Meeting At Camp David

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signing a peace agreement and was determined to keep the Arab lands as part of "a greater Israel."

Israel understandably does not want to give up territory that it feels it needs for security. But the U.S. has long argued that it should be possible to satisfy Israel's security requirements without a full-scale Israeli occupation of Arab territories. And Sadat, for one, told the Knesset: "We agree to any guarantees you accept." Egyptian officials have indicated that they would even be willing to permit some kind of Israeli military presence on the West Bank for a limited time (perhaps up to ten years), if it did not undermine the principle of Arab sovereignty. Last week, moreover, U.S. officials let it be known that Washington might be willing to consider establishing bases and stationing U.S. troops as a safeguard in the area. Begin rejected the idea. Said he: "We do not want any United States troops or United Nations troops, because we ourselves will protect our own people."

There are suspicions, however, that security is no longer Israel's sole reason for trying to hold on to the lands it conquered eleven years ago. The fiercely devout Begin has introduced a troubling religious factor into the argument by maintaining that events related in the Old Testament give Israel a historic claim to the West Bank. He even insists on calling the region by its Biblical names of Samaria and Judea. He declared to the Knesset: "We did not take strange land; we returned to our homeland. The tie between our nation and this land is eternal."

Linked closely with West Bank sovereignty is the issue of the Palestinians' right to self-rule. Israel is adamantly opposed to an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and so it objects to unrestricted self-determination for residents of these areas. Israelis fear that a Palestinian state would be controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization, a group that not only commits acts of terror but also is on record as calling for the destruction of Israel. Says Dayan: "Self-determination for the Palestinians means for us the destruction of the state of Israel in stages."

Egypt and the U.S. may not be very far from the basic Israeli position. Washington and Cairo insist that the Palestinians have "legitimate rights" —something Jerusalem has yet to accept—but neither Sadat nor Carter is enthusiastic about creating an independent state that would be politically, militarily and economically unstable. When the two leaders met last January in Aswan, Carter merely stated that the Palestinians should "participate in the determination of their own future." Sadat later approved this notion, which falls far short of self-rule. An Israeli-Egyptian compromise on this issue is therefore possible.

This summit meeting may be the most trying test Carter has had of his ability as a negotiator and reconciler. Sitting on the porch of Aspen Lodge, overlooking the pool, he will try to dispel the suspicions and antagonisms that have built up between Sadat and Begin. Said one top Administration official: "It's not so mechanical as in a strategic negotiating session. A lot stems from human qualities and reactions. The introduction of ideas depends on intuitive insight."

Carter will need all the intuition he can