Intensive, High Level Contacts Between Israel and Egypt Resume; Hope Expressed for a Thaw in the Two

Intensive, high level contacts between Israel and Egypt resumed Tuesday in Jerusalem and Cairo. No details were released and official comment here was limited to cautious expressions of hope that these latest developments could lead to a thaw in the two-and-a-half years of “cold peace” between the two countries.

Premier Shimon Peres and three senior Cabinet ministers met for five hours Tuesday night with an unidentified Egyptian emissary of President Hosni Mubarak. Gen. Avraham Tamir, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, was scheduled to leave for Cairo by the end of the week.

And in the Egyptian capital, Mubarak on Wednesday received visiting Israeli Energy Minister Moshe Shahal. The latter told Voice of Israel Radio later that the meeting was good and useful but divulged no details.

Tuesday night’s meeting which began at 9 p.m. local time and ended at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, was attended, in addition to Peres, by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin; Minister-Without-Portfolio Ezer Weizman who is attached to the Prime Minister’s Office as a liaison with Israel’s Arab community; and Minister-Without-Portfolio Moshe Arens, Acting Foreign Minister in the absence of Yitzhak Shamir who is presently visiting Europe.

The identity of the Egyptian emissary was veiled in secrecy. Local media claimed it was Ossama Al-Baz, the chief of staff of the Presidential Office in Cairo and one of Mubarak’s closest aides and advisors. The Charge d’Affairs at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Mohammad Basyouni, insisted Wednesday that the envoy was Abdul Halim Badawi, a Deputy Foreign Minister active in past negotiations with Israel but of a lower rank than Al-Baz.

The media nevertheless persisted in referring to Al-Baz and Israel Radio reported Wednesday he returned to Cairo by car immediately after the meeting with Israeli leaders.

TALKS MIGHT SERVE AS A ‘GOOD BEGINNING’

Rabin, the first participant at the meeting to publicly comment on it, told the annual conference of the Israeli Aviation and Aeronautics Society in Tel Aviv Wednesday, “Let us hope that the mere fact that President Mubarak sent a special emissary — whose name I am not permitted to divulge — and the talks that were conducted last night will serve as a good beginning.”

Rabin indicated that by “beginning” he meant a return to the process of normalization between Israel and Egypt. According to media reports, none officially confirmed, the Egyptian emissary did raise issues concerning bilateral relations, including a demand that the Toba border dispute be resolved through international arbitration — a process Israel up to now has rejected.

But he also reportedly spoke of Mubarak’s recent peace initiative. The emissary was said to have explained to the Israeli ministers that what the President had in mind at this time is not a comprehensive peace initiative but a proposal for a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to go to Washington to discuss a possible settlement with Reagan Administration officials.

Only if an understanding is reached with the Americans, the emissary reportedly said, would Israel be invited to join the talks.

ELEMENTS OF MUBARAK’S INITIATIVE

Mubarak’s initiative has not been launched officially. Its contents and premises were reported in an interview with the Egyptian President published last Sunday in The New York Times. Mubarak is scheduled to meet with President Reagan at the White House on March 12.

According to the Times, he will urge the Reagan Administration to invite Jordanian-Palestinian and Israeli delegations to Washington to lay the groundwork for direct peace talks between them. Alternatively, Mubarak offered to host such a meeting in Cairo, according to the Times. But there was some confusion over whether Mubarak viewed this as an alternative to an international conference on the Middle East — which Israel rejects — or a prelude to an international conference.

The political correspondent of Voice of Israel Radio reported Wednesday there was no mention Tuesday night of any proposed Israel-Jordanian-Egyptian-American conference to take place in Cairo.

Rabin, in his talk to the aeronautical engineers, said he hoped the meeting here and Tamir’s talks in Cairo would serve as instruments to implement the real meaning of the peace treaty Israel and Egypt signed in 1979.

However, he cautioned, “hopes and expectations are not enough. They have to be translated into deeds, and I believe that they can be translated if both sides are able to overcome the kind of relatively small obstacles that still lie ahead on the road to achieve it.”

Rabin added, “Only the future and what both sides will do, will show us if the hopes will materialize.”

MEETING ATTACKED BY LEFT AND RIGHTWING EXTREMISTS

Although no details of Tuesday night’s talks with the Egyptian emissary were available, the meeting was sharply attacked Wednesday by left and rightwing elements, Jews and Arabs.

Voice of Israel Radio quoted one of the participants — not identified — as saying that Tuesday night’s talks were “grotesque.” Likud MK Dan Meridor, reportedly briefed by Arens, claimed that the talks were no more than a public relations gesture intended to please American policymakers and U.S. public opinion.

The rightwing Tehiya Party attacked what it thinks to be Mubarak’s initiative and urged Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Shamir to cut short his European trip and return to Israel immediately.

The Tehiya Knesset faction, which opposes the Labor-Likud unity coalition government, said it supported negotiations that would give up any part of “Eretz Israel,” their term for a greater Israel incorporating the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Tehiya position reflected the fears of Jewish settlers in those territories who appear nervous any time peace discussions with the Arabs seem likely. The Secretariate of the “Council of Jewish Settlements in Judaea, Samaria and the Gaza Region” called on the settlers Tuesday to prepare for a struggle against any move to induce Israel to relinquish territory.

The Council urged the government to proclaim that in any future talks with Jordan, it will insist that in exchange for peace with Jordan and other Arab states, Israel will offer peace but nothing more.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Meir Wilner, secretary of the pro-Moscow Hadash (Communist) Party, objected strenuously to Mubarak’s initiative on the grounds that it ignored the right of the Palestinians to their own state and was simply another formula to impose the Camp David autonomy plan.

Wilner echoed the Soviet line that only recognition of Palestinian rights and inclusion of the Palestine Liberation Organization in an international peace conference could resolve the Middle East conflict.

12 LABOR MKS WELCOME MUBARAK INITIATIVE

At the same time, however, 12 Labor MKs signed a petition Tuesday calling on Peres to welcome the Mubarak initiative. Shulamit Aloni of the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM) urged the government not to rule out pro-PLO personalities in any Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to peace talks.

There was little enthusiasm in Arab ranks over the initiative. The pro-PLO East Jerusalem daily A-Sha’ab claimed in an editorial Wednesday it conflicted with the idea of an international conference on the Middle East and, in effect, ignored the PLO.

HUSSEIN-ARAFAT ACCORD ON VERGE OF UNRAVELING

Meanwhile, the agreement between King Hussein of Jordan and PLO chief Yasir Arafat on the framework for negotiating a Middle East settlement, seems to be unraveling.

According to reports from Tunis, where Arafat currently maintains his headquarters, the PLO is demanding that any negotiating delegation include not only Jordan and Palestinians but representatives of Syria and Lebanon as well. They want the delegation members to be appointed by a committee of the heads of Arab states.

A PLO spokesman in Tunis confirmed that there are differences among the PLO leadership over the Hussein-Arafat agreement which was announced on February 11. Salah Halaf, one of Arafat’s deputies, also known as Abu lyad, complained that the Mubarak initiative included concessions favorable to Israel and the U.S.