Observers here are closely watching the current dispute, which flared dramatically over the weekend, between Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and the PLO leadership over the upcoming second-stage settlement efforts of Secretary of State Henry A, Kissinger. Whatever the outcome of the dispute– and Israeli observers tend to play down its intensity and predict it will eventually be smoothed over — it seems bound to have an oblique affect on the next stage of diplomacy due to start on Friday when Kissinger arrives at Aswan.
Plainly, the PLO is discomfited by Sadat’s determined and enthusiastic participation in Kissinger’s settlement attempts. Whatever their outcome — whether there will be a second-stage accord in Sinai or an immediate return to Geneva — it is apparent that Sadat is guiding Egypt, for the present at least, along the course of a peaceful settlement which is heresy and anathema for the PLO.
A successful second-stage accord would confront the PLO squarely with the prospect of a period of guaranteed quiet in the region. A return to Geneva, which seems imminent whichever way the forthcoming talks go, would put the PLO in an even more uncomfortable position: The need to change its basic credo and implicitly recognize the State of Israel if it is to have any role at all in the overall settlement efforts.
PLO SUCCESSES SLIPPING AWAY
The PLO apparently feels its triumphant international diplomatic achievements of the past year are now slipping away-without their being translated into concrete successes in the Mideast itself. International successes have led to yet more international successes — but to precious little in the way of new power and influence among the chief Arab protagonists who now seem to have their sights set on a political accommodation with the Zionist enemy — albeit on 1948 terms.
The maximum that even the most conciliatory PLO members would contemplate is a 1947 solution; and the vast majority of the PLO spurns even that and insists, as did Yassir Arafat at the UN, on a secular Palestinian state to replace Israel.
But while the PLO’s fears and doubts over the forthcoming negotiation are understandable, Israeli observers have been wary of Sadat’s desire to publicize the dispute between himself and the PLO, rather than to stifle it as he could so easily have done.
SADAT SEES A MAJOR ADVANTAGE
The feeling is that the Egyptian leader sees a major advantage for himself in the forthcoming talks under Kissinger’s aegis if his image is perceived as that of a moderate battling against hard-liners and extremists within his own camp. Observers here expect that Kissinger will very probably agree to this presentation of the inter-Arab situation, and stress it in his talks with Israeli leaders.
The Secretary is expected to cast Sadat in the role of having “stuck his neck out” for a settlement and therefore deserving of the most far-reaching and onerous Israeli flexibility possible. Kissinger has in previous negotiations sought to play on Sadat’s internal problems, and the current rift between Cairo and the PLO is expected to provide him with the perfect basis for a “Help Sadat against the extremists” appeal to the Israeli negotiators,
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