Document created: 24 September 04
Air University Review, November-December 1971

 Diplomacy and the Possible

For the old and wise, history is analogous to the chastening experience of life, inducing a measure of humility conspicuously absent among the less scarred and those who would ignore its recordings. Unlike the so-called pragmatic politician of the day, the historian of the Middle East finds little solace in the mumbo-jumbo of “peace proposals” and “package deals” reflecting more maneuver than substance, though portrayed as enhancing the prospects for peaceful change. The historian’s unfortunate lot is to view the contemporary scene in the wider perspective of age-old divisions and enmities that crisscross the region and, with a kind of resilience, give conflict and tension an enduring reality from which there appears to be no escape. Nevertheless, despite the intense, and as yet fruitless, search for alternatives to violence and diplomatic paralysis in the Arab-Israeli conflict, there remains hope of defusing what is certainly the most intractable political problem of the day.

The Art of the Possible purports to offer nothing less.* Accordingly, the book offers itself to frustrated diplomats and nervous policy-makers who will read it if only out of sheer desperation. I commend Professor Reisman for his perceptive analysis of the present play of forces in the Middle East. His rejection of the commonly held reductive fallacy implying that the Arab-Israeli problem is the exclusive and central issue in Middle Eastern politics places him at least one cut above others who will not allow the facts to confuse their prejudice. Yet, as is so often the case where the diagnosis of an irrational problem is reasonably accurate, the prescribed medicine seems to have no curative ingredients for the ailment itself; instead the prescription would probably make the patient worse, with new complications.

* Michael Reisman, The Art of the Possible: Diplomatic Alternatives in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970, $6.00), 158 pages.

A diplomatic settlement between the parties is somewhat perfunctorily ruled out by Reisman. He proposes an alternative that would not be a “quixotic quest for peace” but a search within the realm of the possible, for a “system of minimum order” that would serve as the groundwork for a future peace. Emphasizing the need for “unfettered investigation of new political techniques and legal institutions,” he writes of the necessity for innovative thinking and “creative diplomacy” that alone can establish the conditions for eventual and lasting peace in the region. Thus, for each of the immediate focuses of conflict, the author proposes a plan: for the Sinai Peninsula, the establishment of a Sinai Development Trust; for the West Bank of the Jordan River, the creation of a Palestinian state; for the Golan Heights, the foundation of a Druze Trust territory; and for the City of Jerusalem, the drafting and adoption of an international statute.

Inasmuch as Professor Reisman’s “creative diplomacy” represents another concoction for Israeli withdrawal that clearly does not require Arab governments to sign a peace treaty or to establish diplomatic and commercial relations or even to act in a peaceful way with a neighboring people, his proposals have value only for exploratory purposes. As propositions for action, they ignore the religious, political, and emotional heritage of the area. The proposed diplomatic stratagem is, indeed, typical of the mounting cynicism that marks some of the solutions offered for Middle Eastern affairs.

For example, since Egypt finds no incentives for a negotiated peace in her present burden of huge defense expenditures, aggravated by a sluggish economic growth rate, by losses of revenues from the Suez Canal and the Sinai oil fields, and by the fall in tourism, how likely is it that Reisman’s suggestion that the Sinai be neutralized will induce her to agree to any formal diminution of her sovereignty in the Sinai Peninsula? An externally supervised Sinai Development Trust would hardly be perceived as an exercise of Egyptian autonomy. The SDT would have to be a global corporation that would float bond issues in commercial markets and operate independently of any state. While there would be no question of Egypt’s residual sovereignty over the peninsula, routine police functions and border supervision would have to be carried out by the SDT police force of a multinational character. Perception of these facts by the Egyptians would, it is argued, be offset by “an abundant source of gainful employment” for the 300,000 Palestinian Arab refugees in Gaza and by the prospect of reducing Egypt’s chronic unemployment. All of this is predicated upon converting a wilderness into an economic paradise by finding treasures hidden beneath the sand and rocks of the region.

