Getting tough with Israel
Nicholas von Hoffman
First Wilson, then Roosevelt and now it's Reagan who is drawing boundary lines on a map. Apparently the plaster in the walls of the Oval Office emits an intox- icating chemical which induces the men who work in that famous room to believe they can legislate for people whose language they do not speak, whose cultures they do not know, and whose perspective they are not given to understand. Nevertheless, the Shultz-Weinberger duo has begun to prevail on the President, as the Israelis' friends feared, and we now have the United States telling its disobedient client it must cough up the fruits of its 1967 victory.
A more modest accomplishment might have been to crowbar the Israelis out of their_ 1982 gains and get them to leave Lebanon. Even that may not be easy. Over the years we've taught the Israelis one thing, which is that America never means it when it tells Jerusalem to pull back, to stop. The history of America's empty huffings and puffings has schooled the Israelis to Pay no attention. American threats are not believable or, as they say in officialese here, we have no credible Israeli deterrent and to get one may be quite messy politically.
At the minimum it would take a prolong- ed withholding of money and arms to make the Israelis mind. Refusing to grant export licences for a shipment of weapons for a month or two, as the United States has done from time to time, is not going to br- ing Israel to heel. Given that they have the third most potent air force in the world and a competent arms industry of their own, it would take an arms embargo of several years' duration, at least, to convince Mr Begin and the other hit men in his cabinet that America means it this time. Of course, another approach would be to step up arms deliveries to what we are pleased to refer to as the moderate Arab states, a policy which is as evil as it is crazy.
As of now, nothing so indefensible is be- ing planned, but Jerusalem should unders- tand that in Mr Reagan and his friends they are not facing creampuffs like Jimmy Carter. If guys like Caspar Weinberger get mad at you, they'll hurt you. But before they are likely to lean on Israel by holding back arms shipments they may dabble with internal Israeli affairs by flirting with Mr Shimon Peres and the Labour Party or by cutting off the money. While it might take some years before an arms embargo would bother the Israelis, the pain resulting from pinching off the financial umbilical cord would be almost immediate. The pipeline fracas should convince even the Israelis that when this Administration feels the pressure of moral gas bubbles in its gut, it moves with disconcerting swiftness.
The Reagan speech proposing his peace plan was a bit of retaliation in itself. From the first hour of the Lebanese invasion, so insultingly timed to coincide with Mr Reagan's dancing economic quadrille in the mirrored ballrooms of Versailles, to Mr Sharon's repeated acts of biting the hand which feeds Israel, Washington's sense of its own dignity has been progressively more bruised. Pride doth influence policy, and an Administration which was not displeased to see the PLO rubbed out by the Israelis is now thoroughly nettled.
The completeness of the Israeli victory has given Mr Reagan the chance he needed to rap their knuckles. There being no one left within hundreds and hundreds of miles who could be vaguely considered a serious threat to the continued existence of the Israeli state or even to the peaceful flow of life, the way has been opened to let them know who is boss. But that cuts two ways. With no enemies of any strength, the Israelis can risk telling Mr Reagan what to do with his peace plan.
Nevertheless, there are risks. This is an argument which could grow nasty and slog over into domestic American politics in ways no one can guess. At best it is no way to teach the Israelis anything. A softer but better American policy might have been to lower the volume of arms and financial aid to Israel without making any public pro- nouncements, quietly to distance the United States from Jerusalem and let the Israelis learn what it will be like to govern seven or eight million Arabs in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon — not to mention Israel pro- per. The elaborately grotesque mechanisms of puppet governments, fraudulent repre- sentative assemblies, quisling spokesman and rigged elections might have persuaded the Israelis that, although the South Africans may be able to hold on another 20 years by creating Bantustans for Zulus, Arabustans for Palestinians wouldn't hold up for five.
If there has ever been a time to let events take their course, it is in the Middle East now. Apparently, not even the Israelis can stand Israel. One of the recurrent observa- tions heard around Washington is that the emigration of Jews out of that boiling land is much greater than generally realised. Moreover, Russian Jews, emancipated from their Slavic thraldom, will not be boarded on an Israeli-bound plane save at gun point. Thus, just as Christians from the Crusades once conquered the same real estate but couldn't stand to stay and live there, so also the Jews of the diaspora. The Israeli State will implode in on itself from the weight of its own imperium.
American culture, however, does not produce patient politicians. The one thing these people cannot do is do nothing, so even a George Shultz cannot act on the pro- position that the easiest, the cheapest and the least costly policy is to leave the Israelis alone.
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