Taking the Measure of Mubarak

...Having threatened for years to kill "the traitor Sadat," the PLO and the Libyan-Syrian sponsored "Rejection Front" undoubtedly will receive a big boost from the assassination...

...Sadat's own demeanor during his years under Gamal Abdel Nasser was proof of this...

...interrupt the withdrawal, the responsibility for upsetting the peace process will without doubt be laid at our doorstep...

...Ever since the Camp David agreements, Israelis had been living in the shadow of a question: What would happen to the peace with Egypt if President Anwar Sadat were to disappear...

...First, Jerusalem's estimate of how deeply the extremists have infiltrated the Egyptian Armed Forces...

...Egypt, America's staunchest Arab friend and the only Arab peacemaker, was sidetracked in favor of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which opposed the peace agreement and refused to permit the stationing of American troops on its soil even for its own defense...

...But even Moshe Dayan, who probably did more for the success of Camp David than any other man in Israel, advised his countrymen to "watch events carefully" in commenting on Rightist demands to postpone the retreat from Sinai...

...Therefore, a substantial shift in the peace process would involve an equally momentous change in Cairo's global orientation, something no new leader is likely to undertake, even if he wanted to, before firmly consolidating power...

...In addition, while Sadat was alive, the struggle between Cairo and the extremist Arabs was over Egyptian foreign policy, particularly the question of relations with Israel...

...The demonstrations of joy set off by the news of the murder in the streets of Tripoli, Damascus and the PLO-dominated Moslem sections of Beirut sent a chill down the spines of most Israelis, although they wanted with all their hearts to believe Vice President Hosni Mubarak's assurances on the night of the assassination that Sadat's legacy of peace would be nurtured...

...The attitude on both will probably depend, at least in the short run, on two factors...

...For the small minority of Israelis who had always cautioned against trusting the Egyptians and opposed the evacuation from Sinai, the assassination was clear proof that their warnings were justified...

...In a sense, it is felt Sadat became a victim of the awacs syndrome before the $8.5 billion arms sale to the Riyadh regime was put to a vote in Congress...

...Not only had the Egyptian President been assassinated...

...The present American Administration is seen as having made its mistake vis-avis Sadat when it failed to push for progress in the autonomy talks and, more important, when it indicated that it had downgraded the significance of the Camp David agreements and of the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty...

...his murderers, albeit reportedly Moslem fundamentalists, were members of the Army, thought to be among his strongest bases of support...

...Doubt about the depth of commitment to the peace process inside Egypt inevitably surfaced, particularly with Israel due to return the second half of Sinai next April under the terms of Camp David...

...All this promises to produce stepped-up political activity-and in-fighting-in the Arab world a few months hence...

...He was particularly active in maintaining contacts with leaders of other Arab countries for his predecessor...

...supervised demilitarization of the Sinai peninsula would provide reasonable protection from surprises in the South after the buffer zone was back in Egyptian hands...

...Yet if we Eliahu Salpeter, who has long reported from Israel in The New Leader, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Moreover, Sadat suffered from a serious heart ailment that could result in his untimely departure from the scene...

...The personality of the leader, be he strong or weak, always has had a determining influence on the Nile Valley country...

...In contrast to his chief, they observe, he was impatient with Jerusalem's hesitation about instituting West Bank autonomy...

...and second, the balance Hosni Mubarak strikes between continuing Sadat's legacy and returning Egypt to the Arab fold...

...Israeli politicians contend that Mubarak' s ultimate course could depend to a very large extent on Washington's actions in the months ahead...

...The Carter Administration is viewed as having contributed heavily to the fall of the Shah by giving him the wrong advice at the wrong moment on how to deal with his domestic opposition...

...It had been accepted that Sadat's leadership and the U.S...

...It also was taken for granted that the probability of a future Arab adventure against Israel had been sharply reduced, because the elimination of Egyptian participation made the chances of success much less likely...

...When Sadat arrested some 1,300 of his opponents last September, mainly among the Moslem religious extremists, he was apparently more aware of the dangers facing him than many of the Western European pundits and politicians who said he was "losing his nerve" or "overreacting...

...Israeli experts wonder whether that is the sole reason Mubarak visited Israel only once (accompanying Sadat to Beer Sheba), and unlike several top Egyptians never developed better than correct relations with any Israeli leader...

...Israel is caught in a trap," a top official said privately...

...Stricter security arrangements were enforced, too...

...Experts point out that every major event in one of the big Arab countries sends tremors through the entire Arab world, but the effect becomes evident only after the passage of some time...

...Arab affairs experts here tend to agree that regardless of whether Mubarak succeeds in assuring continuity of the regime, Egypt after Sadat will not be the same...

...Mubarak is known in Israel as a very efficient administrator who implemented Sadat's policies and was being groomed for succession ever since the Yom Kippur War...

...These assumptions will have to be tested anew in light of Cairo's policies in the coming months...

...In any case, Mubarak is expected to hit hard at the opposition (as he reportedly urged Sadat to do many months ago), and to play down the broadening of the peace process in an effort to improve ties with other Arab countries?but without jeopardizing the Israeli-Egyptian relationship...

...Still, the same Arabists caution, it is important to keep in mind that in a country like Egypt no second-in-command would want to project a very strong personality or display strong ideological commitments, let alone express dissenting views, while the man he was serving was in power...

...Arabists here note that Sadat's Israel initiative was closely linked with his turn from Moscow to Washington...

...With Sadat gone and the Middle East's future unclear, Israel must reassess its security situation...

...On the other hand, Saudi Arabia's importance in the less-extreme Arab camp (and in the eyes of the West) will probably also increase...

...Israeli observers, citing the speed and efficiency with which Mubarak and his associates took control, suggest that this must have been preying on the minds of the Egyptian leadership...

...The possibility of assassination could not be excluded in a region where "solving" political disputes by the physical elimination of an opponent was the practice long before personal terror also became common in the West...

...But prior to that Israel will have to determine its line on the autonomy talks, due to be reopened shortly, and?even though no official would admit it openly-on the pace of preparations for the final evacuation of Sinai in April 1982...

...That emphasis has shifted, and control of Egypt itself is the issue...

...In this sense, the attack that took place October 6, on the eighth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, foreshortened history: The test of the peace process without Sadat would now come before, not after, evacuation of the strategic buffer areas protecting Israel's southern border...

...We could make a tragic mistake giving up all Sinai, as if nothing happened, before we know who really are Egypt's new rulers...

...It is further noted that Mubarak neither said nor did anything in the past to imply less than full agreement with Sadat's basic policies...

...When he met death by violence during a full-dress military parade, the question on everyone's mind here assumed the harshest realities...

...As has been demonstrated elsewhere, though, there is no way to fully protect a national figure from a fanatical attack...

...Former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin has said publicly what not a few other Israeli leaders feel privately: that the Reagan Administration, too, shares some responsibility for the unhappy events in Cairo...