Israel's Withdrawal Syndrome

...At the same time, Washington must have all the world understand how extremely careful it is being not to give Israel any excuse to delay the final Sinai withdrawal...

...All of Israel therefore got the insiders' joke a few months ago when Be-gin's Herut Party cronies tried to fob off on now Defense Minister Sharon the unpleasant duty of uprooting some illegal shanty settlements put up in the northern Sinai...

...On March 23, in fact, it was ultra-Right defectors who came within a vote of toppling the government by voting for a no-confidence motion that had originally been brought by Labor-ites angry with the Begin-Sharon policy of armed confrontation in the West Bank...

...With everybody witness that he was serving as his master's savior, Sharon took up the job with gusto...

...hopes to convince the Saudis and other Arabs that only Washington's warnings have prevented Israel from committing some dastardly new act of aggression...

...To give credibility to the claim, the Administration "leaks" news of impending Israeli attacks on Lebanon, President Rea-gan's ultimatums to Begin, and so on...

...Shamir came back less wildly enthusiastic, having failed to arrange the visit, yet agreed that Mubarak appeared determined to abide by the peace treaty...

...By some miracle, every new arms shipment to Jordan or Saudi Arabia appears on the Israeli side of the balance sheet when calculated by the Pentagon's computers...

...But the sheer quantities of fire power on the enemy side, and the extent to which automation neutralizes the human factor in modern mechanized warfare, also compels them to note that talk of Israel's "clearcut superiority over any Arab combination" is intentionally misleading—and only facilitates the sale of additional American hardware in the region...

...Never mind that no one of any authority in the Israeli government has given the slightest indication this country might renege on Camp David...

...Israelis remain persuaded that given their superior training and equipment maintenance, and their readiness to fight against greater odds, they would prevail in a confrontation with their Arab neighbors—especially if Egypt is true to its treaty signature and stays out of the fighting...

...He returned telling everyone that he was convinced the Egyptian President would live up to his obligations—an assumption that some members of the Cabinet were no longer so sure about...

...This has stirred great concern here because the history of Israeli-Arab relations proves beyond question that an abundance of arms nurtures Arab hopes of finally beating Israel into submission, if not extinction, in the "next round...

...To add insult to injury, the more guns, tanks and planes Washington sells to the Arabs, themore unequivocally does it assure the Israelis and their American friends that the military balance in the Middle East is overwhelmingly in the Jewish State's favor...

...Women, younger people, the religious, and the less educated recorded a higher rate of opposition to withdrawal than the national average...

...For in showing "understanding" for this most unambiguous pronouncement, and even buttressing it by heaping more arms into the Arab laps, the U.S...

...Acting on this information, Begin gave Sharon the order, this time in the name of the entire Cabinet, to move the Army against the recalcitrant settlers...

...The latest Jerusalem Post poll had 59.3 per cent of the population in favor and 37 per cent against, the opposition having been increased by respondents who in earlier surveys answered "don't know...

...Under the circumstances, it is small wonder that some Israelis now believe the U.S...

...or else, 2) Washington does understand what the Arabs really want the guns for, but if that be the price of petrodollar friendship, it is willing to pay it...

...Half as many (29.5 per cent) gave as their main reason the obligation to honor commitments...

...The suspense of the main plot revolves around the uncertainty about how Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will behave once the turnover is effected...

...Further, if Washington makes it normal procedure for most countries in the Mideast to periodically demand and get more U.S...

...has descended to invoking the Zionist bogeyman because it is worried about losing influence in Saudi Arabia...

...First, the Right-wing opponents of the pullout began to gather enough momentum to present a serious challenge to Begin's authority...

...The Defense Minister, however, not only managed to evade the task, but even was suspected of secretly encouraging the anti-withdrawal forces...

...The assassination of Anwar Sadat and the efforts of his successor to patch up relations with at least the "moderate" Arabs (who nevertheless sought to isolate Egypt for recognizing the Jewish State's right to exist) has raised many questions among even the most dovish Israelis...

...embassy lately...

...Most troubling of all, though, is Washington's performance in the face of the clearly stated declaration by Saudi Arabia and its friends that Israel, not the Soviet Union, is their principal enemy...

...Far more distressing to Israelis, though, is the inevitable result of this policy: the sale of state-of-the-art American weapons to Saudi and other Arab countries that have earned the status of "pro-Western" by not having assassinated an American diplomat or burned down a U.S...

...They still look upon Sharon, a former Labor Party member, as an "outsider...

...According to this view, the U.S...

...Sharon, reportedly influenced by the late Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, told Begin that if the only thing standing between Israel and peace were the settlements, the settlements should go...

...Second, Mubarak invited Sharon for a red carpet visit to Egypt...

...Of those favoring the pullout, a majority (59.5 per cent) said they felt this was necessary to maintain the peace with Egypt...

...And lurking in the background is the huge, potentially fatal issue of unrestrained quantities of ultramodern weapons being shipped to the Middle East by an America and Western Europe unable to figure out how to pay for their oil bill without risking global conflagration...

...Begin dispatched Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, an old underground comrade, to double-check Sharon's impressions and try to convince Mubarak to make an official visit to Jerusalem sometime before April 26...

...A tragicomic element has been provided by the roles of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in forcibly evacuating Jewish settlers from the Rafiah salient...

...Back in 1978, when the Camp David negotiations reached a deadlock over Sadat's insistence that every last Israeli settler had to be evacuated before the land was returned, Begin telephoned then Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon—the certified superhawk of the government nest—to ask for advice...

...Sensitive to the electorate's uneasiness, Israel's top politicians are engaged in a final scramble to shift the onus for giving up Sinai onto each other...

...Labor Party Opposition leader Shimon Peres successfully insisted that the two issues be voted on jointly...

...ELIAHU SALPETER, a regular NL contrib-utor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...True, Begin seems to grab every opportunity for saber rattling, especially in the direction of the Palestine Liberation Organization commandos in southern Lebanon...

...WHILE THE Israelis thus find themselves grappling with a new feeling of heightened vulnerability, Washington, whether intentionally or simply through a lack of finesse and savoir faire, has taken to aggravating its ally's fears...

...Public opinion polls here still show a respectable majority supporting completion of the withdrawal, but nobody seems extremely enthusiastic about the idea...

...But it is equally true that he has been doing so for almost a year without actually firing a shot across the border...

...Then two things happened...

...arms, Mubarak may find it difficult, despite the Camp David accords, not to end up joining in the general Arab military escalation...

...Of the opponents, the belief that "settlements should never be uprooted" was the explanation most frequently offered (30.7 per cent), followed by the conviction that Egypt will not keep the peace (25.9 per cent) and unspecified "security considerations" (19.1 percent...

...Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger apparently cannot pass up a chance either to say something unpleasant about Israel or, worse, to push fresh American arms sales to the Arabs...

...has left them to make only one of two deductions: 1) America is so blinded by its own concepts of global strategy that it cannot see reality...

...Nonetheless, Begin has on several occasions tried to establish the point that while he signed the peace, the Knesset voted for giving up the settlements...

...Not content with this alibi alone, Begin soon sought a second one: In bringing the peace treaty to the Knesset for approval, he attempted to introduce two separate resolutions—one to ratify the treaty itself, the other to approve the withdrawal...