THE Middle East war is older than many of the soldiers who fight it; yet in the 22 years since the fighting began over the creation of Israel, neither Israelis, Arabs nor well-meaning outsiders have been able to work out a lasting settlement. Against this discouraging background of aborted peace plans, U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers was given little chance six weeks ago when he proposed still another attempt at negotiations. The new effort was launched as Washington prepared to act on an Israeli request for more jets —a move that threatened to deepen the Middle East's protracted crisis.
Last week Rogers' gamble returned at least a preliminary payoff. In a Cairo speech and in a private note to Washington, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser responded to the U.S. proposals. Washington had deliberately urged the Israelis to withhold their reply in order to give Nasser, fresh from 19 days of talks with his Soviet patrons in Moscow, time to react to Rogers' offer. To the delight of U.S. officials, Nasser's speech was relatively devoid of anti-American polemics and cautiously favorable. His note was even more accommodating, so much so that it placed the U.S. and Israel under tremendous pressure to reply in kind.
Major Initiative. Nasser himself had supplied some of the impetus for the latest try at peacemaking. Last May Day, in a long speech on Arab struggle against Israel, Egypt's President inserted a warning that the opportunity for a U.S. rapprochement with Arab nations was rapidly fading. The warning worked on the State Department. Rogers persuaded President Nixon that "a major political initiative" ought to be made to get the antagonists "to stop shooting and start talking."
One factor that encouraged Rogers, paradoxically, was the increased Soviet involvement in Egypt. Russia's growing military presence since .last March was a source of U.S. anxiety, to be sure, but the Secretary reasoned that it enhanced Nasser's self-confidence. As Rogers put it: "In all my experience as a lawyer, I have never found anyone who likes to bargain from weakness." Conversely, he figured, the Soviet involvement might force the Israelis to realize that they might not be dealing from a position of strength forever.
On June 19, Rogers' letters went out to Foreign Ministers of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and other interested parties. Within ten days, improved Soviet SA-2 missiles were moved closer to the Suez Canal and began knocking Israeli jets out of the sky. Had the U.S. initiative, the White House wondered, been interpreted as a sign of weakness? President Nixon issued a strong warning about the danger of a potential U.S.-Soviet collision, and pointedly contrasted the aggressive Arabs with the peace-loving Israelis. Rogers cringed at the harsh rhetoric and so, obviously, did the Egyptians. In his speech last week, Nasser specifically protested the Nixon charge and offered to negotiate as proof of his peaceable intentions.