"There Will Be Another Chapter"

But for now, the U.S.-Israeli freeze remains deep

"This is not the end. Either these talks will resume, or there will be another chapter of peace negotiations. The work we have done is not wasted." So said Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan last week, as he prepared for a weekend meeting in Brussels to explore ways of resuming the deadlocked talks on an Egyptian-Israeli pact. Both Egypt's Premier Moustafa Khalil and U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who were to join Dayan in the Belgian capital, hoped that other long chapters of negotiations would not have to be written. But the possibility of an early resumption of serious bargaining was very uncertain, especially given the still high level of distrust that welled up between Washington and Jerusalem following the collapse of the Vance shuttle on the eve of the Dec. 17 treaty-signing goal set at Camp David.

The Brussels meeting was not intended to pick up where negotiations left off two weeks ago, when Israel rejected the latest Egyptian treaty proposals. Indeed, there was a chance that the meeting might have to be delayed if Vance had to extend his SALT talks with the Soviets in Geneva. In any case, the White House stressed that the Brussels discussions would deal only with "procedures" for restarting the talks. On that, at least, both Washington and Cairo agreed with Menachem Begin; in Jerusalem, the Israeli Premier bluntly told newsmen that Dayan would be limited to discussing only "how, when and where" negotiations might be resumed.

Begin also indicated that Israel was prepared to negotiate seriously on only one of the outstanding issues: Egypt's insistence that the security arrangements included in any treaty be reviewed after five years. The Premier was firmly backed by Israel's Knesset, which gave him a 66 to 6 vote of confidence on his tough stance toward Cairo and Washington. Said Opposition Leader Shimon Peres, usually a Begin critic: "Under pressure from the U.S., we will be united."

Emphasizing a posture of beleaguered defiance, Jerusalem halted a military equipment pullback that had been intended to help speed the Sinai withdrawal that is to begin after a treaty is signed. In response to a series of terrorist bombings, Israeli planes attacked Palestinian camps in Lebanon for the first time since before the September session at Camp David. As Florida Democrat Richard Stone, head of the Senate Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, put it, the Israelis appeared to have "drawn the wagons into a circle."

That went for the Israeli lobby in the U.S. as well. Begin telephoned Jewish leaders to give his account of the talks' collapse. Israel's Justice Minister Shmuel Tamir, who was on a U.S. tour, encouraged pro-Israel groups to launch a write-in and telegram campaign aimed at the White House and Congress. A group of 33 Jewish intellectuals, including Writers Saul Bellow and Irving Howe, who have criticized the Begin government's inflexibility in the past, sent Carter a letter saying that Washington's support of Cairo's position was "unacceptable."

The Administration decided to just take the heat. When a group of U.S. Jewish leaders asked to see Carter, they were steered instead to Vance, which the spokesmen interpreted as a calculated insult. The State Department prepared a summary of the Administration's view of the achievements of the negotiations and the hurdles remaining; its aim, said a White House aide, was simply to "explain the facts," which include the U.S. insistence that Sadat's demands were not new, as the Israelis claim, but have been under discussion since early November.

One of the mysteries about the collapse of the talks on the eve of the Dec. 17 deadline was just why the Begin government dug in so hard against the Sadat proposals. Some Israelis speculate that in addition to his concerns about his country's security, Begin might have felt a need to show toughness at a time when his personal popularity has been slipping. Indeed, only a day before Begin rejected the Egyptian proposals, he had received the results of a new poll showing a decline in his popularity from 68.2% approval in October to just 48.9% in December.

Some of Begin's own colleagues profess surprise at the degree of the Administration's disappointment over the stalled talks. Amazingly, some Israeli officials now say privately that if Washington had made it clear to the two sides how important the Dec. 17 deadline had been to Carter, a treaty agreement might have been reached on schedule. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the character of the present impasse than that fundamental misperception.

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