Israel's Doubts

...Any clauses based on such an assumption, it is commonly felt, should be public and not secret...

...Fully published treaties, on the other hand, evoke public debates and comments by all the participating parties that, in turn, provide certain limits to subsequent distortions...

...In part this is because Israelis feel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been pressured by Washington into making concessions that amount to what former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan has called a "step-by-step retreat...

...In part it is because many of them can and do listen to Arab radio and read the Arab press, and they cannot forget that only last July 23, in an address marking the 23rd anniversary of Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat described Israel as a "dagger in the heart of the Arabs, before expounding on the options open to Cairo if its conditions were not met...

...At the recent Jidda conference of Moslem nations, however, Egypt was among the sponsors of the resolution calling for Israel's expulsion from the United Nations...

...But when he talks in Arabic to Arabs, the animosity he expresses toward Israel goes far beyond what apologists for Arab statesmen always explain away as "necessary for domestic consumption...

...will remove some of the strain that has developed between the two governments...

...Soon afterward, at the Kampala conference of the Organization for African Unity, Egypt initiated the proposal that Israel should be suspended from the UN pending its acceptance of "all UN resolutions" on Palestine—in their Arab interpretations, of course...

...It is in this context that the international assumption of an Arab trend toward accommodation is being examined here...

...One of the strongest arguments in favor of giving Israel the economic aid and arms supplies it needs has been its insistence on fighting its own battles...

...Considerable doubts also exist about Egypt's obligation to abstain from military action for the duration of the agreement, even if Syria resumes hostilities...

...Moreover, in the economic field it is the oil sheikhdoms and Saudi Arabia who carry the real weight, not Egypt...

...Egypt has reportedly promised Washington that each year, for at least three years, it will renew the mandate of the UN forces separating the opposing sides in the Sinai...

...Similar scrutiny is being given the validity and value of some of the "political concessions' Egypt is supposedly willing to make in exchange for the very tangible Israeli withdrawals from the Abu Rudeis oil fields and the strategic Mitla and Gidi passes...

...And a clear indication that the Ford Administration's desire to win Arab favor pretty much rules out such a return was provided this summer by the way the State Department misled Israel on the size of the intended Hawk missile sale to Jordan...

...Three points in particular are being stressed...

...Cairo, it is thought, is interested in another accommodation—on the best terms America can be blackmailed into—because at the moment it does not feel strong enough to do better by force...

...It heightened the doubts that have emerged concerning any new agreement...

...Thus Sadat served notice that regardless of what Washington tells Jerusalem, Egypt does not see the signing of a new agreement as ending its right to keep the threat of United Nations suspension over Israel's head...

...In sum, reviewing the events between last March when the Sinai negotiations broke down, and Kissinger's arrival here August 21 to start them up again, Israelis find that Cairo has been excessively belligerent publicly and increasingly intransigent privately...

...Neither is there pervasive gloom...

...Rabin considers this a most important point, because Damascus would presumably be reluctant to resume the war alone...

...Besides attaching these question marks to the expected Egyptian components of a second-stage Sinai accord, some Israeli observers are taking a hard look at its American aspects...

...for a breakdown of the Eliahu Salpeter is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Third, an American presence at some of the observation points in the no-man's land between Egyptian and Israeli lines would not be a plus, as several members of Rabin's cabinet contend...

...It also raised the question of whether Sadat's bellicosity—illogical as it may have seemed at a time when Kissinger was trying to convince Israel to respond with further concessions to Egyptian "moderation"—was not a carefully calculated move to set down his own restrictive reading of whatever might be decided upon...

...Second, despite Israel's compliance, relations between Washington and Jerusalem have not returned to anywhere near their previous level of intimacy...

...And even if Israel insists on more specific definitions than those that accompanied the 1957 Sinai withdrawal (but could not be located by Washington when Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran in 1967), the interpretations of secret covenants inevitably become more disparate as time elapses...

...There isn't any reason to assume, either, that declarations made in Egypt's name to "tone down'" the boycott against U.S...

...Indeed, Israelis were shocked more by Sadat's tone than by what he actually said on July 23...

...talks...

...Sadat has spent much of the last year speaking about coexistence with Israel in American press interviews, smoking his peace pipe on British television and appearing the epitome of reasonableness in France or Germany...

...firms trading with Israel (not economic warfare as such, mind you) will be honored...

...But a substantial body of opinion here, including virtually the entire opposition and significant elements within the governing Labor Alignment, believes it is more dangerous to give in now to an openly militant Sadat on the basis of secret assurances, than to risk Kissinger's displeasure...

...Since Sadat went along with the extremists in Jidda, though, how can he be expected to stand aside should the Egyptian President's "Syrian brethren" renew the fight against "the Zionist enemy...

...Yet the more flexible Jerusalem is under American pressure, the more Washington may resort to pressure tactics during future differences of opinion...

...The other reported Egyptian concession concerns its abstention from active participation in anti-Israeli diplomatic initiatives...

...In fact, so long as Kissinger hopes to dislodge the Soviets from the Arab world without challenging Moscow, his futile attempts must be at the expense of Israel...

...Jerusalem, meanwhile, has been doing the bending and compromising at the behest of the U.S...

...First, it may be true that Israel's yielding to the U.S...

...Jerusalem is worried about being blamed again by the U.S...

...It is a posture that once before cost this nation dearly—and accounts for its mood of guarded concern...

...If Americans—civilian or military, in large or small number—were to be stationed in the Sinai, this important advantage could evaporate...

...Yet by his refusal to renew the mandate this spring, in the very midst of a most delicate stage of the negotiations, Sadat served notice that he will retain the threat of eliminating the UN forces—no matter what promises are transmitted to Israel...

...For an interim agreement, by definition, is designed to lead eventually to a permanent one, and therefore must involve a number of "assumptions" and "expectations" about the future behavior of the opposite side...

...Instead, the atmosphere here might best be described as one of guarded concern —and it is not likely to change soon, no matter what the outcome of the current intensive efforts underway to achieve another interim Sinai agreement...

...On the contrary, it could well prove a minus...