to him and be able to say, 'You see, we are not trying to sabotage you. We are helping you in every way that we can.' What better proof can he have than that the Syrian move for a tough, no-compromise line was overruled by the Arab Foreign Ministers themselves?" Although they do not accept all its provisions, Administration officials described the working paper as "very helpful."

Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, meanwhile, was putting the final touches on what the Israelis are calling a "peace treaty" to discuss in Washington. The proposal is made up of 30 sections detailing in legal form a declaration of peace, exchange of ambassadors, resumption of trade relations and other workaday items. But there is no map showing what Israel's final borders might be and certainly nothing to indicate that Jerusalem will relent on its opposition to any negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Despite Israeli insistence that "everything is negotiable," a high-ranking official conceded that "there is nothing surprising" in the Dayan treaty.

What the Israelis really Intend to tell Carter is to cool it. They are now convinced that the President's aim to reconvene a Geneva Conference is a wasted effort, since the two sides are so far apart. Thus they will try to persuade Carter and Vance that there are more urgent items to be taken up, such as the Palestinian refugees and the continued fighting in southern Lebanon. Dayan, however, will get some hard questions in Washington about the new Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. In his farewell to Argentina's President Jorge Rafael Videla last week, Carter said again that the settlements pose "additional problems" for the peace process.

TIME learned last week that despite official denials Israel has started, in addition to the three officially declared new settlements, another three new settlements in the past month, and a fourth is in the process of being manned. Moreover, the controversial plan of Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon to settle 2 million Jews in occupied lands has the official support of Premier Menachem Begin's government. "We will continue to settle, and settling is a long process which must be carried out," said Sharon in an interview last week with Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff and Correspondent David Halevy. "Anyone who thinks that this government is going to withdraw from the West Bank is suffering delusions."

Even though Carter says he has private assurances from all of the leaders that they will be more flexible than their public stance, hopes for a renewed Geneva are dimmer than ever. In an Interview with Syndicated Columnist Trude B. Feldman that appears in a number of Jewish publications around the country this week, the President seemed sobered by the procedural difficulties in bringing the two sides together. "Dozens of other foreign policy matters have suffered to some degree because I've expended so much time on this issue," he said. "If our efforts fail this year, it'll be difficult for us to continue to devote that much time and energy to the Mideast."

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