U.S.: Letting Might Make Right

We might as well come right out and say it. We understand the need for compromise in working out relations among men and among nations, but we think there are some things on which there should be no compromise. One of them involves the unjustified invasion and occupation of one country by another. We will not go back over the old arguments as to whether the invasion of Lebanon by Israel was justified. There is hardly a country in the world which thinks it was—and that includes the United States, which condemned the invasion at the United Nations. We think that in a case of this kind, there should be no "compromise" which allows the culpable state to benefit from having carried out its act. If it does, it can be tempted to try again, somewhere else.

The Lebanon-Israel agreement mediated by Secretary of State Shultz does allow Israel to gain from its invasion in a number of ways. Among them is an opportunity for some of its soldiers to participate, actively and for the first time legally, in carrying out policing operations on Lebanese soil. It will also have official sanction to carry out intelligence operations, and Israel's Lebanese protege Major Saad Haddad will be permitted to continue wielding considerable power in the south, despite the fact that the Lebanese government had regarded him as a traitor for years.

Many people will say we are nitpicking. Isn't it better for the Lebanese, as President Gemayel has already said, to accept 50 Israeli soldiers on its soil in return for getting rid of 50,000? Yes, it certainly is better, if that's the only alternative. We do not blame Lebanon at all. Lebanon is occupied by a vastly superior military force. It cannot negotiate with Israel as an equal. It has to accept the best deal that the Israelis are prepared to give it. We do not expect Lebanon to commit suicide in order to satisfy our or anyone else's concern with the need for principle and tidiness in international affairs.

We do, however, blame the United States. As a superpower, rather than a small country under occupation, the U.S. should be concerned with defending the basic principles of international behavior, and as the nation which is providing Israel with the subsidies that make it possible for Israel to be as powerful as it is, the U.S. should have used its influence to make Israel conform with these principles. Mr. Shultz reacts almost with horror when anyone suggests the U.S. should put "pressure" on Israel, but as George W. Ball suggests (see p. 8), it is not a question of "pressure"—which implies an attempt to take away from Israel something that it has an absolute right to have. What is at issue is whether the U.S. should continue giving subsidies to Israel when it uses those subsidies to carry out actions which are not in the U.S. interest. We think that if the United States announced that it would no longer provide any funds to Israel until it withdrew completely from that country, Israel would quickly lose interest in its 50 soldiers and in Major Haddad. As we all know, Eisenhower succeeded in getting Israel to evacuate Sinai this way, and he did it on exactly the same issue of principle. In his words: "Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory ... be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal?"