Middle East Diplomacy

Ganging up against Israel

Lionel Gelber

Israel may have been taken by surprise when Arab states attacked her on the Day of Atonement, October 6, 1973, but in their behaviour, pro and con, other powers ran true to form. A month later a formal declaration even lined up the European Economic Community (or Common Market) with the enemies of that beleaguered land. There was, though, nothing new about this. Community members had been attempting for years to co-ordinate foreign policies and it was at the expense of Israel that, from the outset, the EEC tried to do so.

Such an assertion will meet with disbelief. There has been publicity about disputes between the EEC and various segments of the free world over trade and monetary affairs; on both sides of the Atlantic, however, major opinion media have always soft-pedalled other adverse Community trends. Then, too, at one juncture Israel might have joined a free trade area which, despite protests from Washington, the EEC was devising for Mediterranean non-members. A need to conserve the stream of oil from Arab producers is now given as the sole excuse for an anti-Israeli stance. The fact is, nevertheless, that Israel was the butt of hostile manifestations by the European Economic Community more than two years before the oil imbroglio came to a head. To these the Netherlands subscribed reluctantly in the autumn of 1973. But the pro-Arab sympathies of the European Community had been apparent long before Arab countries brandished the oil weapon as a means of cowing the West and of getting the US, by a circuitous method, to forsake Israel.

Western Europe is rich again and it wants to have a commensurate say in world politics. Not that Humpty Dumpty, after so great a fall, expects again to be, as he once was, the pivot of world politics. American and Russian super-powers now hold the scales. As an en semble however, the European Economic Community would like to deal with other giant aggregations — the American, the Rus sian, the Chinese, the Japanese — as an equal. The question is, though, whether the EEC is prepared to speak abroad with a resonant single voice. It has not yet built up the sort of unified statehood through which other titans express themselves. It is, moreover, unequipped for making a contribution to the maintenance of a wider free world order or even to preserve, under the North Atlantic Alliance, a due share of its own semi-continental ramparts against the Warsaw Pact. For many years American policymakers made light of any who pointed to the neutralist, anti-American Third Force predispositions that lurked in the European Community. These, nevertheless, burst forth during the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. Only Portugal, among Atlantic allies of the United States, granted the use of facilities (in the Azores) to American aircraft when they flew to Israel with essential war supplies.

It is, to be sure, Western Europe and not the Middle East that is covered by the North Atlantic Alliance. Strategically, as had been revealed by the Afro-Asian campaigns of the two world wars and the postwar Truman Doctrine, the defence of the one region is mixed up with the defence of the other.

Soon, however, fighting in the Middle East was again halted and West European chancellories argued that, for peace-making, they, with the two super-powers, possessed a unique prerogative. But Russia is suspect and Israel would have felt abandoned if even Britain and France planted themselves, under one guise or another, on the scene of combat.

In the United Nations, at rate, the United States objected to peacekeeping contingents from those who enjoyed permanent seats on the Security Council — the United States herself, the Soviet Union, Britain and France, with China abstaining. And when Russia threatened anyhow to go ahead on her own, the American precautionary alert (with "Hands off" as its grim nuclear message) indicated that the US was not bluffing. Moscow climbed down. It scored, nevertheless, when the oil embargoes it had long proposed to Arab oil countries were adopted. For the nonce, on the other hand, the

American precautionary alert had saved the independence of Israel from a Soviet stranglehold — even though defensible fron• tiers, life-savers in 1973, may subsequently be narrowed under post-bellum pressure froni Washington. And the European CommunitY, having cold-shouldered its American guar' antor, opened a rift in the Atlantic Alliance over which the Kremlin will have shed ne tears.

The dilemma is one, moreover, that a federal union for the European CommunitY cannot, as many now imagine, do anything 9 resolve. It was clear before the autumn 0' 1973 that such a vehicle would only accen' tuate impulses that are neutralist, an American and Third Force in effect. Yet these can be diminished. The European CommunitY might, after all, be premature in throwing its, weight about. Britain is a new member an' the British people do not like what awaits them within that body. Terms of entry may renegotiated. But will renegotiation bear fruit' If this gets nowhere Britain might withdre from the EEC. A regional entity, commanding fewer resources and exerting less influence' may be the result. What, at any rate, must be remembere.d,, about the Community's anti-Israel posture I, that there had been signs of trouble for several years before the Arab-Israeli war 0f, October 1973 and these must not be neglecteo if the situation is to be seen in perspective' Events have moved so fast that it will have been forgotten how Japanese militant recruited by Palestinian terrorists movie, down at Lod, the Israeli international airpen7 eleven Puerto Rican pilgrims, seven citizens 2, Israel and five other innocent travellers. Tr" Security Council of the United Nationa' glossing as always over pan-Arab misdeed railed once more at Israel for having mount reprisals at the Lebanese bases of Palestinleaf terrorists. Unabashed, too, was the spirit cynicism in which members of the EEC 11°Ir

