The Nation's Pulse / Towards a Middle East Peace?
Rusthoven, Peter J.
"The Nation's Pulse / Towards a Middle East Peace?" by Peter J Rusthoven The recent visit to Israel by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the ensuing diplomatic and military discussions between...
...And while from this perspective the Palestinians present the most appealing case, the sense of injustice felt by Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Iranians, and the rest is also understandable...
...At the same time, we find that the rate of unemployment has failed to drop to expected levels...
...but given the political and emotional climate bequeathed to him by his flamboyant predecessor, his gesture to Israel stands as an unqualified example of statesmanship, whatever its ultimate success or failure...
...No people in history has been as consistently subjected to systematic persecution and discrimination over as long a period of time...
...Government Statistics as a Guide to Economic Policy," Policy Review, Summer 1977...
...In two thousand years since the birth of Christ, spanning Holy Roman Empires and assorted Crusades, little has changed in the world's longest standing trouble spot...
...It is precisely because of these factors that Mr...
...Begin, criticized both before and after his selection as Prime Minister as a right extremist, promptly invited Sadat to Israel...
...As a historical matter, then, it is hardly surprising that the Middle East remains the most explosive area of the world...
...either necessary or desirable, since there is an explanation for the persistently high level of unemployment that has largely been ignored by bureaucrats and politicians: namely, that the official reported measures of unemployment are highly inaccurate and generate numbers which are practically useless...
...In thousands of years so little has happened that even hints that the problems of this area can be resolved...
...From that time until this, their respective descendants have continued the tradition...
...And while moral judgments of some confidence are possible with respect to a number of particular individuals and events—the motives of a Muammar Khaddafi, for example, require no anguished reflection —in no other spot on earth are the fundamental historical and moral questions more complex...
...Had the late Mr...
...The PLO, darling of the so-called "Third World," has demonstrated its basic disinterest in any solution that does not involve elimination of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state, regardless of whether an alternative arrangement would benefit the Palestinians themselves...
...At the same time, Israeli settlements in the Sinai unquestionably rankle the Egyptians, suggesting a degree of permanence in the present territorial alignment which no Egyptian or other Arab is prepared to accept...
...One should be disgusted, to be sure, that the loudest claim to representation of the Palestinians is put forth by Yassir Arafat and his cowardly thugs, and that the PLO is in turn backed by the Kremlin's murderous philosophers of dialectical materialism...
...Sadat as promptly accepted, thereby incurring the wrath of most of his Arab neighbors, and inspiring assassination threats from the worthies of the Palestine Liberation Organization...
...Begin, veteran of the most bitter struggles in his nation's long and often lonely battle for survival, stands firmly in the tradition of Israeli leaders who would be willing to compromise much that is disputed if only the sovereignty and security of their nation can be assured...
...For many, including myself, the basic appeal of Zionism is no less powerful today...
...For example, the New York regional office of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics decided last fall to stop publishing its monthly unemployment estimate for New York City because that estimate was nolonger considered sufficiently accurate for researchers...
...In the centuries that followed, when not warring among themselves, the Israelites found themselves variously embroiled with Hittites, Philistines, Syrians, BabyloPeter J. Rusthoven is an Indianapolis attorney...
...Given the history of the Middle East, this is no mean accomplishment...
...But the underlying claims of the Palestinians, that their interests are shortchanged in the present arrangement and that they have somehow been odd-man-out in the periodic reshufflings of land and power in the Middle East, are no less real for that...
...It is unlikely, however, that such a program is Kenneth 1V...
...While almost nothing can accurately be characterized as a historical constant, conflict in the Middle East and war between Jew and Arab come very close...
...What Sadat's visit does indicate, however, is that a livable solution short of total conquest by one side or the other may yet be hoped for, and that reasonable individuals on both sides have, for the moment at least, seized center stage...
...These people previously were not counted as part of the labor force, but • Kenneth W. Clarkson and Roger E. Meiners, Inflated Unemployment Statistics, Law and Economics Center, 1977...
...In this country, Israel's basic claim to a national homeland has powerful appeal among most sectors of the citizenry, unreconstructed anti-Semites and certain fringes of the new left notwithstanding...
...nians, and finally Romans...
...Throughout recorded history, Israe' and its neighbors have seldom if ever known a period of, prolonged peace...
...Nor should anyone believe that the problems themselves have become any easier to resolve: In the parlance of gametheory, the Middle East is in many ways a zero-sum contest...
...As with many such occurrences, there was a certain chance aspect to all this, disturbing to those who long for greater precision and predictability in the ordering of world affairs...
...Nasser and his allies ever fulfilled their oft-stated pledge to "drive Israel into the sea," one need have little doubt that that "occupied territory" would never have been returned...
...THE PUBLIC POLICY by Kenneth W. Clarkson & Roger E. Meiners Deflating Unemployment Statistics Virtually every economic indicator now points to a continuing economic recovery and expansion since the end of the 1974-75 recession...
