MIDDLE EAST: Sadat: The Hour of Decision

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That prospect does not worry Sadat too much. He believes that if the conference starts well, the Syrians and Palestinians—assuming a formula for their representation can be worked out—will show up later on. Washington, after top White House and State Department policymakers spent their Thanksgiving holiday digesting extensive reports by Ambassadors Hermann Eilts in Cairo and Samuel Lewis in Jerusalem, began to tinker with a new formula for a pre-Geneva "preparatory conference"—comprising Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, the U.S. and the Soviets, if Moscow wished—that would keep a comprehensive multilateral Geneva conference going until Syria and the Palestinians decided to join. Meanwhile, the Eilts-Lewis cables were relayed to U.S. Ambassador Richard Murphy in Damascus; Murphy was instructed to use them to convince Assad that Sadat did not sell out the Arab side in Jerusalem. Obviously, Washington, shut out of the Sadat-Begin talks, very much wanted to be part of the followup.

Agreement between Begin and Sadat about the need to prepare for Geneva was the only concrete result of the trip. At the end of the visit, Begin released a 107-word "agreed statement" with which the Egyptian President concurred; in diplomatese, the communiqué was one step below a joint statement. The declaration expressed the desire for further dialogue between the two countries; the goal was "successful negotiation leading to the signing of peace treaties in Geneva with all Arab states."

Underlying this carefully guarded statement was the prospect that Egypt and Israel might establish working committees on substantive issues that could lead to what Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser, has described as "Geneva Up": a peace conference at which most procedural and some substantive issues had been agreed upon in advance to preclude the possibility of failure. The alternative was "Geneva Down": an unfocused, probably contentious conference at which even basic procedures would be subject to intense wrangling. At week's end Foreign Minister Dayan flew to West Germany for a scheduled round of talks with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's government. Across the Middle East, rumors rebounded that he might meet there with Egyptian diplomats—or, possibly, even go later to neutral Rumania for a conference with his Cairo counterpart, acting Foreign Minister Butros Ghali.

Precisely how Israel would respond to Sadat's initiative depended, in large measure, on the outcome of a subtle contest between Foreign Minister Dayan and Premier Begin. It was not by any means an open fight, but there were significant differences between the men about the meaning of Sadat's trip. Begin apparently believed that the visit did not call for any immediate Israeli countermove. By contrast, Dayan feels that Israel needs to reappraise its position toward the Arab states—and to do so quite soon.