Israel's Cold Peace

...In part, their hostility is rooted in decades of anti-Israel propaganda...

...In the eyes of the Egyptians, it was Israel that denied the peace" by unfriendly acts toward the Arabs over the past six years...

...Israeli observers have noted, however, that in the past Mubarak has set other conditions for normalization, including full autonomy for the Palestinians...

...Yet Egypt at present is doing exactly the opposite...

...They include not only the members of the Opposition parties but also wide circles in the middle ranks of the bureaucracy, whose cooperation is vital to executing the decisions taken at the policymaking level...

...The answer, of course, is negative...

...Israel claims that the British, who ruled Egypt when the Turks controlled Palestine, moved the original markers...

...TABA AND BEYOND Israel's Cold Peace byeliahu salpeter Tel Aviv Israeli and Egyptian delegations, meeting in Cairo and in Herzlia, a Tel Aviv suburb, have reached agreement on all the technical points snagging negotiations on Taba...

...Meanwhile, Hussein's public chastisements of Arafat have not won the King the applause of Israelis either...

...In addition, they have recommended that the talks begin in the form of conciliation, and that if no agreement is reached within four weeks, should automatically proceed to the arbitration phase...

...David Kimche, on the other hand, was very specific in outlining the sorry state of relations between Cairo and Jerusalem: "Has the peace that we have today met our expectations...

...For it is understood that once the relatively minor issue is settled, talks on the autonomy of Palestine will start again— with the implicit assumption that here, too, some compromise will have to be reached...

...The most controversial of the 15 small contested areas along the border between the two countries, Taba, occupiesamere 600 yards just south of Eilat and is the site of a big tourist hotel...

...The width of the gap between the two countries was sharply underscored in a recent symposium at Tel Aviv University on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the late President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem...

...in part, it reflects a frustration produced by their loss of importance and influence because of the more liberal stance initiated by Sadat and continued by Mubarak, and is not directly related to the Jewish State...

...Cairo claims that according to border markers set before World War I, the land is on the Egyptian side...

...Compare his situation to that of Egyptian charge d'affaires Mohammed Bassiouni, the star of Israel's press, radio and television...

...As a result, even when an Israeli and an Egyptian try these days to deal with each other sympathetically, they have difficulty finding a common set of facts needed for discussion...

...I am disappointed...

...El Al and Air Sinai fly daily between Cairo and Ben-Gurion Airport...

...A ix this, Professor Shamir cautioned, has strengthened the resistance of those who were against peace with Israel from the outset...

...Egypt was represented by Energy Minister Abdel-Hady Kandil, who happened to be in Tel Aviv on some oil sale negotiations . Israel was represented by Foreign Ministry Director General David Kim-che, while "The Israeli View from Cairo" was presented by Professor Shimon Eliahu Salpeter, a regularNL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...Recent political and diplomatic developments in the Middle East, though, have certainly not been conducive to reducing the Israeli-Egyptian tensions, let alone improving the prospects for peace in the whole region...

...They have been accompanied by Jordan's sudden rapprochement with Syria, one of the leaders of the hard-line anti-Israel camp and safe harbor of some of the most extreme PLO factions that have split away from Arafat...

...Old maps support Jerusalem...

...and President Mubarak repeatedly and vehemently reaffirms his adherence to peace with Israel and to Camp David...

...According to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, any territorial questions not resolved by the two parties directly are to be settled through conciliation or, if that fails, arbitration...

...incident at Ras Burka [where an Egyptian soldier opened fire and killed eight Israeli tourists, three of them children, climbing the sand dunes near the Red Sea...

...Indeed, Israelis suspect that Mubarak's growing Arafat friendship is motivated less by expectations of softening PLO intransigence than by a desire to make Egypt more acceptable to hard-line Arab countries...

...The people have to be helped to forget the hostility...

...Be that as it may, Shamir believes the badly deteriorated Israeli-Egyptian relationship is not beyond repair, assuming the leadership on both sides is willing to pursue active steps toward better mutual understanding: Jerusalem must give greater consideration to the effect of its actions on Egyptian public opinion...

