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The crisis with Israel thus remains at a stalemate. The Israelis are determined not to give up Jerusalem or such strategic positions as the Golan Heights on the Syrian border or Sharm-el-Sheikh at the opening of the Gulf of Aqaba. The Arabs insist that they will settle for nothing less than the restoration of the territory they lost in 1967.
The moment would seem to be ripe for dramatic diplomatic initiatives, but none have been made. The United Nations peace mission undertaken by Swedish Ambassador to the Soviet Union Gunnar Jarring has ended in utter failure. The Soviets, having been invited by Sadat to withdraw their formidable military presence from Egypt last year, are remaining relatively aloof from the scene. That leaves the U.S. as the only peacemaker in sight, but so far the Nixon Administration has failed to come up with any fresh ideas.
The U.S. still believes that the first step should be an interim settlement allowing the reopening of the Suez Canal; this would be followed by negotiations toward an overall settlement. But Egypt maintains that "proximity" talks—in which Egyptian and Israeli teams would position themselves in separate rooms of the same building, with an American mediator running back and forth between them—can only take place if the Israelis will first give an assurance that they will withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. The Israelis reply that they are not going to assure any withdrawing in advance of negotiations.
The Israelis can afford to delay, and the Arabs cannot bring themselves to do otherwise. Even the Arabs' hopes for the Palestinian fedayeen as a force that could break the impasse have faded, although, as one U.S. diplomat observes, "We will have the terrorist problem in the Middle East as long as the Palestinian problem is not solved." Of particular concern is the uncontrollable Black September group, which some fedayeen leaders in Beirut describe as "not an organization but a state of mind." They mean that various groups of fedayeen who become disgruntled may temporarily declare themselves members of Black September, then venture forth to violence, be it the kidnaping of Israeli athletes in Munich or the killing of Western diplomats in Sudan.
To Muammar Gaddafi, the only hope lies in Arab unity, and he has gained an influential ally in Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, Nasser's old friend and policymaker and the editor of the Cairo newspaper Al Ahram. Heikal, who is somewhat estranged from Sadat but sees Gaddafi as a new force in Arab politics, takes considerable hope in the forthcoming Egyptian-Libyan federation. He believes that the new alliance will be strong enough to exert pressure, via the conservative Arab states and the U.S., to make Israel withdraw from the occupied territories.