Man Of The Year: They Are Fated to Succeed

On a bare hill at Giza, some three miles from downtown Cairo, stands a simple rest house occasionally used by President Sadat. Its principal feature is a wide veranda that overlooks the Pyramids. The light and shadows constantly change the shape of these massive triangles leaning against each other. These are structures at once simple and monumental; they have endured the elements and man’s depredations for as close to eternity as man can reach by his own efforts. In no other place in the world is man forced into humility so exclusively by one of his own accomplishments. In this sea of sand split by the green valley of the Nile stretching a man’s vision in a thin straight line for hundreds of miles, there is no natural monument to dwarf him. The most breathtaking landmarks are all manmade, defying time and human fallibility. The Egyptian has reared tremendous edifices to remind him of both the finiteness of the human scale and the reach of human aspirations through recorded history.

One wonders whether Anwar Sadat sat on that veranda as he first began to contemplate his journey to Jerusalem—a move at once simple and awesome like the Pyramids themselves. We do know that not far from this resthouse Israeli and Egyptian negotiators have been meeting now for two weeks in an old hotel. It is in keeping with the spirit of a region where mirage and reality blend that the negotiators are at a bureaucratic level, which guarantees that no significant progress could be made until Premier Begin and President Sadat had met in Ismailia. But the mere presence of Israeli diplomats in Cairo has lent itself to the symbolic manifestations of public feeling so dear to the Arab heart; the massive demonstrations are significant whether they are spontaneous or government-sponsored. Two great peoples have met again as equals. Through the millennia both have suffered and endured; both have been obsessed with permanence, the Egyptians in architecture and the Jews in moral law. Both have now embarked on the quest for that most elusive of all permanencies: a lasting peace.

And these two eternity-obsessed nations are likely to realize their dreams. The very audacity of Sadat’s act, like the artificial mountains which are the Pyramids, dwarfs the small calculations of the recent past. Ups and downs are inevitable in the process; there will be complicated negotiations, but the parties have fated themselves to success.

One need only recall the situation of two months ago: then all was preparation for a Geneva conference. But that conference was distrusted by Egypt and Israel alike. Major procedural problems were unresolved: the scope of the plenary and the working groups, the nature of Palestinian participation, the precise role of the Soviet Union. The procedural deadlock would in all likelihood have been followed by a substantive stalemate as the irreconcilability of the opposing publicly stated positions became apparent. All the most intractable issues were thrown together.

The danger was real that in the very process of organizing the conference the most radical elements would achieve a veto, since no progress could take place without them. In turn, the Soviet Union would be able to exercise a veto over any plausible moderate solution. All the while, Israel, maddened by isolation and the fear of an imposed peace, would withdraw into sullen intransigence. Progress at Geneva would have depended on American pressure on Israel to a degree probably incompatible with U.S. domestic political realities. We ran the risk of being caught between the parties: accused by the Arab side of insufficient exertions and by Israel of excessive pressures. The Soviet Union would have gained an increasing voice as the frustration of all parties came to focus on us. Egypt—the most eager for peace of the Arab countries, yet treated as just one of a number of participants—was threatened with being reduced to passivity, with losing control over its destiny in a welter of unmanageable and unpredictable claims.

Considerations such as these must have been in President Sadat’s mind when he decided to cut through the Geneva minuet that was getting as complicated as it was irrelevant, and go to the heart of the problem—the psychological gulf that had separated Israelis and Arabs since the creation of the Jewish state.

In a recurring irony of history, the Jewish people, persecuted and ostracized for centuries, found itself again condemned to a ghetto existence of international isolation at the very moment when it had built its own state. The Arabs, their pride stung by the creation of Israel and convinced from the beginning that Israel was occupying their national territories, had refused to accept the very existence of the Jewish state. This created a vicious circle: Israel saw security in purely geographic concessions as the price of a legitimacy that diplomacy turned into legal formulas so esoteric as to be almost meaningless. Intermediaries could help to a certain point. They could lay a foundation. But no nation or leader will ever be totally certain whether an intermediary’s account of the views of the opposing side reflects reality, gullibility, or his own preference. The mere fact that an intermediary was necessary, that direct talks were rejected, reflected and fueled the prevailing distrust.

