Kissinger's Fragile Accord

...And complicating matters is the existence of Israeli settlements on the Golan that no Israeli government could surrender to Syrian rule without risking political extinction...

...This change in the U.S...

...economic and military assistance...

...A step toward a peaceful solution on the Sinai front, to be effective on its own terms, needs to be followed by further steps, supportive of and supported by the first one...

...This is a lesson the United States has used to the full, not only by withholding aid but by promising ample amounts of it in the future to both Jerusalem and Cairo, providing they do what it expects of them...

...On the strength of the available evidence, it is perfectly possible to argue that Egypt has implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist by negotiating and reaching a long-term understanding with it at all, and by justifying those actions with the argument that the outside powers will not permit Israel's destruction...

...This, indeed, was the essential rationale of their agreement-difficult enough to achieve, yet relatively easy compared with the still outstanding issues...

...It has been brought home forcefully and painfully at the end of each of Israel's victorious wars, when U.S...

...But those who, like myself, would have preferred an attempt at an overall agreement to a successful piecemeal effort, however unpromising the prospects a priori, do not find their misgivings dispelled...

...Precisely for that reason, meanwhile, Syria is interested in regaining possession of the Heights...

...While the contribution of the Sinai accord to a Middle Eastern peace settlement is a matter for speculation, its deleterious effect upon Israel's position is already evident...

...What does the Sinai agreement reveal in this respect...

...But could Syria afford to make peace with Israel and leave the Palestinian cause, of which it is the main supporter, in limbo...

...But regardless of the ambiguity that may threaten the viability of the accord in the future, its fragility is an existential function of its relation to the other unresolved issues to which the existence of Israel-illegitimate from the Arab point of view-has given rise: the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Palestinians...

...The agreement could not have come to pass without American threats and promises and active participation in the security arrangements...

...It is a sign of weakness insofar as the ambiguous complex of documents, requiring the underpinning of American wealth and power, lays bare the lack of genuine faith in the accord by the parties directly concerned...

...Even if it could, would it agree to the demilitarization of the Golan Heights and security for the Israeli settlements under U.N...

...Thus, where the Sinai offered plenty of room for political and military maneuver, the Golan Heights, after the pullback that marked the separation of forces in May 1974, offer hardly any...

...The situation appears to exclude the possibility of an interim arrangement on the model of the Sinai accord...

...Hans J. Morgenthau, a frequent NL contributor, is University Professor of Political Science at the New School for Social Research...

...The value of a partial arrangement such as the one just concluded, therefore, must be measured by the indication it gives of Arab reconciliation to the existence of a Jewish state...

...auspices...

...The central issue is-as it has been from the beginning of the modern Jewish return to Palestine, long before the founding of the State of Israel-the very fact of Jewish settlement...

...The distance Israel could possibly withdraw without putting the upper Galilee into the range of Syrian artillery is measured by hundreds of yards...

...AFTER SINAI -TWO ARTICLES Kissinger's Fragile Accord by HANS J. MORGENTHAU Time was when it made sense to debate the relative merits of the step-by-step and the overall approaches to a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict...

...It is as perfectly possible to argue that Egypt has retained full freedom of action concerning the safety and survival of Israel by not signing a peace treaty setting up definite boundaries, by refusing to declare an end to the state of war, and by exchanging tangible military and economic advantages for paper promises made to the United States and not to Israel...

...support...

...As I pointed out at the time, a soldier trained in the handling of electronic equipment is bound to be a technician, and it is doubtful that 200 technicians capable of handling electronic battlefield equipment can be found who have no military ties past or present...

...For just as Israel must yield to the desires of the United States in view of its economic, military and political needs, so the United States must support the aspirations of the Arab confrontation governments in view of its own political interests...

...role is to date the most important result of the Sinai negotiations...

...Israel, for example, has a vital interest in preventing the repossession of the Golan Heights by Syria, whose artillery used to bombard Israeli settlements in the valleys of the upper Galilee from there...

...That is to say, the step-by-step approach has not been able to sever the organic connection among these different problems, imposed by the nature of the struggle itself...

...The Israeli response to such a solution is easier to predict, assuming the history of the Sinai agreement may be used as a guide...

...pressure forced Israel to forego the ultimate fruits of its victories...

...The revelation-like no other revelation coming from Sinai-is ambiguous in the extreme...

...The contemporary observer can have no reliable answer to that question...

...Yet the technique for constructing the Sinai agreement-burying the central issue beneath a mountain of formal and informal, public and secret promises by everybody to everybody else-invokes the memory of the Vietnam peace agreement that never worked as it was intended to, and was swept away as if it had never existed when the central issue raised its head again...