ded assent. st

Three months later the same vv eEuropean combine staged a repeat perf°ri; mance. During September, after Israel, athletes were assassinated at the Munict Olympiad, Israeli aircraft struck once more the Syrian and Lebanese havens of Ara„,`: terrorists. Russian and Chinese vetoes stile' ed the latter, with their hosts and sponsoringe governments, from condemnation bY tht Security Council. But for a subsequerie American veto Israel would have borne t,.e entire blame. And so, among others, Pe Community bloc, with the Pompidou regiril„ , in the van, mocked simple equity — and 1311 tam n under Edward Heath did the same.

Nor was the Security Council the only gan of the United Nations that, during 19l, put Israel in the dock. The General AssemblYr; before the adjournment of its annual auturotie passed a resolution 86 to 7, condemning tc, Israelis for annexationist procedures in c)„, cupied territories. The Community grouP,, Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and LuIce",i, bourg — had persuaded Egypt and her 03'5 jutors to eliminate from their resoluti0n:5,1 threat of sanctions against Israel, but tith'e under the United Nations Charter, te General Assembly could not, in any case, ft enforced. The text, nevertheless, was more pro-Arab and anti-Israel than similar statement by the General Assenw,.;f hitherto. In voting for it the countries jet Western Europe were arrayed with the SOYrhe Union, patron of Egypt, Syria and Iraq. *he US, with China, was numbered among 1' thirty-one that abstained. Then, during April 1973, Israeli comrn tie dos killed three Arab terrorist leaders in t„s heart of Beirut and the United Nati0,4 Security Council rebuked Israel for the dartc"ti reprisal she had undertaken. An Anglo-Frerlio resolution was less one-sided, though, than:0 predecessor and here, too, the United St tea did no more than abstain. On July 26,

United States cast another veto. The Security Council had been making a broad survey of the Arab-Israeli conflict and might have Passed a resolution which, as usual, censured Israel alone. Against her Britain and France ganged up with Russia once more. And in August 1973 it was the prospect of another American veto which eliminated a threat of sanctions when the Security Council adolonished Israel for intercepting an Arab *liner in Lebanese airspace and searching it on Israeli soil.

Unison between Paris and London against Jerusalem involved Washington. In the North Atlantic Alliance, however, no deeper breach Yawned until the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. But when the EEC issued its pro-Arab statement in Brussels on November 6, this had not only been preceded by numerous try-outs al the two organs of the United Nations. Account must be taken of a still earlier episode, one divulged early in the winter of 1972. °tiring the previous year a series of unusual ,Conversations had been held at Luxembourg oetween members and would-be members of the European Community:

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The talks have been shrouded in secrecy," ilt was reported by the Times (February 4, :272). "This is no doubt in part a reaction to e damage done by leaks last spring when L'Ie Six drafted a secret memorandum on the middle East — their first joint foreign policy venture. The Israelis considered it to be too Pro-Arab, accused the Germans of caving in the French and vented their disappointlent on Herr Walter Scheel, the West Ger111a,sti Foreign Minister, when he visited Israel." thuismay in Jerusalem was natural enough as 2Le French and West Germans broke ground "11.d, with other components, explored how, Within the European Community, they might eGoncur over world affairs. The French, West ermans and British are the prime coin , alents of the European Community. Each ' ,ad pro-Arab leanings. Anti-Israel was the 'ood in which it all started. , The Community has done most in the West d'ostir things up against Israel, and France has , AeLhe most to stir things up in the Community. I 00ut her motives there is no mystery. In a '.aniberof Arab countries — Syria, Lebanon, enisia, Algeria and Morocco — French aks, oil companies and commercial houses ve long held sway; and as French economic el3elialism thrives behind a nationalist, antifrc,40., nial facade, it panders to pan-Arab ongs. Not that middle-rank officials or the srench people as a whole nurse the anti-Israel k!iitiments that the upper echelons display. Or has France always taken the same path. 1 1,d zigzags mark her course towards NATO elti towards entry by Britain into the Et_roPean Community. She has not always. sTa,ri against Israel. Sacro egoismo, Gaullist thYle, was ostensibly what induced her during '`e Six-day War of 1967 to reverse herself. t..,8efore his retirement, General de Gaulle's nnt over the 'domineering' qualities of Jews 7ealed the degree to which the anti-Dreyfus oredo that was rife during his boyhood lasted his struggle with Hitler — a German tThose anti-Semitic furies consumed many of I oe Gaulle's own compatriots, famous and ' 'scure alike, with Jewish antecedents. As for General's political heir, Pompidou, he had I tL't only steered clear of the French ResisL'uce but exercised his right as President to rig,rdon a Frenchman who collaborated with '',,e Nazis during their occupation of France. h,?ne gauge of Gaullist aims in this context .47 been downright bad faith over the sale of pj,Ins. The United States substituted her Jwa.ntoms for the French Mirage aircraft 111 eh Israel had bought and paid for but of th leh she could not obtain delivery. So too, 1 ere was a dispute between Paris and tieiriUsalem over missile-firing French patrol 1115a Purchased by the Israelis and for which, t'vertheless, an escape from St Nazaire was entrived. Under President Pompidou,

moreover, France had supplied Libya with Mirage jets, although with the pledge that Egypt would not use them against Israelis. Egyptians, however, were trained to pilot these and some of them were shot down during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 by Israel. There was also a significant incident at Djibouti where the French forbade an American destroyer to leave port and go to the help of a blockaded American freiehter.

Then The Hague offended the Arabs by endorsing Community strictures of Israel and yet staying pro-Israel. The French, with the British, thereupon baulked at sharing oil with the Dutch. This was scarcely a boost for the idea of a co-ordinated foreign policy by the Nine. Yet in the National Assembly only the Communist Party lent M. Pompidou unanimous support and everywhere French diplomacy flouted what, by the findings of opinion polls, was the will of the nation.

But the cruellest recent blows to emanate from Western Europe were West German in origin. Israeli athletes and trainers did not only die because of blunders by authorities of the Bonn Republic at the Munich Olympiad of September 1972; within seven weeks the rest of the Arab terrorists were released. And yet with Arab affairs Germans have had little to do since the first world war, except for a brief second world war interlude under Rommel. They were plunged into these, however, with the rise of Israel — a land to which a surviving remnant of European Jewry fled and where the Bonn Republic, ashamed and repentent over incalculable evil wrought in the German name, acquired a moral outpost. But even before the Munich Olympiad, with its grim sequel, the 'process of reconciliation between Israel and West Germany had been more erratic than is realised.

During 1971, for example, when the Six drafted their first secret memorandum on the Middle East, the aftermath suggested that the West Germans saw eye to eye with the French and were already letting the Israelis down.

What Israel wanted from the Bonn Republic was that it would always take up the cudgels for her. As compared with the Nazi affiliations of his predecessor, Dr Kurt Kiesinger, there was Herr Willy Brandt's own valiant anti-Nazi record and the unparalleled gesture of the West German Chancellor when he knelt at tlte Warsaw ghetto memorial. Nazi atrocities had produced a special relationship between Bonn and Jerusalem. West Germany differed besides, from her European allies over one point with no precedent; a stipulation by the vanquished that a victor must undertake to evacuate occupied territory before a peace settlement had been signed. Yet Ostpo/itik as a rapprochement between West Germany and the Soviet imperium, engendered a rapprochement between West Germany and clients of Russia among the Arabs. How special, under these circumstances, was Israel's special relationship with the Bonn Republic likely to be? Henceforth, as between Arabs and Israelis, West Germany played no favourites. The West German recognition of Israel seven years before had prompted Arab states to cut ties with Bonn. These, with a Soviet mentor blowing hot and cold, were restored. When the European Community groomed itself for its cldbut as a major factor in world politics, a pro-Arab bias emerged at once. It was Herr Brandt himself, furthermore, who, a week before the Arab League acted upon overtures from West Germany, proposed a second Community effort — nothing less than mediation in the Middle East.

