Marking Time in the Middle East

...If elections were held tomorrow, however, Labor would not necessarily be a shoo-in...

...CHANGES THAT CHANGE LITTLE Marking Time in the Middle East BY ELIAHU SALTPETER Tel Aviv The new calendar year got under way here with a variety of developments involving issues crucial to the Middle East's future...

...But Hussein unexpectedly flew to Damascus, patched up his decade-old feud with Assad and pledged never to negotiate separately with Israel...

...This was followed by still another flare-up of the shooting, this time between the Druse and the Shiites, on the one hand, and the Christian militias on the other...

...Otherwise, relations with Egypt could revert to where they were before Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem—and Israel no longer has the Sinai to provide strategic depth...

...Peres himself still has something of a "credibility problem" dating back to the days when he lost out to Me-nachem Begin...

...Beyond Labor's desire to retain its leverage, the public opinion polls indicate a distinct lack of enthusiasm for returning to essentially the old Likud rule...

...And during the past half dozen years he has not only painstakingly worked at clearing his public image but has had substantial success in doing so, especially since becoming the Prime Minister...

...therefore, that he will again be tagged '' tricky Shimon" if he torpedoes the rotation without some iron-clad cause...

...Under Peres Israel has pulled out of Lebanon, put the breaks on a disastrous inflation, repaired much of the damage done to the country's image abroad, and poised itself to start reversing the deterioration of relations with Egypt...

...With considerable help from the autobiography of Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who was then maneuvering to be the Labor Party leader, Likud succeeded in painting Peres as a master of intrigue and generally untrustworthy...

...Industry Minister Ariel Sharon's vicious personal and political attack last November on the Prime Minister's integrity fit the bill, and public opinion widely supported Peres' initial insistence that Sharon quit the government—notwithstanding Likud's warning that his dismissal would mean the end of the coalition...

...For although the "inner Cabinet" is evenly split between five Labor and five Likud ministers, the past year has demonstrated that even under this mutual-veto arrangement the Prime Minister has the upper hand in numerous circumstances where the two sides differ...

...Equally important, the strident tone of domestic political argument has been moderated, permitting a more civilized dialogue...

...After an eight-month "war of attrition" waged by his Likud coalition partners, Prime Minister Shimon Peres finally managed to obtain a unanimous Cabinet vote committing Israel to arbitration of its dispute with Egypt over the tiny Taba beachfront area south of Eilat (see "Israel's Cold Peace," NL, November 4-18, 1985...

...Billions of dollars of U.S...

...In addition, the democratization initiated by assassinated President Anwar Sadat and continued by Mubarak has led to the revival of virulent Opposition parties and to the resurgence of Moslem fundamentalist extremism...

...No date was set for either step, though, and Mubarak appears reluctant to be seen in a summit with the Israeli Prime Minister...

...Had Hussein accepted Peres' invitation to talk, Likud, which opposes any compromise with the Palestinians, would have quit the government coalition, preempting the rotation...

...Peres is understandably concerned, Eliahu Salpeter, a regularNL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...Yet in this instance as well, after throwing down the gauntlet and receiving broad public backing, the Prime Minister accepted Likud's partial retreat and several new stipulations that could further complicate negotiations with Cairo...

...Egypt, meanwhile, has so far exhibited none of the movement Peres expected...

...During the last year of Israel's presence in South Lebanon, the Syrians gained control over the Druse and the Shiites, and made the country's Christian President Amin Gemayel tear up any agreement negotiated with Jerusalem...

...Thanks to a population explosion, 50 million mostly rural Egyptians are today trying to support themselves on an area of cultivable land equivalent to that of Holland, a highly industrialized nation of 12 million...

...King Hussein failed to convince Yasir Arafat to accept UN resolutions 242 and 338, thus opening the way for Israel-Jordan talks about the future of the West Bank...

...What all the activity on the various fronts since the start of the year has added up to is thus clear...