...Yet it is undeniable that establishment of an Israeli homeland required the use of territory claimed, rightly or not, by people whose own journeys through history have often been marked by travail, and whose sense of ownership of the land in question challenges that of the most ardent Zionist...
...The more specific issues which dominate present discussion are no less intractable...
...The cynical and self-interested motives of other participants stand out more clearly by contrast...
...In no other spot on earth are the differences between neighboring peoples as deep-seated, the animosities as intense, and the threat of war so constantly impending, as in the area occupied by the Israelis and their fellow children of Abraham...
...In response to this the Carter administration has introduced a public jobs program as part of its welfare reform bill...
...It is this last factor which engenders such despair whenever reasonable men reflect on the possibility of a peacefulsolution to the difficulties of the Middle East...
...That there are systematic biases in official unemployment statistics is now gaining widespread recognition...
...Competing, often equally compelling, and usually seemingly irreconcilable considerations impinge on virtually every question...
...While the subsequent negotiations between Egyptian and Israeli representatives have been far from serene, and have broken off on more than one occasion, the image of Israeli soldiers playing the national anthem of a visiting Arab head of state is one that will not soon fade from memory...
...Coming as it did on the heels of the most thoroughgoing campaign of genocide in the history of mankind, the UN endorsement of a Jewish homeland after World War II seemed a singularly appropriate, if far from adequate, effort at some form of recompense...
...Sadat's visit to Israel comes as such a welcome surprise...
...Israel's reluctance to accede to this demand is perhaps even more so...
...Generations before that, Ishmael, Abraham's son by the concubine and father of the Arabs, quarrelled with Isaac, Abraham's promised child of the covenant from whom the Jewish nation would arise...
...The desire of Egypt and other Arab nations that territory lost to Israel in the 1967 war The American Spectator March 1978 25 be returned is certainly explicable...
...For all that, however, Sadat's visit merits both prayers of thanks and renewed prayer that a just peace may yet be achieved...
...The recent visit to Israel by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the ensuing diplomatic and military discussions between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and their respective underlings, stand out as at once the most dramatic and encouraging news development of the past year...
...Our own nation, however bumbling its diplomatic efforts in this area may be at times—and I do not dispute that recently they have been very bumbling indeed—has nonetheless revealed again its basic desire that all efforts to-ward a peaceful settlement be encouraged...
...Specific antagonism between Jew and Arab is, if anything, an even more vintage phenomenon...
...For hundreds of years before Moses led the great Exodus, Jews labored as slaves of Egyptians...
...In the thirty years since the United Nations—a considerably different body than the assemblage that bears its name today—endorsed the concept of a Jewish homeland, continuous tension has erupted into outright war no less than four times...
...For much of this period, the Soviets and the Americans have roughly allied themselves on different sides of the conflict, making the Middle East high on any list of likely locations for an outbreak of direct hostilities between the so-called "superpowers...
...Clarkson is professor of economics and Roger E. Meiners is a John M. Olin Fellow at the Law and Economics Center of the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida...
...One cannot help but hope that this latest and surprisingly encouraging development is at least a small indication from the Almighty that this troubled region, spiritual center to so many who worship Him, may yet receive His most devoutly cherished blessing...
...26 The American Spectator March 1978...
...The other Arab nations, perhaps Syria and Libya in particular, have displayed once more their adherence to the doctrine of "drive them into the sea...
...In essence, the high measured rates of unemployment in recent years can be explained in large part by a new class of individuals who either are largely unem: ployable or have no need or desire to work, but who, in order to qualify for various welfare benefits, must officially register for work...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Peter J Rusthoven Towards a Middle East Peace...
...Sadat may not, in the final analysis, be blessed with extraordinary vision or intelligence...
...Sadatperhaps as a mere rhetorical flourish, perhaps as a subtle hint—stated that he would go anywhere in pursuit of a just peace in the Middle East...
...No sober observer expects that a permanent peace will come anytime soon as a result of the steps, taken by Sadat and Begin: The problems of centuries do not disappear in a few hours of conversation between old enemies...
...Aside from the obvious security implications, for the Arabs to demand the return of land lost in a war in which they were essentially the aggressors must sound more than a little hollow in Israeli ears...
...As for the Russians, it is difficult to see how anyone could fail to perceive their complete lack of interest in any outcome that does not advance their own influence and efforts at domination—interests that are best served by keeping the Middle East in turmoil...
...The tangled and conflicting religious, historical, and other claims to Jerusalem seem almost to defy description...
...The immediate aftermath of Sadat's visit has emphasized another thing as well—namely, just who the reasonable individuals involved in the Middle East are...
...It has been some thirty-two hundred years since Joshua succeeded Moses and fulfilled the mandate of Jehovah by leading the children of Israel into the Promised Land, wreaking havoc on assorted tribes of Canaanites in the process...
Vol. 11 • March 1978 • No. 5
