A Defiant No to Reagan

The Prime Minister of Israel was in a rage. Standing before the Israeli parliament, his back erect, Menachem Begin lifted his right arm into the air and repeatedly pounded his fist on a table for emphasis. “For you, Mr. President,” he declared, addressing his remarks to an American President 6,000 miles away, “this is a political matter. You need to get closer to Saudi Arabia. Maybe you need to shake hands with King Hussein [of Jordan] after he was on no-speaking terms with your predecessor, Mr. Carter.” Then, drawing himself even straighter, the Prime Minister shouted: “To us it is our life!” His fist crashed onto the table. “Our homeland!” Crash! “The land of our fathers and sons!” Crash! “Judea and Samaria will be for the Jewish people for generations upon generations!” Crash!

Thus, in his most defiant manner, Begin declared last week that Ronald Reagan’s peace plan for the Middle East was “stillborn.” Never mind that the Reagan proposals had been hailed by a wide range of governments and foreign policy experts and even many U.S. Jewish organizations as a bold and promising initiative. Or that the plan was taken seriously by the 20 Arab nations holding a summit last week in Fez, Morocco. To the proud and stubborn Israeli leader, whose cooperation in any Middle East peace process would be essential, the whole idea of the plan was anathema. “It no longer exists,” Begin said sharply. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: “The friendship between Israel and the U.S. still exists.”

And so it did, though the relationship, as the Old Testament that Begin knows so well might have put it, was sore tried. Angered by U.S. criticism, Israel continued to withhold from the U.S. the military intelligence, including technical information concerning captured Soviet-made weapons, that it had gleaned from the fighting in Lebanon. Four days after President Reagan announced his peace plan, which included a request for a freeze on the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli government stubbornly allocated $18.5 million for the construction of eight new settlements in the West Bank.

Reagan’s initiative to solve the long-festering issue of granting some kind of autonomy to the Palestinians had other features designed to appeal to both the Arabs and the Israelis. The President ruled out an independent state for the Palestinians, knowing that the Israelis would never accept such an entity on their borders. Instead, Reagan suggested that the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip be allowed by the Israelis, who now hold the territories, to form some kind of loose federation with Jordan. Reagan also called on the Arabs to recognize at long last Israel’s right to exist. And, trying to soothe Israeli fears, the President declared that the U.S. had an “ironclad” commitment to the security of its ally.

While Israel’s government fulminated against Reagan’s proposals last week, it continued to consolidate its victory in Lebanon. The Israelis wiped out five more Syrian missile batteries in central Lebanon and attempted to pressure President-elect Bashir Gemayel into quickly signing a peace treaty. When Gemayel, a Christian leader who is on good terms with the Israelis and has sometimes been dismissed by Lebanese Muslims as an Israeli puppet, attempted to delay the negotiations on such a treaty until he has had a chance to strengthen his position in Lebanon, Israel’s tough Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, spoke out bluntly. In the absence of a peace treaty, Sharon warned, Israel would place southern Lebanon in a “security zone,” presumably meaning a military buffer sector run by the Israelis or their close allies, the pro-Israeli forces of another Lebanese Christian strongman, Major Sa’ad Haddad.

In a personal letter to Reagan, Begin wrote that the President’s plan would lead to a radical Palestinian state in the West Bank and therefore to “a Soviet base in the heart of the Middle East” that would “endanger our very existence.” Begin chided the President, saying, “A friend does not weaken his friend; an ally does not put his ally in jeopardy.”

The brusque rejection of the Reagan peace plan overshadowed some good news for the U.S.: the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas from West Beirut had gone so smoothly that the 800 U.S. Marines who had been sent to Lebanon as peace-keepers were being withdrawn almost two weeks ahead of schedule.

The controversy over the Reagan plan emphasized not only the range of policy differences between Washington and Jerusalem over how to secure a lasting peace, but also the depth of the soul searching that is taking place within Israel. The war against the P.L.O. had deeply disturbed many Israelis, who regarded it as the first war that their country had not been obliged to fight, and a war that had caused heavy civilian casualties in Lebanon. Israelis were also worried about the cost of the war in terms of their nation’s prestige abroad. Night after night, throughout much of the world, television screens had shown Israeli forces using their sophisticated American-made weaponry to produce devastation in densely populated West Beirut. Abba Eban, a former Foreign Minister and a leading member of the opposition Labor Party in the Knesset, was undoubtedly correct when he concluded, “Israel’s policies, image, character, values and aspirations are less understood and admired today than in any other period of her history.”

