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Israel
Israel The warrior nation in search of peace Murray J. Gart
Since mid-century, oil supply disruptions from the Middle East have been Enked to Arab-Israeli wars. Following the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, Israel has begun to feel more secure and more willing to negotiate with its Arab neighbours. Palestinian hopes for an autonomous Palestine may be channelled into pressure for Jordan to welcome more Palestinians and possibly turn into a Palestinian state. In any case the era o f radical Israeli behaviour as a beleaguered warrior nation has ended for now.
Murray J. Gart can be contacted at 2126 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008, USA. He is a journalist and consultant in Middle East affairs.
In the broadest terms, the Middle East geopolitical climate today appears to be calm, a veritable sea of tranquillity, which supports current forecasts that are freer of any serious hints of war than they have been in a very long time. lran and Iraq are long-term concerns, troubles in Algeria persist and the new tension between Saudi Arabia and Yemen suggests a future problem in the making. But no shadow on the horizon suggests impending crisis, at least for the next few years. The outlook, in fact, is better than it has been for a long time, especially when trends in Israel and its changing role in Middle East affairs are taken into account. In Israel today fundamental changes are in the making. The new government in Jerusalem is serious about taking its first giant step in more than a decade toward peaceful coexistence with its Arab neighbouts and the Palestinians. The new, venturesome spirit rests on a widely shared belief that Israel's strength in relation to its Arab enemies is at an unprecedented peak, while Arab power is greatly diminished. As a result, Israel enjoys a more favourable military balance than ever before which, in turn, inspires enough confidence in the populace to permit its leaders to try to end the bloody contest that pits 3.9 million Israeli Jews against 200 million Arabs. The Jewish state in the heart of Arab Islam has never felt more secure. No potential enemy or combination of hostile powers today poses a credible threat to Israel's existence. The sole military superpower in the Middle East, Israel has atomic arms and the means to deliver them, every modern weapon of mass destruction and a deadly array of conventional arms - an aggregate of power sufficiently impressive to deter attack by any would be aggressor. Consequently, Israelis can be confident for the first time in their national life that while external enemies from time to time may still disturb their peace, at least for the foreseeable future none has the power to overwhelm them. Their primary
0301-4215/92/0111055-05© 1992 Butterworth-HeinemannLtd
1 055
Keywords: Israeli insecurity; Radicalism; Palestinian autonomy
Middle East history since the discovery of oil offers powerful reminders that supplies destined for use in the industrialized world can be interrupted. Almost invariably, the geopolitics of events that have caused big disruptions explain why they happened and how they might have been avoided. Since mid-century, most supply and transport interdictions, such as closure of the Suez Canal, have been caused by Arab-Israeli wars. Hence, good assessments of trends in the 44 year dispute are vital for those who must know whether Middle East tensions point to serious instability ahead or whether they are under control or in decline. Because the Arab nations produce the region's oil, most estimates of the climate for conflict tend to reflect assessments of events mainly from their perspective. But seeing the struggle from the viewpoint of the other combatant is equally vital in appraising the outlook. Israel produces no oil, but it certainly has a record as a contributor to the region's tensions and conflicts, and its actions have often taken the best observers by surprise.