...The Foreign Minister's unyielding attitude has prompted the suspicion that his concern is the West Bank, not Taba...

...Mubarak was quoted by his officials to that effect...

...But that, obviously, is not enough...

...The first step, in his opinion, would be reaching a compromise with Mubarak over Taba...

...Peres and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak are inclined to accept this compromise...

...They have to be eradicated...

...This at a time when Jordan's King Hussein has become openly disillusioned about the chances of persuading the PLO leader to accept negotiations that would bring together Israel, Jordan and Palestinians not formally identified with him...

...This last point is far more serious than it may appear...

...But his designated successor in the National Unity Cabinet, Foreign Minister and Likud Leader Yitzchak Shamir, has insisted conciliation still has to be tried...

...President Mubarak, in what he suggests is an effort to bring the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) around to accepting UN resolutions 242 and 338 and recognizing Israel's right to exist, has been embracing Yasir Arafat...

...Prime Minister Shimon Peres happens to agree...

...The 40 or more agreements we signed with Egypt before we completed our withdrawal from Sinai have not been kept...

...Egyptian claims, right or wrong, are presented with a vehemence quite out of proportion to reality...

...Shamir further observed that the establishment of a parallel Egyptian Academic Center in Israel has been repeatedly postponed because of footdragging by the hostile Egyptian bureaucracy...

...The Egyptian mass media are carefully isolated from Israeli arguments...

...Because six years have passed since the treaty was signed and no progress has been made on the matter, Cairo has been arguing the time has come for arbitration...

...I fear that instead of marching toward greater cooperation, we are sliding downhill...

...Prime Minister Peres is convinced that after Taba is out of the way, Egypt will resume the normalization process between the two countries, and that the Egyptian ambassador, who was called home during the war in Lebanon, will return to Tel Aviv...

...Professor Shamir also started out with the outward signs of normalcy in Israeli-Egyptian relations, commenting in particular on the great number of Egyptian students visiting the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo...

...Perhaps more important, the Sinai remains demilitarized...

...Ourlistofcomplaintsiswellknown...

...Prime Minister Peres still thinks both contrary trends can be reversed...

...Cairo must make it possible for the Israeli side of events to be widely heard in Egypt...

...In fact, very little of anything characterizes our relations today...

...Shamir wants to prevent any West Bank negotiations...

...It would not be right to disregard how the attitude is turning more and more against you,' Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghaly told me in our last meeting...

...There has been no cultural exchange, no trade to speak of, no Egyptian tourism, no political dialogue, no scientific and technological cooperation...

...And he stressed the unfortunate impact that inadequate information about crises between the two nations was having on Egyptian public opinion...

...Although Kandil's brief address was very friendly, it was full of platitudes and avoided any substantive discussion of the issues or attitudes that have prevented progress toward achieving the promise held out by the treaty...

...Shamir, however, continues to maintain that the process must begin from square one...

...Shamir, for several years head of the Israeli Academic Center in the Egyptian capital, the one cultural channel that continued to function...

...There is, to be sure, the brighter side, and I do not belittle it...

...What the two delegations have now completed is the drafting of protocols on the procedures to be followed in either case...

...This is not the sort of peace I had hoped for...

...Thirty years of war leave their scars...

...Instead, we see scurrilous attacks on usintheEgyptianpress, a refusal to print anything positive about us, or, to allow our ambassador to be heard...

...Israeli tourists by the tens of thousands visited Egypt unmolested until the terribly tragic...

...That the Israelis react to Egyptian behavior with dismay, suspicion and sometimes anger is simply not known to the Egyptians," said Shamir...

...But he went on to point out: "On second look, you realize that the courtesy during incidental meetings is more restrained, and that the positions taken by intellectuals have become sharper, occasionally quite extreme...

...But to test his estimate he needs the approval of the government, and his Likud partners are not ready for that...