Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006240294
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Long
It is about how a new Arab-Israeli conflict has become feasible, and about how safeguards against it have been evaporating.
Indeed, for a few days this month some feared war might be imminent, after an effort on May 30 by a radical Palestinian faction to attack the beaches of Tel Aviv.
The raid originated in Libya, and after it was thwarted Egyptian diplomats frantically called on officials in Jerusalem and in Washington. In effect they were saying that if Israel retaliated against Libya it would set off a chain reaction that would pull Iraq, Syria and Jordan into a potentially catastrophic confrontation with the Israelis.
It is not so much that anyone is looking for a fight, but that all avenues to peace in the Middle East appear clogged. When this happens, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and again in 1973, the result has often been war.
This spring, in scores of interviews conducted in Cairo, Jerusalem and throughout the Middle East, politicians, military officials and diplomats made it clear that even while Israel remains at peace with the most populous Arab country, Egypt, other checks and balances that made an Arab-Israeli war practically impossible for most of a decade have deteriorated.
The Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Israel's daily repression of it, have inflamed popular Arab sentiment, prompting Arab governments to restore the Arab-Israeli conflict to the top of their agenda.
It has been easier to do this since a truce was reached in 1988 in the Iraq-Iran conflict, which for eight years diverted Arab attention and financial resources.
At the same time, the increasing instability of King Hussein's regime in Jordan has pushed it into close alliance with Iraq, a development that seems from Israel's point of view to create a real danger of an eastern front because it eliminates Jordan as a buffer against Iraq.
Iraq and Syria remain estranged over their rivalry for Arab leadership, and this limits the chances of achieving a solid eastern front.
But Egypt's return to the Arab diplomatic fold has allowed it to mediate between Iraq and Syria, and some Israelis worry that even a limited reconciliation could create a dangerous threat.
On top of all this, it is evident that Egypt, the only Arab country to openly advocate a peaceful settlement with Israel, is increasingly impatient with what it sees as Israel's procrastination on peace talks with Palestinians.
The establishment of a new hard-line government in Israel, led by Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir, has heightened tension. It appears to have closed more of the few options still open for pursuing a peace process encouraged by the United States and Egypt.
The options were further narrowed when on Wednesday President Bush, frustrated by the failure of PLO leader Yasser Arafat to denouncethe guerrilla raid on Israel's coast, announced he was breaking off dialogue with the PLO. A drift toward tougher positions is also evident on the Arab side. Last month, at an Arab summit meeting in Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq widened his threat of retaliation against any Israeli attack by saying he meant an attack against any Arab country - not just Iraq.
This implied that Iraq now thinks the option of inflicting heavy damage on Israel is no longer a wild dream, thanks to Baghdad's new military might - long-range missiles, chemical weapons and the combat-readiness its army acquired during the war with Iran.
While most Arabs, and many Westerners, tend to dismiss Iraq's talk as bluff, neither Palestinians nor Israelis do. After the Arab summit meeting, a senior Palestinian leader familiar with President Hussein's way of thinking said:
"You can't imagine what having 50 fighting divisions can do to a man's psychology. Saddam is not kidding. For 10 years Hafez al-Assad in Syria has been talking about achieving strategic parity with Israel, but Saddam has done it with these chemical weapons."
For their part, Israelis say that if Hussein has proved anything in the decade since he started the war with Iran, it is that he is "capable of serious miscalculations," in the words of Yossi Olmert, director of the Israeli government's information office in Jerusalem.
Arab and Israeli analysts say that all these verbal duels are slowly reinstituting the notion that a war in the Middle East is tolerable.
Two weeks ago, President Assad of Syria told his Parliament: "Wars, nowadays, will not be as short or as limited as they have been in the past. Israel is still superior to the Arabs in technology and can visit on us great human catastrophes, but the Arabs, too, can now visit upon Israel similarly devastating catastrophes with the weapons they possess."
Clearly alarmed, and concerned about becoming isolated again in the Arab world, Egypt spoke up in a protest by Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel-Meguid against a recent comment on the Israeli radio by the Israeli army's deputy chief of staff, Baruch Ba, who had predicted that Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Libya could launch a war against Israel.
"I don't exclude Egypt," he added, noting that in such a case Israel would retake the Sinai Desert and might not stop at the Suez Canal.
In his response, Meguid said the general's comments were "returning the Mideast region to the atmosphere that existed before peace" and Cairo would not take such threats idly. Egyptian diplomats said their purpose was to cool tempers.
Cairo's real concern, they said, is that if the peace process collapses, Egypt will have no choice but to side with the majority Arab camp.
In the midst of these forces, holding the balancing wheel, is the Palestine Liberation Organization, which refused to publicly denounce the aborted raid on Israel.
The raid was staged by a PLO faction, and the Americans made a denunciation of it a condition for keeping open the dialogue the PLO established with Washington two years ago.
Secretary of State James Baker used the threat of an American suspension of its role as mediator to prod not just the PLO but also Israel and Arab countries into new moves toward negotiations.
But Palestinians widely view the PLO-American dialogue as having yielded no positive results, and the PLO leadership felt it had only two poor options: End the dialogue and abandon the peace process, or yield to the Americans and invite an open rebellion within PLO ranks by those who would prefer to be in harmony with the radical voices rising all around the region.
by CNB