Israel: the warrior nation in search o f peace
security threat now is internal, and the tools for dealing with it are quite different from those available to wage war. Israeli's internal security means sharing its common homeland and finding ways of living peacefully with the 1 750 000 Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. No sound basis for living together is possible unless Israel is willing to give up territory it captured from Jordan (the West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza) in the war of 1967, and to return it to the Palestinians from whom it was taken by force of arms. That is precisely what the country's new leadership says it is willing to do. Many terms and slogans - UN Resolutions 242 and 338, land for peace, self-determination for Palestinians - are shorthand describing elements in the sterile debate that has raged over Middle East issues for 25 years. They add up to one proposition: Israel can have internal security, but only by ceding control of the territories and granting autonomy and rights of self-government to severely oppressed Palestinians who live under the iron fist of the occupying army. Guidelines on how to proceed and what to do to achieve an acceptable settlement are already in place. They are found in the Camp David Accords. The proposals - part of which led to cold peace, but peace nevertheless, between Egypt and Israel - were written in 1979 and signed by Israel, although until now they have not been implemented. Nevertheless, the Accords are widely believed to contain the formula most likely to win eventual acceptance by the Israelis and Palestinians. Not by chance, the framework for peace in the Accords lies at the heart of the negotiations started up after many months of consultations under the sponsorship of the USA and Russia a year ago in Madrid. Camp David proposes a course of action that, in these times, can be moulded swiftly into a workable basis for an agreement that satisfies the main Israeli and Palestinian objectives: security for Israelis and freedom from occupation and unimpeded self-government for the Palestinians. Since its founding in 1948, Israel's role in the Middle East has centred almost exclusively on selfpreservation and nation building. A state with an official religion, it has stressed its ambition to create and maintain a homeland and refuge for the world's 14 million Jews, although most of them choose to live elsewhere. The population of the country, about 4.65 million, includes 750 000 Arabs and some 370 000 immigrants from the former USSR who have settled there in the last two and a half years. More Russian Jews, possibly as many as 650 000,
1056
could move there in the next three or four years. To achieve its broad objectives, Israel has fought five wars and battled almost incessantly with Arab neighbours and Palestinians, at times employing the hotly disputed but remarkably effective military strategy of overwhelming real and potential enemies with bold preemptive strikes. It has acquired a reputation for being quick on the trigger when it feels that any of its interests are threatened, and no public debate ever precedes military action. The fighting has frequently inflamed the atmosphere of a region that has failed to achieve even a modicum of peace during most of the 20th century - a place, in fact, where peace has come to mean little more than a pause for rest between wars. Israel has been accused, at times justly, of generating some of the instability. But its role in the Middle East is changing. It has been profoundly affected by the adjustments in international and national life that have resulted from the great events of the last few years. Its position as a Middle East nation is developing in new directions to take account of large modifications in the region's geopolitical landscape. In the new role that is emerging, the aspect of it that has become most visible is a major shift in priorities to domestic affairs. The change began to be noticeable following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, when domestic security, immigration and a faltering economy moved to the top of the country's agenda. The sense that Israel had become relatively safe from external attack almost overnight began to take hold, ironically, soon after Iraq fired the last of 39 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. The Soviet empire had crumbled and then disintegrated completely following the coup that failed in August 1991. The 45 year Cold War ended, leaving Israel's active Arab enemies without their only source of support and arms from outside the region. The Jewish state benefited doubly: its Arab adversaries were greatly weakened, while, at the same time, the USA, its great benefactor and the only global superpower, obtained enormous new influence in Arab security affairs. The Gulf War also fundamentally changed the Middle East's political and military terrain, greatly improving Israel's position by liquidating the threat posed by Iraq, the most formidable of its Arab enemies. The war destroyed Iraq's army, the world's fourth largest and the most powerful Arab force assembled since the Crusades. In the aftermath, as far as UN officials can tell, Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was liquidated, and along with it the only potential challenge to Israel's
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
region-wide monopoly of atomic weapons. When the war ended, there was little left to fear from Iraq. Another result of the Gulf War was an Arab world divided as never before in post-colonial times. A large bloc of Arab nations fought Iraqis in an alliance organized by the USA, Israel's greatest friend. The precedent shattering realignment of power was made even more extraordinary by Israel's decision to remain on the sidelines in spite of the numerous missile attacks on its largest city. Syria, another enemy of the Israelis, fought, in effect, for Israel's interests as well as its own. At the same time, the disappearance of all support from the USSR, Syria's principal weapons supplier, significantly reduced its strength. Israel also benefited handsomely from the stunning losses suffered by other enemies who stood with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, namely Jordan and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization; Lebanon, its northern neighbour, expired as an independent nation and all but formally became a province of Syria, as it once had been when Turkey ruled the region. Taken together, the changes, realignments and rearrangements of power add up to this bottom line: Israel enjoys unprecedented