Israel Won’t Be the Sacrificial Lamb : There Are Certain Things a Nation Cannot Do With Survival at Stake

Israel today finds itself in the most precarious and isolated position since the onset of the 1967 Six-Day War. While it won that conflict, it has already lost the media wars of 1988. Against the backdrop of the intifada , the latest headlines celebrating the new-found “moderation” of “Freedom Fighter” Yasser Arafat, along with his meeting in Stockholm with five American Jews, Israel has been isolated from world public opinion. And now, amid a chorus led by European diplomats, editorial writers and Mideast-analysis spin doctors, Ronald Reagan and George P. Shultz have instructed the opening of a direct dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Where can Israel go from here?

First, Jerusalem needs to move beyond the question of the PLO’s recognition or lack thereof. As a sovereign state that is held accountable for every word and deed, it can never hope to match Arafat’s traveling media circus. Therefore, Israel’s collective leadership, led by both Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, must enunciate clearly what it has not stated for a very long time: The overwhelming majority of the citizens of the state of Israel view a PLO state as outlined by Arafat in Geneva as the beginning of the end of the Jewish state. They must make it clear that no Israeli negotiator, from Labor or Likud, would ever agree to a U.N. or other foreign military presence on the West Bank. That was tried before. But in May, 1967, when Egypt demanded that the United Nations remove its troops from the Gaza Strip--just 40 miles from Tel Aviv--then-U.N. Secretary General U Thant, under pressure from the Arab bloc and its friends, immediately pulled out the multinational force. A few days later the Six-Day War began.

Since then the United Nations has voted to condemn Zionism as racism, and its General Assembly continues to this day to serve as a rubber stamp for Arab diplomatic and propaganda attacks against Israel. The United Nations’ sorry record has disqualified it as a neutral guarantor for any future Middle East peace plan.

No Israeli negotiator will cede East Jerusalem to the PLO. To do so would surely transform the Holy City into the next Beirut.

No Israeli negotiator could honestly discuss the future of the West Bank without representatives of Eastern Palestine--Jordan--at the negotiating table. Since the West Bank lacks the necessary infrastructure to survive and flourish on its own, only a plan that would involve continued economic linkage both to Jerusalem and to Amman could hope to offer a viable future for its residents.

These basics have guided Israeli policy-makers, whatever their political orientation, for the simple reason that geography knows no left or right. Tel Aviv is a mere 15 miles from the pre-’67 borders; Haifa, 21 miles; Jerusalem, literally a stone’s throw.

Whatever the cost, Israeli leaders must disabuse those living under a false illusion. These are many who feel that if we can get over the first hurdle of Arafat’s agreement to accept Israel as a reality, then all the other questions will fall into place. They won’t. Not only because other major players in the PLO like George Habash and Abul Abbas refuse to play the moderates’ game; not only because Hamas, the fundamentalist Muslim movement in Gaza and the West Bank that has led the intifada, states in its covenant that the only solution to the Jewish question is jihad (holy war), but because the reality of the Middle East no longer allows for two belligerent states to face each other without the whole area becoming a powder keg that would make today’s skirmishes look tame by comparison.

There are certain things that countries can and cannot do. Britain knows how it could end the strife in Ireland--namely, give the Irish Republican Army its own state; Britain is unwilling to do so, and the world is unwilling to force Britain to do so. Spain could end Basque separatist terrorism tomorrow by giving in to Basque demands. Spain is unwilling to do so, and the world is unwilling to force it to do so. The Soviet Union could end unrest in the Baltics by giving up Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. The Soviet Union is unwilling to do so, and the world is unwilling to force the Soviet Union to do so. Israel cannot give Yasser Arafat what he wants. It should say so loud and clear before false expectations build up in the West as to what is possible.

Israel should say to the United States and the West: Let us talk about ways for the West Bank and Gaza Arabs to have more control over their future, but let’s stop talking about withdrawing to the ’67 borders. We will never do it. We have the same responsibility for safeguarding and defending our sovereignty as you have to yours. To us, giving East Jerusalem to Arafat, or giving over the entire West Bank without Israeli forces stationed there, is much worse than for the Soviets to station offensive weapons in Cuba.

It is not the question of whether Arafat tacitly recognizes Israel. It is the fact that what Israel must pay for that recognition could mean the demise of its sovereignty and mortal danger to all of its citizens. If the Soviets are not asked to show such boldness in the Baltic states, if the United States would not tolerate such interference in the Western Hemisphere, if Britain would not take that risk in Ireland, why should Israel be the world’s only sacrificial lamb?