Joseph Alpher
JOSEPH ALPHER GUEST COL U M N I S T From a possible war to a threat to the American-Israeli alliance, Israel faces new strategic challenges from Iraq's attack on Kuwait. Iraq's attack on Kuwait...
...on the basis of an uncompromising stand toward Iraq...
...Even without war, however, Israel stands to benefit from a new order from which the Iraqi threat has been eliminated...
...He is currently editing The Middle East Military Balance 1989-1990...
...He was also motivated by a deep-seated fear lest Israel's policy in Judea and Samaria, coupled with the pressures of Soviet immigration, somehow force a Palestinian migration into Jordan, thereby "Palestinizing" his country and toppling his regime...
...Iraq's attack on Kuwait presents Israel with a number of new strategic challenges...
...If, on the other hand, King Hussein continues to falter, Jordan might need, or get, a new ruler...
...In this way, the U.S...
...For Israel, Jordan's defection presents a special problem: Alone among Iraq's neighbors, Jordan had during the prior 18 months developed a close collaborative relationship with Saddam's regime...
...All this occurred with minimal Israeli input...
...Among them: 1. The possibility of a military attack by Iraq on Israel itself...
...the Hashemite Kingdom would be dragged willy-nilly into the fighting—precisely what Saddam would hope for...
...On the other hand, American policymakers would not forget that it was Israel alone that had correctly assessed, and warned of, the aggressive nature of the Iraqi regime...
...Yet it will not go away, and there is no alternative to the PLO on the horizon...
...As of mid-August, not a single Palestinian personality anywhere had spoken up against Saddam and in favor of the principles of international order and respect for sovereignty that would have to form the basis of any compromise Palestinian settlement...
...Once again, the Palestinian national movement had misread the opportunities of history and shot itself in the foot...
...2. The downgrading of the American-Israeli strategic alliance...
...As for the Palestinian peace process, it has probably been relegated to a back burner (if not the freezer) for some time to come...
...Joseph Alpher has been deputy head of the Jaffee Centerfor Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University since 1986...
...And it was the inter-Arab system that had failed to deal effectively with Saddam, that had misread both his strategy and his tactics, and had thrashed about helplessly during the first week of the crisis—until America showed the way...
...and Iraq, the Middle East will never be the same again...
...hoped not only to contain and ultimately dislodge the Iraqis from Kuwait, but also to protect Western and Japanese access to vital oil resources...
...He coordinated and edited theJCSS Study Group report Israel's Options for Peace in 1989...
...It was Israel that pressed ahead with the Arrow antimissile missile, correctly having argued ALPHER continued from page 17 that the Third World missile threat would dominate war scenarios in the 1990s...
...Prior to Iraq's threats to Kuwait, and the subsequent attack, Israel was the only country in the Middle East that had been directly and consistently threatened by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi President-for-Life...
...The extent of military cooperation between the two was alarming...
...Within a week after the hostilities began, the United States and much of the Arab world had lined up against Saddam...
...By virtue of its near alliance with Baghdad, Jordan has become a critical potential link between Israel and Iraq...
...In its effort to effect an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the U.S...
...Because of these potential scenarios, Israel is faced with the strategic challenge of persuading King Hussein to keep his distance from Saddam and thus to make Jordan an effective geo-strategic buffer between Israel and Iraq...
...If he were desperate enough, he might well be prepared to suffer a drubbing from Israeli retaliatory bombing, if by so doing he rallied other Arabs to his cause and thereby softened the pressures of the economic and military ring tightening around him...
...King Hussein's apparent motives included his economic troubles and his need for powerful outside backing to counter local Islamic and Palestinian threats...
...Were the Iraqis to lob missiles at Israel or to conduct air sorties and were Israel to reciprocate, Jordanian air space would be violated...
...In response, Saddam appeared to be laying the basis for a possible attack on Israel aimed at distracting Arab opinion and diverting the Arab strategic effort away from the defense of Saudi Arabia and toward its more traditional shared hostility against Israel...
...Undoubtedly .American military planners took comfort in the knowledge that in many ways the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were the ultimate regional strategic reserve, but they would have to be desperate indeed before calling upon the IDF for help...
...Indeed, this objective is shared by the entire anti-Iraqi alliance...
...To this end King Hussein should be given reassurances and support, not only from Israel but from Egypt and the United States as well...
...Were King Hussein to allow Iraqi forces to establish a permanent presence on Jordanian soil, Israel would have no alternative but to regard this as a casus belli: Better to take on Saddam's huge army far from the Jordan River border than to wait, like Kuwait, while Saddam massed an attack force nearby...
...Conceivably, America would feel obliged to reward the Arab coalition and firm up the new strategic order in the Middle East by pressuring Israel to make concessions on the peace process...
...Once the immediate crisis ends, Israel will need to look at the American-Israeli relationship on a more long-term basis: To the extent that Syria, Saudi Arabia and particularly Egypt cooperate successfully with the United States, Washington's postcrisis attitude toward its critical interests in the Middle East (primarily the guaranteeing of oil supplies) appears likely to focus on these Arab countries more than on Israel...
...Of major concern to Israel was the defection to the Iraqi side by the PLO and Jordan, the two main Arab players in any Palestinian settlement...
...collaborated with a number of Arab and other regional states to effect a broad coalition...
...Both Washington and Jerusalem understood that the U.S.-Is-raeli strategic relationship was likely to be an impediment to American strategic coordination with the likes of Syria and Saudi Arabia...
...Jordan is thus central in Israel's immediate effort to avoid a bloody clash with Iraq...
...Iraq might conceivably attack Israel even if Saddam recognized that he could not win such a war...
...If war does break out between the U.S...
...With both the Palestinians arid Jordanians in disgrace, attention might focus, by default, on Syria and the Golan...
...For Israel, much depends on the Arabs' questionable capacity to maintain an alliance with the U.S...
...3. The realigning of alliances...
...Moreover, Washington's close relationship with Jerusalem has not impeded developing an instant military alliance with Arab countries as disparate as Syria and Saudi Arabia...
Vol. 15 • October 1990 • No. 5
