Middle East: A Quiet Little Memorandum

Vague though it is, a U.S.-Israeli pact stirs up trouble

The brief 700-word document was signed without fanfare by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger at an informal dinner at the National Geographic Society in Washington. The occasion was so low-key that neither the press nor television was invited. And, in what seemed an extraordinarily calculated effort to play down the whole affair, the Pentagon failed even to give its customary briefing afterward. Sharon pronounced himself pleased nonetheless. “The agreement is a very wide one,” he declared. “It covers everything.” But by the time he arrived back in Jerusalem, the quiet agreement had touched off an uproar in Israel that threatened the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It also made many Israelis more unhappy than ever about their government’s handling of relations with the U.S.

The document was a “memorandum of understanding” on strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Israel. Although it was the first such agreement ever signed by the two countries, there was little that was new or substantive in it, at least from Washington’s point of view. It commits the U.S. and Israel to “act cooperatively and in a timely manner” to deal with any threat to the region’s security caused by the Soviet Union or by Soviet-controlled forces that might be introduced into the area. No Arab country is ever mentioned as a threat to Israel’s security.

The Reagan Administration clearly intended that the agreement would help assuage Israeli anger over the sale of U.S. Airborne Warning and Control System

(AWACS) planes to Saudi Arabia. It was also hoped that the document would enable the Israeli government to accept more easily European participation in the Multinational Force and Observers (M.F.O.) that is to police the Sinai after Israel withdraws from Egyptian territory next April, as provided in the Camp David accords. That, apparently, it did. Late last week the U.S. and Israel issued a joint statement that was expected to clear the way for the inclusion of European troops (about 400 in all from Britain, France, Italy and The Netherlands). Israel had opposed the troops because the European Community’s 1980 Venice Declaration calls for the “association” of the Palestine Liberation Organization with Middle East peace negotiations. The joint statement affirms that the Camp David accords are the basis for the creation of the peace-keeping force and participation in it. The Israeli Cabinet conditioned its approval on European acceptance of the terms, but U.S. officials did not believe this would present a problem.

The memorandum of understanding, ironically, proved to be a far thornier issue in Israel than the agreement on the Sinai peace-keeping force. No sooner was the text published than it ran into a storm of protest. Four opposition parties in the Israeli Knesset, ranging from the left to the far right, united in an effort to oppose the agreement. With four Cabinet ministers traveling out of the country, opposition leaders saw a chance to overturn the two-seat majority that Begin’s Likud coalition holds in the parliament, and they called for a vote of no confidence. Fearing that the government could fall, Likud leaders devised a scheme to push back the hour of the Knesset session from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m., which would give traveling Cabinet ministers time to return to Israel. Furious at the ploy, the Labor Party countered with an appeal to the Supreme Court. The court turned it down, and the debate on the joint agreement finally got under way at 5:30 p.m. By the time it concluded five hours later, Likud had successfully defeated a consolidated no-confidence motion by a vote of 57 to 53.

Opponents of the memorandum of understanding, including some in Begin’s government, argued that it ties Israel to the U.S. in an explicit anti-Soviet pact while failing to mention the security threat from Israel’s Arab neighbors. They feared that naming the Soviet Union as Israel’s principal foe made Jerusalem a party to the conflict between the superpowers and could dampen efforts to improve Israel’s own relations with Moscow. It was also thought that the pact might further hinder emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, a flow that has already dropped from a peak of 4,500 per month in September 1979 to 380 last month. Complained a senior foreign ministry official: “Sharon and his people just didn’t do their homework.”

At the beginning of the talks, the Israeli defense ministry presented the Pentagon with a 29-page booklet that contained a sweeping list of military commitments. Above all, the Israelis wished the pact to be a treaty that would be binding on future U.S. Administrations. Although Sharon later declared that he got “what we wanted,” he had earlier expressed dissatisfaction with it. Editorialized the Jerusalem Post: “A close scrutiny of the document shows that it represents a humiliating climb-down for Begin and his defense minister from the high hopes that had originally been pinned on strategic cooperation with the U.S.”

Even though Israel’s Arab neighbors were not mentioned in the agreement, they were quick to denounce it, if only to deflect attention from the disarray in their own ranks following the breakdown of the previous week’s Arab summit in Fez, Morocco. Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam told U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib, who was back in the region for another round of diplomacy last week, that the U.S.-lsraeli agreement meant that the U.S. “has no more right to play any mediation or arbitration role.” But Habib had three hours of “warm and friendly” talks with Syrian President Hafez Assad, before continuing his shuttle to Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi stop may be cool. Three state-controlled newspapers published strong front-page condemnations of the memorandum that had been signed so quietly over dinner in Washington. —By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman/ Jerusalem and Johanna McGeary/ Washington