No Spirit of Camp David

But Carter and Begin meet for one last try to save the peace talks

Menachem Begin was adamant. Even before he took off last week for a summit conference with Jimmy Carter, Israel's flinty Premier made it clear that he was not planning any concessions to anyone, anywhere, under any pressure. If he accepted the new U.S. proposals for an Israeli-Egyptian peace settlement, he declared, there would no longer be any peace treaty. "It would in fact turn into a treaty of war," he said. "And war needs no treaties; in war, cannons are needed." Arriving at Andrews Air Force Base 14 hours later, he remained just as stern as ever. Said Begin: "We cannot be pressed into signing a sham document."

Jimmy Carter was hardly more diplomatic. Speaking at a dinner for the nation's Governors on the eve of Begin's arrival, he called the deadlocked Middle East negotiations "one of the most frustrating and discouraging experiences I have ever had in my life." He termed the differences between the two sides "some absolutely insignificant difficulties" and added, "It is just disgusting almost to feel that we are that close and can't quite get it."

So began, just five months after the smiling embraces that climaxed the Camp David summit, one of the most inauspicious confrontations in years. Not only did the two leaders meet in a spirit of tension, but the meeting itself was agreed upon only after a series of misunderstandings and misfortunes. Yet on it probably hung the last slim hope of the peace process that Egypt's President Anwar Sadat had begun by his "sacred mission" to Jerusalem in November of 1977. Since then, even since Camp David, drastic changes had jeopardized prospects of peace in the Middle East. The latest of these, the Islamic revolution in Iran, had cut off half of Israel's oil supply and brought new strength to the Palestinians. And Carter was no longer the hero of Camp David, but a weakened leader, beset by upheavals from Viet Nam to Iran to Africa. A New York Times-CBS poll showed that a mere 30% of those asked approved of his handling of foreign affairs.

Realizing that the negotiations were at the brink of collapse--"in deep crisis," as Begin put it--the two leaders met somberly at the White House. For two hours last Thursday, three more Friday and in an after-dinner session Saturday, surrounded by maps and documents, they shut themselves up in the Oval Office and argued their differences. Neither side, according to insiders, gave an inch. On the key issue of whether or how to tie the Israeli-Egyptian agreement to a grant of autonomy for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, there was no sign of compromise at all. The U.S. has come out in favor of the Egyptian demand for a target date of autonomy one year after the treaty is signed. Israel refuses.

The deadlock was built firmly upon an earlier one. In an effort to get the stalled Camp David process moving, the U.S. had invited Egyptian Premier Moustafa Khalil and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan to return to Camp David on Feb. 21 for more negotiations. In four days of discussion, the two sides politely exchanged views and got nowhere. U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance submitted a new proposal that essentially supported the Egyptian view on the question of autonomy. Vance also sided with the Egyptian position that ambassadors would not be exchanged until after the Israelis had totally withdrawn from the Sinai Peninsula, and he suggested new language designed to permit Egypt to maintain its military agreements with other Arab states despite the treaty with Israel. Dayan opposed the provisions.

Carter had said there would have to be "signs of flexibility" before he would call a new summit, but despite the deadlock, he decided to try for a summit anyway. Sadat, who had authorized Khalil to negotiate for him, refused to come and join in the deadlock. But since Dayan admitted that he did not have real negotiating power, Carter plunged on and asked Begin to come.

Dayan phoned Begin and told him of the invitation. The Prime Minister initially agreed to come. But when informed that the Egyptian President was not coming to Washington, he changed his mind. Said Begin: "If Sadat is not coming, why should I come? I think I will stay at home." They agreed, however, that the final decision would be left to the Israeli Cabinet.

Sunday, both Khalil and Dayan met with Carter in the White House. "I am glad to learn that progress was made at this Camp David meeting," Carter said, and then he praised the idea of a meeting with Begin. Dayan, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, finally snapped, "No progress." Carter, as if unhearing, continued to lecture his visitors on the virtues of the new "progress."

That same Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet met for four hours and decided that Dayan should return to Israel and brief the ministers before a Tuesday decision on the summit invitation. Acting on Begin's instructions, Dayan told the Americans that the Cabinet had not yet decided, and he asked Carter to delay any announcement of his invitation until a decision was made. The President was losing patience. According to Israeli sources, Carter did issue a warning, which both the White House and Dayan later denied: "If we do not conclude negotiations within the coming ten days, the U.S. will have to reassess its Mideast policy."

