MIDDLE EAST: Slouching Toward Oslo

Can they accept a peace prize without a peace treaty?

An Israeli official: "We are exhausted.

We have exhausted our capabilities and our maneuvering powers. There is nothing more to discuss."

An Egyptian official: "We are in a holding pattern. America is the controller and must get us safely on the ground before we crash or run out of gas."

An Israeli official: "If the Egyptians do not initial the draft we will settle down and wait. What will the U.S. and Sadat do? Deport us?"

Thus after ten weeks of strenuous haggling, of constant commuting by jet between Washington and the Middle East, of reassuring hand holding by President Carter and Secretary of State Vance, the two principals nudged their way reluctantly, morosely toward something that might pass for agreement. One thing that might serve to lure them closer together is the Nobel Peace Prize, which the two are due to receive on Dec. 10. But Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat were slouching toward Oslo, counting every pace and grumbling over every step.

To all appearances, the peace treaty, every word of which seemed to have been carved on stubborn stone tablets, was complete. The eighth draft of the text, in fact, was put before the Israeli Cabinet for the second time last week and was approved after surprisingly little debate; after hearing some of Washington's latest suggestions for a settlement, which were closely aligned with Sadat's, the

Cabinet decided that the eighth draft proposal was not so bad after all.

Nonetheless, the vote was a genuine victory for Premier Begin and his Washington negotiators, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman. It was Dayan who had phoned Begin, saying "Let's for once be ahead of the Egyptians. Let us be the first to say yes, and leave Sadat to fight his own way." Begin agreed, and the Cabinet fell into line by a vote of 15 to 2.

Why, then, the delay? It was Anwar Sadat, with U.S. backing, who balked this time. The text did not include a timetable for concluding negotiations for Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, and it was this timetable that lay at the heart of Sadat's proposals for "linkage" between a treaty and the pursuit of a wider peace in the Middle East. Nor did the document take into account Sadat's new suggestion that in devising the plan for Palestinian autonomy, the negotiators should concentrate first on Gaza, then turn later to the question of the West Bank.