Fighting over the Peace Keepers

European participation in the Sinai force rouses Israeli fears

The hastily called meeting went on for 7½ hours behind the closed doors of Alexander Haig’s seventh floor office. The U.S. Secretary of State and Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir focused on one key question: whether Israel would accept contingents from four European countries on the peace-keeping force that will patrol the Sinai after Israel’s final withdrawal next April. Until Shamir’s flight to Washington late last week, the Israelis seemed ready to veto the European participation because the four countries (Britain, France, Italy and The Netherlands) have implied support of the Palestine Liberation Organization. But Shamir emerged from his session at the State Department with cautious words of optimism. Said he: “I’m taking home some ideas. There are prospects that we will agree on some proposals.”

The issue would not be settled until Shamir presented the U.S. proposals to the Israeli Cabinet, and there was a chance that the final decision might even be postponed until Haig could go to Jerusalem. But the fact that the question remained open at all seemed to justify Haig’s description of last week’s meeting as “very constructive and valuable.”

Win or lose, it was the climax of a long struggle for Haig. Since last summer the Secretary has been promoting a European presence on the 2,500-man Multinational Force and Observers (M.F.O.) provided for in the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. The U.S. had agreed to provide about half of the troops, but Haig wanted to broaden the international support for the Camp David peace process. Others who have agreed to take part: Fiji, Colombia and Uruguay.

The Europeans feared that their participation would be taken as an endorsement of Camp David, which would irritate their Arab oil suppliers and undercut their own broader peace initiative. Based on the European Community’s 1980 Venice declaration, it calls for associating the P.L.O. with the peace process and for Palestinian “self-determination,” a term the Israelis see as a code word for statehood. After intense consultations, the four European countries formally accepted the U.S. invitation to join the M.F.O. But, in effect, they reaffirmed the principles of the Venice declaration.

Jerusalem’s reaction was prompt and predictable. At midweek, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin told U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis that he would ask his Cabinet to reject the participation of the Europeans as long as they supported a P.L.O. peace role. The 68-year-old Prime Minister’s resolve was in no way weakened the next day when a fall in his home hospitalized him with a broken left thigh. It was expected that the Cabinet meeting discussing the subject would be held at his bedside in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital.

Whatever the final outcome, the U.S. and Israel remained at odds on another issue: the scope and nature of a proposed “strategic cooperation” agreement that has been in the works since Begin’s meeting with Ronald Reagan last September. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was due in Washington this week to sign a joint memorandum, but the two sides were far apart. Washington’s idea is to hold small-scale joint maneuvers and preposition some medical and other supplies in Israel for possible future use by the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force. The Israelis want a more far-reaching agreement on joint military action. Complained a senior U.S. official: “Their general approach is so broad and sweeping that it is open to wrong interpretations by the Arab nations. It’s just not realistic.” ∎