MIDDLE EAST: A Preemptive Purge in Cairo

Over double Scotches in his private drawing room, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat confided to an American visitor early last week that he might shortly move to consolidate his power. He had just dismissed his chief rival, left-leaning Vice President Ali Sabry (TIME, May 17), and he hinted at further moves to strengthen his hold. Even so, few expected him to move as quickly and boldly as he did. Later in the week, in rapid-fire succession, Sadat fired Egypt’s tough Interior Minister Shaarawi Gomaa and accepted the resignations of War Minister General Mohammed Fawzi, Minister for Presidential Affairs Sami Sharaf, two leaders of the Arab Socialist Union, the speaker of the National Assembly, and three other ministers—in sum, the heads of all the military, legislative and political institutions in the country. Then he placed all nine under house arrest on charges of plotting to overthrow his government.

The eight ministers and party officials who resigned in sympathy with Gomaa had hoped to bring on the collapse of Sadat’s regime.* In essence, they had tried to make Sadat answerable to the party. He insisted on being President in fact as well as in name. If Sadat can make the purge stick—and there was every indication last week that he can—he may well emerge with as much power as his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser, ever enjoyed.

The departed officials were hardliners, opposed to Sadat’s flexible and apparently pacific foreign policy. Their removal could lend powerful impetus to the good will established between Washington and Cairo in the wake of Secretary of State William Rogers’ visit two weeks ago. Such a development could only rattle Moscow’s foreign ministry—and perhaps Jerusalem’s as well.

Averted Arrest. Sadat may have been forced to move more quickly than he intended. He had been planning a double family celebration—his wife’s birthday and a daughter’s wedding anniversary—for the night the upheaval took place. The party was canceled. That afternoon, TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott spent almost an hour at the presidential mansion and found no atmosphere of impending crisis.

As Sadat told it in a speech broadcast to his startled nation, a young intelligence agent, more loyal to the President than to Interior Minister Gomaa, had brought two tape recordings to the President’s home early one morning. They were recordings of tapped telephone conversations, revealing that the Interior Minister had set a trap for Sadat about two weeks ago. Gomaa had surrounded the headquarters of Cairo radio with policemen in civilian clothes to prevent the President from speaking to the nation after a stormy meeting of the party’s central committee. Sadat chose not to broadcast that night, thus averting a showdown and his possible arrest.

After hearing the tapes, Sadat called up Sharaf and told him to inform Gomaa “that I have accepted his resignation”—despite the fact that the Interior Minister had not submitted a resignation. Sharaf “wept on the telephone,” Sadat recalled during his broadcast last week. “I said, ‘When I lose confidence in someone, I cannot maneuver or lay an ambush. I am straightforward and always in the open!’ ”

“What was really painful,” Sadat continued, “was the discovery that my own house had been bugged.” The President was sufficiently appalled to proclaim “an immediate end to police restrictions on the freedom of citizens,” including wiretapping, “except where the security of the state is concerned”—a wide loophole. He also appointed a committee to investigate the activities of the secret police. Crowds of delighted Egyptians turned out in the streets shouting “Sadat, Sadat” and waving his picture.

In place of the departed ministers, Sadat named a new 33-man Cabinet composed largely of “efficient young men and university professors,” as the President put it. Army Chief of Staff Mohammed Sadek, who succeeded Fawzi as War Minister, prudently ordered a stepped-up alert of troops around Cairo almost as soon as the resignations were announced. “The storm is over,” Sadat told Egyptians in his speech. “I have told members of the armed forces that I will mince anyone who tries to undermine our internal front.”

Sadat’s preemptive strike in effect eliminated from power all his major rivals among Nasser’s heirs. It also settled a sharp policy debate. Sabry, the first to go, was not only jealous of Sadat’s growing personal prestige but also a noisy critic of the President’s decision to join Libya and Syria in a vague new Arab federation. Gomaa had objected to Sadat’s plans for constitutional reforms to guarantee the civil liberties that the former Interior Minister had made a career of suppressing. Ex-War Minister Fawzi and most of the others had grown impatient with Sadat’s search for a diplomatic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moscow was left without one close friend in the top Cairo leadership. Sadat, at the risk of appearing beholden to Washington in the eyes of more militant Arabs, was in effect keeping open the option to pursue Rogers’ diplomatic initiative.

Big Noise from Winnetka. On the surface, the chances of success for that initiative did not appear high last week. No sooner had Rogers returned from his swing through the Middle East than Jordan’s King Hussein disinterred an old Arab vow “not to give up one inch of Arab land.” Sadat, on a visit to the Suez front early in the week, placated army officers by telling them that the chances of peace were no more than 1 in 100. Some Israelis were likening Rogers’ visit to a 1940s popular song: “Big noise blew in from Winnetka/ Big noise blew right out again.”

Yet the public posturing and cynicism on both sides masked a subsurface momentum, however gradual, toward an interim agreement on opening the Suez Canal. “There is still life in this possibility,” Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban told the Knesset, “even if agreement is not certain.” As one high U.S. official put it: “The mirror image on both sides is a desire to move with deliberation in order to avoid the misunderstandings that have marred such efforts in the past.”

The two sides are still diplomatic leagues apart. Israel’s position is that it might accept some official Egyptian presence short of military forces on the east bank of the canal—perhaps a small police contingent. It would insist on at least a skeleton staff to maintain the Bar-Lev Line of canal fortifications, an idea that Cairo would be unlikely to accept. Israel looks with little favor, however, on Rogers’ proposal for an international peace-keeping force in the area.

Presumably there is room for bargaining over the distance the Israelis would be willing to pull back. Government officials in Jerusalem have hinted at eight to ten miles from the canal. Egypt has demanded that Israeli forces go farther—a full 115 miles, but that may well be merely an opening bid. Probably the stickiest issue is Sadat’s insistence that any interim agreement on the canal be linked to a commitment by Israel to withdraw eventually from all occupied territories. Jerusalem is equally determined that any partial withdrawal be entirely separate from negotiations for an overall peace agreement.

Powers of Persuasion. In the wake of Rogers’ trip, the U.S. has more or less committed itself to helping resolve the differences between the two parties. Egypt and Israel both recognize that the U.S. is the only power capable of shouldering the role of go-between. Only Washington, as Israel’s staunchest friend and sole arms supplier, has powers of persuasion with Jerusalem. If Sadat, with his hard-lining opponents out of the way, can offer a reasonable compromise on Suez, the pressure will be on Washington to exercise that influence.

* They had more personal reasons as well. One of the Cabinet members who resigned is married to Gomaa’s daughter, another to Gomaa’s sister-in-law. The departed War Minister, Mohammed Fawzi, is a cousin of Sami Sharaf. And ex-Information Minister Mohammed Fayek is married to the niece of Ali Sabry.