A Letter from Israel

...They have not held rigidly to the principle that wars can end only in peace— such rigidity has been the Arab basis for claiming belligerent rights—but have accepted many partial arrangements for coexistence while still under active attack...

...The pressure regarding this point is universally seen as flowing chiefly from sources of religious anti-Semitism and only secondarily from concern about the future of one Arab state, Jordan...

...Israelis therefore calculate that if and when the blow falls, they will have to defend themselves against Russians—they hope not too many...

...The reason has to be strategic...

...Their demand is simply that the Arabs who recognized Israel by making war on it, should now, if they say they wish to give up belligerency, meet Israel in direct talks to make peace...

...Other Arabs who say that Jewish statehood and Zionism are the danger, and not the 2 million Israelis, mean something else: they mean extinction, not absorption...

...Bringing down Hussein, or Nasser, for that matter, is something the Arabs could easily do soon enough for themselves...

...This would become merely a domestic question to be settled by the Arab nation...

...They look at the densely settled western slopes of the Samarian and Judean hills and recognize that this is Arab land, just as its dense Jewish population makes Israel Jewish...

...Like everyone else, Israelis have learned the techniques of coexistence, which are expedient for survival and blind to all other principles...

...But one wonders whether any occupying power has ever achieved so much pacification at the expense of so little military intervention...

...In 1956, Israel tried to force the Arabs on the battlefield to accept peace...

...But a number of people have privately expressed some strong doubt and opposition to this view...

...It is pure Oriental fantasy...

...The public does not take calmly, as a statistical risk, casualties incurred upon Israel's initiative...

...What would become of the 2 million Jews would not be a matter for negotiation...

...It happens also to be a fantasy for which the Arabs, owing to the immense strategic advantages they have to offer, can always find friendly support from one or another aspiring power...

...The operation is not classed as a reprisal raid...

...This is a vain hope, say these leftist critics...

...Deaths and injuries brought about in this way are counted individually by the whole nation, and the governing party is at once placed on the defensive by its rivals...

...The following letter from Israel comes from a veteran figure in the American Labor Zionist movement and former editor of the Jewish Frontier...

...Instead, it is said to be a preemptive attack...

...The roads are not closed to Israeli travel, the villages not controlled by insurrectionists...

...This group is fretful and impatient with the official policy which forbids all actions that could be interpreted as steps toward annexation, still in the hope of bringing the Arabs to the peace table...

...Yet nothing could be more un likely than that Israel should adopt any policy today merely in order to make de bating points in the U.N...

...These, no doubt, are remote prospects, like the nuclear holocaust under whose pale shadow people live in most of the world...

...And the proof is in their attitude to direct peace talks: Hourani would evidently accept such talks and take his chance on the future...

...Israelis, watching the local signs, are gradually getting used to the idea that this is the contingency for which they must plan...

...Israeli military men today are ready to say that Israel would give up many of the highly advantageous positions it now occupies — in return for Arab signatures on a peace treaty...

...This point of view, while it is an element in the attitude of many, fundamentally determines the political position of a minority of Israelis...

...The mines laid on road and rail, the bomb deposited in a movie house, and the grenade tossed into a market place, the machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire upon fields and shelters, which are reported daily, are accepted in the very same way as the mounting toll of highway accidents...

...Some on the Israeli Left wonder whether the operation was not disproportionate, and how it has affected Gunnar Jarring's mis sion, which Israel is anxious to see con tinued...

...But Moshe Dayan has noted that the Syrians, of course, quite naturally fear Israel's military A LETTER FROM ISRAEL positions on the Golan Heights, within such easy striking distance of Damascus...

...Nevertheless, if the present new test of nerves and strength develops into another standoff, there may be some small tasks for both General Odd Bull and Gunnar Jarring to perform, in the perennial hope of paving a path to broader negotiations...

...For those who come under continual fire at the Jordanian border, this involves a certain stoical discipline...

...The position is obviously being driven to the point of absurdity, even considering the tolerance of our generation for grotesque situations...

...If one is to judge by public statements, the most popular opinion, by all odds, is for retaining and resettling the West Bank and much of the other conquered territory...

...Statistically, the Israeli driver is a much greater menace to life and limb than the Arab saboteur and terrorist...

...Such Arab leaders can do nothing as long as Israeli policy leaves open the possibility that they will be handed back to Hussein and suffer the kind of reprisals the Egyptians took after 1956 against officials who had cooperated with Israeli authorities during the occupation...

...Within these borders Israel feels it is able to withstand terrorist harassment indefinitely, and is in a better position than ever before (given adequate equipment) to repel any large-scale assault or to launch a decisive counterattack...

...But very few Israelis view this as the question of most urgent and immediate concern, but consider it a long-range threat against which they must arm themselves with appropriate deterrents...