The White House began summoning reporters early Sunday afternoon. Dayan had been told that Carter thought the Israeli Cabinet would leak word of his invitation, and so at 2:45 p.m., Carter smilingly told the world, "In light of the developments in the talks at Camp David this past week, we are discussing with the two governments the possibility of moving these negotiations to the head-of-government level later this week." The President left little doubt that he expected Begin to meet with Khalil and himself.

In Israel that night, Begin was furious. He confided to a friend: "Like an Arab, a Polish gentleman does not like to be humiliated."

Monday, Dayan flew home to try to explain the events of the past few days. When he arrived, he found both Cabinet ministers and Knesset members reacting angrily over what appeared to them Carter's effort to put all the public pressure on Begin, while not insisting that Sadat attend. One Israeli denounced the "rude and brutal tactics" employed by the U.S.

The Israeli Cabinet conducted a six-hour meeting on Tuesday and rejected Carter's invitation by a vote of 14 to 2. Begin was among the 14. Only Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman voted to accept, reasoning that it was a tactical mistake for Begin to take the blame for the breakdown in negotiations. When Begin announced the refusal, he carefully refrained from slamming the door on any further discussion. Said he: "The Prime Minister is prepared at any time convenient to President Carter to leave for the U.S. to meet with the President to discuss matters relating to the peacemaking process." But he ruled out any negotiations with the Egyptians.

Carter and his aides were shocked by this rejection. Rarely had Carter appeared to miscalculate so badly. He had ignored or misunderstood the warnings by Dayan, and now he had risked his own prestige by announcing the invitation.

A press conference had been scheduled for 4 p.m. on Tuesday. To cancel it would look as if Carter were ducking the obvious questions about why things had gone so wrong, but it would be difficult to produce a good answer. White House aides scurried anxiously among their offices, trying to find a solution. The President kept his normal schedule, but at one public appearance, launching a reform of the federal civil justice system, he seemed wan and distracted. He spoke in a weak voice and stumbled through his remarks.

Eventually, Carter grasped the reed that Begin had offered. At 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, he telephoned Begin and invited him to a meeting at Camp David between just the two of them. Begin agreed to the trip but insisted that the talks be held in Washington so that he could explain his arguments to the press and to members of Congress.

Begin had a ready audience in the American Jewish community. Last week, there was a distinct worsening in its perception of Carter that often trailed off into bitterness. "Jimmy Carter is using Billy Carter tactics," said Raymond Epstein, past president of the National Council of Jewish Federations. Added Herschel Auerbach, national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America: "Time and again, the U.S. has given in to Arab blackmail. Carter is pushing Israel and trying to get them to endanger their own security." Noted one important Jewish lobbyist in Washington: "It's reaching the point where a lot of us feel 'A.B.C.,' Anybody But Carter." Jews are casting about for an alternative. In California, a primarily Jewish group organized a protest dinner last week in opposition to a large Democratic Committee fund raiser that Carter planned to attend, until the meetings with Begin were scheduled. He sent Vice President Walter Mondale instead.*

But Carter is also under new pressures on the Arab side. Not only have the radical Palestinians won the strong support of Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini, who ousted the Israeli diplomatic delegation in Tehran two weeks ago and replaced it with representatives of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, but most moderate Arab states oppose the whole attempt to negotiate a partial peace treaty without a definite Palestinian settlement. Sadat feels--and U.S. officials share his feeling--that further concessions could lead to his downfall.

Especially worrisome has been the attitude of the Saudi Arabians. They were irritated at the initial Camp David agreement, which U.S. officials had hoped they would support. Now they have begun to delay payments on the more than $1 billion of aid they give Egypt each year, a sum critical to Sadat's impoverished nation. For years, the U.S. has carefully courted the Saudis, seeking their aid in keeping world oil prices down and their support for Sadat's peace efforts. Although the Saudis have produced increasing volumes of oil (up from 7.7 million bbl. per day last summer to 9.5 million bbl. per day)--against the wishes of many members of the royal family, who would rather conserve more of their reserves for future sale--they have not been able to hold down oil prices. And they have done nothing to reassure Sadat.

