The prospects for Camp David
Desmond Stewart
Cairo The tenth anniversary of August 1968 reminded the West of how single-mindedly the Soviet Union, first in Hungary, then in Czechoslovakia, preserves what it sees as its strategic priority: a bank of dependent states interposed between itself and the members of the western alliance. The West had the chance, in theory at least, to show, at Camp David next week, that its political leadership, shuffled in popularity contests and pulse-read by opinion polls, can concentrate equally firmly on interests of yet greater significance. For while the popular democracies are a strategic asset costing Russia resources and reputation, a friendly Middle East can offer the West a cornucopia of energy and capital as well as strategic strength. It also offers a final convergence between what a Martian would see as sister cultures. In the two millennia since Augustus fought Cleopatra, Europe's relations with the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean —whether under Byzantine, Arab or Turkish control — have been its major problem. The ups and downs in the balance coincided with the varying fortunes of Christendom and Islam and Islam today holds strong cards. The game will decide whether we cooperate fruitfully with Arabia, or clash and lose. For the existence of the Soviet Union precludes any dream of reimposing colonial rule. The ideal, if improbable, result of the Camp DaWd conclave would be the extrication, at minimum cost, of the sly complexities of the Balfour Declaration issued when, in the proconsular twilight, Arabs seemed pawns in head-kerchiefs and nighties. Its flippant author could write in August 1919, 'So far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no ' statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.' A diminishing number of westerners, a considerable proportion of Israelis, still feel that Arabs are disposable: that they can be lied to, or if necessary clobbered. Such complacency has been resurrected by the failure of what history will see as the first period of Soviet involvement. The failure resulted in part from an Arab yearning for western consumer goods, in part from Russian ham-handedness in dealing with non-Europeans and an inability to ride several bicycles at once. But while Soviet influence was still strong, pragmatists in Lyndon Johnson's administration stupidly quipped that the Russians were welcome to the overpopulated slums, provided the US retained the oil-rich deserts. But-those on the spot knew that the lure of Nasserist Egypt was a potent incitement to revolution. Colonel Gaddafi's Libyan coup (code-named 'Jerusalem') showed, the year before Nasser died, that lucrative deserts were as seducible as urban slums. Egylit's current pro-American stance, suspect though it be to most educated Egyptians, protects sheikhs and kings whose corruption and wastefulness would otherwise be at the mercy of the region's most persuasive media. Only Egypt could induce even disgruntled acceptance of an Israel controlling, behind its 1967 borders, four-fifths of Mandated Palestine. For Arab opinion had universally rejected the partition plan of 1947 (on which Britain abstained) since it left the Muslim' and Christian majority with just under half of their country, while the more fertile residue went to an immigrant community which had at that time purchased less than seven per cent of the territory awarded to it. If the Israeli leadership were rational, or if the US leadership were prepared to resist pressure from the American Jewish lobby, the Sadat initiative could long since have opened the way to a substantive solution whose territorial disadvantages to the Palestinians could be outweighed (in the fifth of Palestine at issue) by the vertical development made possible by oil wealth and a general reduction on arms expenditure. But Sadat journeyed to an Israel directed by a former terrorist, nearer in spirit to the late Wadie Haddad than to Yasser Arafat. The applauding West was directed by an American President destined for instant conversion into one of those tooth-heavy Mardi Gras giants whose grins are more alarming than most men's frowns. This Georgian Goliath has conducted his Middle Eastern policy on the lines of the tango he learnt at Annapolis: one step for ward, another sideways, and then, if the partner is as pushing as American coeds of the plucked-eyebrow epoch, a tactful reverse. And now Europe is absent from a conference the results of which affect her closely. Failing the practical reconciliation outlined by Israelis such as Arie Eliav and Mair Pail, or