Defense Minister Ezer Weizman said before leaving for the U.S. this morning that he was inclined to doubt Egyptian estimates that a peace treaty with Israel can be concluded within 2-3 weeks. But he affirmed that Israel would make every effort to assure a successful outcome of the talks which open Thursday at Blair House in Washington.
In his parting words at Ben Gurion Airport, Weizman urged his fellow Israelis to be less blase and more aware of the cataclysmic changes that would occur in their lives once a peace treaty is signed with Egypt. “We should all feel that we have before us now the possibility of a change in our lifestyle with Egypt,” he said.
Weizman stressed that the primary subject that will confront the Israeli and Egyptian negotiators in Washington is security arrangements. The two countries will also have to define and reduce to paper their intentions to establish full peace with normal relations between them, he said.
Other issues arising from this will be visas, customs arrangements, health and hygiene arrangements, tourism and joint agricultural projects. Weizman said the intention was to have “an open border” between Israel and Egypt and he hoped that Israelis soon will be able to spend the weekend in Cairo.
The Defense Minister said Israelis should regard the withdrawal from Sinai as a “redeployment” rather than a “retreat” which, he noted, was a term used in warfare. He pledged that he would help negotiate an agreement that “future generations will not look back at in anger.”
DAYAN, WEIZMAN HEAD TALKS’ TEAM
Weizman and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, who is presently in the U.S., were named by the Cabinet yesterday to head the Israeli negotiating team. The Cabinet decided that Israel’s “representation” at the peace talks with Egypt would include the full eight-member Ministerial Defense Committee although Dayan and Weizman will be the only members actually present at the opening.
Cabinet Secretary Arye Naor admitted that this was an unprecedented arrangement necessitated by the desire of each constituent party in the coalition government to have a hand “in shaping the peace treaty.” He said the Cabinet empowered Premier Menachem Begin to send additional ministers to the talks if developments warrant their presence. Those ministers need not be members of the defense committee.
Begin, who was hospitalized for fatigue last weekend, did not attend the Cabinet meeting yesterday. He is resting at home and is expected to resume his duties after Yom Kippur. Weizman and Dayan will be accompanied in Washington by their principal aides and advisors.
Aharon Barak, newly appointed Justice of the Supreme Court who served as Begin’s legal advisor at the Camp David talks last month, was granted a leave of absence to go to Washington by Chief Justice Yoel Sussman, at Begin’s request. But when other justices objected, Barak decided not to attend the peace talks. The legal aspects are expected to be handled by Meir Rosenne, legal advisor to the Foreign Ministry.
PEACE TREATY LINKS CITED
The Egyptian delegation, headed by Acting Foreign Minister Boutros Ghali, also left for the U.S. today. President Anwar Sadat briefed his negotiating team but declined to make a statement to the press afterwards. Other Egyptian officials were reported to have said that an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty must be linked to long-range Israeli commitments on the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and resolution of the Palestinian question.
According to reports from Cairo today, the Egyptians say the U.S. will have to take care of certain “loopholes” in the Camp David accord, notably the different interpretations of President Carter and Begin over the duration of the Israeli freeze on settlements on the West Bank.
As Israel and Egypt prepared for their peace talks, the major issue in the Middle East was the situation in Lebanon where an uneasy cease-fire has been in effect since Saturday between Syrian forces and Lebanese Christians in Beirut. A resolution calling for a cease-fire was unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council Friday night at a meeting which lasted four minutes, one of the shortest on record. It came after several days of intensive diplomatic activity in which the U.S. took the lead, aimed at ending the fighting.
Prior to the Security Council meeting, called by the U.S., the Syrians escalated their shelling of Christian strongholds in east Beirut. On Thursday night, Israeli missile boats bombarded a Palestine Liberation Organization sea base near Beirut. Israeli sources said later that the attack was not aimed at the Syrians but at the PLO which had been planning a sea-borne attack on Israel from that base.
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