The Unchanging Arabist View

...When Richard Nixon assumed office, despite his initial hesitation he authorized the Arabists to develop a new policy for the trouble spot, while he concentrated on Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China...

...Without a corresponding diplomatic strategy," he argues, "an American policy of arming and supporting Israel risks polarizing the region and driving the Arabs to seek comparable support from the Soviet Union...

...merely increased Arab frustrations and made war inevitable...

...must settle the conflict largely on Arab terms—suggests that some definitions of reality never change...

...He argues, first, that the assessment of Kremlin activity was too harsh...

...He concludes his study with a "comprehensive" approach to a Mideast settlement, based in part on the recommendations of the now well-known and controversial Brookings Institution paper that he helped draw up, "Toward Peace in the Middle East...

...At the same time, he attempts to evaluate how well they actually corresponded to reality...

...So far as the author is concerned, "the period of 'standstill diplomacy' from 1970 to 1973," when we were closely aligned with Israel, "will not go down in the annals of American foreign policy as one of the more enlightened...

...Quandt contends that crisis situations force policy-makers to alter their definitions of reality...

...But the underlying thinking, the way the Mideast is seen, has not undergone any significant reassessment...

...Curiously, Quandt never even considers the possibility that by clearly demonstrating to Cairo that the Soviet presence was counterproductive, Nixon may have induced Anwar Sadat to realign his nation with the United States...

...President Johnson's perspective, argues Quandt, was shaped by his negative appraisal of Eisenhower's approach to the Middle East...

...Jerusalem angrily rejected the scheme, and so, prodded by Moscow, did the Arabs—dashing White House hopes that a show of American evenhanded-ness vis-a-vis Israel would elicit a corresponding measure of Kremlin even-handedness...

...In shelving the promising Rogers Plan and pursuing, "an inactive, status quo oriented policy," the U.S...

...for example...

...what is most important is that the President and his advisers maintain the diplomatic momentum...

...That the USSR had cosigned the agreement and given the U.S...

...Throughout 1977...

...Nevertheless, "One might have wondered what obligation the Soviet Union had to respect the terms of an American-arranged ceasefire to which it had not been a party...

...While Johnson tried hard to prevent the outbreak of war in 1967, once Israel won he was determined not to repeat his Republican predecessor's mistake of forcing an Israeli withdrawal before a full peace was attained...

...Quandt is very critical of the Nixon demarche...

...A recognition of our true Middle East interests was brought about by the October War, Quandt says...

...should not discourage any moves in this direction...

...that Israel is not a strategic asset for the United States...

...On the domestic front, the Carter White House presented the election of Menachem Begin's Right-wing Likud bloc as a grave setback to peace, and tried, unsuccessfully, to enlist the cooperation of Israel's American backers in an effort to "moderate" the new regime...

...More important, Quandt rejects the view that Israel is a strategic asset...

...It thus became a prime objective of U.S.-Israeli policy to demonstrate to Sadat that the Soviet military presence in his country was an obstacle to his recovering Sinai...

...He was prepared to offer the good offices of the U.S...

...If he does not quite call on the President to impose a settlement, he comes pretty close...

...Quandt endorses the Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian self-determination, but doubts a "real peace" is feasible...

...As Nixon put it in December 1973, "The only way we're going to solve the [energy] crisis is to end the oil embargo, and the only way we're going to end the embargo is to get the Israelis to act reasonable...

...With Nixon almost entirely preoccupied by Watergate, management of American policy during the conflagration fell to Henry Kissinger, who believed that it would be best to maintain a "low profile" during the hostilities...

...Soviet violations of the Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire agreement along the Suez Canal, and its collusion with Syria during the Jordanian civil war prompted Nixon to reassert his control over Middle East policy...

...The author clearly does not want the same accusation leveled against him...

...Quandt implies that the Secretary himself was not sure where he was heading: "Kissinger knew what he wanted to avoid better than he knew what positive goals he wanted to achieve...

...The by-then Secretary of State feared that open American support for Israel would undermine the Soviet-American detente and provoke an Arab oil embargo against the United States...

...to the Israelis, he stressed that each partial withdrawal would buy precious time and help keep international pressure at bay...

...Meanwhile, U.S.-Israeli cooperation during the Jordanian crisis led the President to conclude that Israel was a major "strategic asset" for the United States, and that we should not apply pressure on Jerusalem for concessions until the Soviets departed from Egypt...

