Pursuing an Elusive Peace

By William E. Smith

Some fences are being mended and some alliances are shifting

Though almost everything else about Middle East diplomacy appears to be in flux, one lodestar remains fixed: April 26, the day on which Israel, under terms of the Camp David accords, is scheduled to return the final third of the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian control. The Israeli withdrawal is vital to the Camp David peace process, to the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak and to the maintenance of peace in the Middle East.

With so much at stake, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig this week flies to the Middle East on a trip that was delayed last month by the imposition of martial law in Poland. His visit to Israel is also a fence-mending mission, an effort to repair some of the damage caused by Israel's de facto annexation last month of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. When the Reagan Administration criticized the Israeli action, Prime Minister Menachem Begin lashed out at Washington, accusing the U.S. of treating Israel like "a banana republic."

Since then, tempers have cooled somewhat. In Jerusalem this week, Haig will be seeking some specific assurance that Israel will continue to exercise restraint in Lebanon, will still cooperate on the formation of the Sinai peace-keeping force, will withdraw from the Sinai on schedule, and will keep talking with Egypt about granting autonomy to the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Israel has already reaffirmed its commitment to withdrawal by April 26, and Washington in turn has told Israel that the U.S. will veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for sanctions against the Israelis because of their annexation of the Golan Heights.

The peace process should stay on track until the Israelis have withdrawn from the Sinai, but the big problem remains: getting a Palestinian autonomy agreement. Increasingly uneasy about this, the Reagan Administration has at last decided to appoint a special Middle East negotiator, a post that was held by Ambassador Sol Linowitz during the Carter Administration but has remained vacant for the past year. Haig was reluctant to appoint a special envoy in part because he feared that if the talks failed, the Administration risked losing credibility in the Arab world. Now that Haig seems to have changed his mind, the almost certain choice for the job is General Brent Scowcroft, 56, a former adviser to the National Security Council.

Despite the Israeli government's commitment to the Sinai withdrawal the subject is a controversial one at home. In fact, Begin's annexation of the Golan Heights was, to some extent, a way of reassuring Israel's ultranationalists who have angrily protested the pullback from the Sinai. Last week, by a vote of five to four (with many abstentions), the Israeli Cabinet set aside $250 million to be divided among the 1,400 Jewish families who will be obliged to vacate their homes, farms and businesses in the Sinai. The debate over the generous compensation, which ranges between $100,000 and $500,000 per family, reflected the ambivalence of the Israeli public toward the whole concept of withdrawal. The offer of money did not win over all of the settlers in the Sinai, by any means. "Now the real fight can begin," said Avi Farhan, an activist in the movement to stop the withdrawal from the Sinai. "We can't be bought with money."

Haig will also visit Egyptian President Mubarak, whose main foreign policy priority is to get back the remaining one-third of the Sinai. The Egyptians have mixed feelings about the prospective naming by the U.S. of a special Middle East negotiator. On one hand, they welcome the step, feeling that only the U.S. can persuade the Israelis to compromise. "It is important for the U.S. to remain active all the time, not just seasonally," says Osama el Baz, a key Mubarak adviser. On the other hand, the Egyptians warned that the U.S. envoy should not try to pressure them into anything.

Since he succeeded the assassinated Anwar Sadat in October, Mubarak has run Egypt with extreme caution. Last week, however, he shuffled his Cabinet for the first time, naming twelve new ministers out of 34. Surrendering some of the day-to-day duties of government, the President appointed as his new Prime Minister a veteran politician, Fuad Mohieddin, 55, who has been active in Egyptian public life for 20 years. Among the Cabinet members shifted: Interior Minister Nabawi Ismail, who was in charge of domestic security at the time Sadat was slain.

Mubarak was host last week to French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson and Defense Minister Charles Hernu. At the close of the visit, Egypt announced that it had signed a $1 billion agreement with France for the purchase of 20 advanced Mirage 2000 jet fighters. The decision pleased neither Israel, which does not look with favor on arms purchases by any Arab state, nor the U.S., which would have preferred that Egypt buy American when it modernizes its outmoded arsenal. Mubarak presumably is anxious to broaden the base of the country's arms purchases. The Mirage deal is an opportunity for Mubarak to avoid becoming completely dependent on U.S. aircraft.

Ever since the signing of the Camp David accords, the Arab states have been bitterly divided. Most of them opposed Camp David but lacked the unity of purpose to present an alternative. Last year Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd proposed a peace plan that might, at least, have formed a basis for negotiation. In effect, the plan would offer Arab recognition, or at least acceptance, to Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from Arab territory seized in the 1967 war. But, when presented to a pan-Arab summit conference in Fez, Morocco, last October, the proposal proved to be so controversial that the meeting broke up within a few hours.

Now, however, there are signs that the Arabs are moving toward greater unity. Last month Syrian President Hafez Assad visited the Saudis, with whom he has often disagreed, and received some support. He and the Saudis may even have laid the ground work for a new pan-Arab summit, at which the Syrians could be expected to endorse a beefed-up version of the Fahd proposals. Assad and the Saudis also agreed to renew their efforts to end the ongoing war between Iran and Iraq, and the Saudis offered to try to mediate Syria's long-standing differences with Iraq and Jordan. The result of this sustained bit of fence mending was to strengthen Assad, to prod the Saudis toward a slightly more militant foreign policy, and to suggest that the Middle East equation was changing enough to bring some divided Arab nations a bit closer together.

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Robert Slater/Jerusalem and William Stewart/Beirut

With reporting by Robert Slater, William Stewart

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