The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (12 page)

Israel is one among many points—Nigeria, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Chechnya, Sinkiang, Kashmir, Timor, Mindanao, et cetera—where the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds meet. Each of these is the central issue for those involved in it, and an annoying digression for the others. Westerners by contrast tend to give the greatest importance to those grievances which they hope can be satisfied at someone else’s expense. The Israel-Palestine conflict has certainly attracted far more attention than any of the others, for several reasons. First, since Israel is a democracy and an open society, it is much easier to report—and misreport—what is going on there. Second, Jews are involved, and this can usually ensure a significant audience among those who for one reason or another are for or against them. A good example of this difference is the Iraq-Iran war, which was waged for eight years from 1980 to 1988 and which caused vastly more death and destruction than all the Arab-Israel wars put together and received far less attention. For one thing, neither Iraq nor Iran is a democracy, and reporting was therefore more difficult and more hazardous. For another, Jews were not involved, neither as victims nor as perpetrators, and reporting was therefore less interesting.

A third and ultimately the most important reason for the primacy of the Palestine issue is that it is, so to speak, the licensed grievance—the only one that can be freely and safely expressed in those Muslim countries where the media are either wholly owned or strictly overseen by the government. Indeed, Israel serves as a useful stand-in for complaints about the economic privation and political repression under which most Muslim peoples live, and as a way of deflecting the resulting anger. This method is vastly helped by the Israeli domestic scene, where any misdeed of the government, the army, the settlers, or anyone else is at once revealed and any falsehood at once exposed by Israeli critics, both Jews and Arabs, in the Israeli media and parliament. Most of Israel’s antagonists suffer from no such impediment in their public diplomacy.

As the Western European empires faded, Middle Eastern anti-Americanism was attributed to other, more specific causes: economic exploitation, often described as the pillaging of the Islamic lands’ resources; the support of corrupt local tyrants who serve America’s purposes by oppressing and robbing their own people, and more and more, another cause: American support for Israel, first in its conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, then in its conflict with the neighboring Arab states and the larger Islamic world. There is certainly support for this hypothesis in Arab and Persian statements, but the argument that without one or another of these impediments all would have been well for American policies in the Middle East seems a little implausible. The Palestine problem has certainly caused great and growing anger, from time to time renewed and aggravated by policies and actions of Israeli governments or parties. But can it really be, as some contend, the prime cause of anti-Western sentiment?

Certain incongruities appear and recur in the historical record. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany’s policies were the main cause of Jewish migration to Palestine, then a British mandate, and the consequent reinforcement of the Jewish community there. The Nazis not only permitted this migration; they facilitated it until the outbreak of the war, while the British, in the somewhat forlorn hope of winning Arab goodwill, imposed and enforced restrictions. Nevertheless, the Palestinian leadership of the time, and many other Arab leaders, supported the Germans, who sent the Jews to Palestine, rather than the British, who tried to keep them out.

The same kind of discrepancy can be seen in the events leading to and following the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948. The Soviet Union played a significant role in procuring the majority by which the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine and then gave Israel immediate de jure recognition. The United States was more hesitant and gave only de facto recognition. More important, the American government maintained a partial arms embargo on Israel, while Czechoslovakia, with Moscow’s authorization, immediately sent a supply of weaponry which enabled the new state to survive. The reason for this Soviet policy at the time was neither goodwill toward the Jews nor ill will toward the Arabs. It was based on the mistaken—but at that time widely shared—belief that Britain was still the main power of the West and therefore Moscow’s principal rival. On this basis, anyone making trouble for the British—as the Jews had done in the last years of the Palestine Mandate—was deserving of Soviet support. Later, Stalin realized his error and devoted his attention to America rather than Britain.

In the decade that followed the founding of Israel, American dealings with the Jewish state continued to be limited and cautious. After the Suez War of 1956, the United States intervened, forcefully and decisively, to secure the withdrawal of the Israeli, British, and French forces. The Soviet leader Khrushchev, who had remained cautiously silent in the earlier stages of the war, realized that a pro-Arab statement brought no danger of a collision with the United States and then—and only then—came out strongly on the Arab side. As late as the war of 1967, Israel relied for its weaponry on European, mainly French suppliers, not on the United States.

