BOOKS

In 1982, in a series of columns in the Observer, Conor Cruise O'Brien ardently defended Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Yet again the spunky little Jewish state was slaying the fearsome Arab dragons before they could pounce and gobble it up. 'What is at stake on Israel's side is survival,' he declared a week after the start of the war. It was a theme to which he returned again and again.

Quite soon it emerged that his was an appraisal not widely shared even among Israelis. The Begin-Sharon grand design of smashing the PLO, kicking the Syrians out of Lebanon, and ensuring Israeli regional hegemony had nothing to do with 'survival' and much with reshaping Middle East geopolitics in Israel's favour.

This book grew out of the Lebanon war. It was written to expand and defend views which had come in for criticism, not least by O'Brien's Observer colleagues. In this cause he has gone back to the beginnings of Zionism to supply a context of the Jewish struggle against dreadful odds in which the Lebanese aggression can be made to seem not only justifiable but necessary. The result is a trifle lopsided: so much familiar background — 'perhaps the greatest story of modern times' — reworked in the service of a contemporary political polemic.

O'Brien has great virtues as a writer. He is almost incapable of writing a dull sent- ence. He is also an immensely persuasive advocate, clear, master of his sources, able to marshall his arguments, skilled at de- molishing his adversaries with slur and innuendo (the adversaries in question are of course any Arab you care to mention but also, and the target of his sharpest sarcasms, the 'infatuated' Foreign Office and do-gooding liberals who dare take Israel to task).

The central message of this agreeably told tale is, however, far from agreeable and, in my view, dangerous nonsense. O'Brien has two main ideas. The first, which we have already encountered, is that Israel despite its history of victories and its vast lead over its neighbours, remains in mortal danger; so it was yesterday, so it is today and will inevitably be tomorrow. The siege endures. Israel's peril is a leitmotif of the narrative, although O'Brien faces a minor awkwardness in reconciling the alleged precariousness of Israel's existence with its swift and repeated walkovers on the battlefield.

The second idea follows from this. Sur- rounded by implacable enemies, Israel can never make peace. It can envisage no possible coexistence with the Arabs, it can

Who's under siege?

Patrick Seale

THE SIEGE: THE SAGA OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f20

hope to win no measure of goodwill what- ever its concessions, it has no alternative but to hang on to all its conquests and, whenever challenged, to strike and strike again.

Not only is peace unattainable, it is also unnecessary. Eventually, and these are almost the last words of the book, the Arabs may adjust to superior Israeli milit- ary strength allowing, not peace, but a slackening of the siege by way of 'tacit understandings' and piecemeal arrange- ments with venal and defeated enemies.

O'Brien is a late convert to Zionism. The moment of conversion, awakening his unreasonable fears for Israel's survival, occurred in Tyre in September 1981. The occasion was a conversation with a Palesti- nian fighter who voiced the wish, common to people in his predicament, to be rid of Israel altogether. It was an encounter `which I shall never forget,' O'Brien wrote afterwards. 'The feel of it was simply death to Israel.' Lebanon seems to be the only Arab country O'Brien has visited in the course of his researches. Since his conver- sion he has not flagged in his advocacy. In an unguarded moment, a leading British Zionist rejoiced to me, 'He is our greatest catch.'

This may account for the curiously famil- iar flavour of O'Brien's portrait of Zion: although the prose is more polished it has in its triumphalism the ring of a fund- raising appeal rather than that of an objective analysis. Historians in Israel, apparently unaware of the state of siege they live in, are more candid and critical about their country's past.

For example, the Israeli army, no less, has published an account by Yitzhak Levi which debunks many myths about the 1948 war and tells the truth about the massacre of some 250 villagers at Deir Yassin, a massacre which put to flight hundreds of thousands of frightened Palestinians. Is O'Brien's siege real? Is Israel in danger of extinction? The answer to both questions is no, and furthermore it Is doubtful whether Israel has ever been truly at risk. The fortunes of the state were assured even before its creation, such was the readiness and determination of the Yishuv, the quality of its leaders and its pioneers, and the backwardness and un- preparedness of its opponents. Since then the gap has widened, with an increasingly developed and formidable Israel floated on a flood of American bounty. It is not Israel but the Arabs who are in a state of siege and who helplessly struggle to break out. This is no figure of speech. Beirut was cruelly besieged for 80 days and the Arabs could do nothing, so lamentable is their weakness in the face of Israeli power. It was Iraq's nuclear reactor that was destroyed not Dimona, Arafat's head- quarters in Tunis which was bombed, Syria's politicians who found themselves hijacked to Israel. Egypt, held in thrall by American aid wholly contingent on peace with Israel, has lost the independence which Nasser won for it.

It is not Israel which faces the prospect of national extinction but Jordan, constant- ly told by Israelis that it is in fact 'Palestine' and threatened by further waves of re- fugees; Syria, with Israel camped on part of its land and living in fear of further punishment at any moment; Egypt, robbed of its regional role; the Palestinians, rob- bed of just about everything.

O'Brien contemptuously dismisses any land-for-peace' formula as a Panglossian pipedream. His greatest scorn is directed at the `comprehensivists', deluded souls who still believe Israel can secure peace and security by handing back territory captured in 1967 and negotiating final and perma- nent boundaries. The present Prime Minis- ter of Israel does not share O'Brien's pessimism.

In a moment of lucidity O'Brien up- braids Golda Meir for exposing Israel to the 1973 war by not seizing Sadat's first peace offer in 1971. Surely he sees the parallel today. The Arabs — even Syria, even Arafat — are calling for an interna- tional peace conference, but Israel is not heeding the cry. Down the road almost inevitably lies another war which could be avoided. But what of the occupied territories and their 1.3 million Arabs? O'Brien's advice to them is to put up with their lot. HIS advice to us is not to agitate too much on their behalf. Here he uses a nasty, if well-worn, argument. International efforts to get Israel out of the West Bank only serve to 'increase the danger to the terri- tory's Arab population'.

In less restrained language, this means don't annoy the Greater Israelites, these guys are terrible when they get mad, you'll only lengthen the queues to the cemeteries where the Palestinians bury their dead. O'Brien advocates indefinite Israeli rule over a subject Arab population, devoid of rights or citizenship. But what damage will such colonial rule do to Israel? And what if the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza do not accept his prescription? The options are bloodshed or expulsion. These are the neo-fascist solutions of a Meir Kahane.

At a moment when Israeli opinion is finely balanced on the question of the territories, O'Brien's book brings ammuni- tion and moral support to the Israeli far right. It is disquieting company for an ex-editor-in-chief of the Observer to be keeping.

Patrick Seale is a special writer on Arab affairs for the Observer.