AGAIN THE AGONY : Israel’s Brilliant Disaster

As the late Moshe Dayan once said, “Israel has no foreign policy, only a defense policy.”

The Dayan dictum was confirmed by Israel’s kidnaping of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid. As a military operation it was brilliantly successful. In its impact on Israel’s foreign relations it is a disaster. And I think the full scale of the disaster has not yet emerged.

The Islamic response to the kidnaping--announcement of the murder of U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. William R. Higgins--has proved horribly effective, politically. A major objective of Israel’s enemies is to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. And it is now clear that American hostages provide the ideal hammer for wedge-driving. All you have to do is to have an American hostage; threaten to murder that hostage in response to some unbearable Israeli “provocation,” and then murder him. Or, if you have already murdered him before the provocation took place, you can produce the proof of the murder after the provocation. Either way, you have produced an effective tap on that wedge.

Proof of that was provided by Sen. Bob Dole, just after the announcement of the hanging of Higgins. The Dole statement in relation to Israel was the most scathing made against Israel by any American political leader since 1957. And 1957 was far the worst year in the entire history of Israel-United States relations, up to now.

Some observers think that Dole consulted President Bush before he made that statement, and that his reference to Israel reflects the feelings of the President as well as of the senator. If so, the government of Israel has cause to be seriously worried, as I believe it now is.

In Iran and in Damascus, and at PLO headquarters, the strategists of the struggle against Israel will have studied the Dole statement with close attention. They will rightly interpret it as meaning there is marvelous political mileage to be made out of murdering American hostages and keeping a threat of murder suspended over other American hostages. A subtle variant is to appear occasionally in the role of “protector” of the hostages held by your clients.

The atrocity against Higgins, committed by the enemies of Israel, might have enhanced American feelings of being “on the same side” as Israel, had the circumstances been different. But as it is, things don’t seem quite to be working that way. The fact is that America does not appear to possess any effective mode of action against the captors of the hostages. The dispatch of U.S. warships to the eastern Mediterranean may perhaps impress a part of the American public. But it doesn’t impress any of the armed factions of Lebanon. Those factions have seen American warships before. They have even seen American Marines. And they have seen the departure of the warships, and of the Marines, without their having accomplished anything whatever.

It is true there are things that could be done that would hurt Iran--a blockade of its oil exports, for example, but to do the things that would hurt Iran would be much more likely to result in more murders of American hostages than in their release. So that option is not worth much either. There may yet be some American military response to the hostage situation. But if there is, it is quite unlikely to do the hostages any good, whatever else it may do.

Some of the American frustration at this specific incapacity of its enormous material strength is bound to vent itself on Israel, for having provided the incident that led to the demonstration of this incapacity and to death. But Israel is also the only country involved over which the United States has the capacity to exert serious pressure. That pressure can be effective if it is sufficiently motivated and sustained. I believe it is likely to be so, in time, in the case of Sheik Obeid.

I believe that Israel is likely, under pressure from the United States, to release Obeid unconditionally, contrary to Israel’s current intention. But I don’t believe that release of the sheik will undo the damage done by his capture, and the responses to his capture. On the contrary, it is likely to compound that damage. Unconditional release of the sheik, in current circumstances, would provide certain proof that the holding of hostages on the threat to kill them--a threat made credible by occasional killing--are highly effective political weapons in the war against Israel. That lesson will not soon be forgotten. It is not conducive to a general release of hostages.

The release of the sheik would no doubt nullify those threats against hostages that have been ostensibly based on the sheik’s imprisonment, but other threats will follow, supposedly caused after other “provocations” by Israel. And Israel has really no choice but to continue to supply such provocations. It may well in future avoid such high level “spectaculars” as the kidnaping of the cleric, which had such untoward political results. But it has to defend itself against the guerrilla war waged against it by the Hezbollah and its allies.

Every act of self-defense, on Israel’s part, will be seen by the Hezbollah as a provocation. And the more successful any such act is, the more unbearable the provocation will be. That being so, the Hezbollah is likely to make repeated use of its not-so-secret weapon: the American hostages. The repercussions in America, in relation to Israel, seem likely to be similar to those reflected in the Dole statement, but getting progressively worse.

Some well-meaning commentators have drawn from the whole affair the moral that it is urgent to get on with “the peace process,” which is assumed capable of producing general harmony in the Middle East (so resulting in, among other good things, the release of all the hostages). The Bush Administration may well draw the same moral. It may well increasingly interpret “the peace process” in an Arab sense: meaning a Palestinian state in the territories currently occupied by Israel.

If things develop that way, Israel will be placed in an appalling position. It will be under heavy pressure, from its sole and indispensable ally, to do things incompatible with its survival. To hand over the territories, to anyone, would mean a serious danger of civil war inside Israel. Jewish settlers in the territories, who are now numerous, would have to be uprooted by force. Many of them would put up armed resistance and would be supported by about half the population of Israel and of the defense forces. Israel’s continued existence would be at stake.

A “Palestinian state” would mean creation of a second Lebanon on Israel’s borders. The Palestinian state, if and when it exists, is supposed to be administered by “the PLO.” But the PLO is no more than a name for a number of diverse and conflicting factions; some would continue the armed struggle against Israel out of any territory that might be handed over, irrespective of any agreements that might be concluded in the name of “the PLO.”

So Israel, having handed over territory, at the cost of an agonizing internal crisis, would not get any peace in exchange. But the cost of rejecting “territory for peace” indefinitely and without a credible alternative might include loss of the American alliance.

If Israel is to weather the storms that lie ahead, the Dayan dictum must cease to apply. Israel needs a foreign policy, as well as a defense policy--and needs it urgently.