What Separates Israel and Egypt

...and that peace talks with Egypt might therefore be endangered...

...For the Israelis, five years was the minimum needed to make this painful accomodation...

...another was that Jordan could then be brought to the negotiating table, too...

...More important, though, Sadat's word was instant and final...

...This was grist for the mill of the Israeli hardliners and heightened Begin's own fears...

...These have led from Cairo and Jerusalem to Baghdad, from Baghdad to Riyadh, from there to Teheran...

...Finding himself without the promised backing from Riyadh, Sadat felt left out in the cold...

...So, probably, did the frequent expressions of praise by Administration officials for "Saudi Arabia's restraining influence in opec price discussions...

...But agreeing to demilitarization, and to the presence of UN forces, would make any direct military move against Israel extremely difficult, even if Egypt wanted to fulfill those obligations...

...can be absolved of allowing side issues and second thoughts to interfere with the achievement of peace...

...Yet even without nailing down every detail, every comma and semicolon, it seems fairly evident that the impasse resulted from a convergence of human and organizational mistakes, genuine political misunderstandings, and several major international developments...

...DEMONSTRATORS IN TEHERAN who were ready to make compromises...

...As a result, Riyadh no longer considered it necessary to reciprocate American support by unequivocally protecting American interests in the Arab world...

...they cautioned that giving in to Saudi demands would have the opposite effect...

...All hope for such an outcome, however, had evaporated at Ben Gurion airport on the morning of December 12...

...No doubt the huge volume of Saudi investments and deposits in America...

...It remains to be seen whether the shock at the 14.5 per cent price hike approved at the latest opec meeting, with Saudi concurrence, will disabuse Washington at least of this part of its illusions...

...On the final day of 1978, Jerusalem declared its willingness to resume negotiations...

...each provides its own version of the "truth," rather than the whole truth??to make a precise postmortem possible at this juncture...

...Publicly it kept mum, but its silence was interpreted as a strategic maneuver...

...Ultimately, though, it is the unexpected developments in Iran that may prove to have the greatest impact on the entire region...

...Virtually to the very end, there were optimists at the Knesset who still thought everything would work out: A special session would be called Saturday night, one day before the December 17 target date set at Camp David, to debate and ratify an agreement that would surely be approved by the Cabinet...

...The most often heard answer concerns the evolving situation in Teheran and Washington's apparent unwillingness or inability to clearly and effectively come out in support of the Shah...

...Even a few days before the Baghdad meeting opened, Prince Fahd assured Sayed Marei, President Sadat's special emissary, that his country would protect Egypt's interests...

...Annis Mansour, editor of the weekly magazine October and close confidant of Sadat, commented ironically: "Has Saudi Arabia turned to the Soviets...

...The sequence was preceded by a number of Washington miscalculations prior to Camp David...

...And that could happen after Israel has withdrawn from all of Sinai, leaving it strategically in a highly vulnerable situation...

...His pronouncements made things worse on both sides: The Palestinians concluded that they should hold out for PLO representation and demand full independence, while a growing number of Israelis began having second thoughts about the wisdom of West Bank autonomy altogether...

...This failure, it is maintained, led Saudi Arabia to conclude, first, thai the Soviets may soon stand considerably closer to Persian Gulf oil wells, and second, that the U.S...

...Israeli spokesmen expressed serious reservations about this line of argument...

...in banks, Treasury bills and equity contributed to Riyadh's self-confidence...

...In the first case, the most significant factor was the difference in the two delegations' methods of operation at Blair House...

...At the conference itself, though, Saudi Arabia joined the "rejection-ists"??who condemned the peace negotiations, called for an economic and political boycott of Egypt and agreed to raise a multibillion dollar fund to continue the fight against Israel...

...when the first critical test came, Riyadh refused to support the Camp David agreements and back President Sadat...

...Foreign Minister Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizmann, Euahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Meanwhile, Israelis are trying to pinpoint what went wrong after completion of the draft peace treaty at Blair House in November...

...The Israelis believed that by giving up all of Sinai they had obtained a five-year grace period to test, and to get slowly used to, the Arab autonomy in the West Bank that could subsequently lead to complete Palestinian self-determination...

...Does it want to become a member of the Warsaw Pact...

...For they have raised a huge question mark about the Carter Administration's determination and ability to bring about and maintain Pax Americana in the Middle fast...