...But an eight-month conciliation period Likud insisted upon could put off arbitration until 1987, when Shamir would be responsible for implementing decisions, and that does not augur well for preventing the further estrangement of Israel and Egypt...

...The "victory" resulted from his patiently negotiating on two fronts simultaneously: He got his coalition partners to reduce their terms for an agreement, and he seemed to persuade Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak to accept some of Likud's demands for normalization of relations between the two countries...

...This had two consequences: It made the danger of a Syrian attack on Israel much more real, and it blew away perhaps the last chance to avoid Peres' having to hand over the Prime Minister's office to Shamir...

...Assad then tried a new tack: Instead of forcing another political agreement on the warring ethnic groups, he called their militia commanders to Damascus and had them sign a 23-page "armistice agreement...

...In fact, only the first page dealt with ending the fighting...

...In the north, too, things seem to be sliding toward their nasty old ways...

...Most of the Labor Party hierarchy would have welcomed such an end to the coalition, whose second two-year phase—requiring Peres and Shamir to rotate their present posts—begins next October...

...Gemayel rejected the document, although it was signed on the Christians' behalf by ElieHobeika, commander of his own militia...

...Both use anti-Americanism and violent anti-Israel propaganda as their maj or tools for capturing the masses...

...Israelis hope that eliminating the Taba dispute will at least check the steadily growing hostility toward them...

...The worry is that these gains could soon be lost with Shamir at the helm...

...now, even if he wanted to erase the public's anti-Israel feelings, it may be too late...

...aid barely manage to feed and clothe the needy, leaving almost nothing to invest in development or the collapsing infrastructure...

...Actually, extensive deliberation bordering on hesitation, plus an unusual readiness to compromise, are his typical characteristics...

...It shows that in the Middle East, too, the more things change the more they stay the same...

...In the East events have also been sliding backward...

...It had agreed that once Israel officially accepted arbitration in the case of Taba, the "process of normalization" would resume...

...This was to include sending back the ambassador it withdrew from Tel Aviv in 1982 to protest the Lebanese incursion, and an early meeting between Mubarak and Peres...

...Ultimately, Foreign Minister and Likud Leader Yitzchak Shamir and his colleagues could not reject the draft document that was hammered together without giving Peres a good reason to break up the government...

...But when Sharon finally produced a watered-down retraction and a half-hearted apology, the Prime Minister relented...

...The security zone north of Israel, policed by the Israel-supported local militia under General Antoine Lahad, is once more becoming the only place in Lebanon where civilians can work and sleep in relative peace and security...

...Likud's stonewalling over arbitration for Taba similarly presented an opportunity to bury the coalition honorably...

...What they are adding up to is another matter...

...Mubarak has made the mistake in recent years of not allowing Israel to present its views in the Egyptian media...

...Yet soon the three sides were again shooting at each other, as they had been before Israel invaded in 1982...

...When that happens, Syria will again have to send in its troops or face the loss of its influence...

...In part, his reticence may be related to worsening objective and subjective conditions in his own country...

...After Hobeika and his family were exiled to Paris, and the militia and the regular Lebanese Army (or what was left of it) pledged allegiance to the President, Gemayel flew to Damascus in a vain effort to convince Assad to change the provisions of the "armistice...

...For a while it appeared that Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had finally achieved his long sought control of Lebanon without having to engage a single unit of the Syrian Army...

...Within 48 hours Ho-beika's troops were overpowered ("defeated" would mistakenly imply serious fighting) and "reintegrated" into units under the command of his deputy, Amir Geagea...

...Poverty, overcrowding and unemployment are mounting, causing the eruption of latent social unrest...

...The consensus of observers here is that eventually fighting will escalate until there is a full-scale revival of the civil war that marked the late '70s and early '80s...

...the remaining 22 pages detailed a new political status quo in Lebanon that added up to a considerable reduction of the Christian community's share in the state powers, and a significant restriction of the (Christian) President's authority...