...Peace, the doctrine says, will only come when the Arabs realize they cannot gain their ends by war...

...The purpose of the non-recognition of Israel is not an Arab desire to alter Israel's ideology, as they now think it advisable to say, or to incorporate it in a larger political union, as they also sometimes suggest...

...Given a positive Israeli policy, however, such groups would gain confidence...

...and they hoped in 1967 that the crushing defeat—impossible to blame on allies, but inflicted by the force of Israel alone—would prove convincing...

...But there is no doubt about the necessity of holding the territories as long as the Arabs refuse to negotiate a full peace...

...The vocal opinion in favor of integrating the occupied areas elicits a strong undercurrent of doubt and opposition...

...But, as Israel is locked into its strategy by considerations of sheer survival, they are willing to give it another try...

...Perhaps some day they will succeed...

...The day following last week's battle there was a reunion of families across the EgyptianIsraeli cease-fire line and the civilian traffic across the Jordan River resumed...

...But the excitable Israelis adjust to the menace of such extremities far more phlegmatically and with far fewer signs of morbid anxiety than do the low-strung Anglo-Saxons among whom I usually dwell...

...This group—and it includes an occasional Arab who has taken a public stand—is eager to demonstrate, within the joint sections of partitioned Palestine—how the social problems and cleavages that con stitute the substance of Arab-Jewish relations can (according to them) be overcome by a positive approach...

...A word about the Israeli reaction to last Thursday's action...

...they leave all civil affairs—and a considerable amount of policing— to the previously existing Arab administration or to new local Arab authorities...

...Everyone here knows about the Jordanian orders to troop units to destroy specified villages and kill their inhabitants...

...And so long as this is the case the Israeli demand for direct peace talks becomes "impracticable," as it is the custom to say these days...

...There is no suggestion that Israel wants to bring him down...

...paraded in its latest military celebration in Moscow...

...The Israeli occupation forces do not add to the hatred Arabs feel toward them by attempting direct rule...

...For a somewhat different opinion, see the comment by Stanley Plastrik in our March-April issue, p. 109.—ED...

...T T HE VIEW OF ISRAEL'S MILITARY establishment (for that matter, of the entire population) has always been that only peace, and not victory, can truly stabilize Israel's position in the Eastern Mediterranean...

...In spite of all this, there are those who do not hesitate to state publicly, and on every possible occasion, the grounds on which they oppose any positive Israeli action toward integrating the occupied areas...

...and everyone draws appropriate conclusions about his own prospects if ever Arab mobs were to riot in occupied Jewish areas...

...They want the powers to force Israel to accept unilateral surrender of its present defensive position, if not also retreat to the 1947 partition boundaries, and allow the restoration of the whole Arab refugee population to its onetime homes, before they will begin to negotiate what remains— i.e., the liquidation of Zionism and of the Jewish state...

...Nothing farther from the Vietnamese or Algerian models could be imagined than the actual present situation in Gaza and on the West Bank...

...There is opposition to any general policy of permanent integration, and any immediate measures which point in this direction...

...But no one here has any doubt about certain facts: we know in our bones that if they could (or felt they could) the Arabs would hit Israel at the first opportunity and, if they won, would liquidate both the Jewish state and the Jews...

...If there is any Arab group that can break the present deadlock, it is the potential leadership of the West Bank Arabs...

...And they want to begin doing all this now...

...Israel is not unique in its opinion that it is constantly misunderstood, that other people are unwilling, even if they were able, to ap preciate its vital interests...

...other Arabs claim to be terrified of talking to Israel...

...Nor is there any question that the borders of the 1948/49 armistice agreements must be substantially altered, not only to include all of Jerusalem within the State of Israel, but also to eliminate the severe risks to Israel's security that these borders entailed...

...Only Dayan, perhaps, would dare say this to the Israeli farmers down below, who for years had to take a continual pounding from Syrian heavy weapons and artillery emplacements dug into these heights...

...But all these parallels and precedents seem beside the point, and are, indeed, a smoke screen intended to hide the point...

...Con sequently, peace and not victory must be the ultimate goal of military planning—always taking into account the fundamental consideration that a single defeat would mean the end of Israel...

...This patriotic and religious enthusiasm is heightened by the twenty years of exclusion from the sacred sites of Judaism...

...During all this time, as Israelis points out whenever the question arises, no voice was raised in defense of the religious rights of Judaism...

...And today, for all their caution, they do not expect another early Egyptian attack...

...What makes this possible for Israel, to an extent hitherto undreamed of, is the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Sinai (to the Canal), and the Golan Heights...

...and if they took steps toward peace, they would do so with the authority of authentic representatives of the Arabs of Palestine...

...The most articulate defense of this position—and, incidentally, the one most likely to sway Israeli public opinion—has come from some of the military...

