Peaceful Signs Amid Thunder

Once again, guns thundered on the Golan Heights last week as Syrian and Israeli tanks and cannon exchanged rounds in rolling duels across land captured by Israel during the October war. For a time, it appeared that fighting might break out again instead of peace; the Israelis, watching Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko move from Damascus to Cairo and back again, suspected that the Soviets had put Syria up to a renewal of hostilities. Yet even while the guns roared, there were signs that a peace settlement was still viable, and that the shooting, as on the Egyptian front last month, was merely meant to keep the pressure on for disengagement negotiations.

One was the cautious optimism of Syrian President Hafez Assad (see box following page) about disengagement negotiations with Israel that are scheduled to begin soon in Washington under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's sponsorship. Another was that Egypt, regaining complete control of the Suez Canal for the first time in seven years last week, announced major domestic moves toward creation of a peacetime society. Imports will be stepped up, currency regulations eased and student exchanges encouraged.

For both sides, however, the most encouraging sign was the solution of a festering political crisis in Jerusalem. For the past two months, Israeli Premier Golda Meir has been struggling to form a new government in the wake of national elections that reduced the Labor Party's representation in the 120 member Knesset from 57 seats to 51. The impasse was cleared up last week in a peculiarly mystifying Israeli way. Earlier, receiving a group of visiting U.S. tourists, Mrs. Meir had warned them: "You Americans might have difficulty understanding our politics." After observing the elaborate charade performed by Mrs. Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, even many Israelis experienced the same difficulty.

Crippling Blow. The first gambit was made by Dayan, whose reputation as a military leader has been tarnished by Israel's poor showing at the outbreak of war. He sought to regain stature and political strength by proposing the creation of a government of national unity that would include even the right-wing opposition party Likud. Dayan's rationale--that decisions on peace ought to be made by a broadly based government --was rebuffed by Mrs. Meir, who dismissed such a government as "a nation al disaster." Dayan thereupon refused to serve in any new government.

His decision was a crippling blow for Israel's 75-year-old Premier. Labor's two coalition partners in the previous government, the Liberals and the National Religious Party, were making harsh demands in return for renewed support. If Dayan and the seven other hawks in his Rafi faction of the Labor Party decided to swing against the government, they could possibly bring it down in a close vote in the Knesset. Her patience gone, Mrs. Meir stunned Labor leaders who had been summoned to a Jerusalem caucus to discuss the formation of the first minority government in Israel's history. She announced that she herself had decided to quit.

Mrs. Meir swept out of the caucus so abruptly that even her bodyguards had to dash to keep up. "Golda! Come back!" screamed Party Secretary General Aharon Yadlin. Two days later she did so "reluctantly," but only after a procession of politicians contritely drove up to her official residence in Jerusalem to pledge support and the other parties in the coalition eased their demands. Even Dayan reversed his decision to leave her after Labor leaders unanimously called upon him to return to the government.

Graceful Return. One victim of Dayan's change of heart was Yitzhak Rabin, 52, a former army chief of staff and later Ambassador to Washington who had been promised the defense portfolio. Rabin lost that job before he ever got it. After reports spread in Jerusalem of threatening Syrian moves on the Golan Heights, Dayan and a fellow hawk, Shimon Peres, the outgoing Minister of Transportation and Communications, were summoned to top-level military briefings at Mrs. Meir's home. Following that meeting, both volunteered to return to join the new government if the Premier would let them. "If I were an Arab," said Mrs. Meir, wiping tears from her eyes, "I would kiss you both." Rabin, one of five former generals in the new Cabinet, was told that he would be Minister of Labor instead of Defense. "All my life," he complained, "I have been collecting ex's. I am an ex-chief of staff, an ex-ambassador and now an ex-potential Defense Minister."

Was this minicrisis real or manufactured? Although the fighting on the Golan Heights was real enough, even many Israelis suspected that stories about the Syrian buildup might have been exaggerated to let Dayan return gracefully to his Defense Minister's job. Asked Ha 'aretz, Israel's most influential journal: "Has the security situation deteriorated to the point where in a few hours it should cause such a radical change?" Some observers noted that on the day when the Golan crisis was supposedly brewing, Dayan had spent much of his time at political meetings. After agreeing to carry on as Defense Minister, he appeared on television to explain that he had returned to the job because extremist Arab governments were making impossible demands on Israel. As a result the Defense Ministry had to be manned for crucial decisions. In Beirut, an Arab political commentator tartly suggested that by setting up a straw enemy, the Israelis had "resorted to an old Syrian method of resolving a cabinet crisis."

Smooth Process. Israel's internal turmoil had no impact whatsoever on the smooth process of disengagement in the Sinai. Last week Israeli forces completed their withdrawal from the Suez and both sides cut troop strengths in the vicinity of Suez to about a tenth of what they had been in October. Crossing the canal at Qantara last week, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn drove through an Egyptian zone six miles wide to a point marked by black barrels and designated "Alpha Line." There, United Nations units from Ireland, Peru, Sweden, Indonesia, Senegal and Finland occupied a narrow buffer zone that runs the length of the canal and extends to meet the Israelis at another barrel border called "Bravo Line." The Israeli standby force, 7,000 men, 30 tanks and 36 artillery batteries--the same size as Egypt's under their agreement--stretches back six miles to "Charlie Line." Beyond that, under the Kissinger disengagement formula, Israel can station as many men as it wishes.

Talking to newsmen in the desert, the U.N. Emergency Force commander, Finnish General Ensio Siilasvuo, admitted that his forces were outgunned across both Alpha and Bravo lines. But, said Siilasvuo, "it is not the caliber of arms that is decisive but the backing of the U.N. and the world community." The blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers are much more wary of the uncounted thousands of antitank and antipersonnel mines that were buried in the Sinai during the past seven years. They now have to be located and blown up.

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