military superiority over all the Arabs who have been its enemies. The so-called Arab nation is weaker, divided and dependent as never before on the USA. Meanwhile, although US financial support of Israel has not increased as a matter of policy, it remains undiminished; the 1991 aid package totalled US$4.5 billion, including the annual subsidy of US$3 billion. Israel's strategic and conventional military resources are formidable enough to handle any trouble that might arise, and in a pinch, US power can be counted on for backup. The only concern expressed by a few Israeli leaders lately is that superiority may be taken for granted and overconfidence could develop into a future source of danger. In any event, Israel's sense of safety began to be recognized soon after the Iraqi missiles stopped falling. Polls early this year showed that security concerns and the fear of returning occupied land to the Palestinians were diminishing in spite of the fact that Palestinians in Israel proper and the occupied territories had overwhelmingly supported Iraq in the war and that individual Arabs had been attacking Israeli civilians more frequently than ever. Majorities in the polls favouring land for peace with the Palestinians grew. The Madrid peace process also stimulated Israeli interest in searching for solutions to what remained of the country's security needs. Until the national election campaign of last spring, a lot of attention
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
had been paid to the negotiations, although the Shamir government then in power conducted them with undisguised disdain. Future plans to improve internal security became a dominant issue in the campaign, and for the first time the old hard line against any concessions whatever to the Palestinians or anyone else was seriously challenged. In June, just before the election, an independent (ie non-political) survey taken among all retired armed forces generals, and intelligence and security officers - 80% of the men who had been most responsible for the country's defence for 44 years produced astounding results: 75% believed that if most of the occupied lands were returned to the Palestinians, Israel's security needs could be ~reasonably satisfied'; 68% favoured giving back the occupied territories; only 31% favoured their annexation. The pattern of responses supported public positions taken by almost every retired armed forces general who had served as chief of military intelligence during the last three decades. They regard the West Bank and Gaza not as an asset, but as a security burden and, individually, several advocate return of the territories either to the Palestinian inhabitants or Jordan. But the sense that Israel is safe enough to turn its attention to internal affairs was most forcefully expressed in the remarkable and almost totally unexpected results of the national election in June. Israelis were emboldened to vote to retire their Likud government, which for nearly a generation had been regarded as the country's most trustworthy custodian of national security. The Likud, popular at home but infamous abroad for its outbursts of unseemly behaviour, led a rightwing coalition of nationalists and religious extremists bent on creating 'greater Israel' by annexing all of the occupied West Bank's Arab lands. Likud had dominated political life for 15 years under two radical leaders, Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Apart from attending to security, which it did with chilling efficiency, it transformed Israel's generally favourable worldwide reputation into that of an international outlaw noted for such acts of aggression as the unprovoked invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and for battering and abusing Palestinians in the occupied l a n d s - jailing tens of thousands of them, often without trial, and depriving them of just about every basic human right. The Likud's Yitzhak Shamir, an Israeli freedom fighter once wanted for criminal acts of terriorism in Palestine by the UK government, was replaced by Labor's Yitzhak Rabin, who promptly fashioned a
1057
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
centrist government. The new prime minister, a former occupant of that office in the mid-1970s, is a cool, non-ideological former chief of staff of the armed forces and minister of defence. Rabin campaigned and won the right to organize a new government coalition dominated by his Labour Party with promises to sharply curtail Israeli settlement in the occupied lands, to permit Palestinians to hold free elections, and a pledge to complete the first phase of an autonomy agreement with the Palestinians by the end of this winter. Everything points to his success. And if he should succeed, it is bound to be noted that the same man who, as commander of Israeli's armed forces in 1967, captured the Arab territories will be the prime minister to preside over their return to Palestinian Arab control. The prospects of an agreement to start Israelis and Palestinians down the road to eventual resolution of their conflict will depend greatly on Israeli intentions. It was Shamir who claimed good faith in entering the peace process in Madrid. Later, however, after losing the election, he said publicly he would have negotiated with the Palestinians 'for 10 years', implying that even then he would have yielded nothing. Rabin is different. The value of his word is inestimably higher than Shamir's. Yet Rabin is no soft, liberal dispenser of charity. As a defence minister in the late 1980s, he was responsible for Israel's harsh policy against the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) to protest against occupation. At one point, Rabin advocated a policy to 'break their bones' as a means of teaching young Arab protesters the error of their ways. Even so, Rabin, the Israeli leader whose word is most trusted by the Palestinians, is a man who usually does what he says. The power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians or Jordanians, or the two together, will also affect the negotiations. The imbalance is greater by far than between Israelis and any other Arab adversary and, in fact, appears overwhelming. The PLO's Yasser Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein lost the leverage needed to sustain their side in the negotiations with Israeli when they stood with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. The two leaders and their constituencies were the war's big losers (except, of course, for Saddam and the people of Iraq). Their grievous error left the PLO and Jordan weak, impoverished, totally cut off from most former friends in the Arab world and, for all practical purposes, militarily, politically and financially impotent. Israeli strength and Palestinian weakness is a power equation that has encouraged Israelis to take a chance on Palestinian self-government, which they
