Steps Toward Peace

IT IS NOT for us to deny Jimmy Carter's diplomatic coup in emerging from the Pocotin Mountains last month with the Camp David Agreement. It was indeed a personal triumph. It was at Carter's suggestion that President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel agreed to come to the U.S. and confer face-to-face, and it was apparently only Carter's tireless mediation that kept the talks from ending in a frustrating deadlock. But it should also be noted that Carter's efforts were not simply a product of his missionary zeal; it is clear that the primary U.S. interest in the Middle East is to establish peace. With the Camp David accords, Carter postponed for some time to come the dilemma of what position the U.S. would take in a full scale Arab-Israeli war--a dilemma that would force the U.S. to make impossible choices, and that might well produce severe divisiveness at home.

There is also no point in debating over whether or not the agreement constituted a "seperate peace" between Egypt and Israel. It clearly was just that; and the Sinai agreement ratified last week by the Israeli Knesset marked a remarkable step toward ending hostilities between the two countries. To be realistic, moreover, that is really all that could be expected. It is inconceivable that the Begin government, or any other Israeli government, would have accepted any agreement that did not include a seperate peace, since Israel views the diffusion of Egypt as a military threat as essential to its primary interest, Israeli national security. The question for Sadat then was how much he could get in return for the separate settlement toward resolving the primary issue for the Arab countries, the Palestinian problem. What Sadat decided was to settle for Israel's agreement to a "framework" for solving the Palestinian question, in the hope that once underway, movement toward a self-ruled Palestinian entity on the West Bank could not easily be stopped.

WE DO NOT think that Sadat was wrong in making this calculation. The Camp David "framework" document does provide an abstract outline that points in the direction of a concrete answer to the hopes of the Palestinians. For the first time in a while it reintegrates into the diplomatic dialogue adherence to U.N. Resolution 242, as well as the commitment to resolve the Palestinian issue "in all its aspects." It also calls on Egypt and Israel to formulate concrete "modalities" for negotiations over the status of the West Bank that will include Palestinian representatives, and that will give the West Bank Palestinians veto power over a finished settlement.

It would seem therefore that even though there is no hard-and-fast guarantee that a Palestinian state, or even the promised "self-ruled entity," will grow out of this framework, it is in the interest of the moderate Arab states--Jordan and Saudi Arabia-to try to work within it. It would also appear in the interest of the more radical Arab parties--specifically Syria, with its influence over the PLO--not to sabotage it. The Arabs have nothing to lose now, since with Egypt committed to a separate peace they cannot hope to confront Israel militarily for some time. And they may have everything to gain. For even if Israeli stalling or intransigence makes productive West Bank negotiations impossible, the Arab states will then have portrayed themselves to the world as the more reasonable party--and will have lodged an I.O.U. with the U.S. government.

But there are two problems. One is that for the time being this "framework" is just words. The other is that Begin has already begun to re-interpret several major concessions--on the moratorium on West Bank settlements, and on Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank--in a way that gives reason to wonder whether it will ever be more than words. It is therefore legitimate for the Arab states to be keeping their distance from the Camp David agreements, at least until they hear spelled out in more detail what the specifics of the West Bank negotiations and the other "modalities" will be. This also makes it imperative that all the parties already involved--the U.S., Egypt, and Israel--act in good faith in the coming weeks to give substance, not only to the Egypt-Israeli settlement, but also to a mechanism for resolving the status of the West Bank, and for dealing fully and humanely with the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. It is only then that the full promise of Camp David can begin to be realized.