POLITICS: Carter, the World and the Jews

More than any past President, Jimmy Carter has committed the prestige of his office to a Middle East settlement. While he has raised Arab hopes—perhaps to an unrealistic level—he has also aroused distrust and anger in Israel and among many of its fervent supporters in the U.S. The significance of the issue reaches beyond domestic politics and even beyond the Middle East itself, for it illustrates the weaknesses of Carter's approach to world affairs generally: too public and too often contradictory.

Many American Jews had deep misgivings initially about Carter, a Southern Baptist with few ties to the Jewish community. He stilled doubts by asserting that Israel should maintain control of the Golan Heights and Jewish and Christian places of worship in Jerusalem. He also pledged to continue military aid, and he promised to wage an "economic war" against the Arab states if they imposed another oil embargo.

Disillusionment began only a month after Carter's inauguration, when, during Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's visit to the Middle East, the U.S. announced that it would bar sales to other countries of Israel's Kfir jets with American-built engines. The White House also canceled a shipment of concussion bombs promised to Israel by the Ford Administration. Vance came home convinced that the Arabs were more flexible than the Israelis, and he said so. In meetings with Middle East leaders, Carter got on famously with Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, Jordan's King Hussein, Syria's President Hafez Assad and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd —but not at all well with Israel's then Premier, Yitzhak Rabin. Then the President alarmed Jews when he called for a homeland for Palestinians, suggested that Israel withdraw from almost all of the territory it had seized in the 1967 Six-Day War, and asked for reparations for displaced Arabs—a demand that even Arab leaders have not made.

Actually these points are sensible and have been raised by previous Administrations, mostly in private. No Middle East peace is possible without at least a start toward resettling the Palestinians, but the word "homeland" raises confusion over whether Carter means a sovereign state or a territory affiliated with Jordan. It is also obvious that no peace is possible unless Israel gives up most of the occupied territories, including the West Bank. But there are many possible ways for this to come about, and Carter's pronouncement seems both premature and imprecise.