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Whether the formula would prove to be acceptable to the Egyptians remained to be seen. But certainly Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was under pressure to achieve some quick progress in his negotiations with the Israelis. This week he is scheduled to meet with other Arab leaders in Algiers, and he will be obliged to prove to his more militant brethren that his policy of moderation, negotiation and trust in Kissinger is paying dividends. So far two Arab states—Libya and Iraq —have said that they will not attend the meeting; both oppose negotiations with the Israelis. Even Syria, Egypt's closest ally hi the October war, has refused to take the first step toward negotiation by exchanging prisoners of war with Israel. So Sadat will have his hands full trying to retain a semblance of Arab unity at Algiers.
The Egyptians are anxious to get the formal peace conference under way by about Dec. 9, the date Kissinger originally proposed, in order to sustain the diplomatic momentum created by the war. The U.S. is also anxious to get the meeting started, so that it can argue to the Arab oil-producing nations that they might just as well step up the flow of oil while the conference is in progress.
Israel, on the other hand, is in much less of a hurry. Its national elections are scheduled to be held Dec. 31, and the political campaign will begin Dec. 8. Premier Meir's government has already been weakened by domestic bickering over the recent war, and will hardly be in a position to negotiate intensively —much less make significant concessions—until the elections are out of the way. Israel is also angry about Egypt's continuing blockade of the Bab el Mandeb straits at the southern end of the Red Sea, and in addition it is waiting to see how the Arab summit turns out. If the parley should prove to be a reprise of the Khartoum Conference of 1967, at which the Arabs vowed "no negotiations, no peace, no recognition," then the Israelis would seem to have little reason to make concessions.
Conciliatory Gesture. The Palestinian guerrilla groups, in the meantime, were trying to decide what goals to press for at the eventual conference. Yasser Arafat and the more moderate of the Palestinians favor the return of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Jordan, and would turn this territory into a separate Palestinian state; but they do not call for an end to the state of Israel.
George Habash and the more militant Palestinians still insist on the dissolution of Israel and the establishment of a united Palestine in which Moslems, Jews and Christians would live together.
Though they disagree on so many other matters, most Palestinian leaders agreed to fly to Moscow last week to discuss their policies. As expected, they won the Soviet Union's endorsement of their participation in any peace conference on the Middle East.