...They want to allow the Histadrut to organize Arab labor and cooperatives on the West Bank, to promote vocational training in Gaza, solve the refugee problem within the reunited frontier, and integrate the new areas into the political and social structure of a reorganized Israel—thus recognizing a dual national composition...

...Another element in the vocal support for immediate action to integrate occupied areas into the structure of Israel is not based on traditional Jewish sentiments but on leftist progressivism...

...Other critics repeat their demand for rapid settlement up to the cease-fire line, and some criticize "excessive" precautions, taken to spare the Jordanian civilians, which cost Israeli lives and permitted many guerrillas and their leaders to escape...

...That is how the military threat is seen...

...The first to express himself on this point explicitly was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan...

...Danger is not only threatening...

...Moreover, every day of occupation that passes makes a policy of Israeli inactivity more questionable, so that time works in favor of the integrationists...

...Israelis are paying for all this startling "normality" with the high price of additional military service...

...No outside pressure—other than Arab participation in face-to-face peace negotiations —will make Israel consider relinquishing these positions...

...And the people responsible for policy here were almost equally as certain, until May 1967, that Nasser would not start a war...

...Nobody now expects any serious approach toward negotiations until the question of Arab leadership is settled...

...the views it expresses reflect those of a major segment of the Labor Zionist movement...

...Waiting in the wings are also the new American-style marines the U.S.S.R...

...but only if it gains peace can its victories be meaningful...

...It still seemed reasonable to interpret Israel's air strike in February as a warning to King Hussein that he could suffer severe damage if he did not control the irregulars, who were in any case a threat to his rule...

...The Russians now have not only technicians in Egypt able to man the missilecarrying ships, bombers, and tanks they supply...

...notes Jordan's obligation to abstain from shooting or supporting or plan ning hostilities across the line...

...Charter to act in self-defense...

...and when the day comes to hand back Arab lands and Arab populations in exchange for peace, they would do so gladly, with a sense of relief, not as a reluctant quid pro quo...

...The official explanation of last Thursday's raid takes a sharply different line, emphasizing a note that has been sounded increasingly for some time now...

...On the big question, when will the Arabs be ready to sit down with Israel and talk, the initiative remains irrevocably with the Arab leaders—if only one knew who they are likely to be...

...The callousness of the world toward Israel's vital interests is prob ably no greater—and, indeed, obviously less great—than toward the vital interests of Hungary or Cambodia, to choose a couple of more or less random examples...

...Current talk is no longer about the areas Israel occupied in the Six Day War...

...It is surpising, nevertheless (if one thinks of it), that the public accommodates itself to a purposeful assault on its safety with much the same resignation that it shows toward a frightful accident rate...

...Because of this, Rabin—in a most articulate exposition of the doctrine sketched above—says plainly that the whole thing would gladly be scrapped for a primarily symbolic gesture on the part of the Arabs of sitting down to talk peace...

...There is no doubt, under continuing similar conditions, they will do so again, through the medium or under the pressure of third parties...

...This is such a universal complaint among all nations about each other that it is probably true in all cases...

...This is not, I would say, a rational policy...

...The usual answers and analogies are quite familiar and totally unconvincing to Israelis: nobody, they know, can legally compel Arabs to recognize Israel, any more than West Germany can be forced to recognize East Germany, Peking to recognize Taiwan, and so on...

...Such a description is explicitly denied...

...but one doubts it...

...So little is changed that the old trading patterns between Transjordan and the West Bank are still in good part maintained, with Israeli and Jordanian official connivance, if not cooperation...

...in Yemen, where Egypt showed its readiness to use poison gas, the Russians proved their willingness, if necessary, to pilot their own planes...

...The military have had a very disapponting experience with their doctrine...

...The Soviet navy, as we know, is also posted in growing strength in the Mediterranean: a clear suggestion that a Cuban-style blockade of Russian arms shipments to Egypt by the Sixth Fleet would not go unresisted...

...The notion that one proceeds from small agreements to larger ones has not worked very well...

...W W HEN ISRAELIS CALCULATE their chances of survival—as, like the rest of us, they no doubt do—the possibility of effective guerrilla attack is not usually con sidered...

...and no one protested the demolition of synagogues by Jordan, the desecration of Jewish cemeteries which were destroyed to build a more imposing terrace and access road for a Jordanian hotel...

...However, because of the foreign pressure to withdraw without a peace treaty—a proposal universally rejected in Israel by all but some of the Communists— opposition to annexation of the occupied lands is far less often and far less decisively voiced in public statements...

...The exact territorial extent of the risks Israel would be ready to run in return for Arab acceptance of its existence remains to be seen...

...This has been predicted, and a variety of Arab movements are trying to produce it...

...T T HIS SITUATION HAS PREVAILED for almost 20 years now, more or less the same period in which the whole world has had to live under the threat of possible annihilation...

