Waiting for the Mideast Storm

...another would amount to simply waiting it out until the Arabs accepted Hussein as the interlocutor most likely to succeed on behalf of the Palestinians...

...Fuel and raw materials have increased much faster in price than the manufactured goods with which Israel pays for them...

...the General Assembly's pusillanimous capitulation to the illegal dictates of its Arab President...

...Armed Forces because the dispatch of "large quantities" of tanks and weapons to Israel had allegedly left stocks in domestic arsenals undesirably low...

...What shocked them was not so much the fact that the leader of the terrorist organization responsible for murdering Olympic athletes and scores of schoolchildren at Ma'alot-to cite only two of its more infamous deeds-was invited to speak at the world forum...

...On the other hand, their faith in the military has been revived...

...the acceptance of Arafat's declared intention to eradicate a member-state as something admissible at the United Nations, something within the rules of the game...

...As a result, a stern austerity program was instituted in November and the pound has been devalued by 42 per cent...

...defense capabilities...

...and, above all, the cheering and applause that followed Arafat's speech...

...Sadat could hardly avoid being affected by the Arab euphoria over the Rabat conference, and especially by the performance of the great majority of free nations at the UN...

...The Israelis are still ready to talk to Hussein, and they are now ready to talk as well to representatives of the Palestinians who are willing to recognize their right to continue to exist as a national entity...

...In plain language this means unilateral Israeli pullbacks without any corresponding political accords...

...Nor should this be surprising...

...Unfortunately, the outlook on this front is clouded by three factors: First, Egypt maintains that it is ready only for military talks "in the kilometer 101 format...

...Self-criticism on this score, however, is moderated by the knowledge that the shadow of an oil embargo and the lure of petrodollars, more than any sudden awakening of international morality, produced the diplomatic triumphs of Arafat in particular and the Arabs in general...

...Yet everyone also acknowledges that the public's profligate habits during the "seven fat years," from the Six Day War to the Yom Kippur War, are the major reason for the country's unhappy fiscal condition...

...and many sophisticated Israelis see the complaint emanating from the Pentagon as either an intentional exaggeration or an attempt to make Israel the scapegoat for America's tragic neglect of its military needs...

...In this context, Washington's recent "diplomacy by slips of the tongue" does not give Israelis much encouragement...

...Because Israel is not ready to be destroyed, and because nobody else seems able or willing to stop the rush of events, a new Mideast war appears almost inevitable...

...Indeed, the overriding concern is that with each passing month the Syrian military is becoming better trained in the use of the enormous quantities of weapons arriving from the USSR, and Soviet arms are expected to begin pouring into Egypt once more as well...

...The threat to Israel comes less from the Arabs' present political successes (or their military power) than from the disintegration of international order which accompanies and facilitates such successes...

...But the stringent steps, coming on the heels of several scandals-the disclosure, for example, that members of the government and managers of public companies carelessly (if not criminally) deposited tens of millions of dollars in the now bankrupt International Credit Bank of Geneva-have generally encountered two contradictory reactions...

...Second, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat apparently has reneged on his promise to Kissinger that once the original disengagement agreement was implemented, the Suez Canal would be cleared and reopened for traffic, including foreign ships bearing Israeli-originated or Israeli-bound cargoes...

...Israel's recognition of its economic mistakes parallels the emerging appreciation of its political mistakes over the last few years...

...No one has any illusions about the cost, particularly the human cost, of another round of fighting...

...Today, even the more rational among them believe it is not a question of "if" but "when" Israel will be destroyed...

...Jews are only too keenly aware of what happens-not only to them but also to the rest of the world-when human values are set aside by statesmen and politicians...

...Then, Undersecretary of State Joseph J. Sisco's declaration that "the U.S...

...One approach under consideration would grant the West Bank Arabs autonomous rule with an Israeli military presence until a peace settlement is signed (although a local Arab leader called this "offering us pita with olives when we expect a feast of roast lamb...

...The Arabs, who tended to be overoptimistic in calmer times, are now convinced that their oil weapon is irresistible, and that all their demands will be met...

...Nor were U.S...

...Increasingly, therefore, discussions of current affairs are concluded with the phrase Ein breirah-"There's no alternative...

...and Soviet conventional arms production should be alarming to both the American public and the nato governments...

...Chief of Staff General George S. Brown's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks viewed here as an isolated aberration...

...considers the PLO the roof organization of the Palestinians," made in a United States Information Service (USIS) interview, was changed to read "the Arabs consider the PLO the roof organization"-though his "mistake" was not corrected in the USIS bulletins distributed throughout the world...

...Again, Israel has no intention of doing so...

...Third, Cairo has indicated that any additional Egyptian-Israeli negotiations would have to be accompanied by some "movement" on the "northern and eastern fronts," i.e., by Israeli withdrawals on the Golan and from the West Bank...

