The Geopolitics of Israel's Survival
MORGENTHAU, HANS J.
AN INTRICATE WEB The Geopolitics of Israel's Survival BY HANS J. MORGENTHAU THE SITUATION in the Middle East has been drastically transformed by four interconnected consequences of the October...
...Let us hope Henry Kissinger will not have occasion to assert that everything in the Middle East would have turned out all right if Sadat had not lied to him...
...The demonstration has destroyed the foundations of Israel's foreign policy...
...In the present instance, to give in is by far the easier choice, especially because those primarily affected are not suffering in defense of their own interests, but for the interests of a small, dependent, widely unpopular third nation...
...But in order to base policy upon this possibility, one still must disregard three things: the indefensibility of Israel within the 1967 borders, implicitly recognized by the tender of international guarantees...
...In the light of the developments flowing from the October War, that view has come to dominate the inner councils of the government...
...That is to say, it would mean the destruction of the Jewish State...
...Hence the United States, faced merely with the prospect of considerable yet tolerable inconvenience, is obliged to pressure Israel to accede to the main Arab demands...
...What is more, the issue continues to be denned in these terms by the governments of Libya and Iraq, as well as by the Palestinian organizations...
...The immediate goals of the new U.S...
...The Arabs now feel that since the Israelis were successfully taken on once, they could be still more successfully taken on again...
...In any event, the Soviet nuclear threat—even if it were checked by an American or Israeli deterrent—is an effective counter to Israel's military superiority...
...Of course, the other Arab governments may have had a change of heart and reconciled themselves to Israel's survival...
...They concerned first the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestine, and then the existence of a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world...
...The Administration, meanwhile, has decided to use its monopoly position to enforce what is being called an "even-handed" policy but is really an open switch from "counseling moderation" without applying strong pressure to putting the American foot down...
...The same logic, applied to the Arab stipulation, would mean the right of the Palestinians to return to what is now Israel...
...Foreign intervention on its behalf, assuming it were available, would come too late —and its availability is moot...
...In makers...
...Therefore, although the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves supporting opposite sides in the war, their visions of a peace settlement tend to coincide...
...ing the 1935 Italio-Ethiopian conflict, Great Britain and France refrained from imposing an oil embargo against Italy, despite the call for sanctions by the League of Nations, because they were afraid Mussolini would have to go to war over it...
...We are thus witnessing the development of an intricate network of forces, all working to Israel's disadvantage...
...It is return for its concessions, Israel would be recognized by the Arab governments as a legitimate sovereign state...
...Were it actually to be carried out, Israel would be annihilated...
...Indeed, the Israelis could not expect such a force to protect them from a ground attack either: Is it likely that foreign governments would allow their soldiers to die for a nation with which most of them do not even maintain diplomatic relations...
...A settlement of this kind assumes that the sole issue at stake between Israel and the Arabs, aside from the status of the refugees, is the restoration of the territorial status quo prior to 1967...
...AN INTRICATE WEB The Geopolitics of Israel's Survival BY HANS J. MORGENTHAU THE SITUATION in the Middle East has been drastically transformed by four interconnected consequences of the October War: (1) the destruction of the belief in Israel's military invincibility...
...Directed at an industrial nation, this can be a deadly weapon...
...Paradoxically, though, Japan and Western Europe, who are most in need of Mideast oil, have no direct way of satisfying the Arab demands, whereas the United States, the country least susceptible to oil blackmail, is the only one able to exert virtually irresistible pressure on Jerusalem...
...policy are the retreat of Israel to its 1967 borders (with minor modifications), international supervision for the Arab holy places in Jerusalem, and some sort of agreement on the Palestinian refugees...
...The most powerful new factor in the Middle East situation, however, is the Arab use of oil for political ends...
...more specifically, it would be compensated for its withdrawal to the 1967 lines by an international guarantee of those borders—probably involving the UN...
...The Jewish State is today almost completely isolated diplomatically and politically, and can turn nowhere except to its American ally for assistance...
...That policy would have worked had it not been for outside intervention...
...The intelligence at the disposal of our government provides evidence that the Russians either had placed nuclear arms in Egypt or were in the process of doing so when the U.S...
...3) the Arab use of oil as a political weapon...