Egyptians such as the banned jour nalist Muhammad Sayid Ahmed, the best hope from Camp David would be an American resolve to enforce an equitable solution. This would give Middle Eastern moderates some power to resist a tide of disgust which now involves Turks and Iran ians as well as Arabs. Although Sadat's optimism seems to bubble like inex haustible champagne, he is known to be deeply chagrined at American failure to support his initiative. (Most Arabs share Richard Gott's view, in the Guardian of 24 Spectator 2 September 1978 August, of another small country: It needs no more than a telephone call fronl President Carter to order a change of direction in Nicaragua.') In Egypt, Sadat knows, the 'mood ef 'Let's see what he can produce' is dispersing like laughing gas. In this connection the see' ession of his leading journalistic allY deserves more than fleeting attention. Ws' tafa Amin, now in his mid-sixties, was one of twin sons to a Faroukian courtier. Edll" cated at Georgetown University, Washing' ton, he founded Akhbar al-Yom in 1944t0 support the Palace against the Wafd. Under Nasser, whom he served well at the tirne Suez, he was later jailed on a charge 0 spying for the CIA. Although Sadat able to quash the sentence, the conviction has not been legally overturned. Combining the business flare of an Arab Beaverbrook, the journalistic whitnsY °f 8 masculine Godfrey Winn, and pro-westel opinions, Amin was one of the handful ° cronies who helped Sadat dismantle, or cas• • trate, the Nasserist press. At the same tiol,c a series of prison reminiscences (and a ow', has confirmed his atrocious treatment/ clouded the posthumous reputation of ale former president. His daily column, Fi k or Opinion, skilfully represented the COhfl sensus of those who had not belonged to died military revolution's elite and who year°, for its disappearance. As a survivor the pre-revolutionary system, he saw, iS Sadat's aectificatory Revolution' May 1971 the opening to a kind of plar'' tic democracy. Amin chose as his point ofdisagreense.,,,Pt with Sadat the defection (predicted by n correspondent in the Spectator 01 August) of 270 or more deputies frt Prime Minister Mamdouh Salim's CetTo Party (on whose platform they had crbeatic Dni that elected) to Sadat's National Party. He was particularly disguetI sted had they had defected before the new partY published its programme. Most observ construe Amin's defiance —which led to being the first right-wing journalist to vitro the muzzle previously strapped on svr;0#1 of the left — as a calculating resolve to ge`,": in a lifeboat before it is engulfed bY mother ship's suction. If Camp David, as the, Jordanians chol, predicted, merely buys time with pliments and predictions of further w_d ings and new fact-finding missions, al".;„g Begin dissuades Carter from eat American proposals, the lethargy of al% for ern summer can only postpone disastevid of waiting in Goliath's shadow is the Pamoos the Palestinian Resistance. The v`lererl, which the Resistance has recently suP„incy some springing from a turbulent demo'conwhich allows, or cannot supPres5, oar tradictory opinions, some from tile,rnent as nations of those who perceive its rp.iri fiod catalyst for further change — " oral assuagement in a return to more rain of violence. When Saul asked his OP! this the young David, 'Whose son or Tv youth?', Abner was unable to answe ' answer is easier in the case of the Resistance. The Palestinians continue an occluded but still potent Arab tradition. In this tradition the young Gazan, Stillman al-Halabi, killed Napoleon's deputy, General Kleber, at the cost of having his hand burned with pitch and his body slowly Impaled. The same tradition produced Ahmed Orabi in Egypt, and the Mahdi in the Sudan. On a small scale, which Sadat has frequently applauded, it led Dinshawi Peasants to resist British officers shooting their pigeons; on a large scale it led to an Algerian revolt which cost a million lives.
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The tradition had prompted change, as well as violence; and, beyond that change, the vision of a Middle East once again the equal of Europe.
This struggle involving Turkish and Iranian as well as Arab militancy, is no cosier for us today than it was for our ancestors. There is, perhaps, one way to avoid or palliate it. And that is to send President Sadat back to Cairo with more than placebos in his briefcase. Certainly the choice next week will be Goliath's. If he miffs it, the boy David has his missiles ready. And they won't be pebbles.
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