Nadav Safran

In mid-November of last year, I concluded an article for Foreign Affairs on the October War and the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict by saying that a resolution of the conflict had at last become a real possibility for the parties directly concerned, and an imperative necessity for all the outsiders that have been involved in it. I added that a successful wedding of the outside powers' need to the possibilities latent in the situation required sensitivity to the fundamental concerns of the parties, imaginative diplomacy, and statesmanlike timing. In the nine months that have elapsed since I wrote those words, the United States, Europe and Japan, and up to this point the Soviet Union, have given ample evidence of their eagerness for peace. The United States in particular has taken the lead in trying to promote an Arab-Israeli settlement, and Secretary of State Kissinger has twice treated the world to breathtaking experiments in diplomacy, shuttling between half a dozen capitals to sustain two "campaigns" of negotiations of hitherto unprecedented intensity.