Background Report Behind the 11th-hour Break Throuch

Premier Menachem Begin has won the praise of supporters and critics a like for the high risk personal initiative he took at his fateful breakfast meeting with President Carter Tuesday morning, just before the President’s departure from Israel. Begin yielded on some points, stood firm an others. acting on his judgement of the situation alone and thereby is credited with helping salvage a peace mission that was tottering on the brink of failure.

“He showed real leadership, Prime Ministerial mettle,” said one senior Israeli official who was one of the very few aware at the time of the dramatic meeting taking place. This official, not one of Begin’s personal aides, praised the Premier for “taking the broad, historical perspective, discerning between vital issues and less consequential matters, holding out for the first and conceding the second.”

The basic truth behind the 11th-hour break through is that Prime Minister Begin consciously and with the full sense of responsibility stepped out ahead of his Cabinet and, during that breakfast meeting, traded with Carter as one leader with another.

There is, of course, a fundamental difference between the constitutional powers and position of an American President and a Prime Minister in a Cabinet democracy of the Israeli (British-based) type. Yet, even in the Cabinet system there are moments when the Prime Minister must cease to be merely the chairman of a panel — the Cabinet — and assume a much more individual, almost autocratic, authority.

The difference between the two systems manifests itself again if the Prime Minister’s decision or action is not supported subsequently by his party and the Parliament. Then, as Begin himself pointed out in his interviews last night, the Prime Minister must resign, taking his entire Cabinet with him. An American President does not require such export facto endorsement. He cannot resign if he feels that his move is not supported.

BEGIN TOOK A CALCULATED RISK

Tuesday morning was one of those rare, but inescapable moments when a Prime Minister is required to act like a President and face the risks of later paying the price inevitably exacted if such Presidential-type decision-making is repudiated. Begin sensed the nature of the moment and rose to it.

There is no doubt, according to informed sources, that Israel’s Cabinet ministers — barring Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan who, with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, participated through part of that dramatic breakfast discussion –were not a ware of the magnitude of the break through that had-been achieved. They, like the rest of us, were only apprised of it hours later, by President Carter’s announcement at Caino Airport.

They did not know that the Premier undertook to the President to present to the Cabinet an American ###ledge in place of the Israeli demand for direct and regular oil supplies from Egypt. Only the night before, this oil demand had been regarded in the Cabinet as a sine qua-non for the treaty because it symbolized in the minds of the ministers Egypt’s readiness or reluctance to engage in normal trade relations with Israel.Similarly, they did not know that, after months of rejection, Begin now signalled his acceptance of the Egyptian demand that Israel vacate EI Arish within two or three months and present a detailed timetable for its phased withdrawal from the rest of the “interim withdrawal” area (to the Ras-Muhammad – EI Arish line) over the nine-month period stipulated of Camp David. In return for this, Carter indicated Egypt would be prepared to restore its agreement to exchange ambassadors with Israel during the tenth month.

The ministers also did not know at the time how Begin was refusing to give ground, despite the massive pressure inherent in the cliff-hanging circumstances of the Presidential mission, on the Egyptian demand for a military “liaison office” in Gaza. This, he told Carter, was not an issue on which he could concede no matter what the consequences. It remains to be seen what precisely the President has proposed as a compromise on this key question.

QUESTION ABOUT TIMING

While appreciating and praising Begin’s exhibition of historic leadership qualities at a critical moment, many observers will now ask themselves whether the same leadership could not have been show a months ago — back in November, when the peace talks first got bogged down in what, after all, were largely subsidiary issues.

When the triumph and euphoria subside, comparative-studies will inevitably be made between the terms that were available then and those that have been agreed upon now. On the face of it, the argument could be made that the difference between the November package and the March package did not justify all the tension and brinkmanship of the intervening months.

But equally, it could be contended, Israel’s “haggling” produced important Egyptian concessions, especially on Article VI which the Israeli government felt was “the heart of the treaty.”