The Imbalance of Power in the Middle East: Arab Options

By Robert G. Hazo

According to syndicated columnists Evans and Novak, President Reagan all but promised in advance that he would not question Israeli Prime Minister Shamir about the Pollard spy scandal or Israel's sale of US arms to Iran when Shamir traveled to Washington in early March. Are American officials so completely unable to distinguish America's Middle East interests from Israel's, and is America's support for Israel so unqualified, that neither the theft of literally a ton of top secret US documents nor Israel's sale of American weapons to Iran were even mentioned in the presence of leaders of a state that literally continues to exist only because of American generosity? Although the Arab-Israeli conflict may seem to be in a quiescent stage, there is no indication that US officials are using the reduced state of Israeli-Syrian tensions to move towards a Middle East peace. On the contrary, American officials seem to have bought Israel's basic contention: that the best policy for now is watchful neglect.

As long as Israel insists, with US backing, that the sole permissible approach to settling the Arab-Israeli conflict is bilateral Israeli negotiations with Arab states (preferably one state at a time), with American as a possible mediator, only three are possible: Arab capitulation to Israeli demands; continuation of a state of no-war, no-peace; or another Arab-Israeli war.

Few Israelis have problems with these alternatives, perhaps believing that an extended period of inertia is most likely. Israel's leaders have begun the long effort to improve its economic situation, cutting inflation from over 300 percent a year to around 20 percent annually. However, Israel has also used the past year to consolidate further its grip on the occupied territories. With hard-liner Yitzhak Shamir back in power, is there any doubt that the settlement-building will grow?

It appears that, since Israeli rejection of the 1982 Reagan peace initiative fell flat, the US Marine debacle in Lebanon, and failure of the two most recent US efforts to get King Hussein into negotiations, America, not having a clear idea of what to do next, is simply following the Israeli lead.

The Israeli approach is outlined in an article entitled "Paying Less Attention to the Middle East," which appeared in the August, 1986 issue of Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee. In this article, American is encouraged to appear to continue to push the idea of territory for peace, but not to do so seriously. Instead, the article counsels the US to ignore both the Palestinian problem and the idea of a comprehensive peace, encourage the Israeli-Egyptian relationship, keep in touch with the Russians only to avoid a military accident, and, above all, fight terrorism. The author maintains that this course of action will not damage US interests, and insists that the question of peace or war must be left solely to the principals in the area.

In contending that the onus for lack of movement is on the Arabs, this article adopts the Israeli policy of waiting for Arab peace initiatives. However, by adopting wholesale this Israeli stance, the United States directly violates its own basic policy for dealing with the Soviet Union.

When addressing US-Soviet relations, both Secretary of State Shultz and Secretary of Defense Weinberger have repeatedly stressed the folly of trying to negotiate with America's principal adversary from a position of weakness—a policy reiterated by every American administration since the beginning of the cold war. However, since the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US has urged the Arab states to negotiate, from a position of relative weakness, bilateral agreements with Israel—from precisely the kind of posture the US flatly rejects as disastrous in any approach to the Soviet Union!

Even if one includes the separate peace Egyptian President Sadat negotiated with Israel, which alienated Egypt from the rest of the Arab world and thus made a comprehensive peace more difficult, this US policy has been a demonstrable failure. There have been five Arab-Israeli wars in 39 years, one about every seven years, and a sixth Syrian-Israeli war may well be looming on the horizon. Given Israel's unwillingness to address seriously the Palestinian aspects of the Camp David agreement, and President Mubarak's rising opposition in Egypt, the odds are that Camp David will remain, for the most part, as only a cease-fire, and not a real step towards peace.

Since the Israeli policy of strategic superiority over any combination of its Arab neighbors has been guaranteed by the United States, the Arabs have been understandably reluctant to enter negotiations. This is not only because of their relative weakness, but also because America's role as an honest broker has been clearly and deeply compromised for some time.

When King Hussein dropped the peace process in February, 1986, he said he could not find enough common ground with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat. Undoubtedly this was a factor in the King's decision to suspend political coordination with the PLO. Under very similar circumstances, however, King Hussein scuttled another peace initiative in 1985 because, as he openly indicated, the deck had been stacked by the United States and Israel. Since, in his view, there was nothing to negotiate, and going through the diplomatic motions would predictably end up with the Arab side getting the short end of the stick, he chose to withdraw.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Arab states of the Gulf have for some time been eager for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Each has its own special reasons for wanting a settlement. Common to them all are concerns about domestic unrest and fears of Israeli and, more recently, Iranian expansionism. All, however, have been reluctant to build up their military, or use their geopolitical assets, or wield their economic leverage—which, in the case of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, is still considerable—to strengthen their bargaining position and thus enable them to play more effectively the game of nations through power-brokering. Despite occasional gestures of turning to other military suppliers or trading partners, their consistent policy boils down to trying to persuade the United States government to use its leverage to make Israel grant territorial or other concessions to reach at least the appearance of an honorable settlement with the Palestinians. At the same time, these Arab states are hoping that peace prospects will be strengthened by one of two possible shifts in public opinion: that living in a constant state of siege and economic hardship will finally tilt public opinion in Israel in favor of territorial concessions for peace, or alternatively, that if Israel refuses to make those necessary concessions, there will be a change in the American public's support for Israel. So far, there is little evidence that this policy is having any significant results.

