Middle East Summit in Alexandria

For once, the good news from the Middle East outweighed the bad, though not by a very wide margin. The good news was that after a final four-day bargaining session, Israel and Egypt had settled the details for submitting to international arbitration the pesky Taba dispute, which had been impeding good relations between the two countries for the past four years. That in turn led to a two-day summit meeting in Alexandria between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The event apparently succeeded in moderating what Israelis call the "cold peace," which has prevailed since Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.

The bad news was that Middle East terrorism was again on the increase. Neither Pakistani authorities investigating the attempted hijacking of a Pan American airliner in Karachi two weeks ago nor Turkish police probing the massacre of 21 worshipers at a synagogue in Istanbul had yet announced the identity of the perpetrators or their mentors. In Lebanon, meanwhile, gunmen kidnaped two more Americans in West Beirut, bringing to six the number of U.S. citizens who, along with a dozen foreigners of other nationalities, are believed to be held hostage in that country by various terrorist groups. And in southern Lebanon, after Palestinian guerrillas attempted to infiltrate Israel in a rubber dinghy, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected ammunition dump on the outskirts of the port city of Sidon, devastating an industrial district.

The Alexandria summit was the twelfth meeting between the leaders of Israel and Egypt since 1977, but only the first since 1981. The talks took place in the beige, horseshoe-shaped Ras el Tin Palace, once the summer residence of King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch, and now used by the government for official purposes.

Whatever the lasting significance of the Alexandria summit, the two leaders went to some effort to demonstrate that it was a psychological success. At the close of the first session, Mubarak told reporters, "We have concentrated heavily on the Palestinian issue, which is vitally important for the peace process. I think the Israeli position is improving a lot." For his part, Peres declared that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip "have a right to participate in the determination of their own future," and that Israelis "have no desire to dominate another people." Later he added, "If we had more time, we would have made more progress. We have reached much more understanding on a very complicated issue."

At the end of their talks, Mubarak and Peres agreed to set up a committee to prepare for an international conference on peace in the Middle East. Egypt and Jordan have long favored such a meeting. The U.S. and Israel have opposed the idea, in part, because it would necessarily include the Soviet Union. The conference may never be held and the newly proposed committee may never meet, but last week's agreement suggested that Peres was willing to explore new ways of reaching a comprehensive peace settlement.