Hijacking a Continent

...THE MIDEAST TURMOIl-1 Hijacking a Continent BY RAY ALAN London "The end of the world" screamed the front-page banner headline of one of Britain's most popular daily newspapers at the height of the latest Middle East crisis It was referring to the failure of the England soccer team to qualify for the next international championship, but it would not have been a wildly inaccurate summing-up of the geopolitical scene The UN Security Council was now as totally discredited as the UN General Assembly, Washington's NATO allies were simultaneously deriding America's Watergate-induced impotence and assailing its Near-East initiatives, Arab oil-exporters were threatening to wreck the economy of any West European state that displeased them, China and Libya were (separately) promising to help upset whatever peace America and Russia might "impose" on the Mideast, and, for good measure, the Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, was declaring that his aim was to convert the world--in particular Europe, a natural prolongation of the Arab world"--to Islam The mam lessons of the latest Arab-Israeli war, as many informed Europeans see them, are these -The Arabs may attack Israel at any time without fear of a UN reprimand, Moslem and Communist votes backed by the votes of countries with Moslem minorities vulnerable to Arab agitation, of oil-importing nations, and of governments with an appetite for Libyan or Saudi subsidies, constitute a permanent anti-Israel bloc -Whenever Israel successfully beats back an assault and looks like it is defeating its attackers, the UN will order a ceasefire, thus saving the assailants from the consequences of their action and encouraging others to go to war in due course -No UN force can offer Israel security, it is more likely to act (as in 1967) as a screen behind which enemy military preparations are made, a screen that would be withdrawn whenever the Arabs wished To reassure Israel, some European diplomats suggest that a peacekeeping team could be placed under the orders of the Security Council and withdrawn only with the Council's approval But this gimmick would be unlikely to inspire much confidence within Israel, since the Council has a built-in anti-Israel majority Moreover, individual governments supplying the UN with troops would be vulnerable to pressure Two Western diplomats, consulted at the beginning of November, agreed that it their countries took part m the peacekeeping force and an Arab government ordered them to withdraw under threat of oil sanctions, they would almost certainly do so Consequently, only three possibilities remain open to Israel 1 To rely on a big-power guarantee This would qualify the leaders of Israel for admission to a top-notch psychiatric clinic, but would not do the rest of the population much good A tripartite big-power guarantee of the status quo on Israel's borders was in twice in June 1967 when Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Gult of Aqaba from Sharm el Sheik and moved an army across Sinai When consulted Britain and France said (in effect) Yes, there are a lot of mirages in Sinai this summer, aren't there 9 The U S was considerably more sympathetic But Israel still had to remove the Egyptian threat alone and also bear the criticism of Western liberals who thought the Jews, renowned for their philanthropy, were unkind to chase the poor Egyptians back across all that sand 2. To keep large buffer-zones between itself and its more bellicose neighbors Buffer-zones are acceptable to world opinion when they are carved out by a megalomaniac Russian dictator, even if they occupy territory half the size of Poland When you're a small embattled people that has been living with the threat of extermination for 2,000 years, they are proof you are an expansionist at heart 3. Greater military self-reliance This would mean preemptive strikes against every concentration of armed men its aircraft spotted within reach of its borders and, ultimately, acquisition of a nuclear deterrent There is, of course a fourth possibility peace But this option requires Arab recognition of Israel, and despite recent peace efforts, few Europeans think the Arabs are ready for that The Egyptian and Syrian governments are the of their own propaganda, attend to tell their peoples that their armies have again been forced back-though the Cairo regime may be preparing the way by blaming its failure on American intervention 'We can beat Israel " says Colonel Anwar el-Sadat, "but not America Israel's other two neighbors, Lebanon and Jordan, would make peace within a month if Egypt and Syria led the way Yet King Hussein of Jordan hopes to regain as much as possible of eastern Palestine, territory his grandfather...

...King Abdullah annexed in 1948 in defiance of the other Arab rulers The Palestine-Arab political organizations, though, are insisting--with Soviet backing--that Hussein must not be allowed back across the Jordan River Should Israel and Hussein come to terms, the Palestinians say they will resume guerrilla attacks, should Israel reach a settlement with the Palestinians it will offend Hussein and his U S and British backers And even if all Israel's neighbors make peace...

...Colonel Qaddafi of Libya says he is ready to equip and finance any force that undertakes to chase the Jews out of Israel--while in the background the Soviet and Chinese propaganda machines continue to try to outbid one another A non-Communist French official observed a few weeks ago "There's no denying the tact that the Russians are better allies than the Americans They gave the Arabs their latest equipment and supplied them massively from the start The Americans waited until the Israelis had lost a quarter of their An Force before they supplied even a comparatively primitive means of combating the Russian SAMS" But the United States did furnish the essentials that probably saved Israel, and thereby won the respect even of those European governments that made a show of pro-Arab "neutrality " No one in Washington should doubt that if Israel had gone under, America's credibility in NATO would be nil and Western European foreign ministers would now be elbowing each other aside for a heart-to-heart chat with Leonid Brezhnev As things are, most West European governments are more concerned about their oil needs than about the rights and wrongs of the situation in the Near East Holland had its supplies cut off partly because its government issued a statement mildly criticizing Egypt and Syria for starting the October war, but mainly because the Arabs knew a boycott of Rotterdam would hurt and intimidate other European states too The Libyan ambassador to Bonn has warned the West Germans very firmly not to express "solidarity" with the Dutch The British government, doubly vulnerable to Arab pressure because the oil sheikhdoms could knock as much as 5 per cent off the value of the pound by withdrawing funds from London, says its oil supplies are assured But it is scared--and the problem goes beyond the issue of Israel's survival "The Arabs have got us by the short hairs," a British official said last week "There's a triangular power struggle in the Arab states between Right-wing extremists like Qaddafi and the Moslem Brotherhood, Left-wing extremists like the Syrian and Iraqi juntas, and moderates like Hussein and Faisal who are almost certainly doomed in the medium-to-long term Whichever extremist faction wins can dictate not only our Mideast policy but our attitude to African problems, the Persian Gult and the India-Pakistan quarrel They can also, for ideological reasons or just for the hell of it, put up our industrial costs and add to our balance-of-payments problems It's as if the whole of Western Europe were aboard a plane controlled by hijackers We don't know where we're going and we can't do a thing about it" Ray Alan regularly reports in these pages on European affairs...