ISRAEL'S DECISION: SECURITY WITHOUT PEACE

MEETING in secret session last week, the Israeli Cabinet came to a decision with far-reaching consequences for the issues of war and--above all--peace in the tense Middle East. Ever since the Six-Day War, the single most contentious issue in the Middle East has been the future of the 26,000 square miles of Arab territory occupied by Israel. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser demands the return of "every inch" of that territory as a prior condition to any peaceful settlement. Israel, claiming the spoils of victory, has formally annexed Jerusalem's Arab section and taken over the Golan Heights, from which Syrian guns shelled Israeli kibbutzim for ten years. But Israel has--until now--left open the larger questions of what it intends to do with the populous West Bank of the Jordan River, and with the broad sands of Sinai, which have been a tank battleground in two wars.

Last week the Israeli Cabinet took the first step toward answering those questions. On the West Bank, it agreed to establish a total of 20 paramilitary settlements in the mountainous occupied territory overlooking the Jordan River. Three, in fact, have already been built; the decision was to authorize 17 more to be constructed this year. In Sinai, the Cabinet agreed to build up to ten nahals, or fortified settlements (one is already in operation in the northeastern Sinai). Israel will also establish three new towns in the occupied lands, one between Jericho and Jerusalem, another east of Hebron on the West Bank, and one at Sharm el-Sheikh, overlooking the Straits of Tiran. The Israelis have always maintained that they want to negotiate peace treaties with each of their Arab neighbors. Behind last week's decision was evidently a consensus that such treaties are beyond reach, and that Israel is not willing to let the Big Four powers dictate a settlement. At any rate, the Cabinet decided to act now to ensure what it perceived to be Israel's vital interests. In effect, the decision meant that Israel has opted for the security of extended frontiers at the price of almost certainly forgoing any realistic hope of an agreed peace with the Arab countries.

No More Risk. The Cabinet took no decision on the future of just over 1,000,000 Arabs who inhabit the occupied territories, most of them living on the West Bank. But the new settlements and towns represent the "operative stage" of a far larger plan that encompasses these Arabs as well. That plan bears the signature of Deputy Premier Yigal Allon and dates back to the 1967 war, when he offered it as a suggestion to Premier Levi Eshkol while the guns were still firing. A month and three days after the fighting stopped, he presented his plan to the Cabinet, and has been refining it and pressing for its adoption ever since. Last week's action did not deal with all of the Allon proposals, only one aspect. But even so, it was bound to raise fears in the Arab world that the entire Allon Plan might eventually be adopted.

The plan reflects Allon's conviction that "all the intermediate arrangements of the past led to new wars. We must take no more risks with our future." It assures, for instance, that Jordanian artillery can never again reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as it could until the war. The key element is a security belt ten to 15 miles wide, overlooking the Jordan River, a natural tank barrier that would become Israel's permanent military frontier (see map). It is to be protected by paramilitary settlements located on what would become Israeli territory. The strip is laid out so that it will enclose fewer than 20,000 Arab residents. New Israeli towns will overlook the Arab population centers of Jericho and Hebron, but Jericho itself will become part of a 4.3-mile-wide corridor linking Jordan to the West Bank.

Autonomous Palestine. The plan ingeniously avoids a dilemma presented by the restive West Bank Arabs. If Israel annexed their land outright, the Arabs would amount to 40% of the country's population and, given a higher birth rate, would probably be in a majority by the year 2000. Instead, Allon suggests that the populous areas become an autonomous Palestinian state, demilitarized and forbidden to make treaties with any foreign power, but otherwise free to govern itself. If the Arabs reject this, Allon has a second alternative. He would offer to return the region to Jordan, in exchange for Jordan's acceptance of 200,000 refugees from the Gaza Strip, which Israel intends to annex. The Israelis would offer help in resettling the refugees, extracting from Jordan in turn a public acknowledgment that the refugee problem was solved. Under either alternative, Israel would retain the right to reinvade the West Bank if Arab fedayeen commandos ever based themselves there.

Israel is equally determined that no Arab army will ever return to the Sinai, which would become demilitarized on the Egyptians' side and would be guarded at its southern tip by the new Israeli fishing and resort town to be built at Sharm el-Sheikh. If Egypt were to agree to that, Allon--while not including the suggestion in his formal plan--envisions an eventual Israeli withdrawal to a new north-south border running from Sharm el-Sheikh north to El Arish. The line would include most of the Sinai's important junctions that control the roads into Gaza and the Israeli Negev. At a minimum, the Sinai's most fertile triangle will be taken over and guarded by the fortified settlements to be built there.

No Turning Back. The decision is tantamount to going ahead with those parts of Allon's plan that Israel can carry out alone. As such, it carries the Middle East dispute to an angry new phase, one from which there is no easy turning back. All future negotiations on borders will have to take into account the new Israeli settlements, which by year's end will be "established facts," as Allon puts it. The Arabs are hardly in a position to prevent Israel from acting, and many Israelis believe, perhaps wishfully, that the plan may eventually be accepted by Jordan's King Hussein. As for Nasser, he would be unlikely to survive such a drastic revision of Egypt's borders, and can be counted on to reject it out of hand.

Because the plan is so patently unacceptable to the Arabs, Washington views it as a setback to any hopes for lasting peace in the region, and over the past few months has appealed to Israel to produce a more "realistic" set of border proposals. By last week's move, Israel effectively rejected that appeal.

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