1058
have viewed for 25 years as too risky to be worth considering. It also permits them to invest more of their energy in pressing domestic affairs, such as reforming a sluggish economy in which unemployment reached 11.5% early this year. If they can achieve a more stable environment in which internal security concerns are reduced, and, at the same time, attract more investment capital from abroad, they may be able to improve life for the flood of immigrants from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Autonomy negotiations may look like a race with only one runner, but unless both contestants are allowed to claim a fair share of the prize, nobody wins and the battle resumes. Another item to fit into the new mosaic, even if it is difficult to measure, is the fatigue on both sides of the conflict. Understandably, Palestinians in the territories have grown bone tired of life dominated by an enemy army that has pushed them to the margin of existence. A strong impulse exists among them to settle as quickly as possible for whatever they can get as long they are permitted to retain what little remains of their ancestral homeland some experts estimate less than 50% of West Bank land, others say as little as 25%. The Israelis are aware of Palestinian desperation. West Bank and Gaza leaders attend bargaining sessions and try to appear cheerful at press conferences before TV cameras. But Palestinians are divided into numerous camps and factions. Some, such as Hamas, the powerful and growing Muslim fundamentalist sect, try to use the negotiations to win dominance in the territories by weakening local bargaining team members and the PLO. Many try to sabotage progress with acts of violence, however cruel and costly they may be. But there is fatigue among Israelis too, which translates into strong motivation, like Rabin's, to stabilize life in the territories. They see less and less value in stationing troops in harm's way to perform valueless service that is meant, in any case, to be the work of trained police. Fatigue may not be a glorious motive for ending a conflict, but wars often end because adversaries decide they are too weary to carry on. The Israelis are also weary and resentful of lavishing subsidies on settlements in the territories, including East Jerusalem, where 250 000 now live and require armed protection to support their illegal hold on expropriated Arab lands. The election, in part, turned on widespread resentment of the privileges enjoyed by settlers. A powerful deterrent to any near-term aggressive behaviour on Israel's part exists in its eonsensual dependency on the USA. Debatable as it may be
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
whether such dependencies are wise or healthy in the long run, Rabin's campaign depended greatly on the correctness of his calculation that he could win the election if voters saw that the Likud was destroying the country's intimate relationship with the USA. Rabin, a former ambassador and frequent Washington visitor, chose to dramatize issues that served his campaign interests, but were also likely to win favour with the Bush administration. He sensed, correctly, that Bush depised Shamir and his Likud cronies. He could also see that relations between the two governments had broken down so completely that Bush, without any prompting, would do everything possible to bring the Shamir government down. As it turned out, he was right. It follows, of course, that the Rabin government will honour its promises to restore warm relations with the USA. Rabin used his campaign to lay the groundwork for US approval of the US$10 billion loan guarantees to create job opportunities in Israel guarantees that Bush had killed several months before the election. Now granted, they restore good relations with a stroke of the President's pen. The Middle East's only superpower cannot always be expected to agree with the USA in policy matters affecting the region. But a stronger relationship is bound to mean that Israel and the USA will in the future act more in concert than at any time in many years on large issues affecting the region and US vital interests. Following Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, the crystal ball clouds over. There appears to be no chance at all that Rabin will ever permit a Palestinian state to be created in the area now occupied by Israel. It would not be surprising, however, if Israel tried to encourage Palestinians to take power in Amman and establish the state of -
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Palestine in Jordan, where Palestinians already constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. Many Israeli leaders see advantages for Israel in a Palestinian state located in what is now Jordan, which would attract and welcome Palestinians from Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, they reason, heavy pressure will be put on Israel to permit diaspora Palestinians to move to the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians will be in control. Negotiations in Washington have raised the prospect that Israel and Syria may be able to find a way to settle their conflict over the Golan Heights. Rabin has asserted that all of the Golan cannot be returned to Syrian control. Even so, he responded swiftly and affirmatively to Syrian overtures to negotiate an agreement. The possibility of real progress on this Middle East front now exists. The Middle East outlook is somewhat improved by recent events and the encouraging trends that are shaping Israel's future behaviour. That estimate, if sustained over the next few years, means that the region may experience less instability and reduced tension from the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel may well begin to contribute to the resolution of some issues in which it has a direct stake and which have produced conflict and strained relations with Arabs in the past. Whatever else may happen, the era of radical Israeli behaviour has ended for now, a development of major importance to the region and the world. It is entirely possible that Israel will transform itself from a warrior state into a mature, responsible regional superpower with a vital interest in preventing armed conflict. If Israel decides to use its power wisely, which appears now to be its intention, it could become an important Middle East force for stability.
