Middle East: divide and lose
besmond Stewart Cairo Arab rifts are widening into canyons and, ei,ven when started by outsiders, they se authentic obstacles to the develop'11;ent of Arab unity. The canyon between "tYPt and its previous major ally Saudi cAl`tabia, for example, was floodlit as Preside!lt Sadat addressed students at Alexan:tta University. They were feting the 27th "aniversary of the embarkation of Farouk, Portly admiral, for exile in Riviera ilPiltelubs. The Egyptian leader accused anlY,acih of waging a campaign of hatred vbainst his country. Disappointed that a snerbal truce had failed to reopen the Saudi se"g°t — or piqued that, even so, America D.elned to be renewing its friendship with i'cl!Yadh —Sadat used the prestige of the late e lag Feisal as a missile against his brothers, ,l!sins and son. He spoke of the telephone j. during and after the 1973 war in which t:blsai nightly asked how he could be of help Ypt. The blend of Alexandrian humid the now familiar rhetoric and the digest °Ilsets of Ramadan would have sedated tchs listeners. Yet Arabs from Morocco to ce"%lait who listen to the youthful announkitosic3n Radio Monte Carlo — Sadat's larger aid—eace — will have recalled that Feisal's lethwas part of a bid to regain Arab tiainz!lem, not a unilateral peace. An Egypt() -0,`"Plomat whose career took him briefly cor:e Pinnacle of his profession told your oe'esPondent that he could remember no stir:siculwhen Cairo exerted as much presbej as on Feisal, in 1974, to suspend the oil Of',!(), tt. Sadat plainly trusted the good faith 4,4'4 brother, Henry Kissinger. By confile t, Photographs of Feisal's haughty prostill reacting to the visit of Kissinger could the serve television commercials devoted to Saud. Problems of biological stain. kiy:,,udi Policies are as firmly endorsed in alenThas Sadat's treaty in Cairo's parliaatitit; Press and boutiques. Their new quiet em,,i,"acY marks a deliberate change of reCasts from traditional Saudi caution. By 'lag to use oil at the 1947 Bludan Conference the Saudis long spiked a major Arab weapon. The advance represents the consensus of a dynasty which merits closer scrutiny than harem chitchat or gossip about Knightsbridge shopping sprees. The bedouin, unlike the fellahin, have made shooting-star forays into world history. Like, seeds that sleep until the right rainstorm, they can project sudden splendours, often short-lived, often executed (like so much early 'Arab' architecture) by hirelings. The advent of Islam in the seventh century released a dozen talents worthy of a Plutarch, or a Suetonius. Ibn Khaldun, the Arab historiographer so admired by Toynbee, worked out a theory after studying such dynastic explosions in North Africa and Andalucia. He allowed each desertborn family three generations before its primary impetus fizzled out in selfindulgence. Saudi Arabia is now ruled by the second generation of Ibn Saud's family. The avalanche of oil has been for it a material shock equivalent to the spiritual shock of the Koran. The princes who matter are clear-sighted, reticent and cool. The Californian-trained, hippyesque nephew who murdered Feisal is an ominous projection of tomorrow, not today.
Westerners who rejoice at Arab rifts are almost certainly mistaken. The formula divide et imperil works when an overwhelming power deals with a fissile society it wishes to dominate: Caesar's Rome with tribal Gaul, for instance. It works less well when roughly equal powers back rival favourites. French support for the Maro nites, British for the Druses, secured shortlived hegemonies. The American isolation of Egypt from the bulk of the Arab world, whether intentional or not, may reconcile the Levant's two most dependent economies.
The advantages for America are doubtful. While shouldering vast new financial burdens she alienates more profitable friends. Egyptians and Israelis who hoped Camp David would mean more prosperity and less military expenditure are already disappointed. Both countries have increased their military budgets; Egypt has lost access to Arab capital while Israel's annual inflation rate is over 100 per cent.
But although summer can explode and Ramadan can be bellicose, the silly season more often keeps the pyjamaed Levant in meditative Siesta. A season, in other words, to ask: what next? Sadat seems to have snipped the hope that other Arabs, beginning with the Saudis and Jordanians, would follow his example. Israel had already made the hope tenuous. Air raids which could have inspired a Guernica, before a blasé world accepted the bombing of civilians as no worse than seal-culling, the appropriation of West Bank land for new Jewish settlements and of the grazing grounds of 25,000 Negev bedouin for airfields: these are balanced by no offer on Palestinian autonomy to match what South Africa has given the Transkei.
A second, more likely possibility is that an exasperated Egypt will eventually return to the, Arab camp. With Sinai restored, if demilitarised, and with the oil wells out of Israeli hands, the swing of the Egyptian pendulum could lift to power a leader who for one reason or another would fly to Riyadh. But in the Middle East things happen less quickly, less logically than Western observers expect: as more than one lost wager proves.
The hawks in Washington have been snapping their iron beaks in Europe and elsewhere. .A CIA official was asked at a London party, admittedly after midnight, the precise dimensions of the Israel for whose security he felt 'a gut reaction'. Did it inch.Kle the West Bank and Gaza? 'If you want my opinion, it would ideally include Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Mesopotamia. That way our petroleum would be safe.' It requires no major talent for plot structure to foresee sonic Greater Eden planning some Greater Suez. A US special force is already assigned; Israel offers nearer, better facilities than Malta or Cyprus. It would only require some military clash of ambiguous origin for the 1956 ultimatums to be refloated. Instead of the Canal, the fuels . essential for Western motoring would be the pretext for armed intervention. 'Collusion' would be as energetically denied as last time. The result, if we were spared world war, would probably make the first Eden seem as judicious as Solomon and Vietnam a victory.
Against these possibilities — unlikely, uncertain or apocalyptic — a fourth is being rediscussed: that of an enlarged Genevastyle conference aiming urgently at an overall solution. The notion was long dismissed as a waste of words: between Talmudic jot-splitting and Russian legalism no compromise would emerge. Apart from a general recognition that Camp David has made things worse, there are several rejoinders to such objections. Sadat's critics, for all their charges of treachery, usually concede that his initiative has shown the world that Zionist extrem ism, as much as Arab, blocks the road to peace. Another result is visible to an outsider. The more militant Arabs, including Palestinians, are discussing what kind of peace they would propose against Sadat's; Israeli liberals have been making similar explorations in the context of Begin. The lapse of months has also clarified things for the partners in this partial peace. Israel must face a hazardous future of zealotry or settle for less than an all-Jewish Palestine. Egypt can play the role of America's Cuba only at the risk of permanent isolation from its friends, and Sadat's final fate as a Shah or Somoza. Not least important: the presence of an incompetent in the White House may jerk other Europeans, besides Chancellor Kreisky and ex-Chancellor Brandt, into exerting their influence towards a balanced peace. As for the 'superpowers': competition for future oil would be less risky — if inevitably sticky — than a nuclear war.
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