Israel: U.S. "Ally" or Not?

Recent confrontations in Lebanon between U.S. marines and Israeli soldiers have sparked debate in Washington over a key question: to what extent is Israel a friend and ally of the United States?

Secretary of State George Shultz has said on television that he believes Israel is not only a friend and ally but is a "true and trusted" one. He has also said that the two countries have "common objectives" in the Middle East.

But many other U.S. officials behind the scenes are questioning whether such statements actually conform with the facts of the U.S.-Israel relationship as they are revealed by the record of recent months, and even years.

As they see it, the frictions between American and Israeli troops in Lebanon during the past few weeks are only the latest manifestations of a current Israeli attitude that comes closer to hostility than to friendship. Behind the behavior appears to be a desire to thwart current U.S. objectives which Israelis view as being opposed to their own.

The Israeli attitude is nothing new. For more than a quarter of a century, there have been countless U.S. policies which the Israelis did not like and tried to frustrate—with whatever means seemed appropriate. For example, in 1954 Israel was unhappy at U.S. moves to court Gamal Abdul Nasser, who only recently had taken overfull control of Egypt. To destroy the budding friendship, Israeli agents in Cairo set off bombs in U.S. Information Service libraries in Cairo and Alexandria. The purpose, as Israeli officials eventually had to acknowledge during a subsequent scandal known as the "Lavon Affair," was to have the U.S. believe that it was Egyptians who had committed these anti-American acts.

Two other major actions taken behind the U.S.'s back by Israel were the 1956 attack on Suez and the 1967 bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty. In the first, Israel joined Britain and France in a military operation to topple Nasser, and kept its plans secret from the United States. President Eisenhower publicly labelled Israel an "aggressor." The attack on the naval vessel Liberty by Israeli planes and torpedo boats took place during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and killed 34 American sailors, wounding 171. The Israelis claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. But survivors have testified that the attack was deliberate—that the day was clear, the ship was flying an oversized American flag that flew unfurled all day in eight knots of wind, and that prior to the attack the ship was systematically reconnoitered, at low levels and for seven hours, by ten Israeli jets and flying box cars. One theory is that Israel wanted to prevent the ship, which was an electronic eavesdropping vessel, from listening in on some potentially embarrassing discussions of plans to take over Syria's Golan Heights.

The Most Recent Divergences

The current problems which the U.S. is facing with Israel are an outgrowth of the invasion of Lebanon last June and the presentation of the "Reagan Plan" for the West Bank and Gaza last September. Since early last summer, the two countries have been on divergent paths in the region, and in the view of many U.S. officials the Israelis have made this clear by their attempts to sabotage U.S. policies-and not always very subtly.

The problems over Lebanon—which Israel had invaded on June 6 under the correct assumption that the U.S. Administration would raise no serious objections—got started after the U.S. concluded that Israel was engaging in an unnecessarily brutal and bloody siege of the inhabitants of West Beirut. On July 4, the U.S. made its first public request to give the civilians a break, by voting for a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the restoration of water, electricity, food and medical supplies. The Israelis ignored it. From then on, as the siege continued, Israel shunted aside U.S. appeals and rebuffed its "demands" for a cessation of the bombings and a lifting of the siege and usually did it in a way that made its disdain quite clear. For example, after President Reagan announced on August 1 that it was "absolutely imperative" for the Israelis to adhere to an agreed ceasefire, they unleashed a record-breaking, 20-hour bombardment, and moved their tanks into West Beirut for the first time. And on August 12, when President Reagan phoned Prime Minister Begin to express his "shock" and "outrage" at a particularly intensive period of bombing and shelling that had broken up a delicate negotiating session between U.S. envoy Philip Habib and the Prime Minister of Lebanon that morning, Mr. Begin assured the President that the attack had stopped. A few minutes later, Mr. Reagan was informed that the attack was indeed continuing, and it did not stop until nightfall. During most of its shelling and bombing—carried out with U.S. weapons that had been provided for "defensive" use only—Israel made liberal use of "cluster bombs," in violation of written promises it had given to the U.S. in 1978 after it acknowledged having "mistakenly" used these particularly deadly bombs during a previous invasion of Lebanon.

