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TILTING TOWARD ARMAGEDDON continued

TILTING TOWARD ARMAGEDDON continued  image
Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
January
Year
1975
OCR Text

TILTING TOWARD ARMAGEDDON

continued from page 11

Since 1967, and increasingly since 1970, Israel has pursued a policy that is suicidal for any small power surrounded by enemies that it cannot ultimately conquer.

ing a serious blow to the Palestinians. During this period, Kissinger is reported to have taken over the conduct of Middle Eastern affairs directly, and the second option was adopted. Israel moved towards annexation, not as an explicit policy, but nevertheless quite definitely and plainly.

There was much talk about the "historic rights" of the Jewish people to the West Bank Judea and Samaria, in Israeli parlance. After some conciliatory moves by Hussein, these claims were advanced with increasing clarity, even in official statements. It was also made clear that the Golan Heights, now virtually free of Arabs apart from the Druze, would remain permanently part of Israel, and the Gaza strip as well. In the South, Bedouins were expelled from the Rafah region southwest of Gaza in preparation for Jewish settlement. Plans were discussed for a deep water port (Yamit) in that area. The administrative boundaries of Jerusalem were greatly extended, and all-Jewish settlement areas established. Settlement was accelerated throughout the occupied territories. Israel undertook systematic exploitation of the oilfields of the Sinai peninsula. These policies plainly implied ultimate de facto annexation, and this conclusion was spelled out fairly clearly in the "Galili protocols," adopted as part of the electoral program of the dominant Labor Party in August 1973. Needless to say, all of these moves were undertaken with tacit American support, as part of what should no doubt be called the "Kissinger Plan," in contrast to the rejected Rogers Plan.

During the same period, Egypt made repeated efforts to regain its position as American ally, even expelling Russian advisers, but these moves met with no response. These Israeli-American policies were undertaken under the guise of "security"-every act of every state is motivated by "security." But the claim is not very convincing. On simple grounds of security, Israel would be as well served by the conditions of the Rogers Plan as by thinly defended borders which are a constant provocation. Reserve-General Mattityahu Peled, formerly of the General Staff, has been particularly insistent on this point in internal Israeli debate, and his arguments are quite persuasive. He has aruged that "security" is being used as a cover for territorial expansion. This too seems a convincing hypothesis. The policy option adopted by Israel and the United States under the "Kissinger Plan" in fact maximized the security risks, since evidently Syria and Egypt would not accept this outcome. But the risks were considered slight, on the assumption of Israeli omnipotence and total Arab ineptitude.

As much as any single individual, Kissinger is responsible for the tragic war of October. All the more ironic, then, that the American press, in its mindless adulation of this dangerous and confused man, should now be lauding him for his brilliance in patching up the conflict short of a still greater catastrophe. When the assumptions of US-lsraeli policy were proven false by the October events, and when Saudi Arabia was impelled to initiate the oil politics that raised the threat noted earlier, Kissinger was forced to shift American policy towards the Rogers Plan, which, for all of its serious inadequacies, and inequities- in particular, its silence on the Palestinian issue- would probably have prevented war.

Since 1967, and increasingly since 1970, Israel has pursued a policy that is suicidal for any small power surrounded by enemies that it cannot ultimately conquer. The policy of annexation entailed the risk of repeated war, hence eventual disaster, since Israel can only lose once. It also led to reliance on a single  superpower and diplomatic isolation, since annexation proceeded in defiance of international opinion. A foretaste of the future, given such hazardous diplomacy, can be seen in the current Cyprus turmoil. The United States was virtually the sole support for Greek fascism. The immediate US reaction indicates that Kissinger must have given at least tacit support to the idiotic attempt of his Greek clients to bring Cyprus under Greek rule in the coup that overthrew Archbishop Makarious. When it became clear that Turkey would not tolerate this outcome, and that its military conquest could not be stopped, Unites States policy took a noticeable "tilt" towards the bigger battalions, and the Greek Cypriots were sold down the river. All that remains is for Kissinger to spend a few months commuting between Athens and Ankara, arranging a partition short of nuclear war, to the cheers of the political analysts in the press.

As matters now stand, Israel is under American control. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have recovered their preferred position as American clients, with all that that name implies. Iran, a firm American ally, is rapidly becoming one of the world's major military powers. Disruptive forces, such as the Palestinians, face hostility on all fronts, though their appeal to mass opinion in the Arab countries places certain limits on the measures that can be taken against them. The region is becoming a kind of Latin America, a network of mutually hostile states subject to reactionary forces within and linked directly to the United States. One can imagine a settlement, more or less along the lines of the Rogers Plan, that might provide the grim form of "stability" that seems to be Kissinger's ideal.

However, the sytem is now highly unstable. Israel is digging in its heels, moving to incorporate the occupied territories. It will take considerable American pressure to force it to relax its grip. If this pressure is applied, Israel will have no recourse. But the pressure will be applied only if the oil-producers insist, and as already pointed out, they have some stake in the preservation of Israeli power.

Still, it is not unlikely that they will insist. There is currently much talk in the Israeli press of preemptive war. One can see the logic. Israel cannot remain in a state of permanent mobilization, for economic reasons, and cannot tolerate a war of attrition. The Arab economic blockade may become more effective as Arab economic power becomes more influential internationally. It is reported that Syria is being heavily armed by the Soviet Union, now that Egypt has shifted allegiance. Israel would no doubt be willing to accept some compromise with Egypt in the Sinai and a return of portions of "Judea and Samaria" to Jordanian control, but only external force will compel it to move toward the kind of settlement that Syria and Egypt, at least, are likely to accept. If there is another war, it may well bring long range missiles and possible even nuclear weapons into operation, and it it quite impossible to forsee the consequences.

If short-run stability is imposed, the most that the Palestinians can hope for is a mini-state subject to Israeli and Jordanian control. Israel will remain a Jewish state, that is, a state based on the principle of legal and institutional discrimination against non-Jews. For the Jewish population, there is a high level of democracy, by world standards. But the foundations of state policy place strict limits on Israeli democracy, as the facts indicate. Thus, more than ninety percent of the 1967 territory of Israel is, by law, owned in perpetuity by the Jewish people. Non-Jewish citizens may not lease, rent, or work on these lands. The Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews, and excludes Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes. All-Jewish settlement areas are developed, with no protest from liberal opinion; imagine the reaction if all-White settlement areas were designated by law in New York City. Arab political expression is controlled, and, in past years, Arab dissidents have been jailed or committed to house arrest for long periods without formal charge, and, in some cases, expelled. Internally, Israel can hardly avoid religious domination of social life, regardless of popular feelings about the matter, since some principled basis must be established for distinguishing the privileged majority from other citizens or from stateless Arabs in Israel-a growing category, since statelessness is inherited, contrary to Standard practice in the Western democracies.

A Jewish state can no more be a functioning democracy than a Christian state, or a White state, or an Arab state. This much must be clearly understood. A Palestinian state, if is is established, will be no better than a mirror-image, perhaps even a distorted image, given its subordination to its hostile neighbors. But although such an outcome will be a bitter one for the people of the Middle East, it may very well accord with the basic principles of American policy in the region, if only Kissinger-style "stability" can be maintained. The latter is not too likely. Internal conflicts are severe and there is no reason to expect them to subside, under foreseeable political conditions. Hostility and antagonism will only be exacerbated as the various states of the region stand armed to the teeth, driven by irredentist forces and mutual hatreds.