Camp David's fragile peace
Edward Mortimer
The Middle East has thoughtfully provided an event seemingly of suitable historic stature for the Spectator's hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary.
They kept us on tenterhooks all the way. It was going to end on Thursday last week. Then on Friday. Then it was going on into this week, despite Carter's deadline. On Sunday night at ten and again at eleven P.m. (BST) the summit was still going on (why does it have to be in America, five hours behind Fleet Street, instead of in the Middle East itself, two hours ahead?) and may, after all continue into Monday. I decided to get some sleep. And at six that morning, my deadline now only hours away, I wake to the news which by now hardly anyone expected: the summit is a 'success'. There is an agreement, or rather there are two agreements. But the actual texts of them will not be available until after this has gone to press.
My first reaction — and, I'm sure, that of almost anyone else who had the task of watching events in the Middle East over the last five years or longer — is that it must be Phoney. Everyone knew the positions of the two sides were miles apart. How can that change just by having three men closeted together for twelve days on a country estate, especially when the two making the agreements are known to have hardly spoken to each other directly during that time?
My second thought is that if anyone has given away anything of substance it is probably Sadat. We have all written ad nauseam about the pressures on Sadat not to make further concessions: the need for a credible Arab platform with a Palestinian plank, the Power of Saudi Arabia and so on. The fact remains that Sadat is capable of taking decisions without consulting anybody, and he has amply demonstrated his capacity for doing the unexpected in the past. Begin is much less flexible, both in his own personality and in being the leader of a democracy, where policy changes — even if decided at the top — have to run the gauntlet of party caucuses, parliamentary censure and public opinion. It is hard to imagine Begin being more flexible than the average Israeli, whereas Sadat is certainly more flexible than the average Arab.
Against that it may be argued that Israel IS more vulnerable to American pressure, and would therefore be more likely to make concessions in the setting of Camp David, with the American President throwing all his personal influence into the scale. That, at least, was the Egyptian view, which is why the Egyptians hailed the announcement of the summit as a success, and sought to emphasise its importance in advance. The Israelis implicity conceded the point by seeking to play it down. Yet while it is certainly true that Israel is heavily dependent on American support, and that Israeli governments have yielded to American pressure in the past (notably by withdrawing from Sinai in 1957, and, on a smaller scale, by accepting the second Sinai agreement of 1975), it seems unlikely that private pressure in a closed meeting would be enough. They do not normally yield without a good deal of ostentatious kicking and screaming, and an attempt (often successful) to defeat the American president on his home ground, by mobilising the Israel lobby in the United States. Consequently one Eyptian game plan for Camp David allowed for a 'failure' of the talks, but aimed to have it on an issue which divided Begin from Carter and placed Carter as favourably as possible for the ensuing battle to win American public opinion.
It is unlikely, however, that this scenario was much relished by Carter himself; and it did provide him with extra leverage over Sadat. Sadat, much less than Begin, could afford to quarrel publicly with Carter or be blamed by him for a failure at the talks. Having taken so much trouble to involve the Americans directly, he made it virtually impossible for himself to ignore whatever compromise suggestions they might put forward, and thus rendered himself, in the short term at least, rather more vulnerable to American pressure than the Israelis.
But before one can say that Sadat has given in to pressure, one has to know what his actual hopes or objectives were. Is it really a matter of great importance to him to get the Israelis physically out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? Or does he simply need a form of words on this issue enabling him to say that it is now settled in principle so that he can now go ahead and make an Egyptian peace, and, if the details of the other matter prove rather difficult to sort out, he can say it is the fault of other Arabs for failing to take advantage of the great opportunity he has secured for them?
The latter is what he has apparently got. Israel accepts that Resolution 242 applies to the West Bank; this is a concession by Begin, but not by Israel as such. The idea that 242 might not apply to the West Bank was a personal foible of his. Israel promises 'full autonomy' to the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This presumably is meant to sound better than the 'self-rule' offered in Begin's former plan, but could mean almost anything in practice. Israel promises to withdraw troops 'except from special security base areas' (or some such formula). How big would these areas be? What rules would govern troop movements in and out of them? Presumably the troops stationed there would intervene if any political or military situation developed in the West Bank which the government of Israel considered a threat to Israel's security.
