Victory or .
settlement?
Although it is too early to be sure how the fighting will end and what its consequences will be, it is clear enough that the resumption of the Arab-Israeli war was brought about by an ingeniously timed joint attack by Egypt and by Syria in the middle of Jewry's Day of Atonement. It is reasonable to criticise the Egyptians and Syrians for their military optimism; and it is also reasonable to question the strategic rather than tactical sense of their timing. It is, however, unreasonable to criticise their aggression, since all they seek is the recovery of some of their territories seized by Israel during its pre-emptive Six Days War of defensive aggression, and kept. The Golan Heights matter to Israel because if occupied by hostile forces they threaten Israeli settlements around Lake Tiberias and in the Hula valley. They have been for many years, and are likely to remain, a running sore. But the Suez Canal is a different matter. Israeli occupation of the east bank is a standing affront to Egypt, and could Egypt manage to drive the Israeli army back into Sinai, away from the canal, then this might well be victory enough, and the basis of a secure settlement between Egypt and Israel. But in the heat of war the Israelis are not likely to see is that way at all. If Egypt were to sustain the fighting for a few weeks, then the strain of immensely long lines of communications across Sinai would inevitably begin to tell on Israel; as must a drawn-out struggle on Israel's highly efficient but part-time army. Israel's military necessity demands the swift knock-out punch, delivered in one of the very early rounds.
This said, the long-term requirement of Israel is a settlement with its Arab neighbours and in particular with Egypt; and such a settlement is only likely to be durable and workable and tolerable if it follows upon some kind of military stalemate in which neither party is utterly humbled and neither is utterly proud and triumphant. The irony of the situation is thus that while Israel's immediate military necessity requires a knock-out, a settlement is a necessity of state, and this requires an Egypt ready and willing to negotiate with the consent of the other Arab states. Such an Egypt is not one which has once more been knocked out.
An Arab-Israeli war is not the same threat to world peace as it used to be. The United States and the Soviet Union have both withdrawn from their previous confronting positions and seem to have concluded that their several interests are best served by cooling down, not heating up, the Middle East. The United States, in particular, has a very sound reason for abandoning its extreme pro-Israel line, in view of its problem of oil supplies and of the new readiness of the oil-rich Arab states to use the power of their oil to further the Arab cause. It is odd that Egypt and Syria chose to strike against Israel this autumn, when the implications of Saudi Arabia's shifting position were bound to be causing concern in Washington, and when Dr Kissinger was seeking to discover the grounds of a settlement. But there it is. Reason has seldom marked the conduct of Middle East affairs; and while we hope that a military stalemate will yield the conditions for a lasting peace, we are only too aware that the prospects of a reasoned compromise are remote when the hounds of war are let loose.