By June 8, 1972, Egypt and the Bonn Republic were officially in touch with each other again. Diplomatists intimated that the Egyptian Government and other states of the Arab League had been pleased by Herr Brandt's attempt to conduct an impartial policy in the Middle East. But the rumble of conflict was what the Middle East first brought to West Germany. In September Cairo rejected'an appeal for co-operation from Herr Brandt at the Munich Olympiad before Arab kidnappers, after killing two Israelis, slaughtered the rest of their victims. Yet a wrangle that supervened did not last long. Despite the backing that terrorist bands procured from most Arab states, Bonn hastily absolved the latter from complicity in what had happened. West Germany, as far as Israel was concerned, had found the road back with no difficulty. More awkward was her later quest in Arab-Israeli affairs for the middle of the road.

Salt was poured on raw wounds when, during October 1972, Bonn surrendered Arab gunmen, imprisoned since their crimes at the Olympic games in September, to hijacking liberators. West Germany had been making amends to Israel since the days of Konrad Adenauer. Yet even Herr Willy Brandt now vacillated. Jerusalem must have banked on Bonn's willingness to follow through. As it. falters, there are no champions among the main components of the Community on whom it may count.

It was a noteworthy hour, all the same, when, in June 1973, the West German Chancellor, unlike other foreign Heads of Government, went to Israel. If he exhibited moral courage, so did Mrs Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, when she received a West German Chancellor on the soil of the Jewish State and accepted his invitation to pay West Germany a return visit.

Ambivalence, however, is what still typifies the attitude of the Bonn Republic towards Israel and, since the Arab Israeli war of October 1973, has done so as much as ever. Unlike other Community allies, West Germany first permitted but then forbade the United States to fly war supplies out of her German depots for the succour of Israeli fighting services. Two Israeli ships also loaded up at Bremenshaven; the third, hoisting the Star of David, was stopped lest Arabs take it amiss. Oil for the Bonn Republic is refined at Rotterdam and Arab States notified West Germany that, with a pro-Israel public in the Netherlands, there must be no show of solidarity with her.

In the Upper and Lower House, Herr Brandt endeavoured (November 13, 1973) to rectify moral damage by restating the reasons for a special relationship with Israel. He also commended the Community pronouncement (Brussels, November 6) which overweighted against Israel the more balanced United Nations resolution of 1967. Confusion persists.

Nor are such fluctuations apt to abate. The two Germanies have joined the United Na tions but while they belong to competing global camps the problem of Israel is not likely to set them apart. After the first world war the German people rebelled against the stigma of war guilt. After the second world war it was guilt of another kind that elicited West German reparations to Israel and indemnities to such German-Jewish victims as were left. East Germany, as Moscow's principal European client, spurned any such obligation. But all of this stems from a past that the younger generation of Germans, East and West, never knew.

Time, moreover, has also been working to Israel's detriment in world politics generally. Remorse after German infamy derived from the Christian conscience. There is no reflection of this today in most of the European Community or at the United Nations. In the world body Afro-Asians call the tune, and, with the Soviet bloc, Moslem states have been quick to exploit their opportunity. During the 1940s the immeasurably macabre statistics of Nazi iniquity were still fresh when the UN General Assembly authorised the creation of a Jewish state and admitted it to membership. In the 1970s no similar proceeding would be remotely conceivable.

Then there is Britain, a neophyte among major Community policy-makers, but one who prior to the independence of Israel had had with her the closest of associations. It was to create a Jewish National Home that she had been assigned a Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations while derelict Turkish lands, infinitely more vast in extent, were carved out for Arab desert chieftains. London, though, had whittled down space for the Jewish Homeland before Nazi persecutions enhanced its value.

After the war of 1967, Israel would have negotiated with Arab neighbours under Security Council Resolution No. 242 as sponsored at the United Nations by the Wilson government. For the Heath government, however, a less equitable version was offered in a speech at Harrogate during November 1970 by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Even more extreme, after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973,, were the pro-Arab dicta of the Community which at Brussels (November 6) the British, with the French, did most to formulate.

No doubt Sir Alec Douglas-Home has recognised Israel's right to existence. A rush to the rescue after she had succumbed would, all the same, not be worth much. The United States herself, morevoer, had long been urging Europeanisation upon Britain and this was now put to the test of battle. In commercial morality London emulated Paris when it banned the export of ammunition and spare parts for Centurion tanks that Israel had bought from Britain. The Heath government did further harm when it debarred the passage to Israel via Cyprus of American war supplies and ferried fighter bombers.