No less difficult is the author’s assumption that third-party palliative economic arrangements necessarily diminish the politico-strategic and emotional significance attached to the conquered territories. The less optimistic easily recall the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and considerable restraint is necessary not to recite the psychological, political, and security liabilities of the “peace” that history has already recorded. The author seems to demolish his own case by failing to cite a single historical precedent.

More difficult yet is Reisman’s belief in benevolent participation by the U.S.S.R. in the proposed scheme, even to the extent of coercing its reluctant protégé to cooperate. Now Middle Eastern specialists may debate the nature of Soviet intentions in the region, but if they agree on anything at all it is manifestly not the suppressed Russian urge to make the Sinai desert bloom. Surely a region spared from Soviet “benevolence” is a region saved. Curiously, the author does not call for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles and military forces—clearly the first step toward restoring Egyptian sovereignty and the creation of a “system of minimum order.” He never really escapes from the first question: If the Soviets are sufficiently influential to foist a complex SDT upon the Egyptians, why can’t they simply encourage a genuine dialogue with the Israelis, leading to a peace agreement?

The proposals for disposition of the West Bank and the Golan Heights conform to an avant garde definition of security. Accordingly, we are told that despite Israel’s new borders her defensive posture has not improved.

The Israeli proponent of territorial retention, like his American counterpart, the proponent of ABM, is motivated by an imperative of territorial defense that contemporary weapons have long since obsolesced. Flying and missile time between Tel Aviv and Amman is the same no matter who controls the West Bank of the Jordan. Israeli control of Sinai does not change the missile distance between Cairo and Tel Aviv. No matter how much territory it controls, any state in the Mediterranean is open from the sea to quick attack by aircraft flying below the radar threshold. This is not to suggest that territory has no strategic importance. The strategic value of territory is a function of a broad, multifaceted context; in many circumstances, territory is not of major importance. (p. 57)

Presumably, the nightmares are not over for Israeli generals. The reversal of the prewar strategic relationship between Israel and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and the acquisition by Israel of security in depth are irrelevant. Reisman implies that occupation of Sinai has not really removed the threat of rapid juncture between Egyptian and Jordanian forces across the Negev triangle. Tel Aviv, 300 miles from Egyptian forces, is as secure as Cairo—now only 80 miles from Israeli forces. That air bases in the north of Israel have fallen out of Egyptian aircraft range counts for as much as the 15-minute loitering time the Israeli Air Force has gained with its new bases in Sinai. And if the new bases imply an easier striking range and a faster turnaround for attacking aircraft and larger payloads, “the imperative of territorial defense” does not really mean much. Indeed, one suspects that Reisman might have a hard time persuading Israelis in at least a score of villages that control of the Golan Heights has eliminated the threat of Syrian artillery. He would certainly rue the day he tried to convince Arabs that Israeli troops 40 miles from Damascus and 25 miles from Amman constitute no threat to their security.

As though the popular mood in Israel were “expand or perish,” it is a matter of considerable ease for Reisman to lecture Israelis on the sins of “micro-colonialism.” Good Christians will take issue with the dubious assertion that Jeremy Bentham’s unheeded call in 1793 for emancipation of the colonies was the original sin leading to the world’s current crises. Israelis are therefore chided not to repeat the error.

“Unless Israel has the courage to recognize the demands of the Palestinians and show enough political maturity to deal with men who have terrorized them, a surging source of instability will continue.” (pp. 55-56) Indeed, courage would have to be summoned in order to submit to the genocidal demands of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah, George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Naif Hawatmeh’s Popular Democratic Front. To be sure, such maturity is at a premium among nations which actually face the threat of political and physical extinction. The crisp legal language of the author assuages fear and reduces the problem to the barest simplicity:

