Israel and U.S. back in step

Press, 15 June 1983, Page 13

Israel and U.S. back in step

From

PATRICK SEALE

in London

Without fanfare and almost without conscious decision, American policy towards the Middle East has slipped into a new phase. Its chief feature is an explicit AmericanIsraeli partnership in ordering the affairs of the area. This partnership was implicit in the early phases of last year’s Lebanese war, then ran into trouble as the war reached its gory climax in the siege of Beirut and the massacres of Palestinians which followed Israel’s seizure of the city. Now, with evident relief on both sides, the partnership is back in business and stronger than ever. Evidence may be seen in President Reagan’s release of the 75 F--16s momentarily blocked during the invasion; the even more important agreement on joint production of Israel’s new fighter, the Lavie; the secret “side letters” accompanying the Israel-Lebanon accord; the renewed invitation to Premier Begin to visit Washington; and, promising still wider future co-operation, the suggestion that the memorandum of strategic understanding, signed on November 30, 1981, but not then implemented,

now be given real substance. What all this amounts to is an American underwriting of Israeli military supremacy in the region, and with it the abandonment of Washington’s attempts at evenhandedness, which were halfhearted at the best of times. Partisanship for Israel is in the bloodstream of the American body politic, but the latest shift in President Reagan’s Middle East policy should not be seen only as an electoral manoeuvre timed for the impending opening of the 1984 presidential campaign. It is also a recognition of the realities of Israeli power on the ground (not to mention in the air), as well as a consequence of the muddles and miscalculations of Arab diplomacy. The implication of the shift is that the Reagan Administration has given up the search for a comprehensive peace. Senior United States officials still routinely repeat that the Reagan Plan is not dead, but in fact

Jerusalem will now be allowed to impose its own solution on the West Bank. Current American attitudes suggest a weariness with Middle East complexities and a yearning for the old simplicities which divide the world into goodies and baddies. There has been a return to the Manichean vocabulary in which Israel is the “strong ally,” Syria the “spoiler,” and the Soviet Union the “meddler” (“I don’t see what reason they have to be there,” President Reagan complained last month, of the Soviet presence in Syria). The American dream for the Middle East would seem to be one in which a final push by the Israeli partner would rout the last remaining Arab radicals, enabling grateful Arab moderates to live in peace and prosperity under an AmericanIsraeli order. Begin’s dream is no less sharply drawn, if harder headed. It is of security through force, peace by hegemony, the building of Greater

Israel within a protective ring of demilitarised territory from Sinai to Lebanon. But have the partners’ moves so far brought the dreams nearer? Reality in-its stubborn messiness gives the lie to these grand designs. For one thing, the IsraeliLebanon accord has, in the phrase of Israel’s former foreign minister Abba Eban, “non-implementation built into it.” While Syria refuses to budge, so will Israel, and Lebanon’s present fate is dismemberment. Renewed civil war is possible as Lebanese opponents of the accord talk of setting up an opposition government in Syrian-controlled territory. Far from being scattered to the winds, Palestinian fighters, determined to hot up the guerrilla war, are regrouping in eastern Lebanon under more radical leadership than Yasser Arafat provides. Moderate Jordan has the jitters, well aware: that Israel’s solution for the West Bank must mean a new Arab exodus across the river with incalculable consequences for the kingdom. In a probably futile

bid to stem the expected flood, Jordan has clamped travel restrictions on West Bankers. Israel itself has not escaped damage. Its roughly 500 dead, a small toll compared to the more than 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinians killed in the last 12 months, are still enough to cause many Israelis to question whether the invasion was worth it after all. Perhaps the most telling criticism of the Israeli war and the American peace in Lebanon is that between them they have prepared the way for yet another war. For the truth is that the Israel-Lebanon agreement and the Gemayel Government that signed it can be protected only if Syria is defeated. In the context the question which most absorbs American and Israeli planners is whether the Russians will fight for Syria or whether their bluff can be called. As a result of the Israeli invasion American troops have been sucked into Lebanon and Soviet troops into Syria. They are now closer to each other than in any world trouble spot except Berlin. Copyright — London Observer Service.