"Kilometer 101," the United Nations checkpoint along the Cairo-Suez road, stood once again at the crossroads between peace and war in the Middle East.
There, in a cluster of sandswept tents guarded by blue-helmeted troops of the U.N. Emergency Force, Israeli and Egyptian negotiators met once more in an effort to work out the details of the Suez ceasefire.
Five of the six points in U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's ceasefire package had already been achieved.
The Cairo-Suez road was open for transporting nonmilitary supplies to the city of Suez; for evacuating the city's civilian wounded; for sending food, water and medical supplies to Egypt's Third Army trapped on the east bank of the canal. Checkpoints were manned by U.N. forces. The cease-fire was generally holding up. Perhaps most important, the exchange of war prisoners —241 Israelis and 8,305 Egyptians —was completed late in the week.
What remained to be settled was the "disengagement and separation of forces" called for in the agreement. Egypt insisted that Israeli troops abide by its interpretation of the ambiguous Kissinger plan and withdraw to the positions they held on Oct. 22—before they surrounded the city of Suez and trapped the Egyptian Third Army. The Israelis maintained that the Oct. 22 lines were uncharted and suggested instead that both sides withdraw to the positions they held before the Yom Kippur War began Oct. 6. To the Egyptians, this would mean the loss of their newly restored position on the east bank of the canal and an admission that they had gained nothing in the October war.
The chief negotiators at Kilometer 101 were Egypt's Major General Mohamed Abdel Ghani el Gamasi, Israel's Major General Aharon Yariv, and the commander of the U.N. forces, Major General Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, who presided over the meetings. At an earlier session, General Siilasvuo had asked each side to come back with a set of proposals that it thought might be acceptable to the other. On Thursday, after a three-day recess, the generals returned to face each other once again over Israeli coffee and Egyptian pastry.
Terse Announcement. The session lasted 4½ hours, making it the longest so far. Outside, the day changed from a bright, clear November morning into a raging sandstorm, but inside the tent the negotiating continued. At one point, Yariv walked over to the Israeli tent within the U.N. compound, to telephone Jerusalem. Later, both Yariv and Gamasi meandered out of the U.N. tent and talked earnestly together for a long time, as clouds of desert sand swirled around them. Finally, the conference ended with the terse announcement that the talks would continue the next day.
Apparently the negotiators were making progress. General Yariv proposed a compromise formula that could lead to a settlement. Under the plan, Israel would withdraw its forces from the west bank entirely, thereby freeing the Egyptian Third Army to retreat to the west bank of the canal. The Egyptians would be permitted to retain a limited force on the east bank, and the Israelis would pull back about six miles eastward into the Sinai. U.N. troops would take up positions between the two sides; Egypt would reopen the Suez Canal, and Israeli shipping would receive free passage through the canal for the first time.