Unfinished Story

...At any rate, his first fantasy did not include any sudden change of heart about Israel's legitimacy, and did not rely on direct negotiations between adversaries...

...In its initial embodiment, the Sadat plan was to invite the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China to a summit meeting in Jerusalem: "In my mind's eye, I could imagine my friends Carter, D'Es-taing and Callaghan visiting these holy places-as well as Hua Kuo-feng...

...Although Carter did not suggest anything so outlandish as a personal mission by the President of Egypt to Jerusalem, his missive did set Sadat to thinking: "When I had sent him my reply, I began a deep and completely fresh appraisal of the situation...

...But it is doubtful whether this book can contribute to the task, for defensive Israeli critics will find here ample evidence for the disingenuous-ness they have always attributed to their neighbors...

...We refused to meet with you, anywhere, yes...

...Now, fresh upon the media triumph that speech produced, Sadat offers us his autobiography, his own self-image, or at least the image he would like to project to the outside world...

...We were together in international conferences and organizations and our representatives did not, and still do not, exchange greetings with you, yes...

...Even those American diplomats most kindly disposed to his present stance concede that the Egyptian President is a damnably difficult person to pin down, on any point, large or small...

...But finally Sadat settled upon his more realistic venture...

...And the root cause was none other than that very psychological barrier...

...To call it self-serving would be superfluous, for such is the nature of the genre...

...we had our reasons and our fears, yes...

...Looking straight at the members of Israel's Knesset assembled in Holy Jerusalem on November 20, 1977, the President of the Arab world's most populous and powerful state said: "We used to reject you...

...Yet it is also a changing abstraction, and what is truth today may not be so tomorrow...

...In all sincerity I tell you we welcome you among us with full security and safety...

...The mistakes made were always those of others...

...After more pages of intrigues and machinations he observes, "Naturally I could not take part in these quarrels but remained aloof watching them, sometimes in amazement, sometimes in disgust, but always with deep pain...

...The important concluding section was hurriedly added after Sadat's return, and the whole was translated by two Egyptian journalists in Cairo...

...From that promising start, Sadat lapsed into a blind alley of his own which revealed the purely psychological intent of his initiative, to say nothing of a strange naivete about the way world leaders do things...

...The story is by no means over, and there are grounds for hoping that the psychological barrier breached by President Sadat can be overcome for good...

...I wanted to put the ball in their court...

...To Sadat, as to much of the watching world, that was a slap on a hand oustretched in welcome, a sign of precisely the bad faith that the visit to Jerusalem should have cleared away...

...Weaving and bobbing through ambiguous and disingenuous communiques, as the bulldozers rumbled along in the night, the Israeli government itself managed to sour the mood of Cairo far more than any of the words of condemnation heard from the Arab brethren...

...Only thus, I decided, could we hope to break out of the vicious circle and avert the blind alley of the past...

...Truth, to Sadat, is a noble abstract virtue by which he says he invariably abides...

...Yet the relative honesty of one or another political leader is hardly the central point at this juncture...

...Indeed Sadat's life story conveys a long record of saying whatever seems to him useful to say at the given moment...

...An empty taxicab drove up and Anwar el-Sadat stepped out"-was just one crack making the rounds of Tel Aviv's smart set in October 1970...

...The full story of what has happened since cannot yet be adequately untangled from the recriminations and countercharges that have filled the airwaves...

...While hardly eloquent, the book nevertheless reads relatively smoothly...

...Yet today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice...

...Ever proclaiming his devotion, Sadat says, "For all the information I possess and all the freedom I have pledged that the people will enjoy, I cannot-out of loyalty to him-allow anybody to slander him...

...But the tone is disappointing...

...No one can be blamed, though, for failing to foresee that the occupant of the empty taxicab would not merely retain his grip on power, but would one day utter some magic words that would change the face of Mideast politics...

...And considering Sadat's mutable notions of truth and sincerity, even the magic words uttered in Jerusalem had better not be counted on until they have been graven in binding accords and commitments...