For at least the first two decades of its existence, Israel was regarded by its overseas friends as the vulnerable underdog, struggling for survival against terrible odds. Today, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Israel is the world’s fourth most powerful military state. (The top three: the U.S., the Soviet Union and China.) Israel is also the world’s seventh largest arms merchant. In the early years, Israelis improvised as best they could with any bits of weaponry they could lay their hands on. During the war in Lebanon they managed, with their combat experience and superb technical skills, to achieve superiority over some of the latest Soviet arms.

As Israel has grown stronger militarily, important changes have occurred within its population of 4.1 million that have made the country more aggressive in foreign affairs and diminished the power of the Labor Party, which, until Begin’s Likud coalition came to power in 1977, had led the nation from its inception. A significant generational shift has also occurred in the way Israelis today see their country’s borders. Israelis who grew up before the 1967 war tend to be willing to have Israel remain indefinitely within its 1949 boundaries; they are glad that Israel exists at all. Israelis who have grown up since 1967 are accustomed to traveling to the West Bank, to Gaza and, until five months ago, to the Sinai. The expanded borders enhanced the Israelis’ sense of freedom; they also increased the nation’s sense of security. Begin gave back the Sinai in return for peace with Egypt. He obviously has no intention of giving up any more, rejecting Reagan’s view that Israel’s lasting security must be created out of compromise and an exchange of territory for security.

There is no question that the majority of Israelis still support Begin and many of his policies. A Jerusalem Post poll disclosed that if elections were held this month, Begin’s Likud coalition would win 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset, for a gain of 18 seats. The survey also showed that the opposition Labor Party, which won 47 seats in the June 1981 elections, would lose twelve. Furthermore, the polls indicate that Begin has never been more popular as a leader. But such surveys tend to obscure the degree of unease in the Israeli population. Observes Meron Medzini, a lecturer at Hebrew University: “One-third of the Israelis are alienated from Begin. The war in Lebanon has only deepened this alienation. Unfortunately for Begin, this one-third is the most vocal third of the population.” Wrote Hebrew University Historian Ze’ev Mankowitz last week in an eloquent expression of this national mood: “The public debate over the war in Lebanon … is essentially a battle for the soul of the people of Israel.” He continued: “Past victimization does not generate automatic moral immunity, does not give one carte blanche to harm others and does not justify a policy of righteous entitlement.”

Begin was quite prepared to lead the battle that Mankowitz referred to, confident of the logic of his arguments and the rectitude of his position, a man with an encyclopedic memory of political events, names and odd and quirky facts that he could cite in the savage parry and thrust of Knesset debate to put down an opponent. But even at the height of his powers last week, the Prime Minister remained a kind of anomaly in Israel. In a land so informal that many men proudly boast they do not own a suit and cannot cope with a tie, Begin, soberly clad in a dark suit, white shirt and immaculately knotted tie, is so punctilious and polite that he delights in kissing the hands of women when they are introduced to him. He can be stiffly formal with Cabinet colleagues, addressing them in Hebrew as adoni (sir).

A man who had suffered two heart attacks and was still feeling the effects of breaking his hip last November, Begin, 69, was working last week at his usual rigorous pace. He generally rises at 5 a.m., and for the next three hours, after breakfasting on sour milk, cold herring and tea (no lemon, milk or sugar, but some artificial sweetener), he reads four Hebrew-language daily newspapers and the English-language Jerusalem Post. Around 8 a.m., he is whisked to his office eight minutes away in the silver Dodge that serves as Israel’s official car for the Prime Minister. Then he really goes to work, a virtually nonstop whirligig of meetings throughout the morning. At 1 p.m., he tries to get away for a lunch in the kitchen at home with his ailing wife Aliza. He rests until 4, then goes back to the office for more meetings until 7 p.m. At night, he dozes only occasionally in front of the TV set like any weary grandfather. Usually he works for hours, phoning people throughout Israel to discuss current issues. Only at midnight does Begin give up and go to bed.