By going to Jerusalem, President Sadat cut through the mindset of a generation. He allowed the people of Israel to judge for themselves his commitment to peace; he could see for his part the trauma of a people that had never known a day without war in its national existence. Sadat was right that the heart of the problem was psychological. By grasping the essence of the issue, Sadat has done more to resolve it than all the wars and negotiations of the last three decades. Matters in the Middle East now can be reduced to a few fundamentals:

There is no alternative to the Sadat-Begin negotiations. Geneva as a negotiating forum is dead. This is just as well. It could only have led to a deadlock or to an imposed settlement, and in either case to an enlarged Soviet influence. Were Sadat and Begin somehow to fail to find solutions, lower-level diplomats meeting around a conference table in Switzerland later could scarcely be expected to succeed. In short, failure now would make conflict later inevitable. Israel would return to its ghetto existence; Egypt would face a war its people dread.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. Major progress is therefore likely. Geneva could be useful later in ratifying what has been negotiated and to provide a forum for other parties to join the negotiating process.

An Egyptian-Israeli agreement is not inimical to an overall settlement but the condition for it. The choice has never been between an overall and a partial settlement, but between a partial settlement as a first step and no settlement at all. A step toward peace is better than the continuation of conflict, all the more so since both President Sadat and Premier Begin have committed themselves to an overall settlement.

An Egyptian-Israeli agreement should involve principles applicable to the other parties. Sadat and Begin are too wise not to base progress between Egypt and Israel on principles that have wider application. They know from history that to be lasting a peace must in time reach out to all principal parties and that those parties will support it only if they participate in making it. The day will come when Arab leaders who now denounce the Sadat initiative will be grateful that the largest of Arab nations took on its own shoulders the burden of the first and most difficult decision for peace. By solving the psychological problem, Egypt has now made it possible to overcome the other obstacles to peace everywhere in the Middle East. This is why coupling the Egyptian negotiations with the Palestinian issue is important both substantively and symbolically. At the same time, on this issue where distrust and hatred have gone so deep, it may be best to set a general course and leave details for later negotiations.

Having had the privilege of working closely with the President of Syria, I am convinced that he will not turn his back on a genuine peace. In the context of Syria’s turbulent history and its internal pressures, in the light of its perception of itself as the embodiment of true Arab nationalism, President Assad has sought to keep open the option of negotiation. This attitude should be nurtured.

The current negotiations will be a test of Soviet policy. If the Soviet Union genuinely favors a relaxation of tensions throughout the world, it will in the Middle East allow the processes toward peace to occur and not press for formal participation in negotiations which are already under way and to which it can make no contribution. The Soviet Union has nothing to lose from a peaceful solution; indeed, a normalized Middle East should enable all countries to pursue their global policies on the basis of equality. If the Soviet Union encourages intransigence, the motive must be either hurt vanity or an attempt to foster tensions and to improve the opportunities for Soviet penetration. There is no reason to assuage the former, and it is in the interests of all nations to resist the latter.

If the process now under way succeeds—as is likely, even with occasional disappointments—Americans of every persuasion and party will have reason to be proud. We contributed a military balance which foreclosed a military solution. Our nation, because it was trusted by both sides, helped shape a negotiating process which culminated in the breakthrough of Sadat’s historic journey. President Carter has handled the sequence of events growing out of the Sadat initiative with wisdom and delicacy, offering assistance but not intruding on the process of negotiations.

The ultimate credit should of course go to the audacious President of Egypt who dared to smash the psychological mold of a generation; to the courageous Premier of Israel who seized a unique moment of history; and to all the peoples of the Middle East whose inarticulate aspirations, prayers and sacrifices have created the prevailing climate for peace. Appropriately enough for this season, the barren region of the Middle East, which has spawned in its lonely spaces three great religions, has become once again the focal point of humanity’s highest hopes.