Israel: Good News, Bad News

Our friend Humphrey showed up in the office the other day looking smug, with a little smile playing around his mouth. It was a change from his usually insecure, worried demeanor.

Q So I suppose you're gonna tell me, like you always do, that there's no good news out there

A And a good morning to you, too, Humph. Yes, Kathleen's fine, thank you, and so is our dog Jackie, and

Q I mean, you know darn well that in a couple of weeks there's gonna be a new Labor government in Israel, and you're not going to tell me that that's not

A Jeepers, how thick a skin can a guy get?

Q Eh? I couldn't hear what you-

A Uh, I said you can't, er, pick a win quite yet, Humph. I know the polls show Labor far in the lead, but big changes could take place between now and election day.

Q Look, I know you can't help being a confirmed pessimist-

A Realist, not pessimist-

Q But I'm not going to let your pessimism spoil my good mood. Once Labor is back in power, then I figure maybe even you might get into a good mood for a change.

A You figure wrong, Humph. It's true that Labor may be better in many ways than the Likud coalition—but it's still not going to be nearly good enough, in my opinion, even if it does get back into power.

Q Not good enough for what, for crying out loud-

A It won't have a policy good enough to settle the Palestine problem fairly—and until there is a just settlement, we're going to have continued instability, violence and hatred in that part of the world. Does that answer your question?

A Humph, if you're going to sigh, would you please keep that smile off your face? It just doesn't fit.

Look, Labor's record on doing what was necessary to bring peace, during the days when it did have power, was terrible. Remember, Labor was in charge of the West Bank for the first ten years of the occupation, and although it never made the claim that the territory belonged to Israel for biblical reasons, as Likud does, it somehow couldn't get itself to give it back—even in return for iron-clad, internationally enforced peace guarantees. It wanted to keep large hunks of it for "security" purposes—without considering the fact that Israel will never attain real security until it is ready to make a peace agreement that not only protects Israel's interests but is also acceptable to the Arabs.

Caving in to Settlers

Remember, too, that it wasn't Likud that started the provocative policy of putting Jewish settlements in the West Bank—it was Labor. And although Labor said it didn't want settlements established in urban areas heavily populated by Arabs, it always caved in when extremist settlers went ahead and did it anyway. It was Labor that provided such settlers the wedge that they needed to move in on Hebron and turn it into the tinderbox which it remains to this day.

Q Yeah, but hey, that's history, man! This is 1984! Dontcha ever read about how the Israelis have changed? They learned their lesson in Lebanon—that they can't solve all their problems just by being macho, and they don't want to go to war again, and

A That all sounds very nice, Humphrey, but since you pay so much attention to what the pollsters say about the election results, maybe you ought to read about what they're saying concerning the West Bank.

One of Israel's most respected pollsters and political analysts, Hannoch Smith, says that the Labor alignment is ahead in the opinion polls largely because of the mess in the domestic economy, not because of public support for Labor's views on defense or peace issues. In fact, according to Smith it's because Labor is viewed as so dovish on the West Bank that it's getting less support from the public than it might otherwise have.

Q Okay, okay—so maybe Labor's leaders are out in front of the voters on this issue. But it doesn't matter how they win, once they're in power these guys can go ahead and carry out those policies that are needed to settle the Palestinian problem.

A Yeah, but the catch is, Humph—and I guess you weren't really listening to what I said a few moments ago—that lots of Israeli voters may call them dovish, and you may call them dovish, but I think they're too hawkish to make the kind of settlement that will be required to solve the problem.

Q Boy, you kill me. Everybody's wrong but you

A Well, even if everybody else was saying something different, I could still have my own opinion—you come here to get my opinion, don't you?—but the fact is there are lots of Middle East experts who feel the same way.