As always, Begin dominates his Herut Party, the major component of the ruling Likud coalition. During the Lebanese war, he never called a meeting to explain his policies, a failing that would have been unacceptable, and indeed unthinkable, in the larger and more democratic Labor Party. Begin ran his Cabinet in similar style during the week of discussion about the Reagan proposal. Asked to describe the Prime Minister’s relationship to his Cabinet, a Begin supporter tersely replies: “Snow White and the seven dwarfs. They all owe their political lives to Begin. On the issues that count, the Cabinet reflects his views completely.”

The Prime Minister even controlled the hawkish Sharon, the man he made Defense Minister last August, and who led the attack on Lebanon. Begin and Sharon make an odd couple; they have a kind of symbiotic relationship, although Sharon needs Begin far more than Begin needs Sharon, for all of the Defense Minister’s posturing. Indeed, Sharon makes no secret of his desire to replace Begin. He asks those he trusts: “Tell me, how can I become Prime Minister? How can I get rid of Begin?”

Sharon took much of the criticism, from Israelis and the world at large, for the savagery of the assault on West Beirut, although many of his policies had been quietly endorsed by Begin. At a meeting of intimates, Sharon boasted: “I have the survivability of a superpower. No criticisms or opposition will harm me.” On another occasion he remarked: “The dogs may bark, but the caravan goes on its way.” Still, when Begin, angered by the inordinately heavy and prolonged bombardment of Beirut ordered by his Defense Minister, told Sharon to ease his attacks, there was no protest. Others who once opposed Begin, including even Moshe Dayan, were adroitly maneuvered out of the previous Cabinet. Says an in formed official: “Begin stopped him, and Sharon took it like a little puppy dog. He knew what had happened to Dayan.”

But Begin and the man he knows wants to replace him have worked closely to develop the strategy that was behind the Lebanon invasion. Its aim, in the words of a senior military officer, is “to eliminate any potential threat to Israel’s existence.” As Sharon sees it, “Israel needs freedom of operation in the region, and will achieve it either by political means or by its own independent military power.” And Sharon has made it clear that Israel intends to reply to any threat in its own way; i.e., a P.L.O. raid in the Bekaa Valley might touch off an Israeli foray into Beirut, Tunis or Tripoli.

What also drove Begin, as he braced for what he knew would be a long struggle with the U.S. over the Palestinian issue, was the firm conviction that God had given the West Bank to the Jews. And there was something else: a determination, born of his experience in the Holocaust, to do whatever was necessary to protect Israel. Begin’s father, a leader of the Jewish community in Brest Litovsk, Poland, was said to have been thrown by the Nazis into a river at gunpoint while weighted down with sacks filled with rocks; he died, along with many others from the same community. Begin’s mother was also murdered by the Nazis, as was his brother Herzl. Even today Begin cannot bring himself to write letters to Germans, and he has admitted that at times he cannot bring him self to speak to them.

All last week, members of the Begin government systematically attacked the Reagan peace proposals. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who had opposed the Camp David agreements, said that Washington had “markedly deviated from Camp David in almost each and every clause of its new plan.” He told the Knesset that the Reagan initiative was “an attempt to bend and subjugate Israel” and that the U.S. was “no longer an honest broker” because it had chosen to side with the Arabs. Other Israeli officials objected to the linking of Jordan’s King Hussein to the future of the occupied territories. As a Begin aide put it, “If this plan were to be accepted, Israelis before going to sleep would have to pray, ‘God save the King.’ What if Hussein were to be killed? The entire plan is based on the future of King Hussein.”

In part, Begin was angry because he had assumed that the U.S. could be counted on to continue to pay lip service to the stalled autonomy talks, as defined and delimited by Israel. That would have enabled the Begin government to continue freely to go its way in building more Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and, eventually, to incorporate them into Israel. The U.S. had never so interpreted the Camp David accords, and Reagan’s plan more explicitly and forcefully than ever before showed the U.S. disapproval of Begin’s thrust.

