Happy and Unhappy Ends Are Certain in This War : Middle East: Both Israel and the ideology of Zionism will shrink as Palestine is negotiated to statehood.

The historical verdict on whether a war is just is predicated on its outcomes, rather than on the intentions in launching it. The Gulf War may have a positive effect in dissuading potential Saddam Husseins from aggression. After the war we may witness an American about-face concerning its Arab allies, pressuring them to democratize their regimes and share their wealth with their poorer brethren. Such a position may help to redeem the United States from some of the animosities against Americans that the war has spawned in Arab public opinion.

The view that in the wake of the war a terrible popular storm is bound to wreak havoc in the Middle East is exaggerated. All peoples resign themselves, grudgingly, to outcomes they cannot undo. Arab regimes will reluctantly have to give in. The rifts between the Arab states caused by the war may be thus remedied.

The need to start settling the Arab-Israeli conflict will become pressing. The vitality of the Palestinian problem for the Arabs was manifested by the popularity it gained for Saddam Hussein. The demand to start negotiations entailing an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories may become an imperative for the leaders of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, to deflect the deadly accusation that they made demands only of Iraq. They will urge that the principle that instigated the Gulf War, “the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force,” should also apply to the Arab-Israeli conflict. War has generated some intimacy between the United States and its new Arab allies whose views will have greater weight in Washington.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s support for Iraq has undermined its position and negated many of its political achievements. Its claim that supporting Iraq does not mean approving the occupation of Kuwait is specious. The occupation of Kuwait is the bone of contention in the present conflict, and supporting Iraq means endorsing its case.

But the need to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict does not diminish because of the PLO’s condemnable behavior. Nations do not forfeit their right to statehood because of delinquent conduct, as one can see from the case of Germany and Japan in World War II. The Palestinians are not going to vanish, and in any negotiations on a settlement they will have to be represented.

The PLO perhaps does not deserve to participate in the negotiations, but excluding it will not yield greater willingness to compromise. On the contrary: Non-PLO representatives may raise their demands to ingratiate themselves with Arabs and Palestinians. Preferably, the Palestinians’ reprehensible behavior in the Gulf crisis should be used to extract concessions to meet some Israeli territorial-security needs.

There is no Palestinian or Arab ready to acquiesce in less than the PLO’s fundamental demand for a Palestinian state.

The Arab states cannot speak or act for the Palestinians. For years they have ended their summit meetings with the declaration that the Palestinian question is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and that it has to be settled with the Palestinians. Morocco, Tunisia or Saudi Arabia do not need to negotiate with Israel to regain their territories, as was the case with Egypt, and will be in the future with Syria.

Unfortunately, Israel will not come out from this war a victor. Dialectically, the government will be a loser, even without participating in the war. Negotiations for a peace settlement will entail Israeli withdrawal--the contraction of Israel. This will spell a terrible rebuff, a political death verdict, for those who have continuously advocated keeping the territories and settling them. No wonder these political circles will do their best to delay or abort negotiations, hoping for miracles in the shape of Arab vagaries or the exhaustion of the Palestinians to the point that they abandon the territories and emigrate.

Success of these tactics in the past does not augur success in the future, and in the new circumstances such tactics may only end in a showdown with the United States and Europe to Israel’s detriment.

A bitter crisis will ensue. The Israeli people will accuse their leaders of misleading them in prognosticating “Greater Israel.” They will calculate the huge resources that have been spent--and now lost--in the occupied territories. All of Israel’s difficult economic problems, including the absorption of the immigrant Russian Jews, could have been solved were these resources available.

Zionism was open-ended. Withdrawal will afflict it with dreary finality. Israeli ideologists have not yet awakened to the need to rethink Zionism, to inspire their people with the blessings of peace compensating for territorial contraction.

The greatest enigma is, how will the United States come out from the war ordeal? Will the American public understand that the United States is the only superpower left, and so must accept the task (with the United Nations) of keeping the world in line and ensuring a more benign world order? Or will the United States close on itself? Much is dependent on the American leadership’s ability to inspire the American people to take pride in the task that has befallen them and be ready to pay its price.