...At the same time, there is a widespread feeling among Israelis that in the absence of any other counteraction, only an unlikely political earthquake could redress the conditions being created by the Arabs on the international scene...

...They were preceded-and followed-by reports of "dissatisfaction," "objection" and "anger" in the U.S...

...Despite skepticism voiced in the Israeli press (including the ruling Labor party's daily, Davar), the government continues to hope the West Bank can be salvaged...

...With a residual optimism perhaps more naive than realistic, Israelis hope that by their focusing attention on this fact-corroborated by Arafat's UN performance-the world will ultimately come to appreciate that what Jerusalem refuses to discuss is its own funeral...

...Rather it was everything surrounding Yasir Arafat's appearance: his arrogant display of a gun holster...

...On the one hand, people here gloomily believe any relaxation of tensions can merely be local and temporary...

...First, President Ford's statement that Israel would have to negotiate with Jordan or the PLO was officially revised to mean "with Jordan or the Palestinians...

...As Foreign Minister Yigal Allon indicated during his visit to Washington earlier this month, Israel is also disposed to bargain with Egypt over further withdrawals from Sinai as part of a genuine settlement between the two countries...

...Such a "deal" on the scale Cairo envisions is definitely not conceivable for Israel...

...There can be little doubt that Egypt has considerably stiffened its attitude...

...If what has been reported is true, Washington should take action immediately, unless it is ready to abandon its worldwide commitments and yield primacy to Moscow...

...Adding injury to insult, in an act underscoring the Palestine Liberation Organization's utter contempt for civilized mankind's opinion and its influence on responsible political leaders, Arab terrorists murdered a family in Beit Shean while the debate gaining them recognition by the family of nations was under way...

...Eliahu Salpeter is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Needless to say, Israel's economic plight reinforces premonitions of an impending storm and heightens the crisis atmosphere...

...Everyone can, and does, complain that the government should mend its own wasteful ways before asking citizens to tighten their belts...

...And that historical analogy is at the heart of the country's grim mood...

...Since, under the Kissinger step-by-step plan, the whole purpose of staging the Egyptian talks first was to circumvent a deadlock over Golan and the Palestinians, this stipulation looks like a deliberate move to torpedo these talks before they resume...

...they are confident that in the event of new hostilities the Army will not be caught napping again and will quickly gain the upper hand...

...After some initial (and heavily criticized) efforts by the trade unions to maintain their members' standard of living, Histadrut, the national labor federation, finally conceded that compensating employes for inflation would force many factories to close down, create large-scale unemployment and negate the basic purposes of the economic restraints...

...But under no circumstance is Israel prepared to negotiate with the PLO-not so much because it is a terrorist organization (Israelis are aware that terrorism has become an acceptable method of conducting politics), but because the PLO's openly stated aim is the destruction of the Jewish State...

...In short, the country is being asked to pay twice for the same merchandise-and before it is delivered...

...Thus, the absence of a collective sigh of relief over the easing of the imminent war threat on the Syrian front following President Gerald Ford's Far East trip last month perhaps best captured the mood in Israel these days...

...This was the slogan of the Jewish community in Palestine in 1948, when it found it had no choice but to stand up and fight for survival...

...Most people now admit privately that it was short-sighted to deny the existence of a Palestinian national identity and that, consequently, it was wrong not to attempt more strenuously either to negotiate with King Hussein over the fate of the West Bank or to build up a West Bank leadership as a counterweight to the PLO...

...The November 13 "Palestine Festival" at the United Nations General Assembly contributed more to the Israelis' sense of being pushed into a corner than anything else that has happened since October 1973...

...In the Middle East at the moment the negative appears to predominate...

...Outside events have contributed considerably to the present problems, marked by an inflation rate of over 35 per cent, and a drain in the country's foreign currency reserves of $100 million per month...

...In fact, the published figures on U.S...

...The business slump in the West, meanwhile, has made it harder to sell exports, and to obtain investments and charitable funds (for the absorption of immigrants...

...It would of course be a shocking indication of American unpreparedness were the arms required to protect a small country like Israel able to make a substantial dent in U.S...

...It's not the United Nations, 1974, but the Sportspalast in Berlin, 1939, again," commented a correspondent for one of Israel's leading newspapers in his report from Turtle Bay...

...Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy has declared that Egypt will not reopen the Canal unless Israel agrees to more withdrawals...

...at other times, it is something that does not happen...

...Military expenditures have skyrocketed following the Yom Kippur War...

...And on the tactical level, many Israelis place at least a portion of the blame for their predicament at the doorstep of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose readiness to be misled by the Arabs contributed to the Israelis' misreading of events...