With so much emotion building up, the Knesset debate last Wednesday was one of the most acrimonious in the parliament’s history. Begin was preceded by Victor Shem-Tov, who spoke for the Labor Party. (Labor Leader Shimon Peres was unable to attend because of the death of his father.) Shem-Tov told the Knesset that “the Likud goal of annexing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is an empty dream, which is rejected by most Israelis and by the entire world.” Hearing this, Begin looked up and said to Shem-Tov in a low voice, “I’ll suggest elections in May or June.” It was a bold challenge: Let’s hold the elections two years early and we’ll see where the electorate stands on this issue. Later, in his speech, Begin asked Labor members, “Let’s agree on new elections. May or June. Do you agree? If you do, we will prove to you who is speaking for the majority.” Most Israelis seemed to welcome the idea of early elections. Some observers believed the balloting was more likely to take place in the fall of 1983 than in the spring, since one of Begin’s coalition partners, the National Religious Party, needs more time to recover from the severe losses it suffered in the 1981 election.

In his speech, buoyed by the opinion polls that showed his popularity at an all-time high, Begin spoke belligerently and exuberantly. He shouted his rejection of the Reagan plan. He accused Washington of trying to remove him from office. He snidely implied that Reagan was trying to sell out Israel to please the Arab states. Declared the Prime Minister: “If anyone wants to take Judea and Samaria from us, we will say, ‘Judea and Samaria belong to the Jewish people to the end of time.’ ” He did not address himself to the fact that the population of the West Bank is overwhelmingly Arab.

Knesset Member Shlomo Hillel, a former police minister, replied on behalf of Labor. Like the Likud, Labor opposes a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and any change in the status of Jerusalem. But Labor has long opposed an annexation of the occupied territories, because the addition of 1.3 million Arabs to Israel’s population of 4.1 million would change the nature of the country. Like Reagan, Labor wants the West Bank to join in some kind of association with Jordan.

Thus, answering Begin, Hillel declared that the Reagan initiative should be interpreted by the Israelis as “an opening.” After all, he continued, “no other U.S. President has said that he would not ask Israel to return to its 1967 borders with the narrow waist.” He called the government’s haste in rejecting the Reagan plan “unwise and irresponsible,” and criticized Begin for his rash response. “There has not been even a minimum of sophistication,” he said. “As a result, the Arab League meeting at Fez appears to be more sensible and more respectable than the Israeli government.” Later in the afternoon, the Knesset, where Begin’s Likud coalition holds 64 out of 120 seats, endorsed the Prime Minister’s position on the Reagan plan by a vote of 50 to 36.

Hillel was right about the Arab summit’s appearing to be more judicious in its response to Reagan. Last year an Arab conference broke up after only 5½ hours because it could not agree on whether to support the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Fahd, who has since become King. The Fahd plan implied that Israel had a right to exist, something the hard-line states, like Syria and Iraq, strongly opposed. This year the Arab leaders debated a similar plan for the best part of four days, and reached an agreement, although it was more ambiguously worded on the key issue of recognizing Israel.

The lion at Fez was P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, who was greeted as a hero by everybody except Syria’s President Hafez Assad, who was annoyed that Arafat, when he was finally evacuated from Beirut two weeks ago, failed to stop off in Damascus to thank the Syrians for the support they had given the P.L.O.

In his speech, Arafat took a moderate if noncommittal stand on the Reagan proposals. He said that the P.L.O. found some “good things” in the plan. Arafat suggested that the Arab group should say neither yes nor no to Washington, but should move toward some form of discourse with the U.S. on the subject. During the long, agonizing Beirut summer, Arafat had become convinced that some sort of historic change was taking place in U.S. policy toward the region. Like many other people, he suspected that the ferocity of the Israeli strikes in Lebanon was causing the U.S. to see Israel in an unaccustomed light, and he did not want to dismiss the U.S. initiative out of hand. Arafat asked the Arabs for “moral and material support” for the Palestinians remaining in Lebanon, the West Bank and elsewhere, and requested that they replace the military equipment that the P.L.O. had lost in Lebanon. The Saudis reportedly promised to open their checkbooks to pay the bills.