...And in a profound sense, it will be the Arab confrontation governments who will make that decision...

...Technicians, alas, are inclined to see what they expect and want to see...

...While one cannot help being impressed with Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's persistence and ingenuity, it is also clear that these qualities were primarily spent on side-stepping the central issue of the conflict, as well as its political and military manifestations...

...It is certainly far-fetched to compare the stationing of American technicians in the Middle East with the beginnings of our Vietnam involvement...

...It must also be noted that the collection of intelligence through equipment of this kind is not a militarily and politically neutral operation...

...That exercise has been rendered obsolete by the conclusion last month of the U.S.-sponsored accord calling for Israeli retreat from the mountain passes and oil fields of Sinai in return for Egyptian political concessions, an American presence in the passes, and American assurances of massive economic, political and military support...

...Now, with the planned manning of electronic surveillance stations by some 200 American "technicians," the U.S...

...By general agreement, the next item on the Middle East agenda is an accommodation between Syria and Israel focusing on the Golan Heights...

...It is, of course, the second fact that makes the first one possible...

...The Arabs have resisted this with pogroms in the '20s, with civil war in the '30s, and with international war and terrorism since the establishment of the State in 1948...

...The way the Sinai agreement was achieved, not to mention its specifications, testifies to the intolerable danger, amounting to rational impossibility, facing any Israeli government that would pursue a foreign policy at variance with the preferences of the United States...

...This is an asset insofar as American power and wealth have been committed to supporting the accord...

...support by yielding to American pressure...

...History will one day again ask whether or not the United States and Israel acted wisely...

...The redeeming aspect of Sinai is the negative attitude of the two contesting parties toward the forbidding territory, a wasteland rather than a desert...

...If military intelligence was the real objective, there is no doubt that 200 technicians selected by the United Nations could perform the function...

...it calls for a final peace establishing the boundaries between Israel and Syria once and for all...

...Israel has been taught that whenever it follows a policy running counter to American wishes, it risks a "reassessment" in Washington, with the consequent holding in abeyance of U.S...

...To a degree not yet determinable, then, the security of Egypt and Israel will depend upon the judgment of American technicians...

...Perhaps this deep involvement of the United States was unavoidable under the circumstances, for it appears to have been the single alternative to the resumption of war...

...It will not be Israel but the United States who will decide the nature of a territorial settlement...

...The term "technicians" was first used as a code word during the 1962 missile crisis, in referring to Soviet military personnel stationed in Cuba...

...Still, what in the past occasionally came to the surface but generally remained hidden behind illusions of self-sufficiency and overshadowed by pride in great accomplishments has today become obvious for all to see as a necessary condition of Israel's existence...

...The Sinai accord sets a pattern that casts its shadow over the future...

...appears to be reaching a new depth of involvement in the Middle East...

...Israel, on the other hand, must choose between isolation and paying the price for U.S...

...economic, military and political support has, to be sure, been a reality of life throughout the history of the State...

...For the negotiations this summer made obvious two fundamental, interconnected facts: the new role of the United States as the active mediator compelling consent, and Israel's utter dependence on U.S...

...Intelligence with a capital "I" is nothing more than a mess of meaningless material if it is not assessed and interpreted by human intelligence with a lower case "i" At least twice during the height of the Cold War, our technicians interpreted some blots on the radar as Russian missiles, although the picture had been created in one case by a flight of geese and in the other by a reflection of the moon...

...Egypt is able at least to blunt the sharpness of the point by banking upon the availability of the Russian option...

...As for the answer to the question of whether in the long run this involvement will turn out to be good or bad for Egypt, Israel and the United States, as I suggested at the outset, that must be left to the judgment of history...

...The device, apparently insisted upon by Egypt and Israel, can be justified solely on political grounds...

...It is not so much that Israel or Egypt want it as that each wants to prevent the other from having it...

...What both parties demanded was a tangible American commitment to the new status quo, and the United States was anxious to minimize any military entanglement that might involve...

...Israel's dependence upon U.S...

...The dependence has similarly been one factor preventing Israel from seeking an overall settlement, since Jerusalem's conception of the territorial aspects of such a settlement-retreat to the 1967 boundaries with substantial modifications-is at odds with Washington's conception-retreat to the 1967 boundaries with minor modifications...

...It is significant that the key commitments and assurances which finally broke the Sinai deadlock were made not by Egypt and Israel to each other, but by the United States to both and by both to the United States...