Middle East: Pursuing an Elusive Peace

Some fences are being mended and some alliances are shifting

Though almost everything else about Middle East diplomacy appears to be in flux, one lodestar remains fixed: April 26, the day on which Israel, under terms of the Camp David accords, is scheduled to return the final third of the Sinai Peninsula to Egyptian control. The Israeli withdrawal is vital to the Camp David peace process, to the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak and to the maintenance of peace in the Middle East.

With so much at stake, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig this week flies to the Middle East on a trip that was delayed last month by the imposition of martial law in Poland. His visit to Israel is also a fence-mending mission, an effort to repair some of the damage caused by Israel's de facto annexation last month of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. When the Reagan Administration criticized the Israeli action, Prime Minister Menachem Begin lashed out at Washington, accusing the U.S. of treating Israel like "a banana republic."

Since then, tempers have cooled somewhat. In Jerusalem this week, Haig will be seeking some specific assurance that Israel will continue to exercise restraint in Lebanon, will still cooperate on the formation of the Sinai peace-keeping force, will withdraw from the Sinai on schedule, and will keep talking with Egypt about granting autonomy to the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Israel has already reaffirmed its commitment to withdrawal by April 26, and Washington in turn has told Israel that the U.S. will veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for sanctions against the Israelis because of their annexation of the Golan Heights.

The peace process should stay on track until the Israelis have withdrawn from the Sinai, but the big problem remains: getting a Palestinian autonomy agreement. Increasingly uneasy about this, the Reagan Administration has at last decided to appoint a special Middle East negotiator, a post that was held by Ambassador Sol Linowitz during the Carter Administration but has remained vacant for the past year. Haig was reluctant to appoint a special envoy in part because he feared that if the talks failed, the Administration risked losing credibility in the Arab world. Now that Haig seems to have changed his mind, the almost certain choice for the job is General Brent Scowcroft, 56, a former adviser to the National Security Council.