The Middle East Convulsion-Two Articles Turning Back the Clock
KOLATCH, MYRON
The Middle East Convulsion-Two Articles Turning Back the Clock By Myron Kolatch A visitor to Washington last week, finding himself face-to-face with the Secretary of State for a few moments,...
...Any unilateral move would be considered further proof of the charge, particularly in the underdeveloped nations...
...And retelling the tales of Sinai—some apocryphal, some true—will not make the struggle less bloody on either side...
...Nasser, of course, has his troubles too...
...But we think everyone out there is hoping to have his coattails pulled a little...
...The U.S...
...And the pioneering spirit of the 600,000 who defeated 40 million Arabs in 1949 becomes more a legend in history as they become a less significant percentage of the expanding population...
...action...
...In his blustery address to the Egyptian Air Force advanced training command on May 22, Nasser repeated his contention that Israel met only token opposition in Sinai because his main troops had pulled out to tackle the British and French at Suez...
...At the White House, an official observed that Paris and London already had declared the Agreement obsolete and this country was under heavy criticism as the world's self-appointed policeman...
...Another White House employe thought old-fashioned politics had to prevail over geopolitics...
...Always overburdened by too many parties, in the past the politicians have reacted to crises by quickly closing ranks...
...It was inconceivable to him, he said (perhaps thinking of the next speech he might have to write), that the Administration could ignore domestic pressure for unequivocal U.S...
...He continued: "If you believe as I do that what we are doing in Vietnam is basically right, despite our failure to successfully articulate our position, there can be no doubt about what we should do now in the Near East...
...His problem now is how to stay there...
...Under no circumstances, he said, could it be responsible for starting a hot war...
...Would the U.S...
...He knows, too, that no military showdown could put him in a stronger position than he occupies at present...
...Witness the ambivalence toward Israel's attack on the Jordanian village of Es Samu...
...Moreover, it is doubtful that Israel could move today with the same critical speed and secrecy...
...Should Israel take a precipitate step, that step could cost it its life...
...This carried little geopolitical weight, though, he pointed out...
...Who would have thought, for instance, that Israeli intelligence would not know of the Egyptian military movements in Gaza early enough to sound an alarm...
...The barb, it was suggested to him, cut two ways...
...But should the explosion occur, it promises to have greater repercussions than it had a decade ago?for the whole world...
...Hence his reversal to the shell game he played so deftly in the past...
...You'll have to ask the British and the French about that...
...Ten years of relative calm have taken their toll...
...Maturity has also affected the nature of Israel's domestic politics...
...It is generally assumed, for example, that in the event of a full-scale war Israel would soon set the Arabs on their heels...
...With his demarche against the UN Emergency Force, he has put himself on top of the Arab world again...
...involvement in the Middle East demonstrates that many of the dissenters troubling the Administration are specifically against the war in Vietnam, not all wars or all infer-vention...
...Thinking a second, the official conceded that Israel after all is an established democracy...
...There has been a tendency to disregard the differences among opponents of the Vietnam war and lump them together ideologically...
...These conflicting reactions in official Washington are a manifestation of the uncertainty and confusion caused by the Mideast developments...
...Yet he wasn't confident, he confessed, that many in the immediate vicinity shared his interpretation of politics or principle...
...David Ben-Gurion's Rafi party, insignificant at the polls but containing a majority of the country's outstanding younger leaders—including General Moshe Dayan and former deputy defense minister Shimon Peres—has not hesitated to embarrass uncharismatic Premier Levi Eshkol for political gain...
...others maintain that survival in a country surrounded by hostile neighbors requires the fearlessness and confidence of youth...
...Still, there was no denying logic...
...to swallow its pride rather than fire the first round...
...It is increasingly difficult to place the country on a war footing in the middle of the night and take the enemy by surprise the next morning...
...Thus the clock has been turned back 10 years in the Middle East to the tense atmosphere of 1956...
...The man from State waved aside the reductio ad absurdum...
...It is merely to call attention to the fact that Israel is not the country it was the year of its birth or at the age of seven...
...Then, reflecting the President's un-happiness with the stand taken by several major Jewish organizations, the White House official noted that those who accused the Administration of obsessive interventionism in Southeast Asia now demanded that it intervene in the Near East...
...Accordingly, it would appear unwise to base any policy on the assumption of Israeli invincibility...
...Given the precision of the Israeli operation, and the inability of Egyptian soldiers to master their recently acquired Soviet hardware, this is unlikely to have changed the outcome—but the Colonel happens to be right...
...While there is no doubt that Israel's Armed Forces are superior to anything the United Arab Republic could field or put in the air, a toe-to-toe struggle in 1967 would be much more costly to Israel than appears to be recognized...
...could not stand idly by if two million Jews were taking a beating...
...For the moment, all eyes are focused on the Straits of Tiran, where Nasser threatens to cut off Israel's passage to the Red Sea in violation of international law...
...Washington would have greater freedom of movement in the Near East if Israel did not exist, but it does exist...
...Some consider this a sign of maturity...
...policy cannot be based on emotions or even morality...
...Potentially, El-Fatah, like its predecessor the Fedayeen, poses the most serious threat to stability in the region...
...No one can tell when the coattails Secretary of State Rusk mentioned will be torn from anxious hands by some unpredictable incident...
...As late as an hour before Lyndon Johnson went on television to counter in word, if not deed, what James Reston has described as Gamal Abdel Nasser's act of "aggressive illegality" in the Gulf of Aqaba, the President reportedly did not plan any statement at all...
...Ultimately, however, Israel's existence depended on its ability to rally world opinion...
...Washington could not tie itself down to Israel's security...
...No," Dean Rusk replied unhesitatingly, "it does not affect our maneuverability or our capability...
...last November it raised doubts among the newer citizens about adventures of this kind...
...The Middle East Convulsion-Two Articles Turning Back the Clock By Myron Kolatch A visitor to Washington last week, finding himself face-to-face with the Secretary of State for a few moments, asked whether the Vietnam war would affect United States maneuverability in the Near East...
...At the State Department, a policy planner sitting beneath a map of the world took a wider view: U.S...
...He has been frustrated by his impotence against the Royalists in Yemen, humiliated by his inability to bring down Jordan's King Hussein even with the unintended aid Israel recently provided, and goaded by the Syrians to lead if he wants to remain the leader...
...Shrewd and sophisticated, Nasser recognizes the limitations of the vastly improved fighting forces his Number Two man, General Abdel Hakim Amer, has put together with the help of Soviet materiel and training...
...The call for U.S...
...True, it was difficult to see why the Arabs should not continue playing off East against West if Israel were allowed to disappear from the scene...
...In the case of the Near East, American interests would best be served by stability and calm in the region—a condition virtually impossible to achieve in the face of Arab-Israeli hostility...
...In this atmosphere the chance of miscalculation is excessively high...
...continue to base its policy on the principles of the 1950 Tripartite Agreement, guaranteeing the sovereignty of the nations in the area...
...Not so today...
...This has diverted concern from the cause of the crisis in the first place, Syrian infiltration across Israel's borders...
...The visitor responded that the application of these criteria pointed logically to one conclusion...
...It has to be determined in accordance with what will best serve long-range American interests...
...Nor could this country ignore the importance of the Arab nations in terms of sheer size and numbers compared to Israel...
...All of this is not to imply that Israel's Armed Forces are in danger of being defeated, or that its national will is failing...
...It will have to learn to live once more with the terror of infiltration...
...Though tactically unsound, in an earlier time it would nevertheless have won prideful support at home...
Vol. 50 • June 1967 • No. 12
