COLUMN LEFT : Security First, Then Be Ready to Make Peace : Israel’s doves find themselves favoring war, because Iraq’s military must be neutralized.

As someone who went to jail in the struggle against the war in Vietnam and who has opposed every subsequent U.S. military intervention, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of actually hoping for a U.S. military confrontation with Saddam Hussein. There is a major split developing among U.S. liberals and progressives between those who hope that Iraq will voluntarily withdraw from Kuwait and those, like me, who hope that the United States will destroy Iraq’s offensive military capacity.

For those of us who favor a confrontation, the issues are nuclear proliferation and concern for Israel’s security, coupled with a desire to promote an Israeli/Palestinian peace. Here in Israel, these issues become decisive.

Hussein may soon acquire nuclear weapons, plus missile capabilities that might allow him to threaten not only Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, but ultimately even the United States. If allowed to withdraw from Kuwait with his military power intact, he will continue his frantic pursuit of such nuclear capacity.

Equally important is the damage that would follow from a peaceful withdrawal. Hussein would emerge as a hero to tens of millions of people. To show that he was not bowed, despite the “temporary departure” from Kuwait, Hussein could easily begin provocative action against Israel, perhaps moving troops into Jordan.

But even without any military action against Israel, if Hussein remains militarily powerful there is little chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Given the Palestinian tilt toward Iraq, there is simply no reasonable hope that Israelis would make serious concessions as long as Hussein remains a significant military threat. Even Israeli peace leaders find it hard to believe that the proposed Palestinian state would remain demilitarized as long as it could potentially ally with a militarily powerful Iraq. Without decisive action now, not only will Israel have to fight by itself a few years down the line, but in the meantime there is very little chance of progress towards peace.

Many Israeli peace leaders are also deeply troubled by Israel’s intransigence in refusing to accept a United Nations delegation to examine the police killing of Palestinians on the Temple Mount. Israel may have been justly suspicious of a United Nations that has refused to rescind its “Zionism is racism” resolution. But in giving fuel to its enemies by failing to act contritely in the wake of the Temple Mount incident, Israel has allowed public attention to shift away from Iraqi aggression. Suddenly, Israel and Iraq are linked in public consciousness--both refuse to abide by U.N. resolutions--and this linkage serves Hussein, and not Israel.

What has been hinted at by President Bush and made explicit by others is that Israel is going to face real pressure for peace once the world has dealt with Iraq.

While many Israeli doves believe that only strong pressure from the United States will advance the peace process, they also fear that Bush may be moving toward the wrong kind of linkage--of peace to an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, when in fact only the dismantling of Iraq’s offensive military capacity could create conditions that would allow Israelis to accede to American pressure.

Ironically, some Israeli leaders, seeing matters through ideological blinders, may be more concerned with preserving their sovereignty on the West Bank than with dismantling the Iraqi military threat. Israeli right-wingers may even prefer to see a strong Iraqi military, certain that they can use that very fact as a clinching argument against any concessions to Palestinians. After all, nothing has protected them from pressures for concessions on land for peace more effectively than the fear that the Iraqi-Palestinian alliance has generated amongst Israelis.

Ironically, then, the road to peace with the Palestinians requires first a struggle against Iraq. Yet it is not Israel but the United States and the West that should make that struggle: After all, it was the West that armed Hussein. And given the threat Hussein may soon pose to all countries of the world, such a war is the West’s interests.

If the United States is willing to make the target of intervention not just saving Western oil but also dismantling Iraq’s offensive military capacity, it would not be unfair to insist that Israel make its own contribution by stating its readiness to make peace with the Palestinians. In failing to give such assurances, the Israeli right wing may be playing into Saddam Hussein’s hands just as it did when it refused to meet with U.N. investigators of the Temple Mount killings.