The Morning After Ismailia

Self-rule v. self-determination for the West Bank and Gaza

Whether by inadvertence or design, Jimmy Carter last week almost threw the Middle East peace drive into an icy spin. In a conversation with news correspondents on a nationwide television hookup, Carter declared that Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had taken "a long step forward" by offering self-rule to the Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip; only a week earlier he had told Begin in Washington that many of his proposals had not gone far enough. Then, almost in passing, Carter added that the U.S. could not countenance "a radical Palestinian state in the heart of the Middle East." That was a position that he has generally taken in the past, but it was not the best time to reiterate it. Next day the White House explained that the President had not intended to endorse the Begin proposals, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance stressed that the U.S. regarded them merely as "an appropriate starting point" for negotiations.

Nonetheless, Israeli officialdom was astonished and delighted to hear Carter's words and seized on them as justification for Begin's position. "Even Carter behaved himself this week," quipped a Begin aide in Jerusalem. In Cairo, President Anwar Sadat was also astonished, but far from delighted. He was obviously shaken over what appeared to him to be a thoughtless disruption of all his careful and so far eminently successful strategy. Carter, said Sadat ruefully, "is making my job very difficult. This embarrasses me. What surprises me most is ignoring the importance of the Palestinian issue, the core and crux of the whole problem." To make amends, Carter added a brief, unscheduled stop in Aswan to meet with Sadat on the matter this week.

The visit should heal whatever damage was done; that familiar Middle East term "momentum" seemed still in force, thanks chiefly to the efforts of Begin and Sadat at their Christmas meeting in Ismailia. Though the meeting was roundly criticized last week--by many Arabs who felt that Begin had offered too little, and by right-wing Israelis who felt that their Premier had gone too farthe effort had produced some promising results. For the first time, Arabs and Israelis had embarked on high-level negotiations face to face. To be sure, they were unable to settle on a joint declaration of principles, but they did agree to set up Foreign Ministers' and Defense Ministers' committees, which will convene within the next two weeks.

Moreover, the two sides came close to agreement, in principle at least, on the question of Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai (see map). Under the Israeli plan, 1) the region would be largely demilitarized, with Egyptian forces remaining west of the Giddi-Mitla line; 2) Jewish settlements would remain in place and would be protected; 3) Israeli troops, airfields and early-warning installations would be maintained in the central Sinai over a transition period of several years; and 4) freedom of navigation through the Strait of Tiran would be guaranteed. The Egyptians could probably agree, in the end, to such an arrangement. "It would all be relatively simple," remarked an Egyptian official, "except that the Israelis are trying to use their concessions in Sinai to soften up Sadat on the West Bank. They are offering a timetable of four or even two years [in the Sinai] if Sadat will soften his position on the West Bank." But Sadat could not do so without sacrificing his last chance of bringing the other Arab states into the bargaining process.

For the West Bank and Gaza, as expected, the Israelis proposed self-rule but with the security of the autonomous Palestinian region remaining in Israeli hands. The question of sovereignty would remain open, and the whole arrangement would be subject to review after five years. The Begin plan was precisely the same as the peace formula that the Israeli Cabinet had offered the Arabs in June 1967. The plan was abruptly rejected by Jordan at that time.

Like the Jordanians before him, Sadat found the proposals unacceptable. "Our main problem with your draft," he said, "is that the Palestinians must have the right of self-determination." Begin replied, "To us, that would mean an independent state governed by the [Palestine Liberation Organization], and we cannot agree to that." Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan added: "Self-determination for the Palestinians means for us the destruction of the state of Israel in stages." After lengthy discussion, it was obvious that the matter could not be settled, so the two sides agreed to refer it to the Foreign Ministers' committee for further argument. For the moment, the leaders had gone as far as they could. As Begin left for home, his El Al jetliner took him for a quick bird's-eye tour of the Pyramids of Giza.* "The Cheops Pyramid is constructed out of 3 million stones," Begin marveled later. "And how they schlepped those stones in those times is difficult to understand."

