Facing the New Realities

After the changes in Iran, it's now or never at Camp David

The three men who sat down together at Camp David last week to negotiate an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty could be forgiven if they sensed the unseen presence of two other key figures at the deliberations. Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had not, of course, been invited to the talks. But their warm and well-photographed embrace in Tehran injected a note of urgency into Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's attempts to persuade Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egypt's Premier Moustafa Khalil to resolve their differences on the treaty before it was too late.

Both the Egyptians and the Israelis recognize that without a peace agreement the area from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean could be plunged into prolonged turmoil and stress. Having lost access to Iran's oil, which once provided almost 50% of their needs, the Israelis are eager for a settlement with Egypt that would allow them buyer's rights to crude pumping from the wells in Sinai and the Gulf of Suez. The Ayatullah's zealous denunciations of Israel raised fears that some of the sophisticated U.S. weaponry purchased by the Shah might eventually be lent or sold to an Arab confrontation state. As for Egypt, President Anwar Sadat has to worry about the impact of Islamic resurgence on his own discontented masses, and about his growing political isolation in the Arab world.

Arafat's triumphant welcome in Tehran was something of a shock, but it is no great surprise that the P.L.O. and the new Iranian government should be the best of friends. Ever since the early 1970s, Palestinian groups have been giving aid, training and arms to Iranian dissidents. It was the Shah of Iran who sold oil to the Israelis, who used it to power the tanks and planes that were fighting the Palestinians. Thus the Iranian enemies of the Shah became the Palestinians' natural allies. A number of them have fought with the guerrillas in southern Lebanon. Palestinian groups have trained more than 3,000 Iranians in the past few years and smuggled as many as 30,000 weapons into Iran to await the day of revolution. The P.L.O. now plans to send hundreds of Palestinian technicians and experts to Iran to take jobs previously held by Israelis.

Arafat's visit raised serious questions about the effect of Iran's Palestinian connection on the oil politics of the Middle East. The Khomeini regime has already announced that Iran will no longer sell oil to Israel. But what else will it do? The P.L.O. announced last week that the first task of its new Tehran "embassy"--located in what had been the Israeli mission --will be to persuade Iran to impose a stringent boycott against Israel, including a blacklisting of all foreign firms that do business with Jerusalem.

One effect of the revolution in Iran has been to leave Washington's crucial relations with Saudi Arabia in a state of near estrangement. The Saudis believe they have acted strongly in behalf of U.S. interests, striving to keep oil prices down and pumping oil at near capacity in recent months to satisfy American needs after the Iranian oilfields shut down. But the Saudis are losing faith in Washington's ability to achieve a Middle East peace that would solve the Palestinian problem. More important, in the wake of the Shah's demise, they are distrustful of any U.S. commitment to protect the absolute monarchies of the region, and hence are more fearful than ever for their own security. Tensions in the region intensified at week's end with reports of a new outburst of border battles between Marxist South Yemen and North Yemen at the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. To underscore his country's concern with the overall situation, Saudi Crown Prince Fahd last week canceled a planned visit to Washington that would have taken place later this month. The reason: the Saudis have refused to endorse the Sadat peace initiative, and Fahd did not want to arrive in the U.S. so soon after the Camp David meeting.

In Riyadh, a Saudi official declared that the Arafat visit to Tehran was a clear signal to Washington that the U.S. should recognize the P.L.O. immediately. Indeed, there were rumors that the Khomeini regime might at some later time make the continued flow of oil to the West contingent on U.S. recognition of the Palestinians. P.L.O. officials went a step further by declaring that the price for Iran's oil should include the return of East Jerusalem to Arab jurisdiction.

The Egyptian press printed nothing about the Arafat visit to Tehran. President Sadat felt that the Khomeini-Arafat relationship could only serve to increase Egypt's sense of estrangement from its Muslim brothers. Sadat, however, also believed the changed situation in Iran might convince President Carter that he must exert enough pressure on the Israelis to get them to make further concessions, especially on the question of "linkage" between the first-stage treaty and further negotiations on the Palestinian question. With massive U.S. aid (at least $8 billion by some estimates), Sadat would like to see Egypt assume the role of the West's policeman in the Middle East, in effect replacing the Shah's Iran in the Persian Gulf power grid. Optimistic as usual, Sadat spoke last week of flying to the U.S. within a week or two to put the finishing touches on the draft treaty.

In Israel the Cabinet was as split as ever over the question of making peace.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and Dayan all believe Israel must reach an agreement quickly. Like Sadat, they worry about the menace of Soviet domination over much of the Middle East, and want to eliminate potential military pressure from Egypt.

This view is shared by many leading Israelis. Says Amnon Rubenstein, a liberal member of the Knesset: "It is time to stop seeing things through a ten-year-old prism." The unresolved issues between Cairo and Jerusalem, he argues, are far less important to Israeli security than Sadat's long-term commitment to the West. Contends Aharon Yariv, a former chief of military intelligence and now head of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Tel Aviv: "The peace treaty is the least of all the possible evils." Knesset Member Meir Amit, former director of Mossad, Israel's equivalent of the CIA, is now convinced that Israel must look ahead to an economic and military alliance--under an umbrella of U.S. security--with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

There is sharp disagreement with these views from the right wing of the Begin government, led by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, and Dayan is not certain he can negotiate a treaty that will be acceptable to his Prime Minister and his Cabinet. To reinforce his position at the conference, he insisted on taking two members of Begin's staff along. "The problem at Camp David," says an Israeli Foreign Ministry official in Tel Aviv, "is not whether they can reach an agreement, but whether the agreement can be approved by the Israeli Cabinet."

Since the latest negotiations were cloaked in the same secrecy as the original Camp David meeting, it was impossible to tell how much progress was being made. In the opening discussions, the three delegation leaders--Dayan, Khalil and Vance--talked about recent developments in the Middle East: the revolution in Iran, oil, the changing balance of power and Soviet influence. The Egyptians and Israelis seemed to get on well with each other, agreeing that it was too cold outside and too hot in most of the Camp David cabins. The Egyptians astonished the Israelis by ordering kosher dinners.

In subsequent meetings, the delegates tackled the remaining problems, such as linkage and setting a target date for autonomy on the West Bank and Gaza. The Egyptians and Israelis expected to fly home early this week to report to their governments. After that, if all goes well, Sadat and Begin could arrive in a week's time to polish off the final details and sign the treaty. But after so many disappointments over the past year, no one was predicting immediate success. Perhaps the most important thing that Camp David II had going for it was the feeling, shared by all the participants, that if they wanted to salvage anything from the previous Camp David meeting, they had to do it quickly. Says a U.S. analyst: "This is almost certainly a now-or-never situation."

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