Correspondents' Correspondence

...Mideast Reality . . . In his toast at the state banquet in his honor in Jerusalem last month, President Nixon admonished his hosts to pursue every possible means of negotiation for achieving peace...

...To Saudi Arabia he offered the latest in American arms...

...The Arab countries, which in the past believed revenge or threatening to exterminate Israel were the only ways to satisfy their needs, also find themselves at present in a very different position...

...It is the only mature and satisfactory way for a powerful country to act in a complicated and dangerous world...

...This is the question President Nixon should have asked his Arab hosts...

...The same visitor from Mars might also have assumed that since the President spoke so bluntly to the Israelis, he had been equally candid with his Arab hosts...

...He urged Israel to take "risks," to exhibit "statesmanship," to recognize "that continued war . . . is not the solution for Israel's survival...

...Israel which refused to honor the territorial integrity of the Arab nations surrounding it...

...There seemed to be no end to the replaying of the tragedy...

...A visitor from Mars might have assumed from the tenor of the President's remarks that it was Israel which had launched the four wars that have disrupted the peace of the Middle East since 1948...

...To Syria he offered full diplomatic relations...

...The Soviet Union has not been able or has not seen fit to veto Kissinger's peacemaking efforts, probably because American diplomacy during the past few years created options and concerns for Moscow be it in trade, arms limitations, or with regard to China-that encouraged the Soviets to look to their real interests, rather than play the dangerous game of confrontation politics...

...Consequently, it is not meaningful to measure official statements by their "friendliness" or "even-hand-edness...

...for Kissinger's brand of diplomacy cuts through rhetoric and propaganda to the hard core of national objectives...

...His style, too, tends to divert attention from the substantive strategies he is pursuing...

...Robert B. Goldmann 4...

...Still, only in Jerusalem did Nixon tell his hosts what they were expected to do for peace...

...Until Henry Kissinger got busy, the Mideast scenario was as clear as it was sterile: The U.S...

...Richard Cohen . . . or Mideast Reality...

...All this is to the good...

...By focusing the quest for peace on the genuine security interests of each nation, he has freed the conduct of U.S...

...To Egypt he offered American atomic know-how, fuel and reactors...

...backed Israel, the USSR backed the Arabs, and after every war the United Nations patched things up with an armistice that lacked teeth because the big powers had no direct roles...

...Hardly...

...That is the fruit and the real importance of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy...

...Israel is prepared to recognize Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and all the Arab states in the region...

...President Nixon was the soul of diplomacy in his visits to Arab capitals...

...The Presidential toast must have tasted bitter in the mouths of the Israelis And, indeed, particularly difficult to swallow if they felt Nixon really meant what his words and actions indicated: that the responsibility of "statesmanship" and the burden of taking "risks" for peace fall exclusively on Israel...

...In any Middle East settlement, both Israel and its Arab neighbors will have to make compromises and demonstrate trust...

...In Jidda, King Faisal warned there would never be a real and lasting peace in the area until Jerusalem was liberated...

...By the same token, he must have made clear to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that distributing copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was not conducive to Arab-Jewish understanding...

...In Damascus, President Assad reiterated that peace required satisfying the Palestinians...

...What has occurred in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past few months, however, is the same basic qualitative change in the conduct of American foreign policy that we saw two years ago in Moscow and Peking An effort to move out of the mold of confrontation and to shed some of the ideological baggage that has hampered diplomacy since World War II...

...Watching Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy is like watching a champion athlete at work: The sheer physical performance is very thrilling, yet by itself not really important...

...It is the kind of diplomacy, too, that enables the Secretary of State to engage freely in civilized communication with representatives of all sides, without being subjected to political attack or suspected of bad faith by leaders of the nations involved...

...In Cairo, Sadat informed Nixon to his face there could be no permanent peace in the Middle East unless the national aspirations of the Palestinian people were fulfilled this on a day when three more Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinian terrorists...

...This is much more than a matter of personality, although Kissinger's style and energy add a special quality to his method of doing business...

...foreign policy from the strait jacket of confrontation and ideological jousting, lifting it to a level of creative involvement...

...Surely Nixon had publicly told President Anwar el-Sadat that the time had come to announce Egypt's readiness to sign a peace treaty with Israel, guaranteeing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both countries, and establishing diplomatic, economic and cultural relations between them...

...Washington's new diplomatic approach has made it possible for the United States to involve itself and its power productively in the Middle East...

...Was the President being kind to his hosts because they were so polite with him...

...Now it has suffered a traumatic shock and been compelled to reassess its goals...

...Even though we are still a long way from peace in the Middle East, for the first time in 26 years the future of the area looks just a bit brighter...

...In the Middle East, this has meant an attempt to involve the United States, the Soviet Union and the countries in the area in a quest for stability based on a pursuit of their true interests...

...Alas, the man from Mars would have been disappointed...

...In Amman, King Hussein repeated everything the President had been told in the first three Arab capitals he had visited...

...The Israelis did not publicly raise with him, for example, such matters as the unremitting Arab support of Palestinian terrorists, or the steadfast Arab refusal to accept Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East, or the continuing oppression of Jews living in Arab countries...

...Until it is asked And answered affirmatively there can be no just and lasting peace in the Middle East...

...But all the diplomacy in the world will avail little if each side does not recognize the legitimacy of the other...

...Israel which would not accept the existence of Egypt, Syria and Jordan...

...Will they announce their readiness to recognize Israel...

...To Jordan he offered economic aid, military assistance, and an invitation to come to Washington to work it all out...

...As for Israel, in the light of Arab threats it had settled on a "not-an-inch" policy and created "facts" in the occupied territories that it expected to be accepted as time passed...

...Indeed, some of their leaders have begun to put venomous slogans aside and to focus on the more useful task of identifying real and realistic objectives...

...Only in Jerusalem was President Nixon spared such blunt talk...

...Surely, too, Nixon must have openly declared to President Hafez al-Assad that the Syrians must repudiate all support of the Arab terrorists and cut off all further economic, military and political aid to them...

...Henry Kissinger's Salzburg outburst and the whole sordid wiretapping mess have shifted public discussion away from the significance of his diplomatic accomplishments...