No warm receptions for ambassador

Press, 16 July 1980, Page 11

No warm receptions for ambassador

From

ERIC SILVER

in Cairo

Nearly five months after presenting his credentials, Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt, Mr Eliahu Ben-Elis-sar, and his wife Nitza, are still living out of suitcases in two rooms on the nineteenth floor of the Cairo Sheraton.

Every time they find a flat to rent, the landlord has second thoughts before the contract is sealed. The Egyptian authorities say they are treating the Israelis just like any other diplomats, leaving them to find their own accommodation. President Sadat has even offered to lease Mr Ben-Elissar public property, if he can spot something to his taste, but the Ambassador is not in the market for a disused palace. Western observers in Cairo are convinced that the Egyptian Government is intervening behind the scenes to make sure the Ben-Elissars’ search is frustrated. No threats, they say, just a discreet inquiry from the security service and the landlord gets the message. The campaign seems to be directed against the Ambassador alone, either because he symbolises the Jewish State or because of his hard-line personal position on the future of the occupied territories and his proximity to the Prime Minister, Mr Menachem Begin, whose office he used to run in Jerusalem. All the other seven Israeli diplomats in Cairo have long since settled into places of their own, as have the Egyptian Embassy staff in Tel Aviv. The Israelis are still ostracised socially. Although Egyptian politicians and senior officials attended Mr Ben-Elissar’s Independence Day party in April, few public figures invite the Ambassador to their homes dr accept invitations from well-mean-ing foreign diplomats or journalists to meet the Ben-Elissars over the dinner table. They are waiting for a signal from above and the signal is not coming. This boycott is part of a wider strategy of sloping down normal relations until Israel is more forthcoming in the Palestinian autonomy negotiations. It has been accompanied by a revival of licensed hostility towards Israel in the controlled Egyptian press and of anti-Zionist diplomacy by the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Butros Ghali. Egypt has stepped up its demands, explicitly cham-

pioning a Palestinian State and calling for the return of East Jerusalem to Arab sovereignty. Trade . between ' Israel and Egypt has hardly taken off. Only two deals of any size have been concluded. Israel is selling Egypt two million chicks, delivering at least 10,000 a. week, and a Haifa metals firm announced that it had sold 20,000 tones of surplus steel (at 20 per . cent discount) for $6 million. But most Egyptian business men are reluctant to act without Government encouragement. Tourism by citizens of the two countries’remains negligible. In its first five months, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo issued only 135 visas. The Egyptian Consulate in Tel Aviv issued 6000, many of them to foreigners taking the chance to visit both countries. The four return flights a week by El-Al and the specially established Egyptian Nefertiti Airline are heavily booked, but few of the passengers are Israeli or Egyptian. The land crossing at El Arish is working smoothly now, but the bulk of travellers are back-packing foreign, students and Palestinians visiting relatives in the Gaza Strip or going home

to the refugee camps from university in Egypt. . Potential Egyptian tourists are deterred by. the need 'to obtain a second passport for their Israeli visa. The Government insists that they must not jeopardise their chances of going to Arab countries, but most Egyptians would rather hold off than’ tangle with the Ministry of Interior bureaucracy. President Sadat, . who broke off the autonomy negotiations in April,' has repeatedly called for Israeli flexibility as : the price for less grudging normalisation. ’ There is no sign of a. response from Jerusalem. Mr Begin is still in .hospital recovering from a mild heart attack; his Cabinet is weaker and more divided than ever.. The fact that talks are resuming at the technical level of the legal committee is an acknowledgement that progress is improbable before the United States’ elections .in' November, and perhaps,of Israeli elections ini 1981. What matters is an appearance of movement. The negotiators are. busy, the oil sheikhs are drifting back to the Cairo casinos, and the ‘Ben-Elissars -are still on the nineteenth floor. — Copyright, O.F.N.S.