How Deep Is the U.S. Commitment to Israel?

By Thomas Griffith

The Phantoms were rushed off to Israel without public debate, but in confidence that the American public would approve. In the emergency, presumably no political conditions were asked of Israel either: this was not the time. A month ago such American aid to Israel might have risked Arab displeasure, even some oil blackmail, but would have counted on a quick Israeli military triumph. But what if--not to prejudge battles that have not yet been decided--Israel's situation were suddenly to take a turn for the worse, even become desperate? How deep then is the American commitment to Israel? Might the U.S., by sending Phantoms and missiles and other sophisticated weaponry, once again, so soon after Viet Nam, be starting down another slippery slope?

No treaties, such as the American NATO pledge to European partners that an attack on one is an attack on all, bind the U.S. to Israel's defense. The Israelis have not asked for one, in part out of their own self-confident, self-reliant distaste for alignment and dependence. The American tie to Israel, which is not to be found in formal treaties, surfaces more readily in presidential statements and the platforms of both political parties. American Jews are both articulate and influential, and their anxieties are deeply felt whenever Israel is in danger, but those ringing platform pledges were not written simply to appease them in defiance of a contrary mood among non-Jewish Americans. They too remember Hitler's holocaust and admire the tough independence of the Israeli people.

Aid to Israel differs from, more than it resembles the American involvement in Viet Nam. Democratic Israel is not a divided and apathetic people, authoritatively ruled, reluctant to fight its own battles. It does not ask for American soldiers. It is not quite an ally; in some respects it is a client, but it is in no sense a puppet of the U.S.

Yet another vital difference between supporting Israel and supporting Viet Nam must be acknowledged. Unlike Viet Nam, whose geographical relationship to the superpowers was peripheral, the Middle East is a critical area of contention. Prolonged active warfare between two sides, each supplied by a great power, could easily involve the great powers themselves in war. Supplying Israel with weaponry in measured response to Russian resupply of the Arabs may be an essential interim step to ensure Israel's survival, but it is not in the American interest to underwrite blindly Israel's own notion of sufficient victory or readiness to settle. The latent dangers in protracted fighting would quickly become evident to Americans if the Israelis at some point were to say that they are not only short of Phantoms but of trained pilots to man them. Would the U.S. then provide "volunteers"? The Pentagon's present answer to such future worries is: equipment yes, men no. Already Congressmen are warning against any commitment of troops. "Worst-case scenarios" are often an inhibiting guide in policy shaping, but they do suggest the vital American interest in peacemaking.

Historians will long argue whether a real chance for peace existed after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. Perhaps the Arabs were too beaten and humiliated to negotiate. In any case, the Israeli offers of "generous" terms and the return of most of the conquered Arab lands gradually turned to a popular satisfaction in Israel with the extended space that the nation now had to breathe in, beyond the reach of Arab guns. Plenty of room and a strong arm, always at the ready, became the Israeli formula for survival, and anything else--U.N. resolutions, roving ambassadors, third-party mediations, Arab proposals--was politely listened to, but in the end rejected as false security. Against Arab hate and Soviet arms, Israelis were scornful of promises and leary of guarantees; by their own strength they had survived, and would survive.

Though the U.S. is the best friend the Israelis have, and President Nixon is steadfast in their support, the U.S. Government has never agreed with the hardening Israeli line on territorial expansion as its only and surest protection. A month before the fighting broke out, Nixon acknowledged that "both sides are at fault" for the failure of a peace settlement in the Middle East. Israel, though dismissing the U.N. and often caustic about the validity of world opinion, is not indifferent to the reactions of others, particularly in the U.S. The proof is its decision deliberately to await an Arab attack rather than to strike preemptively.

As the battle rages distantly and violently on both sides of the canal, anyone who questions Israel's wisdom in having hung onto the vast uninhabited buffer space that it seized in the Sinai apparently cannot now get much of a hearing in the streets of Tel Aviv. The answer that will not be listened to is really a question: Would the fourth round of fighting have come so soon, and would it have been fought with such Arab tenacity, had not the Egyptians felt a just grievance at the loss of their lands east of Suez, and believed that what was held by the sword could only be freed by the sword?

Intransigence is not an Israeli monopoly, nor reasonableness a dominant trait in Arab policy. So interwoven are the rights and wrongs of the Arab and Israeli cases, so conflicting their claims to a twice-Promised Land, so much death and grief and hurt a part of existence to both peoples, so real their fears and so inescapable their hostility, that outsiders who arrive there to talk of evenhandedness, fair-mindedness and rational solutions find themselves instantly suspect for their naivete. The most egregious assumption that outsiders make is that their detachment gives them superior wisdom. In fact, the intractable problems of the Middle East have been endlessly considered and eloquently argued on both sides. In candid private moments, Israeli leaders can discuss Arab rights and needs with sympathy and understanding. On the Arab side, Hussein has acted with courageous prudence, Feisal with caution, and Sadat has proved a more subtle and rational strategist than Nasser. On almost every major issue, solutions that could be made palatable to both sides have long been canvassed--a demilitarized Sinai and a demilitarized West Bank that would protect Israel without its occupying Arab lands; territorial adjustments in the Golan Heights, juridical solutions to the problem of Jerusalem; compensation and compromises on the Palestinian Arab refugees; face-saving devices so that the two sides could meet together. Most of these points were talked out in Secretary of State Rogers' futile journeys around the Middle East. But at no time have both sides simultaneously felt the same necessity to settle, and the final dismissing phrase to outside mediators was an objection to "imposed" solutions. The logic of such attitudes was that a new bloodletting was necessary before a new equilibrium could be ratified.

Wars are rarely that obliging, and may produce instead of a new equilibrium only exhausted winners and losers and no change of heart. But this time necessity may impose solutions. The Arabs, even if ultimately defeated, have already restored their pride. The Israelis, even if again victorious, might take counsel of the loss of so many men and ask whether they can safely commit their future to a succession of "rounds" of fighting. The U.S., in helping Israel with Phantoms, is taking risks and acquiring rights and interests of its own, including a say in the timing of a cease-fire and a commitment to a settlement. A more active American and Soviet presence in the Middle East is a mixed blessing to all concerned, the U.S. included, but it makes possible for the first time a network of big-power agreements and internationally policed borders that could guarantee, in any settlement that the Arabs and Israel themselves work out, the peace that Israel has never found by its own arms alone.

. Thomas Griffith

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