A Tempted Israel Keeps Its Powder Dry

For years, Israel and its American supporters have been arguing that the Jewish state is the United States’ only reliable ally in the Middle East. They have given considerable publicity to the concept of “strategic cooperation” between the two countries, and have defined its terms of reference as broadly as possible, including in those terms Israel’s potential ability to assist the United States in a Persian Gulf contingency.

As long as that contingency was merely an imaginative analytical tool for strategic planners, U.S. officials squirmed at the notion of Israeli support for an American operation, but did little to disabuse anyone of its impracticality. In practice and in private, American policy-makers recognized that there Please see related map. A7. were very few circumstances in which Israeli help would be welcomed, whether because the logistic challenge of operations from Israel was too great, or because other regional states, such as Turkey or Egypt, could provide the required support, or, most of all, because Israeli support for an American operation would so alienate otherwise friendly regimes in the region that Washington’s policy objectives would surely be undermined.

Saddam Hussein has converted the planning scenario into reality. And both Americans and Israelis are confronting the implications of the rhetoric of strategic cooperation.

Washington has encouraged Israel to adopt a low profile, and Jerusalem has been responsive. It has generally refrained from drawing attention to itself during the crisis, so as not to provide Saddam Hussein with a pretext for rallying all Arabs against the “Zionist enemy.”

Nevertheless, Israelis are frustrated. They want to prove that “strategic cooperation” is no empty phrase. They fear Baghdad’s chemical weapons, and they want to give the hated Hussein a black eye, if not more. They watch helplessly and with apprehension as the United States welcomes Syrian support and ships a host of new sophisticated weapons to its gulf allies.

These frustrations are certain to grow if Jordan continues to provide moral support to Iraq and, most especially, if it does not close the port of Aqaba to Iraqi ships. With Aqaba only a mile from Israeli territory, Israel will be sorely tempted to impose that blockade on its own. It would not wish the United States to blockade Jordan’s port, since that would demonstrate the irrelevance of Israel not only to events in the more remote gulf, but even to the application of U.S. interests immediately outside its borders. “Strategic cooperation” would thus have been proved meaningless in a post-Cold War context.

On the other hand, were Israel to be Washington’s agent in imposing the blockade, it would add several new dimensions of risk to the crisis. Saddam Hussein could rally the Arab masses throughout the region by pointing to concrete evidence of a Zionist-imperialist conspiracy against Islam. More dangerously, he could point to the blockade as a justification for moving troops into Jordan, which Israel would regard as a casus belli. Even more ominously, he might consider an Israeli blockade as justification for launching a dreaded chemical weapons attack against Israel.

Israel’s dilemma is Jordan’s as well, however. King Hussein surely does not want to be caught in the middle of a new conflict between Israel and Iraq. The likelihood that he could stay in power under such circumstances is not very good. He certainly has not forgotten Black September, 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization sought to overthrow his government and Israel played a behind-the-scenes role in preserving it. Having alienated the West, the moderate Arabs and Israel, and with no friends in Damascus, King Hussein would have nowhere to turn if the chaos of an Israeli-Iraqi battle on his territory were to provoke another Palestinian attempt to remove him from the throne. He would be lost.

Given these circumstances, Hussein’s best recourse may be to signal that he cannot stop, and therefore would not oppose, an American blockade, and to close his border to Iraqi ground forces. The king has already demonstrated how far he is prepared to resist world opinion to help Baghdad extricate itself from the mess it has created. His visit to the United States demonstrates that, despite all, he remains closely tied to the West. Even Saddam Hussein needs a conduit to the international community; it is not worth his while to bully the king by preemptively sending troops into Jordan.

Were King Hussein to indicate privately that he will remain silent in the face of an American blockade, but not an Israeli one, Jerusalem’s frustration would certainly rise. But set against its preoccupation with the trappings of the American strategic relationship arethe realities of a grisly encounter with Iraq.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is unlikely to overlook those realities. He has demonstrated time and again that he has infinite patience; and he has outsmarted his opponents, both domestic and Arab, by not tipping his hand too soon. Of all Israel’s politicians, he is by nature and habit best suited to ensure that Israel can be relied on to do what Washington is asking of its ally at this time: to lie low and keep the powder dry for as long as is humanly possible.

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