Saunders Due to Brief Begin on U.S. Answers to Hussein’s Questions

Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders is due here tomorrow for meetings with Premier Menachem Begin and other top officials. Saunders, whose venue is the Middle East, is expected to apprise Begin of the answers the U.S. has given to the 14 questions posed by King Hussein of Jordan on the future of the West Bank and the Palestinians within the Camp David frameworks.

Saunders brought the answers to Hussein in Amman earlier this week and relayed them to Saudi Arabian leaders who he met in Jidda yesterday. Israeli officials are fairly certain that the answers reflect the differences between Israel and the U.S. on key issues relating to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But they do not believe that this will necessarily cast a shadow over the Israeli Egyptian talks currently going on in Washington for a peace treaty.

One aspect of Saunders’ mission is to rally as many Arab moderates as possible to a favorable view of the Camp David accords. Special Ambassador Alfred L. Atherton made such efforts directly after the summit conference last month without notable success. U.S. Consular officials have been busy all week arranging meetings for Saunders with moderate leaders on the West Bank and Gaza Strip while pro-PLO elements are doing their best to pressure possible invitees not to meet with the American diplomat.

ARAB MAYORS TAKE DIM VIEW

Virtually all of the Arab mayors have taken a dim view of the Camp David frameworks, at least publicly. A few, like Mayor Rashad Shawa of Gaza who appeared to be open-minded on the subject originally, denounced the accords yesterday. Similarly, the moderate Faed Kawassme, Mayor of Hebron, has hardened his position on Camp David.

The moderate Elias Freij, Mayor of Bethlehem, at a meeting of West Bank mayors earlier this week at Bethlehem University, joined his colleagues in condemning the Camp David accords as a “betrayal of the Palestinians” and upheld the PLO as the Palestinians’ sole representative. This was a departure from Freij’s lavish praise of the Camp David agreements after they were signed on Sept. 17.

Mayor Bassem Shaka of Nablus said the autonomy plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip was a disguise for continued Israeli occupation. “Nothing can come from Camp David which brought together Begin, the representative of Zionism, (President) Carter, the representative of imperialism and (President Anwar) Sadat, the representative of Arab reactionaries,” Shaka said.

The meeting in Bethlehem was seen as a response to Saunders’ efforts to persuade Hussein to join in the Israeli-Egyptian peace process. Most of the speakers were careful not to attack Hussein, presumably so as not to tilt him toward Camp David. An exception was Mayor Korim Khalaf of Ramallah who denounced Hussein as “a partner to the conspiracy” at Camp David.

ISRAELIS NOT UNDULY DISHEARTENED

But Israeli sources profess not to be unduly disheartened by the widespread rejection of the Camp David agreements. Well aware of the outside pressures being brought to bear on the moderates by the Arab rejectionist states and the PLO, the Israelis believe that if the U.S. succeeds in bringing Hussein into the peace process there will be a sudden upsurge of moderate support for Camp David on the West Bank.

Even if Hussein remains aloof, the feeling in some Israeli circles is that the few moderates who back the accords–and there may be more of them than superficial impressions indicate–can be welded into the nucleus of the representative council envisioned in the autonomy plan for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Saunders, therefore, is expected to do his best to encourage support for the autonomy scheme and Israelis will back him in this effort even though he is likely to stress American positions on the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are unpalatable to Israel.