View from Jerusalem

The decision taken at Geneva over the weekend to proceed with the disengagement talks right after Christmas took everyone in Jerusalem by surprise. No one here expected any talks at all in Geneva before the new year, with the most widely cited date being Jan. 7 for the resumption of the disengagement talks. But Premier Golda Meir had committed herself and her outgoing government to talking about disengagement and making decisions about it – even before the new government takes office, and hence the election problem is, not relevant in this context and Israel’s representatives will be able to negotiate freely and with authority.

Aharon Yariv, who finally quit the army last week and is devoting himself to the Labor Alignment election campaign, is not to be drummed back into service, and the man to lead Israel in the resumed talks will be Aluf Mordechai (Motta) Gur, the military attache in Washington. His formal appointment will be published tomorrow but knowledgeable sources here confirmed leaks from Washington that he will lead the talks. Mentioned as his deputy-though no confirmation of this could be attained-is Aluf Abraham Tamir, head of planning at the general staff.

But the advancement of the disengagement talks, though a surprise, was not an unpleasant surprise to the Labor-led government. Ever since the Geneva conference has been a real and imminent event the opinion polls have been showing a swing back to the Labor Alignment. Only today the Guttman poll taken in conjunction with the Hebrew University School of Social Science showed a large advance for Labor.

This was attributed in large measure to the voter’s interest in the conference and in the future rather than in the war and the mistakes of the past upon which the Likud spokesmen are still harping. The fact that the opening session passed off satisfactorily, the fact that Foreign Minister Abba Eban acquitted himself well, the fact of his meeting for the first time in seven years with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko-and the fact that the conference is to lose none of its momentum but will continue almost at once with the disengagement talks-all this means that the public mind is kept concentrating on the hopeful future rather than on the unpleasant past.

CABINET APPROVES DISENGAGEMENT TALKS

The Cabinet today formally approved Israel’s participation in the renewed disengagement talks. The communique carefully stressed that these would be a continuation–“and in the same format” as the Kilometer 101 talks. Cabinet sources said the intention was to stress Israel’s firm objection to Egypt’s demand yesterday that the superpowers take part in the disengagement talks. The communique also pointedly referred to “the Egyptian front.” ruling out the Jordanian suggestion at Geneva that disengagement talks also be opened between Israel and Jordan.

The Jordanian suggestion seemed to be welcomed last night by Yigal Allon. Speaking in Tel and later in the various committees. These spokesmen add that they expect Syria to join the talks in a foreseeable future should the talks proceed smoothly.

Conference sources say that the Soviet Union has used utmost pressure on Syria to bring it to the conference table but in vain, These sources expect that both Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, will renew their pressure on Damascus next month. Fahmy, Egyptian sources here said is due to visit Damascus this week to confer with President Hafez Assad. By next month the conference will be in full swing and Israel and Egypt will know whether they are doomed in U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s word to “a 30 or even a 50 year war” or to a possible peace.

Before leaving Geneva tonight on his way back to Israel, Eban said that he believed the peace conference had inaugurated a new epoch in the Middle East and that a great possibility for peace has been born. But he warned that “the existence of the Middle East peace conference does not assure with certainty that peace will come. But the absence of dialogue would ensure that peace would be impossible.”