Lessons of the Mideast Peace Process

...The Saudis, they contend, can afford to finance the PLO and other opponents of U .S...

...of passive resistance (like students' and shopkeepers' strikes...

...in exchange for American support of Riyadh, regardless of Saudi actions and policies...

...The Israelis, who warned the correspondents against undue pessimism, see the whole affair as confirmation of the Administration's readiness to put the blame on this country in order to win favor with the Arabs, and as an example of how the media can be manipulated...

...The Arab population on the West Bank is more likely to support the growth of extremism...

...accomplishes both in the Middle East and globally, in the attempt to bolster the outcome of the Camp David agreements...

...Israelis, who believe they have a more realistic appreciation of the true dimension of American-Saudi interdependence than do Washington officials or oil company executives, are convinced this is as much a matter of American psychological attitudes as of State Department policies...

...Indeed, his impressive and repeated assertions of the depth of American commitment to Israel's security offset somewhat the grave impact of Washington's abrogation of its treaties with Taiwan, and of its evident impotence in the face of the upheaval in Iran...

...This led several of America's most respected correspondents and broadcasters to almost unequivocally announce the complete breakdown of the talks...

...With the public at large here, the new tactics of the hardliners are almost certain to boomerang...

...Then, on the Carters' last night in Jerusalem, the hitherto effective official screening was eased a bit and U.S...

...In the region itself, Washington will have to find ways to make the Saudis back—or, at least, stop publicly denouncing—the peace settlement, as well as to continue providing Egypt with $1.5 billion or so in annual support...

...This was clearly underscored by the parallel demonstrations of PLO-inspired West Bank Arabs and nationalist and religious Jewish hardliners eager to make their conflicting feelings known to Carter...

...Ironically, the strong reaction of the PLO, the Arab Rejectionist Front and Moscow to the treaty suggests that they fear Begin's expectations will be realized...

...By the time the President was set to return home (even before the success of his mission became known), most Israelis had come to believe that he genuinely felt it was his obligation to risk his own, and the Presidency's, prestige to try to break the vicious circle of lsEliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...But in recent weeks, some of the Gush Emunim have turned to "direct action": vigilante sorties against Arab demonstrators on the West Bank, and well-planned provocations against the Israeli police and Army...

...For Sadat, the road must lead to complete Palestinian Arab independence...

...It is between the credibility of the U.S...

...Nobody here has any illusion about the important political role the PLO has assigned to violence by its adherents in the overall effort to wreck the chances of an Israeli-Arab peace...

...On each side it has already assumed some new, dangerous forms...

...Nevertheless, the general outlines of the disputed issues were fairly accurately reported, as were the alternate swells of optimism and pessimism in the negotiating parties...

...With the Israeli-Egyptian treaty a reality, violence in the Arab and Israeli extremist camps is likely to escalate...

...Consequently, the effectiveness of Israel's longstanding policy of drawing a firm line between liberal tolerance of extremist pronouncements and tough repression of acts of violence, will probably be severely tested...

...journalists were given a very gloomy briefing on the state of the talks that implicity pointed an accusing finger at the Israelis...

...But they were to change their assessment...

...The fate of the Israeli-Egyptian settlement is, therefore, closely tied to America's willingness to aid the economic stability of its Middle East allies, oblige Western Europe to support the current peace drive and, most of all, demonstrate its readiness to again assume the leadership of the free world...

...The real object of the Camp David agreements was to postpone a decision, to fudge the issue in confused legal language and invoke a five-year period of delay called "autonomy...

...Vigilantism is despised by the opposition Socialists as much as by the conservatives who form the great majority of the government coalition...

...Only Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell can explain (and his explanations to date have been unconvincing) why he gave a 99 per cent negative interpretation of the situation at the briefing when the odds on success were 50:50, since Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan were still in the midst of discussing what became the saving compromise formulas...

...The real interdependence, in short, is not between Saudi Arabia selling oil to the U.S...

...Previously among the Arabs, militancy had consisted mostly of anti-Israeli pronouncements by pro-PLO notables...