1059
Since mid-century, oil supply disruptions from the Middle East have been Enked to Arab-Israeli wars. Following the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, Israel has begun to feel more secure and more willing to negotiate with its Arab neighbours. Palestinian hopes for an autonomous Palestine may be channelled into pressure for Jordan to welcome more Palestinians and possibly turn into a Palestinian state. In any case the era o f radical Israeli behaviour as a beleaguered warrior nation has ended for now.
Murray J. Gart can be contacted at 2126 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008, USA. He is a journalist and consultant in Middle East affairs.
In the broadest terms, the Middle East geopolitical climate today appears to be calm, a veritable sea of tranquillity, which supports current forecasts that are freer of any serious hints of war than they have been in a very long time. lran and Iraq are long-term concerns, troubles in Algeria persist and the new tension between Saudi Arabia and Yemen suggests a future problem in the making. But no shadow on the horizon suggests impending crisis, at least for the next few years. The outlook, in fact, is better than it has been for a long time, especially when trends in Israel and its changing role in Middle East affairs are taken into account. In Israel today fundamental changes are in the making. The new government in Jerusalem is serious about taking its first giant step in more than a decade toward peaceful coexistence with its Arab neighbouts and the Palestinians. The new, venturesome spirit rests on a widely shared belief that Israel's strength in relation to its Arab enemies is at an unprecedented peak, while Arab power is greatly diminished. As a result, Israel enjoys a more favourable military balance than ever before which, in turn, inspires enough confidence in the populace to permit its leaders to try to end the bloody contest that pits 3.9 million Israeli Jews against 200 million Arabs. The Jewish state in the heart of Arab Islam has never felt more secure. No potential enemy or combination of hostile powers today poses a credible threat to Israel's existence. The sole military superpower in the Middle East, Israel has atomic arms and the means to deliver them, every modern weapon of mass destruction and a deadly array of conventional arms - an aggregate of power sufficiently impressive to deter attack by any would be aggressor. Consequently, Israelis can be confident for the first time in their national life that while external enemies from time to time may still disturb their peace, at least for the foreseeable future none has the power to overwhelm them. Their primary
0301-4215/92/0111055-05© 1992 Butterworth-HeinemannLtd
1 055
Keywords: Israeli insecurity; Radicalism; Palestinian autonomy
Middle East history since the discovery of oil offers powerful reminders that supplies destined for use in the industrialized world can be interrupted. Almost invariably, the geopolitics of events that have caused big disruptions explain why they happened and how they might have been avoided. Since mid-century, most supply and transport interdictions, such as closure of the Suez Canal, have been caused by Arab-Israeli wars. Hence, good assessments of trends in the 44 year dispute are vital for those who must know whether Middle East tensions point to serious instability ahead or whether they are under control or in decline. Because the Arab nations produce the region's oil, most estimates of the climate for conflict tend to reflect assessments of events mainly from their perspective. But seeing the struggle from the viewpoint of the other combatant is equally vital in appraising the outlook. Israel produces no oil, but it certainly has a record as a contributor to the region's tensions and conflicts, and its actions have often taken the best observers by surprise.
Israel: the warrior nation in search o f peace
security threat now is internal, and the tools for dealing with it are quite different from those available to wage war. Israeli's internal security means sharing its common homeland and finding ways of living peacefully with the 1 750 000 Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. No sound basis for living together is possible unless Israel is willing to give up territory it captured from Jordan (the West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza) in the war of 1967, and to return it to the Palestinians from whom it was taken by force of arms. That is precisely what the country's new leadership says it is willing to do. Many terms and slogans - UN Resolutions 242 and 338, land for peace, self-determination for Palestinians - are shorthand describing elements in the sterile debate that has raged over Middle East issues for 25 years. They add up to one proposition: Israel can have internal security, but only by ceding control of the territories and granting autonomy and rights of self-government to severely oppressed Palestinians who live under the iron fist of the occupying army. Guidelines on how to proceed and what to do to achieve an acceptable settlement are already in place. They are found in the Camp David Accords. The proposals - part of which led to cold peace, but peace nevertheless, between Egypt and Israel - were written in 1979 and signed by Israel, although until now they have not been implemented. Nevertheless, the Accords are widely believed to contain the formula most likely to win eventual acceptance by the Israelis and Palestinians. Not by chance, the framework for peace in the Accords lies at the heart of the negotiations started up after many months of consultations under the sponsorship of the USA and Russia a year ago in Madrid. Camp David proposes a course of action that, in these times, can be moulded swiftly into a workable basis for an agreement that satisfies the main Israeli and Palestinian objectives: security for Israelis and freedom from occupation and unimpeded self-government for the Palestinians. Since its founding in 1948, Israel's role in the Middle East has centred almost exclusively on selfpreservation and nation building. A state with an official religion, it has stressed its ambition to create and maintain a homeland and refuge for the world's 14 million Jews, although most of them choose to live elsewhere. The population of the country, about 4.65 million, includes 750 000 Arabs and some 370 000 immigrants from the former USSR who have settled there in the last two and a half years. More Russian Jews, possibly as many as 650 000,