Anyhow, let's take a look at the views of the top Labor leaders on these issues. None of them, of course, are in favor of either negotiating with the PLO or allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state—which I personally believe will one day have to be set up if there is ever to be a solution that will last. But even if you assume that a step in the right direction would be a return to the pre-1967 borders—which would include giving the West Bank back to Jordan or turning it over to a Jordan-West Bank federation—how good are the chances that a Labor coalition would do this? Virtually nil. The leader of the party, Shimon Peres, talks of "territorial compromise" —but he doesn't mean withdrawing from the West Bank, Gaza and Golan in return for Arab acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over other Arab land taken over by the Israelis in 1948 and 1949. fie means dividing up the West Bank, and Gaza, and Golan. As far as the West Bank goes, he believes, according to the Israeli press, that no more than 60 percent of it could ever be vacated by Israel. Former Prime Minister Rabin, still a power in the party, has stated publicly that in addition to Jerusalem—which the Labor Party annexed when it was in office—the areas of the Jordan Valley; the eastern foothills of what the Israelis call Samaria; most of the West Bank between Jerusalem and Hebron; and the southern part of the Gaza Strip would always have to remain a part of Israel. And the Secretary of the Labor Party, Bar-Lev, said publicly not long ago: "We can compromise only on a very, very, very small part"—that's right, three veries, I can remember it clearly—"of the Golan Heights."

Straightening out the Frontiers

This kind of idea on what a so-called compromise over occupied Arab land could consist of is a long, long, long way from what was in the minds of American and other sponsors of 1967's U.N. Resolution 242—which even the Israelis claimed to accept, at the time. The sponsors believed that "minor border rectifications" —straightening out the frontier where it passes through a village, for example—would be permissible, and that's why the resolution did not refer to withdrawal from all territories, although the equivalent of the word "all" did show up in the official French-language text. Top U.S. officials used to say for many years that insubstantial alterations of territory could be the only exceptions to complete Israeli withdrawal. You don't hear American officials talking this way anymore—but King Hussein still does. The trouble is, Administration policy-makers for some reason or other don't believe he means what he says—despite their abysmal track record over the years in correctly reading the King's intentions. If people with a much better track record are to be believed, he means every word of what he says. So what is the basis for a settlement? The difference between the Likud wanting to keep all of the West Bank and the Labor alignment wanting to keep nearly half of it seems big: but for all practical purposes, there's no difference at all.

Whew!

Q Yeah, your long lectures sometimes give me a pain in the you-know-what. So okay, even if there's a little truth in what ya say

A ?!

Q —the West Bank and Gaza aren't the only things, right? I mean, how about Lebanon? Looks like Likud wants to stay there, but Labor says it'll pull the troops right out.

A If you'd been around in 1967, young man-

Q Hey, I'm 44!

A —you'd recall that the Israelis used to talk that way about the West Bank. But somehow or other nothing ever happened.

Back to May 17th?

Anyhow, you're old enough to have read the issue of The New York Times of a couple of weeks ago

A —in which Shimon Peres told Thomas Friedman that if he became prime minister he hoped to be able to remove all Israeli troops from Lebanon in from three to six months—the time it would take to establish "security measures" in southern Lebanon that would protect northern Israel from attack. And what were the security measures that he planned to put in place? Well, it would include early warning systems, air surveillance, naval and ground patrols, and the build-up of the Israeli-backed "South Lebanon army"—all of them measures that were agreed to by the Lebanese and Israeli governments when they made their security arrangements on May 17, 1983.

As you know, Humph, the present Lebanese government, under Syrian influence, is not the one that signed that agreement—in fact it abrogated it. So it doesn't seem possible that it would ever agree to have that kind of an Israeli "presence'' in the south even after the Israelis are supposed to have withdrawn. This is an argument that could go on for a long time—maybe for as long as the one that has been going on over the future of the West Bank.

So do you still think a Labor government will be a solution to our problems out there?

Q Look, could you open the window a bit, I think I'm-

A Gosh, you are looking a little gray around the edges, Humph. What happened? You seemed in such good spirits when you came in...