First Harvest of a Peace Treaty

A hero's welcome for Sadat as Egypt returns to El Arish

The first fruits of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty were harvested last week. In a brisk but colorful ceremony at the parking lot of a former post exchange, Israeli officers formally returned the town of El Arish, the capital of the Sinai, to Egyptian sovereignty. Honor guards of both armies stood stiffly at attention as the blue-and-white Israeli flag was lowered and then replaced by the red, white and black Egyptian tricolor. Military bands played the national anthems of both nations as Israel honored its treaty commitment to return to Cairo's authority an 80-mile strip along the Mediterranean coast.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat got a hero's welcome as he paid his first visit next day to Sinai's "caravan city." After flying to El Arish, he prayed in the sands of the Sinai and placed a wreath on the war tomb in honor of Egyptian soldiers who died in action. Then in a moving ceremony, Sadat kissed a huge Egyptian flag and raised it over El Arish. Shops had been painted, and the fountain in the town square, filled with trash since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967, had been cleaned and filled with water. The 40,000 inhabitants of the city were ecstatic. Ashraf Ibrahim told visitors that his family would sacrifice 35 sheep to celebrate the liberation. "There will be many sheep eaten in honor of Sadat," he said joyfully.

The ceremonies at El Arish marked the beginning of an extraordinarily hectic weekend in Middle East peace keeping. With Secretary of State Cyrus Vance participating, talks between Israeli and Egyptian negotiators on autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza began in the desert town of Beersheba, in Israel's Negev area. The opening discussions were slightly clouded by a last-minute dispute between Egypt and Israel over whether the two nations would open their borders immediately, as Israeli Premier Menachem Begin says Sadat promised earlier this spring, or at the end of nine months, as called for by the treaty. Nonetheless, Sadat and Begin were scheduled to open an air corridor between the two countries by flying in an Egyptian 707 from Tel Aviv to Cairo and back, without landing.

Egyptian and Israeli officers worked amicably together in negotiating the fine points of the transfer of authority over El Arish. "It's easy for each side to get along with each other," said Egyptian Brigadier General Hassan Abdel Fatah. "Some of the Israelis are from Arab countries, and they speak fluent Arabic." On the streets of the city, soldiers of the once rival armies exchanged currency as souvenirs.

The Israeli soldiers, in fact, had far more trouble dealing with their fellow citizens than with the Egyptians. Farmers from the settlement of Neot Sinai, two miles east of El Arish, refused last week to abandon a ten-acre vegetable patch that was part of the land being returned to Egypt. Several hundred militant Israeli nationalists drove into the Sinai to support the angry settlers. When Defense Minister Ezer Weizman visited the community in an effort to persuade the farmers to leave, he was spat upon and called a "traitor" and an "Egyptian agent." After Cairo turned down a last-minute Israeli request to let the farmers continue cultivating the field, unarmed Israeli soldiers tried to evict the settlers. They were met with flaming torches, chemical spray and a barrage of stones and vegetables.

The army, in turn, brought in fire trucks to hose down the militants. Tensions eased only when Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin arrived at the scene and promised that the settlers' grievances would be thoroughly discussed at a Cabinet meeting.

The ugly sight of Israeli civilians attacking soldiers of their own army was an apt symbol of the country's current acrimonious mood. During an emotional Cabinet meeting last week, Weizman and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan fought successfully to prevent Begin from offering his hard-line plan for limited self-rule at the start of the autonomy talks. Instead, the two ministers won Cabinet approval to use the Begin plan only as an informal "guideline" during the negotiations.

Quite clearly, the autonomy negotiations will be long and difficult. For the moment, though, both sides can take legitimate pride that the successful transfer of authority over El Arish was proof the treaty was working. The events, of course, had a special meaning for the people of El Arish, whom a former British governor of Sinai, C.S. Jarvis, once described as "a steady, virile race with a marked propensity for hard work but an extraordinarily crooked, suspicious outlook on life generally." One departing Israeli official noted sarcastically that the biggest Egyptian flags in El Arish last week were flying from the rooftops of families who had cooperated most closely with the Israeli military authorities. -

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