DIPLOMACY: Begin Brings His Plans For Peace

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First, they anticipate that Begin will say he is ready to go to Geneva to negotiate a comprehensive settlement that will include withdrawal from the Golan Heights (although Israel would maintain the high points), plus pullbacks in Sinai. U.S. officials expect Begin to propose to keep the Gaza area as well as a stretch of land connecting El Arish and Eilat with Sharm el Sheikh at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. Although Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan will not be along, Washington believes that it will hear once again Dayan's ideas for a solution to the West Bank problem. These include continued Israeli settlement, with the right of Jews to buy property anywhere, the Jordan River as the Israeli defense line, and open bridges to Jordan. That plan, however, is considered by Washington as basically a sanctification of the status quo. Says one State Department expert: "Carter would have to say, That's impossible, we can't sell that to the Arabs.' "

Washington also believes that Begin will present a second, fall-back position. Diplomatic experts predict that the Premier will offer concessions on the Golan Heights and Sinai but defer any movement on the West Bank until the Arabs show good faith in their responses to these prospective deals. At Ben-Gurion Airport last week, Begin talked about an ultimate time when there would be "Israeli ambassadors in Cairo and Damascus and, vice versa, an Egyptian and Syrian ambassador in Jerusalem." Egypt's President Sadat proposes that relations with Israel could be fully normalized within five years of a settlement's being reached. Begin called that time span "unacceptable."

Since winning the election, Begin has talked expansively about peace, apparently seeking to counter charges that Israel has become intransigent about a settlement while the Arabs were cooperative. He seems to believe that his proposals can be the basis for convening a Geneva conference in October. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, in his trip to the Middle East scheduled for August, will probably insist on a later start.

The U.S. believes, as do the Arabs, that rather than throwing everything into a Geneva donnybrook, key issues should be settled first. Washington still insists that if there is to be a settlement, the Israelis will have to agree to withdraw from unspecified but major portions of territory captured since 1967; some kind of permanent homeland for the Palestinians, preferably in league with Jordan, will have to be established; and the Arabs will have to agree to full diplomatic recognition and relations with Israel. Carter has indicated that he will not use economic or military aid to Israel as a lever. Given the power of the Jewish lobby in Congress, as well as the genuine need to maintain Israeli strength for bargaining with the Arabs, he can hardly say anything else. But pressure there will undoubtedly be.