The scheduled meeting in Cairo this week between Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Arens, and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze is without doubt the most promising event on the Middle East peace front in many event on the Middle East peace front in many months.
Its significance is perhaps best appreciated by stressing its venue — the Egyptian capital.
Arens and Shevardnadze have met before, in Paris, and could have met now in any city.
By choosing Cairo, in the course of his important diplomatic tour of the Middle East, the Soviet statesman is making an important policy statement with far-reaching implications.
He is saying, in effect, that the Soviet Union at last recognizes and acquiesces in the American-orchestrated Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979 as the cornerstone of the larger peace edifice yet to be built between Israel and the Arab states.
The treaty will have its 10th anniversary next month and until now, the Soviets have been hostile or, at best, reserved toward it.
They have branded the treaty and the Camp David accords that led up to it as a separate arrangement, designed to serve American, Israeli and Egyptian interests rather than the cause of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
Meeting Arens in Cairo signifies, moreover, that the Soviets intend their own dramatically enhanced diplomatic involvement in the Middle East to proceed in step with the Americans, not against them.
Shevardnadze, in effect, is signaling to the new administration in Washington that, after the Soviet setback in Afghanistan, Moscow urgently wants to channel its energy into Middle East peacemaking.
He is saying, too, that President Bush’s people had better climb aboard.
MAY WARM SOVIET-ISRAELI TIES
On another front, the scheduled Arens-Shevardnadze meeting has served to accelerate the ongoing but sluggish thaw in relations between the Soviet Union and Israel.
Israel’s prompt response to the overture from Moscow doubtless has contributed to this.
The Israeli government, after all, could have stood on ceremony and insisted that the Soviet foreign minister come to Jerusalem, or renew diplomatic ties with Israel, before the Israelis would engage with him in a substantive peace dialogue.
It now seems almost certain that diplomatic relations between the two countries will be up graded in a matter of months.
At present, there is an Israeli consular mission in Moscow and a Soviet delegation on the same level in Tel Aviv.
The Arens-Shevardnadze meeting will also give impetus to Israel’s and Egypt’s own diplomatic thaw, now conveniently facilitated by the successful conclusion of their protracted dispute over Taba.
Arens will call on President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, the first such high-level contact by an Israeli diplomat for more than a year.
Observers here are saying that the friendly relationship Arens has established with his Egyptian counterpart, Esmat Abdel Meguid, has been a useful factor in this rapprochement.
But when all is said and done, Arens and Shevardnadze are not expected to reach substantive or procedural accords at their Cairo meeting.
At best, their discussion will mark the start of a new phase in regional peacemaking, which will involve, for the first time, sustained and constructive Soviet participation.
Moscow is still committed, at least officially, to an international peace conference with all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and all regional parties, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, as participants.
Israel, and in particular Arens and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, firmly oppose that formula.
But Shamir recently reiterated his acceptance of the idea of a conference to be held under the joint auspices of the two superpowers.
That would seem to provide sufficient movement and flexibility for the Soviets and Americans to push matters forward.
GAP ON SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES
These are procedural factors. On the substantive level, there is less cause for optimism.
Shamir and his Likud bloc do not accept the basic principle of land for peace in relation to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
They do not accept the PLO as a negotiating partner and are implacably opposed to a Palestinian right to self-determination, if it leads to an independent Palestinian state.
But here, too, it can be argued that the choice of Cairo as the site of this important diplomatic contact may offer an avenue of hope, because of its implied acceptance of the Camp David approach.
Camp David, in pristine form — before the various parties sullied it with their opposing interpretations — prescribed a two-stage approach to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The first stage, autonomy, signified less than independence for the Palestinians and left Israel in control of the territories, in terms of defense and security.
That fact alone, if the Soviets regard it now in a favorable light, could conceivably furnish the basis of a dialogue between the global powers and the regional parties.
The Israelis and the Palestinians both are hurting after 14 months of unrest in the territories. Now they are conceivably doing some hard thinking about the future.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