1056
could move there in the next three or four years. To achieve its broad objectives, Israel has fought five wars and battled almost incessantly with Arab neighbours and Palestinians, at times employing the hotly disputed but remarkably effective military strategy of overwhelming real and potential enemies with bold preemptive strikes. It has acquired a reputation for being quick on the trigger when it feels that any of its interests are threatened, and no public debate ever precedes military action. The fighting has frequently inflamed the atmosphere of a region that has failed to achieve even a modicum of peace during most of the 20th century - a place, in fact, where peace has come to mean little more than a pause for rest between wars. Israel has been accused, at times justly, of generating some of the instability. But its role in the Middle East is changing. It has been profoundly affected by the adjustments in international and national life that have resulted from the great events of the last few years. Its position as a Middle East nation is developing in new directions to take account of large modifications in the region's geopolitical landscape. In the new role that is emerging, the aspect of it that has become most visible is a major shift in priorities to domestic affairs. The change began to be noticeable following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, when domestic security, immigration and a faltering economy moved to the top of the country's agenda. The sense that Israel had become relatively safe from external attack almost overnight began to take hold, ironically, soon after Iraq fired the last of 39 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. The Soviet empire had crumbled and then disintegrated completely following the coup that failed in August 1991. The 45 year Cold War ended, leaving Israel's active Arab enemies without their only source of support and arms from outside the region. The Jewish state benefited doubly: its Arab adversaries were greatly weakened, while, at the same time, the USA, its great benefactor and the only global superpower, obtained enormous new influence in Arab security affairs. The Gulf War also fundamentally changed the Middle East's political and military terrain, greatly improving Israel's position by liquidating the threat posed by Iraq, the most formidable of its Arab enemies. The war destroyed Iraq's army, the world's fourth largest and the most powerful Arab force assembled since the Crusades. In the aftermath, as far as UN officials can tell, Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was liquidated, and along with it the only potential challenge to Israel's
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
region-wide monopoly of atomic weapons. When the war ended, there was little left to fear from Iraq. Another result of the Gulf War was an Arab world divided as never before in post-colonial times. A large bloc of Arab nations fought Iraqis in an alliance organized by the USA, Israel's greatest friend. The precedent shattering realignment of power was made even more extraordinary by Israel's decision to remain on the sidelines in spite of the numerous missile attacks on its largest city. Syria, another enemy of the Israelis, fought, in effect, for Israel's interests as well as its own. At the same time, the disappearance of all support from the USSR, Syria's principal weapons supplier, significantly reduced its strength. Israel also benefited handsomely from the stunning losses suffered by other enemies who stood with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, namely Jordan and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization; Lebanon, its northern neighbour, expired as an independent nation and all but formally became a province of Syria, as it once had been when Turkey ruled the region. Taken together, the changes, realignments and rearrangements of power add up to this bottom line: Israel enjoys unprecedented military superiority over all the Arabs who have been its enemies. The so-called Arab nation is weaker, divided and dependent as never before on the USA. Meanwhile, although US financial support of Israel has not increased as a matter of policy, it remains undiminished; the 1991 aid package totalled US$4.5 billion, including the annual subsidy of US$3 billion. Israel's strategic and conventional military resources are formidable enough to handle any trouble that might arise, and in a pinch, US power can be counted on for backup. The only concern expressed by a few Israeli leaders lately is that superiority may be taken for granted and overconfidence could develop into a future source of danger. In any event, Israel's sense of safety began to be recognized soon after the Iraqi missiles stopped falling. Polls early this year showed that security concerns and the fear of returning occupied land to the Palestinians were diminishing in spite of the fact that Palestinians in Israel proper and the occupied territories had overwhelmingly supported Iraq in the war and that individual Arabs had been attacking Israeli civilians more frequently than ever. Majorities in the polls favouring land for peace with the Palestinians grew. The Madrid peace process also stimulated Israeli interest in searching for solutions to what remained of the country's security needs. Until the national election campaign of last spring, a lot of attention