From a time-table of the American precautionary alert, it may be gathered that in October 1973 Washington informed London of what it contemplated first of all and other European allies as soon as possible. But while this could have been treated as a courtesy with historic Anglo-American undertones, it no longer impressed Downing Street. Uppermost at Westminster now was a European commitment.

Life among the super-powers, though, still keeps Israel guessing. If the European allies of the United States do not soon make good ensuing deficiencies, a reduction in the number of American troops stationed across the Atlantic could invite Russian ascendancy beyond the Soviet imperium. The defence of non-Soviet Europe has, besides, its maritime as well as its territorial phase. When longrange weapons are also sea-based, the land and sea frontiers of Western Europe stand or fall together.

And in this connection the southern littoral of Western Europe has ports that must always welcome ships of the American Sixth Fleet — with those of its allies. They may not do this, however, if, bowing to Soviet predominance, Popular Fronts take over; if the French and Italian Left arrange matters with Moscow; if, in the European Community, anti-American Third Force neutralism, which Gaullism itself has promoted, gets the upper hand. American warships are older than those that Russia deploys. And what the Israelis may fear are the onerous conditions the Kremlin might impose if, lest the Mediterranean becomes a trap, the American Sixth Fleet should ever be recalled and Israel is encircled.

Illuminating the triumph of history over geography, Israel has had a position on the map which, paradoxically, is both an asset and a liability. For the bulk of her sea traffic the best route is the one between southern Europe and northern Africa. More of a gamble for Israel since the war of Ocrober 1973 is transit between her various ports and the Orient. Even if Israeli shipping ever proceeds through the Suez Canal, Egypt has always been allowed to evade its rules with impunity. And today Israel cannot reckon as safely as she has with the Aqaba route to so vital a southern gateway as Elath. She does not relax her grip on the Sharm el Sheik — Sinai locale in 1967 for a brazen violation of guarantees, Egyptian and American, in which the United Nations acquiesced. Nowadays, however, it is at the mouth of the Red Sea that traffic to and from Israel may also be menaced — if, that is, the Straits of Bab-elMandeb pass under pan-Arab control.

What, on the other hand, the Red Sea artery does afford is quicker naval access to Indo-Pacific waters — from the Soviet naval base at Odessa and from the Mediterranean ports of the West. If the Suez Canal is unblocked and detente falls short of a full world settlement the United States and Russia will vie unremittingly for the oil riches of the Persian Gulf. Here, as in the Mediterranean and beyond, global counteracting power can maintain freedom of the seas. And if it does maritime communications through Elath, as through Haifa and Ashdod, may be renewed The Middle East, however, is a zone in which Western Europe desires to intervene again but where, as it has now demonstrated, it will only make mischief for the West as well as Israel. On home fronts it must get its priorities straight first of all. Abroad the EEC should recollect that it itself once favoured those "secure and recognised boundaries" which figure as much as "withdrawal" for Israel in Resolution No. 242 of the United Nations Security Council. And less self-righteous, too, might have been the European Community when, on November 6, 1973 it borrowed the phrase against "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force." Which among the West Europeans has been applying that axiom to the Soviet Union with its swollen post-Yalta frontiers and as it jumps from the Middle East to the IndoPacific theatre? When, too, was strict territorial rectitude involved against Transjordan for tearing up the UN Partition Plan in 1948 and seizing the Arab half of Jerusalem?

As for the EEC, its components should have learned from the years of appeasement that when its pusillanimity is a danger to others it will be a danger to itself. Today, with all its pride in the civilised society it inherited, it defers to peoples as backward as the Arabs; and the Soviet Union pushing far afield, must perceive that West European compliance with a crack from the Russian knout may be even more servile. The European Community could not enforce its attempt (November 6, 1973) to cosset Arab states by redrafting UN Security Council Resolution No. 242. It should also have known how, above all, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter revalidates for Israel the right of self-defence. The security of that small land presupposes that in upholding world order the West will prevail. So does that of the European Community. And that the West itself should be riven over Israel's struggle for existence is, among ironies of history, far from trivial.

Lionel Gelber, the American historian and writer on international affairs, is the author of several books including The Alliance of Necessity. He has been resident in London for the last few years.