Many of the points contained in the Arabs’ joint resolution, which was offered as a “united peace plan,” were familiar ones. The Arab leaders once again called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and reaffirmed the status of the P.L.O. as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. They asked Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and to dismantle the settlements it has built in the occupied territories.

What was most notable about the plan, which Morocco’s King Hassan II described as a first step toward reaching a state of “nonbelligerency” with Israel, was that it did not denounce the Reagan proposals, and it did not single out the U.S. or Israel for condemnation. Indeed, the resolution did not specifically mention Israel or its right to exist, but the Arabs did say that the United Nations Security Council should guarantee peace among all nations in the region.

That statement, accepted unanimously by the 20 Arab leaders at the summit, sounded like a tacit recognition of Israel’s right to exist. U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that if the Arab plan really implied a recognition of Israel, it was “a genuine breakthrough.” The main question now, he continued, was whether the Arabs would join some sort of negotiating process. “The fact that they have different positions,” Shultz said, “is not so important as whether they will come and talk about them.” While it is still unclear whether any of the Arab states are eager to join in serious talks, the summit decided that a delegation would visit the U.S. and Europe to explain the Arabs’ position.

When the Fez communiqué was published, the Israelis took one look at the Arab plan, with its insistence on the creation of a Palestinian state, the division of Jerusalem and the representative role accorded the P.L.O., and denounced it as “even worse than the Fahd plan, which was rejected by Israel in the past.”

Without doubt, one reason for the Begin government’s displays of anger last week derived from the Prime Minister’s perception that the Reagan White House had altered its style of dealing with him, and he was right. The crucial event that changed the Administration’s view was the Israeli thrust into Lebanon and the siege of West Beirut. In particular, the attack was an eye-opener for Reagan: it made him realize, as never before, that the Begin government was in some ways as much an obstacle to a peaceful settlement of complex issues like Palestinian autonomy as most of its Arab enemies. Reagan had come to office as favorably disposed toward Israel as any of his predecessors since 1948. But relations between the President and the Prime Minister were harmed by repeated incidents over Middle East issues. The White House staff felt that Begin was implying that he could politically control the American President through the powerful Jewish lobby in the U.S. If that was the case, Begin may now have overplayed his hand, giving Reagan greater leverage than he had before. There is no question that Israel’s support on Capitol Hill has been weakened by the events in Lebanon.

Last month, when the Israeli bombing of West Beirut continued even after the P.L.O. had agreed in principle to leave, Reagan was visibly angry with Begin as the two leaders spoke by telephone. No other foreign leader had evoked such a reaction from the American President. White House aides are still smarting over the embarrassment caused Reagan by the timing of the Israelis’ invasion of Lebanon, which occurred while the President and other leaders were attending the Versailles summit in early June.

The Administration eventually decided that more pressure had to be put on Begin to get him to negotiate. Like his new Secretary of State, George Shultz, Reagan believed that the war in Lebanon and the removal of the P.L.O. from West Beirut provided the U.S. with an excellent opportunity to get the peace process working again. Once the proposals had been formulated, a special mission was secretly sent to sound out Jordan’s King Hussein, and came back with an amber Light to proceed cautiously. Israel was not consulted, in part because the Administration feared it would react, as it has sometimes done in the past, by leaking the plan prematurely, and not necessarily accurately, to the press.

From the beginning, the Administration was elated by the response the peace plan received. U.S. allies welcomed it, and British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym planned to visit some Arab countries next month to commend the proposal. Most senior U.S. foreign policy experts in both political parties also backed the President’s initiative.

Cyrus Vance, who served as Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, said of the plan: “It is a bold stroke, and I totally support it. It is wholly consistent with Camp David. I sat through every meeting up there, and I know pretty clearly what took place.” George Ball, a former Under Secretary of State and a persistent critic of the Begin government, lauds the Reagan proposals for “putting a kind of pressure on the Israelis either to go forward or to play the role of opposing the plan.”

After the Fez meeting, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said last week: “Now there are two positions, one stated in a rather conciliatory form from the Arab summit, the other stated rather intransigently from Jerusalem. Now it is the task of diplomacy to find a way, maybe on an interim basis, between these two positions. I think it is possible, and I think the initiative the President has taken provides a basis for it. I feel we have now seen the beginning of a negotiating process.”