Above all, will the troops leave at the end of the five-year transitional period? And on what basis will Israel's final borders in these areas be drawn? Will Israel countenance an independent Palestinian entity in the areas if that is still wanted by the inhabitants and their representatives at the end of five years? The agreement defines neither the extent nor the sovereignty of the areas in question. Everything is left to be negotiated, with Jordan and the Palestinians (all of them or only those who have so far managed noz to be driven right out of their country?) joining in if they so wish.
In short, the Israelis have not committed themselves either to full withdrawal or to recognition of Arab sovereignty, let alone Palestinian self-determination. Palestinians living in exile will certainly feel that the agreement offers them nothing, and condemnation by the PLO can be taken for granted. Palestinians in the occupied territories will approach the offer of autonomy and withdrawal to base areas with considerable scepticism. They have heard too much propaganda in the past about the 'invisible occupation' and 'non-interference by the military authorities in the local administration'. They will ask whether the hundreds deported since 1967 will be allowed to return, whether the annexation of East Jerusalem is likely to be reversed, above all whether the land confiscated, cordoned off, encroached on or otherwise appropriated for Jewish settlements will be returned to its former cultivators.
The point of greatest interest to them in the agreement will certainly be the pledge that there will be no new Israeli settlements during the transitional period. They will want to see whether this written agreement is honoured any better than the various verbal undertakings given to the United States over the last eighteen months. The zealots of Gush Emunim will certainly not voluntarily accept it. Will a Jewish government, headed by a man who believes that all of Palestine is rightfully the Land of Israel, be prepared to use force to stop Jews from making their homes in Judea and Samaria, and to abandon the plans for new Jewish towns and villages which various government departments have in their files? If so, then perhaps the inhabitants of the West Bank would begin to believe that Israeli policy can change, and that the offer of autonomy and participation in negotiations might be worth braving the PLO's wrath to take up. Perhaps.
While all these issues remain unresolved, Israel gets the offer of a peace treaty with Egypt, to be signed within three months and leading to full diplomatic relations within a year. Is this not, then, the 'separate peace', which Sadat has so often said he does not want? Of course he will say that it is not separate, because it is set in in the 'framework' for overall peace provided in the other agreement. But does that mean anything, when the framework is so imprecise, and when the peace treaty is apparently not dependent on the other agreement's satisfactory implementation? The chronology makes it clear that Egypt intends to steam ahead, leaving the other Arabs to follow as best they can.
The only condition concerns, not the Palestinian issue, but the Israeli settlements in Egyptian territory. Israel is not asked to dismantle existing settlements in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip: that is something left for negotiation during the five-year transitional period, for most of which Egypt and Israel will already be at peace. But she is asked to remove those in Egypt. Here Begin, who last December allowed himself to be stampeded by the Sinai settlers into a very ill-judged commitment, and even announced his intention of living in Sinai himself upon retirement, apparently baulked. He did not feel he had the authority to make this concession on his own. But he agreed to put it to the Knesset, and it is surely unthinkable that the Knesset will refuse to pay this price for the bilateral peace with Egypt so long and so ardeoly desired, once it is advised by a leader of Begin's unimpeachable nationalist record that at this price it is genuinely attainable. Dayan, when confronted with a settlers' demonstration last winter, foolishly told the settlers that only they, not the government, could decide whether to withdraw. But even then he warned them that if they made themselves the sole obstacle to peace between Israel and Egypt 'the nation will Ot back you'. What will be the effects in the Arab world? Most Arabs were expecting a failure and many, by no means all of them extremists, were hoping for one, expecting that it would provide a platform for a reconciliation between Sadat and his Arab opPunents — especially with Syria and the PLO(No one minds too much about Libya and South Yemen, and Iraq's hostility Is directed more at Syria than at Egypt anyway.) No one expected Sadat to pronounce a public mea culpa, but had he said that he made every possible effort only to be snubbed by Israel's intransigence, and that in the circumstances he saw no point in any further bilateral contacts, the Syrians showed signs of being ready to treat the episode as closed and resume building a united Arab front for peace (the Geneva Conference) or war. As it is, President Assad will almost certainly consider that his worst fears have been realised. A Pandemonium of Arab outrage can be expected, probably accompanied by further inter-Arab violence. But will this lead to the much-feared Syrian-Israeli war over Lebanon? Not necessarily, because Syria will not feel confident of Egyptian support if she provokes a war at this stage, while Israel should be anxious not to risk jeopardising peace with Egypt now that it is at last within her grasp.
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