...nor was I ever cunning...

...If indeed we wanted to get to grips with the substance of the dispute-with the basis of the problem-In order to establish a durable peace, I reasoned, we ought to find a completely new approach that would bypass all formalities and procedural technicalities by pulling down the barrier of mutual mistrust...

...Nevertheless, as Israel took one step toward peace, it took two steps backward: The Begin government hardened its position on the West Bank and, still more galling in Sadat's eyes (though his autobiography does not carry the story this far), Begin permitted an expansion of Israeli settlements not only in the West Bank but in the Sinai as well...

...I wasn't so sure that Brezhnev would accept the invitation...

...are deep in negotiation, this volume also tells much about the motives behind Sadat's peace gesture...

...He was roundly criticized in Israel for being too forthcoming too early in the negotiating process...

...Perhaps so...

...As Sadat notes in Search for Identity, he went to the representatives of the Israeli people "to confront them with the choice they would have to make if they really wanted to live in peace in this part of the world...

...I never sought power or a position in the government," Egypt's President assures us...

...Once again, each side became "simply unwilling to believe the other...

...The plotting and conspiracy of the young Egyptian officers around Nasser was alien to him, Sadat says, as he took up the position of "a detached observer watching their conflicts as though from a window in an ivory tower, laughing but wondering all the while...

...Sadat's italics...

...I realized that we were about to be caught up in a terribly vicious circle precisely like the one we'd lived through over the last 30 years...

...This in itself is a tremendous turning point, one of the landmarks of a decisive historical change...

...Actually, American publishers commissioned the book long before last November, little knowing how apt and timely it would be, and the bulk was written-dictated, rather-before the trip to Jerusalem...

...Besides offering insights into the personal mentality of a figure with whom Israel and the U.S...

...Whether he was dissuaded by Rumanian President Nicolai Ceauses-cu, to whom he confided this wild scheme, or by someone else, Sadat does not say...

...At the same time that he argues his devotion to the truth, he delights in relating the "completely false" testimony he would press upon the British colonial enemy in his younger years...

...And there, for the moment, it rests...

...So I concluded that any possible change should occur to the substance of that attitude itself...

...Israeli Prime Minister Men-achem Begin did offer a major concession-to restore all of Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty...

...It made each side simply unwilling to believe the other, and quite unprepared psychologically to accept anything transmitted through the USA...

...His repeated protestations of his own high character, his abiding faith in love and truth, his devotion to the lands, his pride in his peasant background-all this begins to sound inane...

...There follow three chapters describing the suspicions, power-grubbings, paranoias, and oppressions of the Nasser years-adding up to a verdict more chilling than even the heirs of John Foster Dulles would presume to render on the hero of the Arab and nonal-igned world...

...British and American intelligence services could summon up no greater prescience...

...Analyzing the Egyptian political scene right after Nasser's funeral, both concluded that the new man would not last more than a few weeks...

...In fact, its objective remained the imposed settlement that Arab pride has so long preferred to mutual concessions freely given...

...The treatment of Nasser is particularly nimble...

...Sadat, however, lapses on almost every page into the downright self-indulgent...

...Israel's choice transcends personalities and relates instead to practical political opportunities...

...the later reverses were the fault of United States technology in Israeli hands and "negligence on the part of the Third Army Commander...

...Reviewed by Peter Grose Former correspondent, New York "Times," and member Secretary of State Vance's policy planning staff Recovering promptly from their initial shock and confusion at the sudden death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the enemy they knew, Israel's experts turned smug in contemplating the nonentity who took his place...

...By a 'psychological barrier' I mean that huge wall of suspicion, fear, hate, and misunderstanding that has for so long existed between Israel and the Arabs...

...It started with a letter from President Carter, hand carried to Cairo last September by a member of the Egyptian Embassy in Washington...

...The great victories of the early days of the October War of 1973 came when Sadat was personally supervising things...

...Something will be finally decided they say, and the next day, without notice, the whole issue will stand open and unresolved...