...And because the sort of intensive action envisaged is likely to raise a storm of domestic opposition, he notes: "The President must be prepared to devote considerable time and energy to building domestic support in Congress and in public opinion for his Middle East policy...

...The author's sympathies lie with the State Department "Arabists," who called for a more "evenhanded" attitude, and favored a clear American statement opposing Israeli acquisition of territory won in the 1967 War...

...Some of those initiatives were subsequently disavowed...

...The book rests on the premise that although many factors go into the formulation of Mideast policy, the views of the man occupying the Oval Office and his principal advisers, their "definitions of reality," are decisive...

...This was disastrous, claims Quandt...

...In addition, the fact that "the Arabs were looking to Washington now, not to Moscow," persuaded Nixon and Kissinger that progress toward a settlement was possible—with progress, as they defined it, meaning Jerusalem would have to do most of the giving up, for otherwise the Arabs might t urn again to Moscow for support...

...It is noteworthy both for the information it contains and for the insights it offers into the views of a senior American foreign policy maker...

...That may be...

...Indeed, by 1970 it appeared that Moscow's support for the Arabs was, if anything, on the upsurge...

...They were, moreover, not "overly rigorous," as he puts it, about the quality of an eventual peace agreement...

...that the U.S...

...a categorical commitment to abide by it evidently counts for little to Quandt, since he does not mention either detail...

...The result was a series of diplomatic initiatives culminating, at end of 1969, in the "Rogers Plan," which called for a return of virtually all occupied lands and gave Palestinian refugees the option of repatriation or compensation...

...It associated the United States too closely with Israel, promoting the growth of Soviet influence and the radicalization of the region...

...He therefore sets out to describe these definitions, to explain how they came to be held and why they were eventually discarded...

...Yet the consistency with which Arabists in the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations have retained certain assumptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict—that a "full" peace is unrealistic and should not be pursued...

...To the Arabs, he explained that each partial Israeli pull-back was a waystalion on the road to full withdrawal...

...Reviewed by Joseph Shattan Contributor, "Midstream " In January 1977 William Quandt, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist who served on the White House National Security Council under Henry Kissinger from 1972-74, was named the Council's Office Director for Middle Eastern Affairs by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzez-inski...

...that only American pressure on Israel can win over the Arabs...

...Carter and his adviscis pushed for a "comprehensive settlement" at Geneva that would include the establishment of a Palestinian "entity" and probably require PLO participation in the talks...

...to achieve such a settlement, but he would not go beyond that, feeling the contending parties had to resolve the essence of the conflict themselves...

...In any case, Quandt tells us...

...What makes this volume's proposals especially interesting is that nearly all of them have been adopted by Jimmy Caller, even as Quandt himself has become the key Middle last specialist on the National Security Council...

...Naturally, the U.S...

...Granted, Moscow did violate the Suez pact...

...After the 1973 War, Quandt reports, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict became Washington's "top priority" in the area of foreign affairs...

...Some observers," he points out, "question whether an Arab change of heart can be negotiated...

...policy was not determined by the oil embargo, but of course the two were very closely linked...

...Still, "it might have to play a role in compensating Israel for Arab reluctance to make such concessions by emphasizing bilateral and multilateral security arrangements, as was the case in the Sinai II agreement of 1975...

...He never raises the question of what would happen to U.S...

...That would achieve "full" peace by requiring the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 armistice lines and acceptance of Palestinian self-determination...

...Where possible," Quandt observes, "the United States might try to extract comparable Arab concessions, but, given the nature of the issues, this would be difficult...

...Kissinger tried to convince the American public that U.S...

...To prod the Israelis, Kissinger evolved a negotiating strategy-step by step diplomacy"—whose essence was "to avoid linking initial diplomatic steps with the nature of a final peace agreement...

...Quandt's latest work, completed shortly before he was recalled to Washington, is a part historical, part polemical study of American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1967-76...

...Consequently, he did not respond to Israel's increasingly urgent requests for military assistance, and "when [Israeli Ambassador Simcha) Dinitz complained about the slow American response, Kissinger blamed it on the Defense Department, a ploy he used repeatedly . . . over the next several days," thereby persuading Dinitz not to "unleash" Israel's American supporters...

...influence in the Arab world once Israel ran out of concessions...