DIPLOMACY: Begin Brings His Plans For Peace

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Unlike his dour predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's new Premier is outgoing, courtly and affable. He has an irrepressible urge to press flesh; probably no other Israeli politician has shaken so many hands or bussed so many cheeks. He is aware that Rabin's last visit to the White House was flawed by the lack of personal rapport between Rabin and Carter. To prevent that kind of psychological impasse, Begin and his aides have worked for weeks discussing not only what he should say to the President but how to say it and when. Thus Begin may well arrive in Washington this week" holding substantially the same positions as Rabin did, but the man and manner will be vastly different.

Begin has already impressed Israelis—including many who were appalled by his victory—with his chivalrous public demeanor. He has effusively lauded the outgoing Rabin for his service to the country. Begin has kept on-most of Rabin's aides and generally treated them as equal coworkers. One aide accustomed to Rabin's brusque hellos still cannot get over the fact that when he arrives in the office every morning, the early-rising Begin gets up from his desk, walks over and greets him with a handshake. Says the aide: "I've been tempted to tell him that I'm just an employee, not a visitor."

Carrying on a personal custom he has maintained for 29 years, the Premier last week began holding open house on the Sabbath at his residence. No previous Premier ever did this. "It's not my home; it's yours," Begin earnestly told several hundred visitors who showed up for the first session. Begin as a good politician is constantly visible attending bar mitzvahs and berit (circumcision rites), or praying at the Wailing Wall. Unlike Rabin, a secular-minded sabra, Begin is a deeply religious man who seems quite comfortable with yarmulke, shawl and prayer book. The Premier even paid a preflight call on his old antagonist Golda Meir at her home near Tel Aviv to secure her blessing for his White House talks.

Begin has shrewdly presented to Israelis an image of himself as a paternalistic statesman—partly by stopping loose postelection hints about annexing the "liberated" West Bank, which he invariably calls by its biblical name, Samaria and Judea. Says Philip Gillon, columnist for the Jerusalem Post: "Begin's basic views don't seem to have changed at all, and that is very worrying. But he has stopped shooting off his mouth as if he were still in the opposition. He has stopped seeing himself as an ex-underground fighter and has begun to see himself as the leader of the nation." Even some Arabs appear to be intrigued. Says one leading Egyptian official: "Rabin and [Labor Leader Shimon] Peres tended to sit in fixed positions, stalling for time and keeping the diplomatic front frozen. Begin seems to like a war of movement, probing and feinting, feeling out the other side's strength. Frankly, we prefer that."