The position of Israel's Likud leaders remains no territorial concessions for peace. Unfortunately, the position of the Labor Coalition leaders to date is not that much different. They have indicated publicly they are willing to consider returning about half of the territories occupied in the 1967 war, exclusive of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and environs. Half of what is left amounts to about 10 percent of Palestine. According to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the most one can expect from Israel is something like the Allon Plan, which would restore a small fraction of the West Bank to Arab control under strict conditions of demilitarization, Israeli control of immigration and emigration, retention by Israel of outposts along the Jordan River, and possibly Vatican or international control of the holy places in Jerusalem. Whatever one may think of these conditions individually, the totality is hardly an offer that the Palestinians or any Arab representative could accept.

Assad Not Adverse to Diplomacy

On the subject of Israel and peace, Syria has agreed to negotiate, but not from a position of weakness. Syria is openly aiming for strategic parity with Israel, presumably to strengthen its bargaining hand rather than to wage a successful war against Israel, although that possibility cannot be ruled out. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad must know that the moment US and Israeli leaders believe Syria to be close to any kind of parity, Israel will ask for and get more and better US arms, or Israel may decide, as it has before, on a preemptive military attack. Assad obviously believes the risk is worth taking, however, since he seeks to convince Israeli strategists that though Israel may win a sixth war, it will sustain unacceptable losses in doing so. President Assad obviously thinks that at that point—and not before—Israel will be willing to cut a deal. His long-range view is that, situated where it is and being what it is, Israel, as a geopolitical freak, cannot look forward to a long historical life span.

President Assad's focus on strength as an approach to Israel, however, does not exclude substituting diplomatic for military strength. In a world where the overwhelming majority of nations and many major institutions such as the Vatican and the World Council of Churches support the withdrawal of Israel from all territories occupied in the 1967 war and the creation of a Palestinian state, Syria's President would be quite content to enter diplomatic negotiations with some of these nations, particularly the Soviet Union, as allies. It is of more than casual interest that Soviet leaders have mentioned the Middle East as a possible topic for the next US-Soviet summit.

It is an axiom of the Arab-Israeli conflict that, in the absence of unity, the Arabs have never really been strong enough to compete with Israel. Unity among the major Arab states could coalesce, however, around the idea of an international Middle East peace conference in which the nations of the world would deal directly with a problem the protagonists themselves cannot resolve and which poses a growing threat to all nations. The Arab states have nothing to lose by making that position public again and again and by using all the means at their disposal to advance it. It is likely that such a conference can only be convened from outside the area, ideally via a US-Soviet agreement to endorse it. However, as Shamir recently told Secretary of State Shultz, Israel opposes any Middle East peace conference which includes more than the US, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and unspecified Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has no interest in convening a peace conference that would impede its colonization of the occupied territories, or its plan for regional hegemony over any combination of Arab states. It may be that an influential school of Israeli strategic thought recognizes a vested interest in the perpetuation of Israel's state of war with the Arabs as well as the perpetuation of the cold war. A downturn in either or both would reduce aid the US allocates to an Israel that has long been living beyond its own as well as American means by claiming alternately that it is threatened by its neighbors or that it is America's military outpost against communist encroachment in the Middle East.

Viewed in these perspectives, the obstacle to peace in the Middle East is not Arab unwillingness to negotiate. Any successful negotiation can only begin when each side can reasonably expect to end up with an acceptable benefit. An acceptable minimum for the Arab side is precluded by Israeli policy and also by American policy, to the extent that our leaders have allowed it to be co-opted by the Israelis. The ease with which the Israelis have co-opted the direction of US Middle East policy, especially given recent events, is occasion for something between American embarrassment and American shame, if not American disgrace. The first step toward ending the Arab-Israeli dispute which costs Americans so much every year, therefore, is for American officials to retrieve, from the Israelis, the direction of American Middle East policy.

Robert G. Hazo is Chairman of the Middle East Policy Association. He has lived and studied in the area and lectured extensively on the Middle East both here and abroad.