A parallel U.S. priority is to secure the withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli forces from Lebanon. Last week President Reagan announced that he would send Morris Draper, a career diplomat who has been serving as Special Envoy Philip Habib’s top deputy in Lebanon, back to Beirut to try to bring about the evacuation of all foreign troops. At the same time, Reagan presented Habib with a Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Habib will return to Lebanon to attend the inauguration of President-elect Gemayel later this month, but has no specific plans after that.

The central question, still unanswered, was whether Begin could be budged from his absolute refusal to discuss the Reagan plan. The President, taking an optimistic Line, speculated that Begin’s adverse reaction might merely be the opening gambit in formulating a negotiating position. Secretary of State Shultz insisted, “We are in the early stages of the evolution of positions. I don’t think the plan is dead by any means.”

Shultz is counting on a combination of external pressure and discontent in Israel with Begin’s policies, which he believes will develop in time, to force the Prime Minister to the bargaining table. Some of Begin’s questions are valid, such as those concerning the risk to Israel of having on its borders an autonomous territory that might be vulnerable to terrorist or even Soviet influence. But surely, U.S. officials reasoned, such matters should at least be open to debate, not summarily dismissed.

One thing the Administration was determined not to do was exert any arm-twisting on Begin. There would be no threats, White House aides insisted, of curtailing economic or military aid. The Administration knows Begin reacts badly to that kind of threat. It is also wary of exerting an adverse influence on the next Israeli elections and of antagonizing the American Jewish community, whose support for the Reagan plan has been greater than the White House expected. Still when Shultz was asked last week when the U.S. would announce the previously planned sale of new F-16s to Israel that had been delayed since shortly after the war in Lebanon began, he replied coolly, “The President will decide that. In his own good time.”

In the months ahead, the Administration hopes that the Arabs will show a willingness to negotiate and thus put more subtle pressure on the Israelis. Until now, Arab intransigence has perfectly complemented Begin’s unbending drive, enabling him to justify anything he did. For this reason, U.S. officials were moderately pleased by the results of the Fez summit. In effect, the conference marked the end of the “rejectionist front” and the triumph of the moderates; both Syria and the P.L.O. supported the mainstream resolution, leaving only Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who refused to go to Fez, outside the tent. The event the Administration was hoping for, above all else, was a decision by King Hussein to join the Camp David negotiations, and the U.S. was willing to dangle the lure of peace. But Shultz is not naive about other U.S. attractions. Said he last week: “I personally feel that if Hussein participates in the peace process, arms sales to Jordan would be looked on more favorably.” But Hussein will make no move without Arab League support, and one thing the Fez summit apparently did not approve was an active role for the Jordanian King in the peace process.

The real problem for U.S. strategy is that practically nobody who knows Begin well believes he will ever make a deal on the West Bank. Israel might, some day, but probably not Begin. He has already demonstrated his willingness to turn Reagan into an adversary and if necessary to damage his country’s special relationship with the U.S. Two of his top ministers have said publicly that they would force the U.S. to abandon the initiative by simply refusing to discuss it.

Begin, in fact, is convinced that the U.S. knows he will never cooperate with Reagan’s plan, and that the underlying tactic of the Reagan Administration is to try to build up political opposition in Israel that would knock him out of office and install Labor’s Peres. U.S. officials insist that there is no truth to that suspicion or to the Israeli claim that they have suddenly become pro-Arab. The hope of the Administration is to get both the Israelis and the Arabs to bend. But if all else failed, some U.S. officials privately concede, the Administration would be pleased if Begin were toppled as Prime Minister.

Given this situation, and aware that at best the process Reagan has set in motion will be a lengthy one, the U.S. may be able to do little more in the months ahead than try to encourage negotiations, make its views known to the Israeli public and await the day when the imperative of peace outdistances the fears and insecurities that have, for so long and with so much reason, shaped Begin’s Israel and Israel’s Begin.

— By William E. Smith.

Reported by David Aikman and Robert Slater/ Jerusalem and Roberto Suro/Fez with other bureaus