...Cecil Hourani is the only Arab so far who seems to mean it when he says that if peace were made now, Israel could eventually be absorbed by the Arabs peacefully...

...From 1948 to 1956, Israel tried to force Arabs to keep the quasi-peace of the armistice agreements by reprisal raids—a policy still retained...

...The conquered areas, particularly the West Bank and the Golan Heights, are today A LETTER FROM ISRAEL the most debated and discussed political issues in Israel...

...What it strongly suggests is that Israel no longer cares to prop up King Hussein...

...March 26 S S INCE THE DAY-LONG Israeli raid on Fatah headquarters in Jordan, the focus of Israeli discussion has shifted...

...To Israelis, what they are asking is so natural that they cannot credit anyone with good will who withholds his support...

...It would not be surprising if after occupying thickly settled Arab areas Israel were to face guerrilla action on the Vietnamese or Algerian scale...

...The amount of traffic between Israel and the occupied areas is impressively large in both directions—but customs inspections take place at the borders...

...But if Israel can count on special attention from the world, it is for a very special reason: this is the people that is the prototype-victim of BEN HALPERN genocide: and when one speaks of Israel's "vital" interests, one means indeed vital...

...For many here the tie of sentiment and tradition, while undeniable, is not acceptable BEN HALPERN as a basis for political attitudes...

...Reading the foreign commentators from this vantage point, one notes with mild astonishment how quicklythose previously committed to the view that Nasser was a peaceful influence — certified experts like Eric Rouleau of Le Monde or the anonymous correspondent of The Economist— have returned to their old positions...

...They do not want Israelis to rule others...

...But, like all fantasy, it has a powerful base in the ego defenses of the Arabs...

...owing, of course, to diplomatic circumstances beyond their control...

...On the issue of Jerusalem, a city long predominantly Jewish in population and the strategic key to the whole center of Israel, the Israelis are not only determined but deeply indignant...

...W W HAT EXACTLY WAS ABOUT to happen in June 1967, before Israel's decisive counterstroke, has been the subject of much debate in the European press...

...They are also frankly afraid of the rapidly increasing Arab population—afraid even though they believe that Israel could, if necessary, deal with any security or police issues that the Arab population might present...

...So long as Arabs continue to refuse peace negotiations, those who hold this opinion are reluctant to voice it...

...And if not, Israel is forced to continue its policy of self-defense...

...For those who go touring on roads that are only rarely attacked or go shopping in Arab towns where terrorists strike only on scattered occasions, it is something else: it is simply an implicit calculation of the statistically insignificant chances of getting killed or wounded, similar to the habit of mind that lets people travel in airplanes...

...everyone knows about the lynchings of Israeli pilots who fell into the hands of Jordanian or Egyptian civilians...

...The official Israeli policy remains one of mere occupation, avoiding, for the most part, faits accomplis that would prevent returning lands upon the conclusion of peace...

...The public is being prepared for a long series of Arab provocations and Israeli counterblows, not for a quick knockout by Israel...

...The main topic now is how to deal with Jordan...

...from which the usual conclusion can be drawn that it is not particularly true in any particular case...

...In counterattack against another Arab attempt to destroy Israel by belligerency, they believe that their new advanced positions would permit them to deal such severe blows to Arab political structures that the lesson might finally be driven home...

...It has been generally assumed that Israel's reprisal raids were primarily intended to exert pressure on Arab leaders...

...and asserts its rights under the U.N...

...The more significant, though still vague, threat is that of having to face Rus sians playing (it is confidently hoped, in a minor way) the role of the Americans in Vietnam...

...Ships will be cleared from the Suez Canal, prisoners exchanged, families reunited, and trade relations with Jordan—to the extent that Jordan is interested—will be kept alive...

...Thus Israel must always win...

...As to the Jarring mission, it must wait on events...

...The immediate threat is still felt, though less so perhaps, after Eshkol's visit to the LBJ Ranch the kind of diplomatic defeat Israel has learned to expect after its military victories...

...Precisely because Egypt refused to grant even token support to the idea that it could talk anything over with Israel, the project of releasing the stranded ship in the Suez Canal was doomed...

...For the fact is that the Israeli occupation A LETTER FROM ISRAEL of Gaza and the West Bank—not to speak of Sinai and the Golan Heights, which are virtually empty—has been conducted with remarkable ease and effectiveness...

...Israel insists on the strictly reciprocal nature of the cease-fire...

...For a large and varied group of Israelis control of the West Bank area restores to Israel those historic sites where once the kingdoms of Judah and Israel existed, where the Temple stood, and Israel's prophets spoke...

...especially one occupying so long embittered a neighboring territory with such deeply interpenetrating borders...

...More recently, outgoing Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin has given a full statement of the position...

...This is, no doubt, related to legal posi tions worked out in Israel's Foreign Office...

...it is an actual presence constantly attending life here...