A Harsh Rebuke for Israel

By Marguerite Johnson

The U.S. backs a U.N. resolution criticizing its ally

When the time came, she raised her hand so tentatively that for a moment there was some doubt in the chamber as to how she was going to vote. But Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, did indeed vote yes last week, thereby joining in one of the harshest United Nations rebukes of Israel that the U.S. had ever supported.

Kirkpatrick's hesitancy in the Security Council reflected the ambivalent approach of the Reagan Administration toward the problem of censuring Israel for the bombing raid on Iraq's Tammuz nuclear reactor. Eloquently recalling the "strength of U.S. ties and commitment to Israel and the warmth of our feelings," Kirkpatrick admitted that the draft was "not a perfect resolution." But she added that Washington had been "shocked" by the Israelis' launching a raid before peaceful approaches had been exhausted. Replied Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Blum: "Israel unreservedly rejects the biased and one-sided resolution just adopted by the council." Then he added with heavy sarcasm, "Israel will treat this resolution with the respect it so richly deserves."

The wording of the resolution had been personally hammered out by Kirkpatrick and Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi during three days of intense negotiations. Iraq had wanted to include a call for sanctions against Israel, but the U.S. made it clear that it would use its veto if they were mentioned. Instead, the approved resolution "strongly condemns" Israel for its raid on the reactor and urges it to pay damages to Iraq, which was "entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered." There is nothing that could compel Israel to make such restitution, however, and Blum had already told the council that his government would not pay Iraq "a brass farthing" for destroying the reactor.

The resolution also in effect rejected Israel's rationale that it had destroyed the reactor because the government had learned that the Iraqis were about to use it to make atomic bombs to attack Israel. The text pointed out that Iraq had accepted the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection safeguards and urged Israel to open its own nuclear facilities to IAEA inspectors. Unlike Iraq, Israel has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which would require it to allow visits by the IAEA. Israel argues that the treaty is meaningless unless peace is established in the Middle East and fears that the international inspectors could acquire a dangerous degree of access to key security areas.

In the aftermath of the Israeli raid, U.S. policy became a high-wire act aimed on the one hand at preserving the U.S. position with moderate Arab countries and on the other hand at demonstrating both displeasure with and support for Israel. "Making the best we could of a terrible situation," as a senior White House official put it, Washington agreed to the strong language in the U.N. resolution to placate Arab anger. Said the official: "We worked very, very hard on the wording of this resolution in order to maintain a dialogue and our credibility with the moderate Arabs. We also wanted to recognize that we have interests in the Middle East that go beyond Israel."

But neither the Administration nor Congress was prepared for a showdown with Israel. At his press conference three days before the U.N. vote, President Reagan was careful to appear to justify the bombing of the Iraqi reactor by saying that the Israelis "might have sincerely believed it was a defensive move." Senator Charles Percy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, summed up the general congressional reaction by noting, "I don't think Congress would ever cut Israel off and leave it to the tender mercies of its adversaries in the Middle East."

Meanwhile Administration officials continued to refute Israeli claims that Iraq was achieving the capability to build nuclear bombs. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Walter Stoessel told the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the U.S. had been "concerned" about Iraq's nuclear program. But, he insisted, "we have not made any definitive conclusions that they were aiming for a nuclear weapons capability." State Department Counselor Robert McFarlane coolly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Israel's attack on Iraq had "shattered this country's trust and confidence" in its ally. Some members of Congress insisted that CIA intelligence reports had indicated that the Iraqis were indeed planning to build nuclear weapons. The Administration went to considerable pains to differ with the CIA finding.

The Administration's position that there was no proof the Iraqis intended to build a bomb is supported by a former top State Department official in the Carter Administration. Said he: "While some aspects of the Iraqi program seemed to go beyond peaceful purposes that might ultimately lead to weapons production, that was not our appraisal."

The raid story took yet another bizarre twist when the Washington Post reported that last October two Israeli engineers had visited facilities of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington and asked about the sort of damage 2,200-lb. bombs could inflict on a reactor. (The Baghdad reactor was destroyed by such bombs.) A subsequent NRC memorandum reportedly noted that "it was unclear whether the Israelis were interested in defending their own plants or destroying someone else's." Israeli officials last week dismissed the visit as "routine."

Beyond the immediate fallout from the attack on Israeli-U.S. relations, the Administration was concerned about the consequent heightening of tensions throughout the Middle East. The Israeli strike immensely complicated, and may have destroyed, any hope that Philip Habib, Reagan's special Middle East envoy, could find a solution to the crisis over Syria's antiaircraft missiles in Lebanon. Last week Habib continued his round-robin shuttle, conferring first with Saudi officials in Riyadh, then with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus, next with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Jerusalem and at week's end with the Saudis again. As usual, Habib was tight-lipped about his negotiations, but Begin announced that Israel was determined to destroy the missiles if diplomacy did not remove them, and he warned pointedly that he would not wait forever. One of the most serious effects of the raid on the reactor appeared to be on Saudi efforts to fashion an Arab initiative to ease Lebanese tensions. Last week the Saudis dismissed Habib's mission as "irrelevant" and castigated the U.S. for its support or Israel.

As other Arab leaders closed ranks, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat found himself once again dangerously isolated because of his continuing support of the peace talks with Israel. So outraged was the Egyptian parliament by the raid that it might have demanded that the entire Egyptian-Israeli dialogue be reconsidered if Sadat aides had not intervened to cool off the members of his own party. Egyptian officials, moreover, expressed concern that the U.S.'s own credibility in the Middle East was at stake and urged Washington to take a decisive stand for the sake of its interests in the region.

In Israel itself, the raid had become an inflammatory issue in the already bitter campaign for the national elections on June 30. Ever since his first press conference after the raid, Begin had been a fount of information--and astonishing misinformation. Even the chief of MOSSAD, Israel's intelligence agency, felt constrained to lament the "devil's dance of public statements and counterstatements." Begin incorrectly said that there was a secret chamber for making bombs beneath the reactor, falsely quoted a Baghdad newspaper to the effect that the reactor was to be used "against the Zionist enemy," and claimed that the reactor would soon become operational, a view contradicted even by some senior Israeli military officials.

When Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres condemned the raid, arguing that quiet diplomacy might have obviated the need for it, Begin lashed out with a vengeance. Said he: "I hate, with a mortal hatred, the word 'treason.' But there is something of sabotage in the statements of Israel's Labor Party." Then Begin went on to approvingly quote a Knesset ally who said that Peres "had stuck a knife in the nation's back."

Some of Begin's more extreme supporters, who have taken to referring to their leader as a "messiah," responded with an assortment of bullyboy tactics. They disrupted Peres rallies by drowning out his speeches, rolling a can of burning garbage into the crowd, throwing tomatoes at his car and trashing one Labor Party office and fire-bombing another.

Peres responded with some harsh words of his own, calling Begin "a danger to democracy" and implying analogies between "Beginism" and "fascism," a word with particularly bitter connotations in Israel. Said Peres: "He wants to set up a regime that will have us all afraid." After Labor began running campaign films of the violence, spliced with Begin's inflammatory rhetoric, the Prime Minister asked his supporters to abandon such disruptive tactics at political rallies.

As the election neared, it appeared that Begin's hard-line strategy of recent weeks was going down well in Israel. Polls last January showed his Likud coalition trailing far behind, with Labor in reach of obtaining an absolute majority in the Knesset. But in a poll taken just before the raid, Likud pulled ahead of Labor, 38% to 33%, and Menachem Begin appeared to be within reach of another four-year term. --By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem and Louis Halasz at the United Nations, with other bureaus

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, Louis Halasz

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