...The erosion of law and order, be it in matters of income tax or traffic regulations, labor relations or political activities, has become a major concern in Israel, too, in recent years...

...protection...

...determination to assist its friends and allies, and the use of its weight against those who combine with America's enemies to challenge its vital interests...

...The third lesson, brought home by the touch-and-go atmosphere of the President's Cairo-Jerusalem-Cairo shuttle, is the vulnerability of the achievements so far in the peace process...

...Equally important will be what the U.S...

...But everything does not depend on what Israelis and Palestinians will do or fail to do in the coming weeks and months...

...Taking advantage of the sympathies of the Prime Minister, the blessings of Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon and their close ties with the hardliners in the National Religious Party, they had been setting up illegal new West Bank settlements one after another in the hope of thwarting the implementation of any future Palestinian autonomy...

...Now, however, the newly created Bir Zeit University (actually a college)—whose student spokesmen speak a surprisingly fluent, American-accented English—has become the focus of organized demonstrations and riots patently aimed at provoking a physical response from Israeli police and soldiers...

...The similarity of the tactics employed by the gun-slinging young Jewish settlers from Ofra and rockthrowing Arab students in Halhul has chillingly demonstrated the potential impact of small extremist groups on the most crucial phase of relations between the Palestinians and Israelis...

...On the other hand, Israel's opposition Labor Party (which supports the arrangements with Egypt but wants a geographical division of the sovereignity of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan), and the hawks in Begin's own parliamentary coalition (who oppose all compromise), fully share President Sadat's assessment that the autonomy will inevitably lead to a Palestinian state...

...The subsequent negotiations, and the American intervention that culminated in the President's trip, were a salvage operation to reinstate, with minor changes, the Camp David evasion formula...

...To their credit, until the final 24 hours of the Carter journey, the hundreds of reporters, commentators and other pundits on hand for the occasion candidly admitted that their information was sketchy at best...

...For Begin, the establishment of Palestinian state on the West Bank must be prevented if the Jewish State is to survive...

...But lessons continue to be drawn here from the experience, and especially from the climactic Presidential gamble...

...opinion polls as about peace in the Middle East...

...One concerns the journalistic profession...

...raeli-Arab warfare...

...And what happens in the Middle East could have a decisive effect on Washington's ability to discharge its leadership role in other parts of the globe...

...and the simultaneous increased doubts in Israel about the wisdom of exchanging strategic assets for a mere delay of the decision on the Palestinian issue...

...On the Jewish side, the main body of opposition has come from the religious Gush Emunim group...

...of school children (whom their elders knew to be immune from harsh reprisals) throwing stones at Israeli soldiers...

...What happened after Camp David reflected the increased pressures on Sadat (accelerated by the success of Moslem fanaticism in Iran) not to make peace under any condition...

...The positions of President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin on the ultimate future of the Palestinians—and thus the interpretations of the autonomy plan agreed to at Camp David—are diametrically opposed...

...Resolution of the questions about the true nature of Palestinian autonomy will be the key to the viability of the Israeli-Egyptian settlement...

...peace efforts, or to hint at flirting with Moscow, just so long as they do not fear the loss of U .S...

...The Israeli public, including a majority of the Cabinet and of leading Knesset members, was at first convinced that Jimmy Carter was at least as much concerned about his standing in U.S...

...A second—and in this instance positive—lesson has to do with the effectiveness of highest-level diplomacy...

...INFLUENCE Lessons of the Mideast Peace Process by eliahu salpeter Tel Aw The 16-month long Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations —which reached their dramatic climax not at the March 26 signing ceremonies in Washington, but during President Carter's four-day cliff-hanger trip to the Middle East two weeks earlier—have by now become one of the most "analyzed" (although not necessarily one of the most fully disclosed) events in contemporary history...

...For the reactionary, corrupt and incredibly rich Establishment of barren, underpopulated Saudi Arabia can survive only by bribing its present and potential small enemies while shielding behind American protection against the bigger ones...

...and of occasional assistance to terrorists...

...Both leaders have been making this abundantly clear almost daily, and they took particular pains to do so at the treaty signing in Washington...