...On his deathbed, the former Prime Minister remarked that everything would have turned out all right if Hitler had not lied to him...
...But the crucial issue for Israel's future is the meaning of the demand for "the restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians...
...Yet it is an undisputed historic fact that none of the violent encounters in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Jews—from the '20s to the Six Day War—had anything to do with the boundaries of the Jewish State...
...And given the unfavorable geopolitical configuration, if it is in mortal danger, it is likely to be doomed...
...Let us imagine for a moment that in the aftermath of World War II, the millions of Germans fleeing from the East were condemned by the Bonn government to the misery of refugee camps, with the stipulation that their "legitimate rights" had to be restored...
...Still, both the artificial preservation of more than a million Palestinians in the status of refugees, to be used as political pawns, and the defense-lessness of an Israel with 1967 borders, give this interpretation plausibility...
...when Egypt closed the Straits in 1967, Israel had to wage war by itself to reopen them...
...and the insistence of all Arab governments on "the restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians...
...and that the American oil embargo against Japan in 1940 launched the United States on the road to Pearl Harbor...
...he thought instead that he had assured peace in our time...
...In 1957, the United Nations induced Israel to withdraw from Sinai in exchange for an Anglo-French-American guarantee of open passage through the Straits of Tiran...
...That possibility has been greatly enhanced by the policies of the USSR, which has clearly indicated its resolve not to allow the Arabs to lose another war, and in fact seems willing to risk using nuclear weapons to assure this...
...We might remind ourselves that durHANS J. MORGENTHAU, Leonard Davis Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, often analyzes international affairs in these pages...
...As the October War newly and drastically revealed, there is a direct relationship between the level of pressure the U.S...
...2) the suggestion of armed involvement by the USSR...
...The aim of a succession of Israeli governments has been simple—to create and, if need be, to show so incontestable a military superiority that the Arab world would be forced to reconcile itself to the inevitable and accept Israel in its midst...
...For the reduced Arab oil shipments threaten America's two principal allies, Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany, with a catastrophe they cannot combat themselves...
...THIS COURSE of action, albeit triggered by the new Arab oil diplomacy, has long had its advocates among U.S...
...military alert made them retrace their steps...
...policy supported, too, by the desire of the Nixon Administration to preserve the appearance of detente by avoiding an open confrontation with the Kremlin...
...The withholding of oil from a modern nation means economic strangulation, with incalculable social and political dislocations...
...That assumption, in turn, rests on another assumption: that the Arab leaders have changed their fundamental attitude toward the continued existence of the State of Israel...
...When Neville Chamberlain went to Munich, he had no intention of destroying Czechoslovakia...
...IT IS HARDLY necessary to point out that had the October War started at the 1967 frontiers, Israel would have been in mortal danger, even if it had avoided its initial military mistakes...
...But the October War differs significantly from its predecessors, for the initial stages of the fighting demonstrated that under certain conditions Israel could be challenged on the battlefield...
...Similarly, a UN peace-keeping force stationed at the 1967 borders would not be able to protect Israel from the Russian missiles at the disposal of the Egyptians, with their range of up to 180 miles...
...is capable of exerting and the extent of Israel's dependence upon Washington for military aid...
...Four times the Arabs tried to eliminate Israel by war, four times they were beaten and three times—in 1948, 1956 and 1973—they were saved from complete defeat by a timely cease-fire that was imposed by the United States and the Soviet Union, acting under cover of the United Nations...
...The enthusiastic pro-Israel rhetoric that politicians have indulged in for obvious domestic political reasons has always been received with private misgivings by officials who felt that our making common cause with Israel was both alienating the Arabs and opening the door to preponderant Soviet influence in the Middle East...
...the proven worthlessness of such guarantees...
...Facing such disastrous prospects, the victim of an embargo has only two options: to fight with every means at his disposal or to give in to the demands of the oil-producer...
...policy...
...In the end, Israel's fate may well hinge upon the credibility of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat's commitment to the Jewish State's peaceful existence...
...Political circumstances may suggest different interpretations, and political expediency may well make it advisable to play down this one...
...Would the Soviet Union and Poland have been eccentric to assume that the West Germans were insisting on the right of the refugees to return to their original homes...
...and (4) a change in U.S...
Vol. 56 • December 1973 • No. 25
