Hard Week for a Miracle Worker

Henry Kissinger's reputation as the miracle worker of the Middle East underwent perhaps its toughest test last week. The Palestinian attack on Ma'alot and the Israeli reprisal raids on Lebanon (TIME, May 27) had appeared to wreck chances for a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel. Only a few days after those tragedies, however, the U.S. Secretary of State reported "substantial agreement in form and content" as talks went on. But nailing down that agreement, in a stepped-up round of shuttle flights between Jerusalem and Damascus, proved to be an exhausting and frustrating chore. The sides were closer, but there was still a gap that Kissinger himself had to find a way to settle.

Both Syria and Israel were eager to have an agreement, but the two countries could not get together on the size of the United Nations buffer force to be inserted between them. Israel wanted at least 2,500 blue-helmeted U.N. troops to keep peace. The Syrians at first insisted on no more than 300 observers, but later agreed to 1,000. Nor could the foes agree on the depth of "military zones" to be established on each side of the disengagement line. Jerusalem wanted relatively wide areas of 14.5 miles on either side of the U.N. buffer manned by limited forces in static positions. Damascus, on the contrary, wanted narrow zones (no more than three miles), each manned by 20,000 men and a hundred tanks free to roam instead of being confined to fixed positions. One reason: Damascus, Syria's capital, is only 30 miles from the present front. Syria also objected to an Israeli proposal that a high-flying U.S. SR-71 reconnaissance plane monitor the ceasefire, like the one that surveys Israeli and Egyptian positions in Sinai.

There were several reasons why Kissinger was finding it much harder to get the Israelis and the Syrians to agree on disengagement than it had been to bring together the Israelis and the Egyptians. Neither side had much to trade, especially since their armies were not stopped in exposed, vulnerable positions, as was the case in Egypt. The nature of the territory was also a factor: the vast Sinai desert is an obvious buffer zone, while the plain of Damascus and the Golan Heights are--or were before the fighting at least--populated regions with civilian settlements on both sides. Another difference: Egyptian and Israeli negotiators were willing to talk to each other, under U.N. auspices, at Kilometer 101; all the Syrian-Israeli negotiations had to be handled by Kissinger himself because Syria refused direct contact.

Beyond that, there has been the fatigue factor, which may have even begun to affect the tireless Secretary of State. At week's end Kissinger--nicknamed "Henry Hercules" by U.S. newsmen traveling with him--had been out of the country and on the go for 28 days. The Middle East negotiations had forced him to delegate the chairmanship of a Washington meeting of CENTO nations last week to Deputy Secretary Kenneth Rush. Kissinger also had had to postpone Capitol Hill appearances to testify on such matters as the upcoming defense budget, while foreign ministers of other nations who wanted to see him had to either take potluck--as Japan's Masayoshi Ohira did last week, and missed--or else postpone visits to Washington. Nonetheless, Kissinger was not out of touch with the State Department; since April 28, when he left Washington, 1,500 cables have passed between him and his staff at State, either through the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem or over equipment aboard his Air Force jet. But broader thinking about U.S. foreign policy, as well as Kissinger's own plans to revitalize State, has had to be put aside, albeit in an important cause.

Negotiators on both sides were getting snappish. "We are tired, beat and emotionally fed up," said one Israeli. "Kissinger has to keep up this absurd shuttle because those bastards don't want to talk to us. They seem frightened by the prospect of their own moderation--if it can be called moderation to take back land you lost in a war you started." Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, after a Knesset debate over his handling of the Palestinian attack on Ma'alot, stomped out of the Chamber, muttering audibly "I'm fed up with this government."

One reason for edginess was that both sides were still suffering the emotional aftermath of the Ma'alot raid, in which 27 Israelis were killed, and the Israeli reprisals on Palestinians in Lebanon that killed at least 50 more civilians. Last week Israeli gunboats, protected by aircraft, shelled the Rashidieh refugee camp near Tyre, killing seven Palestinians and wounding 13. Later Israeli jets bombed Lebanon's mountainous Arqub region near the Israeli border killing at least three more. Palestinian guerrillas threatened to avenge those attacks with suicide raids inside Israel.

Ignored Fact. After Ma'alot, Israelis took these threats seriously, and patrols were increased. Near the Golan, Israeli soldiers flushed eight guerrillas and killed six of them in a running gun battle. The survivors said they belonged to the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was responsible for the Ma'alot raid. They were bound for Kibbutz Ein Gev and Kibbutz Haon by the Sea of Galilee to carry out similar raids in order to free fedayeen prisoners in Israel. In Jerusalem, three Arabs were arrested and accused of setting Katyusha (after the Russian affectionate form of "Katya") rockets, discovered the week before, that were aimed and primed to fire on the city from a neighboring hill.

Unchecked, this kind of terror and anger could ruin Kissinger's long-playing attempts at disengagement. It was almost miraculous indeed that attacks and counterattacks had not abruptly halted negotiations. Instead, both governments made some positive gestures of conciliation even while they remained deadlocked over the intricacies of agreement. Syria began a propaganda campaign to explain to other Arab nations why it was willing to make an agreement with Israel. Israel pointedly ignored the fact that last week's unsuccessful Palestinian foray had been launched from Syria. Equally significant, Premier-designate Yitzhak Rabin at week's end put together a Knesset majority coalition and a Cabinet that present overall a much more conciliatory face than Israel has shown in a long, long time.

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