The Goliaths encircling Camp David

Press, 16 November 1981, Page 20

The Goliaths encircling Camp David

By

DAVID HIRST,

in Beirut, for “The Guardian,” London

“After the disappearance of Sadat, the West is still, in effect, looking for another Sadat to take his place,” says the leading Beirut daily, “AlNahar.” In other words, the Americans believe they can only make further progress towards peace in the Middle East if they bring about a fundamental change in Arab policy. The Americans know that the only possible candidate for the role of a new Sadat is Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Any progress towards peace will depend on whether the Prince can be persuaded to put his weight behind the Be-gin-Sadat agreements made in Camp David in the autumn of 1978.

There is precious little sign that Prince Fahd is ready for the role. On the contrary, in the Saudi view, if there is to be a fundamental change it must be in American, not Arab policy. That, for them, is the hope which their AWACS “victory” has aroused. True, there have been superficial signs to the contrary. The Saudis have been urging the Arabs to give President Mubarak a period of grace, to realise that he cannot seriously be expected to repudiate the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty as the price of his reintegration into Arab ranks. Some Arab quarters have been putting a sinister interpretation on such suggestions.

. But the Arab attacks on the Fahd plan carry little conviction for those who make them subscribe, by and large, to the self-same Arab consensus which Prince Fahd has been careful not to offend. The Syrians attack it because they are neurotically wary of anything which smacks of unilateral initiative. The Left-wing Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine attacks it

for strictly opportunistic reasons because its own position — Moscow inspired — is actually even more moderate than that of Yasser Arafat, the P.L.O. leader, who in general commends the plan. Stung by the criticisms, the Saudis have been at pains to make clear that, whatever they think of Mr Mubarak, they will have no truck with the policies he inherited. The peace plan. Prince Fahd insists, is a “radical” alternative to Camp David. Though the plan was independently conceived, the Saudis, he says, would not dream of foisting it on the Arab world; they are free at the forthcoming Arab summit to accept, reject or amend it. At his press conference to mark Lord Carrington’s visit, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud Al-Faigal, reiterated that the Saudis do envisage a key role for the Soviet Union in the Middle east peacemaking. — a role which' the Syrians and others insist upon as an indispensable counterweight to that of the United States.

And if it is true — as reports from Washington say — that King Hussein is finally turning to’the Soviet Union for antiaircraft missiles, that is a yardstick of the frustration to which this loyalist of Western friends, now seeing his seventh American President, has been reduced, and how little store he and other' ‘‘American Arabs” set by the Reagan thesis that the Soviet Union, not Israel, is the principal villain. Although the Arabs are far from united behind the Fahd plan — and that is one obstacle to its success — it is as nothing compared to the one which Israel is putting in its way. As the Saudis hailed the AWACS victory as the precursor to something infinitely more important — the adopting of their peace plan — the Israelis moved with speed and

resolution to ensure that it would not be.

It has long been Israel's reflex — when faced with diplomatic pressures it does not like — to declare that they constitute a threat to peace and sometimes to give a practical demonstration of that. It is adopting these tactics now. When Prince Fahd first proclaimed his plan, the Americans appeared to think little of it but now they have decided that it has “positive” elements in it. it is this — rather than the plan itself — which stirred the Israelis to action. They are letting it be known that the more Western support the plan commands the more that will jeopardise the only -great peace-making achievement which the Americas can yet boast; that their final withdrawal from Sinai might not take place after all.

At the same time, the Israelis have begun to drop hints that they are ready to sabotage that ” other achievement for which the Reagan Administration likes to share credit with Saudi Arabia; the fragile truce in South Lebanon. All of a sudden Prime Minister Begin is reminding the United States that the Syrian missiles are still in the Bekka Valley and that he is still awaiting the outcome of American diplomatic efforts to get them removed. His chief of staff has warned that Palestinian redeployment and rearmament in the South constitutes a violation of the cease-fire.

What .interests the Arabs is not Israel’s reaction to the Fahd plan but the world’s reaction to that reaction. And so far, in spite of official Saudi optimism they don’t find it very encouraging.

As they see it, Israel has ensured that its partners in Camp David have become its prisoners, Egypt_ remains as

isolated as ever. President Mubarak would certainly like to be reconciled with the Arab world but he has made it plain that reconciliation has to be on Egypt's terms. Mr Mubarak, officials say, would not attend the forthcoming Arab summit even if invited. For that might be enough to give Israel an excuse to renege on the final Sinai withdrawal.

The Saudis — if not other Arabs — appreciate Mr Mubarak’s dilemma. But a far more important question is whether America can extricate itself from the Camp' David fetters. It is too early to say but those Arabs who are looking for evidence that America

is in tact already bowing before the Israeli storm, find it in the assurance of the Secretary of State, Mr Alexander Haig, that Camp David remains the only route to comprehensive peace.

As for the Europeans, the Arabs have long been sceptical of what they hold to be a lack of real determination to push an independent initiative. As Lord Carrington set out for Saudi Arabia, Beirut newspapers called his mission yet another instalment in the "endless diplomacy of asking questions” — never furnishing

answers. He returned home leaving an Arab world probably more sceptical than before.

One illustration suffices. At his press conference, the Saudi Foreign Minister said that participation in an international peacekeeping force for the Sinai would amount to endorsement of Camp David — thereby coming close to the socalled Arab radicals.

At his press conference, Lord Carrington said that it did not amount to that. Meanwhile, in Israel the Foreign Minister says that any country trying to promote any alternative to Camp David disqualifies itself from serving with the force. After AWACS . and the Fahd peace plan the problems of the Middle East look, if anything, even more complex and intractable than before.