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
had been paid to the negotiations, although the Shamir government then in power conducted them with undisguised disdain. Future plans to improve internal security became a dominant issue in the campaign, and for the first time the old hard line against any concessions whatever to the Palestinians or anyone else was seriously challenged. In June, just before the election, an independent (ie non-political) survey taken among all retired armed forces generals, and intelligence and security officers - 80% of the men who had been most responsible for the country's defence for 44 years produced astounding results: 75% believed that if most of the occupied lands were returned to the Palestinians, Israel's security needs could be ~reasonably satisfied'; 68% favoured giving back the occupied territories; only 31% favoured their annexation. The pattern of responses supported public positions taken by almost every retired armed forces general who had served as chief of military intelligence during the last three decades. They regard the West Bank and Gaza not as an asset, but as a security burden and, individually, several advocate return of the territories either to the Palestinian inhabitants or Jordan. But the sense that Israel is safe enough to turn its attention to internal affairs was most forcefully expressed in the remarkable and almost totally unexpected results of the national election in June. Israelis were emboldened to vote to retire their Likud government, which for nearly a generation had been regarded as the country's most trustworthy custodian of national security. The Likud, popular at home but infamous abroad for its outbursts of unseemly behaviour, led a rightwing coalition of nationalists and religious extremists bent on creating 'greater Israel' by annexing all of the occupied West Bank's Arab lands. Likud had dominated political life for 15 years under two radical leaders, Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Apart from attending to security, which it did with chilling efficiency, it transformed Israel's generally favourable worldwide reputation into that of an international outlaw noted for such acts of aggression as the unprovoked invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and for battering and abusing Palestinians in the occupied l a n d s - jailing tens of thousands of them, often without trial, and depriving them of just about every basic human right. The Likud's Yitzhak Shamir, an Israeli freedom fighter once wanted for criminal acts of terriorism in Palestine by the UK government, was replaced by Labor's Yitzhak Rabin, who promptly fashioned a
1057
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
centrist government. The new prime minister, a former occupant of that office in the mid-1970s, is a cool, non-ideological former chief of staff of the armed forces and minister of defence. Rabin campaigned and won the right to organize a new government coalition dominated by his Labour Party with promises to sharply curtail Israeli settlement in the occupied lands, to permit Palestinians to hold free elections, and a pledge to complete the first phase of an autonomy agreement with the Palestinians by the end of this winter. Everything points to his success. And if he should succeed, it is bound to be noted that the same man who, as commander of Israeli's armed forces in 1967, captured the Arab territories will be the prime minister to preside over their return to Palestinian Arab control. The prospects of an agreement to start Israelis and Palestinians down the road to eventual resolution of their conflict will depend greatly on Israeli intentions. It was Shamir who claimed good faith in entering the peace process in Madrid. Later, however, after losing the election, he said publicly he would have negotiated with the Palestinians 'for 10 years', implying that even then he would have yielded nothing. Rabin is different. The value of his word is inestimably higher than Shamir's. Yet Rabin is no soft, liberal dispenser of charity. As a defence minister in the late 1980s, he was responsible for Israel's harsh policy against the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) to protest against occupation. At one point, Rabin advocated a policy to 'break their bones' as a means of teaching young Arab protesters the error of their ways. Even so, Rabin, the Israeli leader whose word is most trusted by the Palestinians, is a man who usually does what he says. The power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians or Jordanians, or the two together, will also affect the negotiations. The imbalance is greater by far than between Israelis and any other Arab adversary and, in fact, appears overwhelming. The PLO's Yasser Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein lost the leverage needed to sustain their side in the negotiations with Israeli when they stood with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. The two leaders and their constituencies were the war's big losers (except, of course, for Saddam and the people of Iraq). Their grievous error left the PLO and Jordan weak, impoverished, totally cut off from most former friends in the Arab world and, for all practical purposes, militarily, politically and financially impotent. Israeli strength and Palestinian weakness is a power equation that has encouraged Israelis to take a chance on Palestinian self-government, which they
