View from Jerusalem
From the Hon. Terence Prittie Sir: Nearly one week of war now in this place, and little sign of a quick ending. For the people of Israel it has been a week full of tragedy — something which must be difficult to under stand to the full two thousand miles away. Almost every family here that I know has a son, a brother or some other close relative at the front. Every face in Jerusalem is grave, preoccupied. This has been so from the start, for there was no over-confidence about this war. The first casualties of war began to arrive at the hospitals on thp third day of fighting, but casualty lists are not yet being published — a heavy curtain of security hangs over this, by far the most dangerous war that Israel has been forced to fight since 1948. It is being faced in a spirit of remarkable courage and calmness, but everyone is aware that it is going to cost terribly in the blood of young Israelis of the first complete generation which has had to go to war to defend a free and independent State of Israel.
The fortitude of the Israelis has shown itself in the same ways as that of the British people in 1940, in cheerfulness, comradeship and quiet resolution. A job has to be done, and when it happens to be that of defending one's country from annihilation, it is done with a high courage. With perhaps one man out of four at the war — and a great many women serving in the armed forces too — volunteers have sprung forward for every kind of work. There was a short but minor rush to buy bread, rice, sugar and paraffin — understandable enough, since apart from this war this was the season of religious festivals and closed shops. Of any sort of apprehension, let alone panic, there has been no sign whatever; in this freest among democratic societies there is a universal sense of discipline. And behind the work-as-usual attitude there has been a keen awareness of how tough the struggle ahead was likely to be.
Behind the cruel reality of war lies a deeper tragedy. Hopes had been high that the road to peace would become clearer in the next few months. The United States Government was taking a fresh, close look at the prospects of peace. There was growing talk of an Israeli initiative, as soon as the elections — due at the end of this month and now likely to be postponed — were out of the way. Only 48 hours before the Egyptians and Syrians invaded, a very senior member of the Israeli Foreign Ministry told me that, " Providence is working for us, is working towards peace." The foam and froth of the election campaign, the calls for no retreat from safe frontiers and for new settlements in occupied territories, attracted far more attention in the outside world than in Israel itself. The people least impressed by electioneering tactics are those who are being canvassed. The overriding desire of the average Israeli has always been for peace.
This war has dealt a heavy blow to the cause of peace. The Israelis have already suffered, in proportion to the size of the community, far greater losses than those sustained by the United States in the whole Vietnam War. What would have happened had they not had the buffers of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights between them and the enemy? The rocket weapons which the Arabs have held so far in reserve would have been launched at Tel Aviv and other terribly vulnerable centres of population on the first day of war, Aircraft operating from bases in Sinai would have been eight to ten minutes' flying-time from the heart of Israel. Sam Missiles would have been advanced to the old frontiers. On the ground an advance of seven or eight miles — of the kind that has taken place over the Canal — would have laid waste a fruitful and thickly populated part of the Plain of Sharon. Today the so-called " hawks " of Israel consider that they have been proved right beyond all shadow of doubt; their view was always that the Arab governments did not want peace and that secure frontiers should be held until a genuine Arab will for peace becomes apparent.
Arab animosity, and the reasons for
It, are understood. What is not is blatant Soviet war-mongering. Israelis are amazed at Brezhnev's appeal to other Arab states to join in the war. By doing this, he has deliberately invoked an escalation of Middle East fighting and has put the whole policy of East-West detente at risk. It is now hard to find an Israeli who does not believe that there has been complete collusion between a brutally cynical Soviet leadership and the Egyptian and Syrian, invaders. The lesson for the Western world is too obvious to need to be pointed in this letter.
What is sure is that Soviet professions of a desire for peace need never again *be believed. Never. The rape of both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the brutal butchering of the East Germans who rose in 1953, ought to have convinced us all of this a long time ago. However grim the situation, there is usually a ray of hope. In this war it has been provided by the Palestinian Arab population of the occupied territories. After war began Arab municipal and building workers turned up, as usual, for their jobs in Jerusalem. The same happened in other places in Israel where they go to work. In the occupied territories all has stayed quiet, and there has been hardly an Israeli soldier to be seen. Some Arabs have shown signs of emotional strain; but there was no elation during the first, hectic forty-eight hours and no undue gloom thereafter — only expressions of sadness that there had to be any fighting at all. In the last six years a degree of coexistence has been established between Israelis who are the most unobrusive of conquerors and Palestinian Arabs who have grown tired of hating .and want to get on with the business of living. They, too, want peace.
Peace is today obviously farther off than on the Jewish Sabbath of October 6, when the people of Israel were celebrating their Day of Atonement, prayer for forgiveness of their sins — leaving thin lines of defenders along the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. The fact that the Arab attack took place on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar has given a special bitterness to this whole bloody and disastrous business. How might we Britons react to invasion on December 25, or, for those to whom Christmas means nothing, on a Bank Holiday? The moral is clear; the coward strikes when one's back is turned. This, too, should be remembered when the cost of this war is counted up. For Israel that cost will be high, but the Israelis know that they have to fight on until victory. For they are fighting, not for a strip of desert or such high-sounding and meaningless concepts as dignity and prestige, but for their very existence.
In London some of this may be hard to understand. I hope that you can let your readers know that I am writing from my heart.
Terence Prittie American Colony Hotel, Jerusalem
Previous page