In the days following the Ismailia summit, the participants were left with a sobering sense of the morning after. The Israelis returned to Jerusalem blaming members of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry for "conventional thickness" in failing to reach agreement on a declaration of principles. "We did our part," Begin told the Knesset. "We made our contribution, and now it is the turn of the other side." Israelis had also found Sadat unrealistic. "He is both shrewd and naive," said one negotiator. "He really believed that after his historic trip to Jerusalem, we would have to respond with the same speed and to the same degree. And when we did not, he behaved like a kid whose toys have been taken away. Yet he seemed genuinely pleased with some of the results."

At the same time, the Egyptians characterized the Israelis as "unimaginative and limited, the victims of living for 30 years in an international ghetto." As one Egyptian negotiator expressed it to TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn: "Their attitude reminds me of that of the old-fashioned Orientalists of the era between the two World Wars, who thought of the Arabs as Bedouins or refugees. Now the Israelis come to Egypt and meet a group of technocrats and intellectuals, and they assume these people cannot be Arabs, they don't fit the stereotype. Therefore these people must be willing to make a separate peace and split off from the Arab world."

The Egyptians argue that Begin has failed to grasp the fact that Sadat is willing to accept something less than full Palestinian statehood now-in exchange for a plan calling for self-determination later. If he could win Israeli acceptance of that principle, Sadat would be able to demonstrate to the other Arab leaders that his policy of negotiating with Israel was paying off. He could again invite the other Arabs to join the negotiations, and in the end the Palestinians might choose to create an independent state, a federation with Jordan or even a federation with Israel. "The problem," says an Egyptian negotiatior, "could be solved in any of ten different ways." But until Sadat persuades the Israelis to agree to the principle of Palestinian self-determination, he will not feel free to make a deal on Sinai, however advantageous that agreement might be to Egypt.

If Sadat needed any reminder of the pressures at work, he had only to read the papers and turn on the radio. In Syria, Damascus Radio called the Begin peace proposals a revelation of "Zionist intransigence in its ugliest form." Even Jordan, which has not strongly opposed Sadat's initiative, dismissed the Begin plan as "unacceptable" and "ridiculous." In the Israeli-ruled West Bank, Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, a moderate, insisted that "the Israelis have not moved one inch from their past positions." The furious anti-Sadat states that met in Tripoli in early December made plans for another get-together in Baghdad to adopt a hard new line against Sadat's peace efforts.

The P.L.O. expressed its displeasure characteristically: it ordered the execution of a West Bank Palestinian, Hamdi Kadi. He was killed because he was an official in the Israeli military government, but the fact that his murder coincided with the Ismailia summit was hardly accidental. From Beirut there were reports that the murder heralded a new campaign of terrorism, but whether that campaign would be limited to the West Bank, as P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat prefers, or expanded to other Arab capitals and to Europe, as radical elements demand, was still to be decided.

In the meantime, Menachem Begin--the man who has long proclaimed the Jews' "natural and eternal right" to the West Bank--was angrily criticized at home by the 60,000 Israelis who have settled in the occupied territories. "What right does anyone have to tell people they will not be in Israel?" demanded David Margalit, who lives in the northern Sinai settlement of Yamit. Cried an American emigrant who also lives in Yamit: "I didn't come from Miami Beach to live in Egypt!" As settlers demonstrated outside, a member of Begin's own Likud coalition, Moshe Shamir, argued their case in the Knesset: "My heart is laden with pain as I see our settlers in Judea, Samaria and Sinai cry out in agony as their dreams are shattered before their eyes."

The fact is that the current peace activity has made Begin stronger than he ever was before. After an 11 1/2-hour debate in the Knesset, one of the longest sessions in memory, Begin won endorsement for his plan by a vote of 64 to 8, with 40 (mostly opposition Labor Party members) abstaining. With that kind of support at home, Begin would be in a position to negotiate from strength--and to make further concessions, if he can be persuaded to do so--when the political and military committees meet this month.

* Begin subscribes to a common assumption that the three Giza Pyramids were built by the Israelis' enslaved ancestors. In fact, the stones probably were trundled by indigenous peasants between 2600 and 2500 B.C.; the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt is believed to have occurred about 1,200 years later.

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