...In any event, during the preparatory stages of the Baghdad Conference against Egypt's peace moves, Riyadh kept reassuring both Cairo and Washington privately that it was working 6 The New Leader RIYADH MARKETPLACE hard behind the scenes in support of Sadat's position...

...The Egyptians, working under strict orders, took a hard line on practically all issues, then called President Anwar Sadat for further instructions ??enabling him to soften or qualify an initially tough stand when he wanted to...

...One was the Administration's expressed conviction that once Israel and Egypt reached an overall agreement, the U.S...

...And once they conferred, it almost immediately became apparent to the two men that the time had come to downplay deadlines...

...It was not long after the Senate approved the sale by a narrow majority, that this analysis proved correct...

...That helps explain why Sadat suddenly sought changes in the Blair House draft, especially in the texts of articles VI (5) and IV...

...Consequently, they repeatedly found themselves having to win over both Begin and the hardliners in the Cabinet, and by the time they succeeded Egypt had changed its mind and raised the ante...

...Press reports had Secretary of State Vance warning the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that blocking the sale would cast serious doubts in Arab minds about America's readiness to cooperate with moderate Arab regimes...

...Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, in a "college-try" shuttle effort to beat the calendar, was waiting there with Egypt's latest amendments when Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrived from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies in Oslo...

...But when they called home for approval, they frequently found Begin??under pressure from the hawks within his party??less willing to yield...

...and ultimately, to perceptions of a shift in the balance of power between East and West in the Middle East...

...Nevertheless, last spring, when the U.S...

...His language left no doubt about the enormity of shock waves sent through Egypt by the unanimous condemnation that came out of Baghdad...

...Yet overriding these matters, in the eyes of most analysts here, is the question of why Saudi Arabia switched from what appeared to be tacit tolerance of the American sponsored Israeli-Egyptian agreement to open hostility...

...The Egyptians, eager to show the other Arabs that they were not selling out the Palestinians, sought tangible and obvious proof of the movement toward autonomy, even before the peace treaty was signed...

...The air remains too heavy with mutual recriminations??as Israel, Egypt and the U.S...

...Instead of increasing the seller's influence over the buyer, it was the buyer who was soon to demonstrate his independence of the seller...

...The latter provides, among other things, for the establishment of demilitarized zones in the Sinai and for the stationing of UN troops between Egypt and Israel...

...While many Israelis realized what motivated Sadat, his sudden shift of position strengthened the hand of those who had always argued that any dispute over autonomy could provide Egypt with an excuse not to carry out its part of the deal...

...Neither Begin nor Sadat nor President Carter??in their intemperate statements in the last days before the breakdown of the talks last month...

...is no longer the most reliable protector against such a threat...

...He now had to try to insulate himself from further accusations of "abandoning Egypt's obligations" under the Joint Defense Pact of the Arab League...

...As for the political misunderstandings, these were already in evidence at Camp David...

...Additionally, the Baghdad meeting prompted Sadat to demand that the normalization of Israeli-Egyptian ties be more closely linked to autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza...

...the problem now was avoiding a complete deadlock...

...would be able to secure Saudi Arabia's support for it...

...The former states, de facto, that where the treaty conflicts with the international obligations of the contracting parties, the treaty takes precedence...

...Washington, in a clumsy attempt to convince the West Bankers to cooperate with the autonomy plan, sent State Department Arabist Harold Saunders to the area...

...Israel was represented by two strong personalities...

...Yet all these obstacles probably could have been overcome, were it not for the consequences of broader international events...

...Thus as this is being written, the expectation is that in mid-January Vance will initiate a new round of peace talks...

...Senate debated the sale of 60 F-15 planes to Saudi Arabia, the Administration's main argument was that the deal was necessary to strengthen U.S...

...influence in Riyadh in general, and to advance Israeli-Arab peace efforts in particular...

...By the same token, it is argued, the Saudis probably decided that it would be wise to take out a kind of "reinsurance" in the form of closer integration with inter-Arab political alliances, even if that meant falling in line with the Iraqis and Syrians on the Camp David issue...

...As the New York Times reported from Cairo, President Sadat felt stabbed in the back by the Saudis...

...Toward that end, within two weeks Vance held hastily arranged meetings in Brussels with Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egypt's Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil...

...LESSONS OF THE IMPASSE What Separates Israel and Egypt by eliahu salpeter CYRUS R. VANCE Tel Avtv The failure to meet last month's deadline for the signing of an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was almost as great a disappointment here as in Washington...

...Three days later Cairo announced that it, too, was prepared to return to the negotiating table...