"The prospects for Camp David are nil," said one Saudi official early last week. Moreover, the Saudis distrust Carter's insistence on pursuing the settlement. "The present Administration has no room to maneuver diplomatically," added this official. "It is one dimensional. It has no options. It is like a horse with blinders plodding through, unaware that all around are flames. We call out danger, and they do not hear." This inability or unwillingness to read signals is increasingly one of the weaknesses in the much criticized Carter foreign policy.

The signals the Administration sends out are troubling, too. With U.S. friends in the Middle East worried that the fall of the Shah of Iran shows the vulnerability of any regime and the inability of the U.S. to protect its allies, Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger tried some tough talk, saying that the U.S. might intervene militarily to protect oil supplies in the area. But the Persian Gulf countries were not assuaged. Said Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah Al-almad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah: "It was irresponsible and tantamount to the law of the jungle." And Carter soon toned down his Cabinet members' assertiveness. Said Carter at his press conference: "Any sort of action that we take would not encroach on the prerogatives of individual nations, and we do not intend to become involved in the internal affairs of another country." Like the repeated misunderstandings between Washington and the world, this changeability seems to be inherent in Carter's handling of foreign relations.

As the Carter-Begin impasse continued into the weekend, reported TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden, the U.S. side had difficulty predicting what lay ahead. There was no optimism, only an enduring, primal drive to push on, to keep trying, because the stakes were so high. If the meeting produced only a stalemate, as expected, the U.S. had no fallback plans, no hopeful visions of the next stage. Said one normally effervescent official in a tone of despondency: "Who the hell knows what happens next?"

Washington diplomats are thinking in terms of so-called worst-case scenarios. Collapse of the talks, they believe, would lead first to Sadat's return to the Arab fold. Whether the Egyptian President is accepted back and becomes more militant or whether he is accepted and undermined by his rivals, the consequences are similar. Either way, the stalemate would make the Middle East in general and Egypt in particular more vulnerable to Soviet influence.

Stalemate would also heighten instability in the region, lead to additional radicalization of moderate Arabs and make further violence likely among Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, who have been biding their time while the peace process has been playing out.

U.S. officials do not intend to give up, but admit they are running out of new ideas. They are prepared to go a long way in trying to help guarantee Israel's security--a guarantee, however, that Israel has never sought and does not want because in the long run it feels it cannot rely on such promises.

If there is an absolute stalemate in this round, Vance will probably fly to the Middle East to brief the leaders, solicit their thoughts about a next step and try to uphold the idea that there will be a next step.

After a reasonable interval, there could be a new move to get talks started again, this time very possibly using the comprehensive approach rather than the step-by-step method. As one U.S. official puts it: "It has already happened ten or 15 times that either Israel or Egypt has said, 'This is our final statement.' Yet somehow things always get going again." Still, the failure could only diminish U.S. influence in the Middle East. Said one foreign policy analyst: "It would demonstrate to the Arabs that the U.S. can't deliver Israel. Many people will wonder if it can deliver anything at all."

Despite all of Carter's troubles, his aides say he maintains a kind of stubborn confidence in the basic correctness of his views. That confidence was somewhat bolstered from an unlikely source last week, when Moscow finally indicated its affirmation of the SALT II treaty.

Said President Leonid Brezhnev: "It appears that the work of more than six years is now close to completion. Of course, in some ways the treaty, from our point of view, could have been better ... On the whole, however, this is a good and important thing."

Brezhnev's speech kindled hopes in Washington that a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting and a signing of the SALT II accords could occur in April or May. The growing sense of Carter's diplomatic weaknesses, fed by last week's peace-talk troubles, makes it all the more possible that the U.S. Senate will not ratify the SALT II agreements once they are signed. But as one of Carter's closest aides said of the Begin meeting, "As long as there is a straw out there, we have to keep trying to grasp it." sb

*The timing seemed remarkably inauspicious, but last weekend Carter took the first public step to seek renomination in 1980. He authorized his wife Rosalynn, Mondale, and his top aide, Hamilton Jordan, to make calls to about 300 influential people around the country announcing the formation of a campaign committee.

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