Farewells in the Rose Garden

By Marguerite Johnson

But hopes for only a brief pause in the peace process

For Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin, it marked the very last time they would meet in the White House. The American President and the Israeli Prime Minister bade public farewell last week where they have so often parted, sometimes in anger, sometimes with euphoria, in the Rose Garden. It was an emotional moment, ending an official relationship that brought Carter his most brilliant foreign policy achievement, the Camp David peace accords, and Begin some prospect of peace for his embattled country.

The entire Israeli and American negotiating teams shared regrets and reminiscences around the huge polished mahogany table in the Cabinet Room. Said one American participant: "It was one of the more poignant episodes, because that process, those people, were such a big, intense part of this Administration. We had been through so much together."

Walking to the Israeli leader's limousine afterward, the President's voice broke as he praised Begin's "extreme political and personal courage" and the strong ties between Israel and the U.S. "The Camp David accords and the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt are solemn documents committed on the honor of our nation, on a permanent basis," said Carter. Begin agreed, calling the accord "a binding treaty, a sacred trust."

The Prime Minister's trip to the U.S. had originally been planned as a private visit to New York, to take part in a centennial dinner honoring the late Ze'ev Vladimir Jabotinsky, the fiery Zionist who was Begin's mentor. But after the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations on Palestinian autonomy ground to a halt in midsummer, Carter invited Begin for a side trip to Washington to try to get the talks back on track. At the time, the Administration hoped to set up some time in January a trilateral summit involving Carter, Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Any such summit will now have to be postponed until after Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

Begin had also hoped to meet with Reagan on his visit, and his aides allowed five virtually free days on his schedule so that he could fly to California if the President-elect invited him. But Reagan decided that he would not meet with any foreign leaders before his inauguration in order to avoid any chance of misunderstandings about American policy. Begin could scarcely conceal his disappointment, but he did meet with Richard Allen, Reagan's senior foreign policy adviser, who repeated the President-elect's firm support for the Camp David process as the basis of his Middle East policy.

Even as Begin was en route to New York, U.S. Ambassador James Leonard, deputy to Carter's special Middle East envoy Sol Linowitz, shuttled between Jerusalem and Cairo trying to nail down a "memorandum of understanding" among Egypt, Israel and the U.S. The White House fears that unless the progress achieved so far in the negotiations is closely defined in writing, momentum for further progress may dry up before the Reagan Administration can resume the initiative. Talks on autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza Strip are scheduled to resume in Cairo this week, but only at the nonministerial level.

Sadat, the foreign leader who was most disappointed by Carter's defeat, is resigned to a lengthy delay in the negotiations. One inducement to Egyptian patience is the prospect that elections next year in Israel may bring in a new and more flexible government headed by the Labor Party. Earlier this month, Israeli Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres, former Foreign Minister Abba Eban and former Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev visited Cairo to take part in a symposium on the Palestinian problem sponsored by the Egyptian magazine October. Sadat took the opportunity to meet with the Israelis and discuss their mutual concerns.

"There was a good chemical reaction between Sadat and Peres," Eban remarked afterward, adding that "we conducted relations, not negotiations." Peres appeals to the Egyptians because he is seen as being less dogmatic than Begin about Israel's need to control all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Moreover, he would bring to the negotiations none of the biblical fervor that fires Begin to claim the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, as he calls it) as the historical birthright of the Jews; the Egyptians find that position exasperating and irrational. By contrast, Peres favors a plan that calls for the return of nonstrategic portions of the West Bank to Jordan, which lost the area to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Beyond that, Peres believes that a joint Jordanian-Palestinian state on the occupied West Bank, headed by Jordan's King Hussein, is more feasible than trying to achieve Palestinian autonomy.

One virtue of Peres' proposal is that he would let the Jordanians include any Palestinians they wanted on their negotiating team -- and that could conceivably include members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Another point in favor of the plan is that the prospect of a Jordanian role in negotiations has be come increasingly acceptable to a number of West Bankers as an alternative if autonomy fails. Sadat, however, argues that an autonomy agreement must be completed first, and only then should King Hussein be brought into the negotiations. His reasoning is that the ground work for a comprehensive settlement for the Palestinians must first be mapped out; the Jordanian option would merely divide the West Bank and leave the Palestinians no closer to full autonomy. After being reminded that Reagan had told TIME in an interview that he believed Jordan was a "key" to a Middle East settlement, Sadat forcefully repeated his objection to including the King now. "Yes, yes," he said, "there is a contradiction between my position and that of Mr. Reagan." --By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman with Begin and Robert Slater/Jerusalem

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, Robert Slater

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