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have viewed for 25 years as too risky to be worth considering. It also permits them to invest more of their energy in pressing domestic affairs, such as reforming a sluggish economy in which unemployment reached 11.5% early this year. If they can achieve a more stable environment in which internal security concerns are reduced, and, at the same time, attract more investment capital from abroad, they may be able to improve life for the flood of immigrants from Russia and other former Soviet republics. Autonomy negotiations may look like a race with only one runner, but unless both contestants are allowed to claim a fair share of the prize, nobody wins and the battle resumes. Another item to fit into the new mosaic, even if it is difficult to measure, is the fatigue on both sides of the conflict. Understandably, Palestinians in the territories have grown bone tired of life dominated by an enemy army that has pushed them to the margin of existence. A strong impulse exists among them to settle as quickly as possible for whatever they can get as long they are permitted to retain what little remains of their ancestral homeland some experts estimate less than 50% of West Bank land, others say as little as 25%. The Israelis are aware of Palestinian desperation. West Bank and Gaza leaders attend bargaining sessions and try to appear cheerful at press conferences before TV cameras. But Palestinians are divided into numerous camps and factions. Some, such as Hamas, the powerful and growing Muslim fundamentalist sect, try to use the negotiations to win dominance in the territories by weakening local bargaining team members and the PLO. Many try to sabotage progress with acts of violence, however cruel and costly they may be. But there is fatigue among Israelis too, which translates into strong motivation, like Rabin's, to stabilize life in the territories. They see less and less value in stationing troops in harm's way to perform valueless service that is meant, in any case, to be the work of trained police. Fatigue may not be a glorious motive for ending a conflict, but wars often end because adversaries decide they are too weary to carry on. The Israelis are also weary and resentful of lavishing subsidies on settlements in the territories, including East Jerusalem, where 250 000 now live and require armed protection to support their illegal hold on expropriated Arab lands. The election, in part, turned on widespread resentment of the privileges enjoyed by settlers. A powerful deterrent to any near-term aggressive behaviour on Israel's part exists in its eonsensual dependency on the USA. Debatable as it may be
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Israel: the warrior nation in search of peace
whether such dependencies are wise or healthy in the long run, Rabin's campaign depended greatly on the correctness of his calculation that he could win the election if voters saw that the Likud was destroying the country's intimate relationship with the USA. Rabin, a former ambassador and frequent Washington visitor, chose to dramatize issues that served his campaign interests, but were also likely to win favour with the Bush administration. He sensed, correctly, that Bush depised Shamir and his Likud cronies. He could also see that relations between the two governments had broken down so completely that Bush, without any prompting, would do everything possible to bring the Shamir government down. As it turned out, he was right. It follows, of course, that the Rabin government will honour its promises to restore warm relations with the USA. Rabin used his campaign to lay the groundwork for US approval of the US$10 billion loan guarantees to create job opportunities in Israel guarantees that Bush had killed several months before the election. Now granted, they restore good relations with a stroke of the President's pen. The Middle East's only superpower cannot always be expected to agree with the USA in policy matters affecting the region. But a stronger relationship is bound to mean that Israel and the USA will in the future act more in concert than at any time in many years on large issues affecting the region and US vital interests. Following Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, the crystal ball clouds over. There appears to be no chance at all that Rabin will ever permit a Palestinian state to be created in the area now occupied by Israel. It would not be surprising, however, if Israel tried to encourage Palestinians to take power in Amman and establish the state of -
ENERGY POLICY November 1992
Palestine in Jordan, where Palestinians already constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. Many Israeli leaders see advantages for Israel in a Palestinian state located in what is now Jordan, which would attract and welcome Palestinians from Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, they reason, heavy pressure will be put on Israel to permit diaspora Palestinians to move to the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians will be in control. Negotiations in Washington have raised the prospect that Israel and Syria may be able to find a way to settle their conflict over the Golan Heights. Rabin has asserted that all of the Golan cannot be returned to Syrian control. Even so, he responded swiftly and affirmatively to Syrian overtures to negotiate an agreement. The possibility of real progress on this Middle East front now exists. The Middle East outlook is somewhat improved by recent events and the encouraging trends that are shaping Israel's future behaviour. That estimate, if sustained over the next few years, means that the region may experience less instability and reduced tension from the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel may well begin to contribute to the resolution of some issues in which it has a direct stake and which have produced conflict and strained relations with Arabs in the past. Whatever else may happen, the era of radical Israeli behaviour has ended for now, a development of major importance to the region and the world. It is entirely possible that Israel will transform itself from a warrior state into a mature, responsible regional superpower with a vital interest in preventing armed conflict. If Israel decides to use its power wisely, which appears now to be its intention, it could become an important Middle East force for stability.
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