. . . Israel need only announce that it will withdraw from the West Bank regions occupied in 1967 upon formation of a representative Palestinian government recognized as independent and sovereign by the United Nations and committed to active compliance with the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter. Israel would then permit the United Nations Committee on Self-Governing territories to dispatch an observer team to the West Bank, which would administer a series of referenda: The inhabitants would determine the form of government they wished and would choose their political leaders. Israel would thereafter withdraw under a United Nations timetable. The United Nations might station a peace-keeping force on the eastern or western boundaries of the new Palestinian state, but this would be a largely symbolic gesture. (p. 52)

The element of reciprocity is not crucial in Reisman’s concept of international relations. The burden is upon Israel to act as midwife to the projected Palestinian Arab state, but Arab governments and Palestinian Arabs need not recognize the existence of a Hebrew or Jewish national entity. Thus, with no more than a painless stroke of the pen, conflict and tension related to the balance of power in the Arab East would dissipate in the train of Israeli largesse inspired from renewed love and trust in the United Nations.

With attention more upon possible Israeli military expansion than upon the necessity to persuade the Syrian government to the wisdom of a political solution, Reisman’s proposal for converting the Golan Heights into a Druze Trust Territory, if considered seriously, is sure to confront the policy-makers with an example of how to neglect history and lose that which history has already effectively resolved. One of the more healthy signs in the situation is that the warrior-like Druze have not succumbed to the nationalist bug which the author roundly denounces as the scourge of Middle Eastern politics. Yet he anticipates an evil day and offers to cede Syrian land to the Druze so as to “minimize the national and trans-national tensions involved in eventual Druze claims for self-determination.” The generosity is misplaced. A heretical offshoot of the Shi’ite Ismailis whose foremost aim is to preserve their traditional customs and practices, the Druze of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel have managed quite well without the dubious benefits of Chapters XI and XII of the United Nations Charter.

Indeed, while the Druze in Israel enjoy religious autonomy and full citizenship—even serving in the army—their coreligionists in the Levant are active in the Arab nationalist movement and in Syrian and Lebanese political leadership. Why the author seeks to undo this relatively happy arrangement, as well as risk the delicate Christian-Muslim balance in Lebanon, is as mystifying as the presumed greater readiness of Syria to cede the Golan to the Druze in preference to the only slightly less despised Israelis.

The author, with his talent for “creative diplomacy,” has yet another proposal. It is for an international statute for Jerusalem that would accord Israel only nominal sovereignty and would “incorporate effective and enforceable guarantees of autonomy and unimpeded access by adherents of other faiths to their respective holy places.” Despite Israel’s zealous protection of churches, mosques, and other holy places in Israel (e.g., Capernaum, Tabha, the shrines in Nazareth, the Mount of Beatitudes, the al Jazar mosque in Acre), the author does not find it difficult to imagine Israel’s barring certain Christians and Muslims from the City of David for political reasons or even reconstructing the ancient temple where the Dome of the Rock presently stands. In fact, the author does not credit Israel’s declared readiness to work out an arrangement for safeguarding the holy places under the jurisdiction of the respective religious authorities. Instead, his proposal would incorporate the International Court of Justice into the decision structure of Jerusalem, thus placing the capital city somewhere between nominal Israeli sovereignty and a corpus separatum whose mandate would be determined by the vagaries of international law.

To be sure, the proposal is at once symbolic of and consistent with the overall plan to encircle Israel with a number of varying quasi-sovereign entities or buffer zones, whose existence might ostensibly resolve the security dilemma. The inherent ambiguities of such arrangements, however, will not be lost upon the security-obsessed Israelis, who in the final analysis would sooner forget Reisman than either their right hand or Jerusalem.

Air University Institute for
Professional Development

Dr. Joseph Churba (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a member of the Documentary Research Division, Institute for Professional Development, Air University. He was formerly Senior Middle East Specialist, Office of National Security Studies, and professor of government at Winnipeg and Adelphi universities. Dr. Churba has completed the book-length Egypt and Israel in Africa and published monographs on the Middle East as well as articles and reviews in professional journals.