Entering West Beirut

One of the U.S.'s fears throughout the siege of last summer was the possibility of an Israeli invasion of West Beirut, which it believed would only exacerbate the situation and cause even more massive civilian casualties. For this reason, it mediated an evacuation of the PLO guerrillas under which Israel gave the U.S. specific assurances it would not enter that part of the city. On September 3, however, the Israelis moved tank forces into -the Beirut quarter of Bir Hassan, in clear violation of the agreements. On September 15, after the assassination of President-elect Bashir Gemayel, Israel broke its word again and occupied all of West Beirut. Its occupation troops showed little concern for U.S. interests. Some of them set up an observation post, without permission, in the U.S.-owned building destined to be the future U.S. Embassy, and at one point an Israeli officer took a shot in broad daylight at a U.S. marine guard on top of the present embassy building, which had the American flag flying.

Already, on August 7, Israel had begun to send strong and unpleasant signals that it did not want to have an American military presence in Lebanon. On that day, two Israeli jet fighters made several mock attacks—passing "dangerously" close and lasting for 15 minutes, according to Pentagon officials—at two U.S. helicopters carrying an American military liaison team to Lebanon for a meeting with Philip Habib to discuss plans for the use of marines. When U.S. officers on a similar mission landed in Lebanon the following day, Israeli troops prevented them from going to meet Mr. Habib on schedule, and drove trucks onto the landing zone to prevent the helicopters from returning to pick them up.

The first group of U.S. marines sent to Lebanon stayed only 16 days, but when the President decided after the Shatila and Sabra massacre to send the marines back, once again Israel made problems long before the marines even arrived. The marines were to take over the airport of Beirut, which Israel had agreed to evacuate. But its troops went about their preparations for leaving the airport at a deliberate, snail's pace. When the day came for the scheduled marine landing, the Israelis had not gone yet, and U.S. naval vessels with the marines aboard waited off shore. Only after three more days of painstaking negotiations could they come in.

Taunting and Nudging

Ever since, Israeli troops have been making life difficult for the marines in a whole series of incidents during which they have taunted them, nudged them with their vehicles, confronted them with their tanks, and accused them of acting as a "buffer" for Palestinian guerrillas. They have also singled out U.S. officers serving with the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization for harassment. The commanding general of the U.S. marine corps said it was "inconceivable to me why Americans—serving in peacekeeping roles—must be harassed, endangered and degraded by an ally," and added that he believed the incidents are "timed, orchestrated, and executed for obtuse Israeli political purposes." It is believed by many political analysts in Washington, both in and out of the government, that Israel wants to discredit the marines as peacekeepers in order to demonstrate that only Israel is capable of establishing a "security zone" in southern Lebanon. But this is where U.S. and Israeli viewpoints diverge sharply-since the U.S. believes, along with Lebanon, that any permanent Israeli presence would make it impossible for Lebanon to function as a stable and sovereign state, and would destroy its economic viability as well by cutting it off from trade with the Arab world. If to be allies means to have common policies, the U.S. and Israel are not allies in Lebanon.

In the West Bank and Gaza, unlike in Lebanon, there is no American "presence" that can lead to direct confrontations. But the incompatibility of U.S. and Israeli policies towards the area could not be more clear. The United States, in a proposal submitted by President Reagan on September 1, 1982, called on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and allow those territories to be linked to Jordan. The proposal was rejected immediately by Mr. Begin, who said that Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank was a "simple historic truth (which) will never change." His number-two man in the government at the time, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, said that "not only will Israel not accept" the plan, "it will not discuss it." Sharon may now be gone, but Mr. Begin still is not willing to discuss it either.

As it has done so many times before with other U.S. plans, Israel found a way to blow up the Reagan Plan by deed as well as word—and to do it in a manner that would also humiliate the United States. As part of his proposal, Mr. Reagan had asked Israel to put a freeze on the building of settlements in the West Bank, in order not to foreclose the solution he was proposing. But on the same day that the Israeli government officially rejected the Reagan Plan, it also announced that the building of ten new settlements—yes, ten—had been approved for the West Bank. And ever since, Israel has been accelerating the pace of its settlement of the West Bank to an unprecedented level.

In short, Israel has been giving U.S. policymakers plenty of reason to wonder: just what is an ally, anyway?