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As they prepare for a possible campaign against the P.L.O., the Israelis are privately saying that the P.L.O., with a bit of Egyptian connivance, has been planning an all-out uprising in Gaza and the West Bank to take place in early May, not long after the Israelis have withdrawn from the Sinai. The Israelis justify their recent crackdown on the West Bank, including their firing of three pro-P.L.O. mayors, as part of a pre-emptive strike against the P.L.O. plan. The Israelis also say that in the past two weeks they have intercepted 1,000 hand grenades that were being smuggled into the Gaza Strip from El-Arish, which is under Egyptian control. They are thus hinting that the Egyptian government is quietly cooperating with the P.L.O. by allowing Bedouin tribesmen to carry grenades to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Some P.L.O. officers admit that they have received weapons by this route. Says a P.L.O. commander: "There are many officers in the Egyptian and Jordanian armies who will close their eyes because they want to help us." But there is no reason to believe that the Mubarak government has endorsed the smuggling.
The dispute over the hand grenades was just one of the contentious incidents that threatened to delay the departure of the Israelis from the last segment of the Sinai by the deadline of April 25. Sharon and others were recommending to the Cabinet that the date be ignored altogether. The Israelis charged that the Egyptians were violating the withdrawal agreement between the two nations by positioning military units in the demilitarized zone in the Sinai, by allowing the P.L.O. to set up an office in El-Arish, the Sinai's main city, and by directing hostile propaganda against Israel. In addition, Israel and Egypt have been wrangling over just where the final border should be drawn; 15 points were still in dispute, including the question of whether or not an Israeli hotel and bun galow village on the Gulf of Eilat should eventually be in Israeli or Egyptian territory. Meanwhile, a band of Israeli zealots, protesting the forced abandonment of the Sinai settlement of Yamit, staged furious demonstrations. Some even placed their children in the path of Israeli soldiers who were busy removing palm trees and telephone lines.
With so much confusion and so much at stake, the U.S. sent Stoessel to Jerusa lem to make sure that the Sinai withdraw al takes place on schedule. Stoessel came away convinced that the withdrawal will proceed as planned. Says one American official in Israel: "Begin, like the late Golda Meir, just cannot accept the fact that he is going to withdraw from territory he holds. But he knows he has to. He wants to achieve the peace on which Camp David is based."
At midweek Begin asked Sharon to make a quick trip to Cairo to discuss a number of outstanding points with the Egyptians. Sharon arrived in Cairo, as it happened, on the very day that the five men who had been sentenced to death for their part in the assassination of Anwar Sadat last October were executed. Shortly before dawn, the two soldiers, including the leader of the assassins, Army 1st Lieut. Khaled Islambuli, had been shot by a firing squad, while the three civilians had been hanged in Cairo's central pris on. The executions were carried out in se cret and were not announced until several hours later.