Nevertheless, the return of Russian imperialism, now in the form of the Soviet Union, to a more active role in Middle Eastern affairs brought an enthusiastic response in the Arab world. After some diplomatic visits and other activities, the new relationship came into the open with the official announcement, at the end of September 1955, of an arms deal signed between the Soviet Union and Egypt, which during the following years became more and more a Soviet satellite. More dramatic even than the arms deal itself was its welcome in the Arab world, transcending local differences and grievances. The Chambers of Deputies in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan met immediately and voted resolutions of congratulation to then Prime Minister Nasser; even Nuri Said, the pro-Western ruler of Iraq and Nasser’s rival for pan-Arab leadership, felt obliged to congratulate his Egyptian colleague. Almost the entire Arabic press gave its enthusiastic approval.

Why this response? Certainly the Arabs had no special love of Russia, nor did Muslims in the Arab world or elsewhere desire to bring either Communist ideology or Soviet power to their lands. Nor was it a reward for Moscow’s Israel policy, which had been rather friendly. What delighted the Arabs was that they saw the arms deal—no doubt correctly—as a slap in the face for the West. The slap, and the visibly disconcerted Western and more particularly American response, reinforced the mood of hate and spite toward the West and encouraged its exponents.

The spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East and the enthusiastic response to it encouraged the United States to look more favorably on Israel, now seen as a reliable and potentially useful ally in a largely hostile region. Today, it is often forgotten that the strategic relationship between the United States and Israel was a consequence, not a cause, of Soviet penetration.

The first concern of any American government is of course to define U.S. interests and to devise policies for their protection and advancement. In the period following the Second World War, American policy in the Middle East, as elsewhere, was dominated by the need to prevent Soviet penetration. The United States regretfully relinquished the moral superiority of the sidelines and became involved in stages: first supporting the crumbling British position and, then, when that clearly became untenable, intervening more directly and, finally, replacing Britain as defender of the Middle East against outside attack, specifically from the Soviet Union.

The immediate postwar need was to resist Soviet pressure on the northern tier—to secure the Soviet withdrawal from Iranian Azerbaijan and to counter demands on Turkey. This policy was clear and intelligible and, on the whole, successful in saving Turkey and Iran. But the attempt to extend it to the Arab world by means of the Baghdad Pact backfired disastrously and antagonized or undermined those it was intended to attract. The Egyptian president, Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, seeing the pact as a threat to his leadership, turned to the Soviets; the pro-Western regime in Iraq was overthrown, and friendly regimes in Jordan and Lebanon were endangered to the point that both needed Western military help in order to survive. From 1955, when the Soviets leapfrogged across the northern tier into the Arab world, both the threat and the means of countering it changed radically. While the northern tier held firm, the Arab lands became hostile or, at best, nervously neutral. In this situation the American relationship with Israel entered a new phase.

This relationship was for a long time shaped by two entirely different considerations: one of which one might call ideological or sentimental; the other one, strategic. Americans, schooled on the Bible and on their own history, can readily see the birth of modern Israel as a new Exodus and a return to the Promised Land, and find it easy to empathize with people who seem to be repeating the experience of the pilgrim fathers, the pioneers, and their successors. The Arabs, of course, do not see it that way, and many Europeans share their view.

The other bond between the United States and Israel is the strategic relationship, which began in the 1960s, flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, fluctuated in the 1990s, and acquired a new importance when the United States faced the concurrent threats of Saddam Hussein’s hegemonic ambitions, of al-Qa‘ida’s fundamentalist terror, and of deep-rooted and growing discontents among America’s Arab allies. The value of Israel to the United States as a strategic asset has been much disputed. There have been some in the United States who view Israel as a major strategic ally in the region and the one sure bastion against both external and regional enemies. Others have argued that Israel, far from being a strategic asset, has been a strategic liability, by embittering U.S. relations with the Arab world and causing the failure of U.S. policies in the region.

But if one compares the record of American policy in the Middle East with that of other regions, one is struck not by its failure but by its success. There is, after all, no Vietnam in the Middle East, no Cuba or Nicaragua or El Salvador, not even an Angola. On the contrary, throughout the successive crises that have shaken the region, there has always been an imposing political, economic, and cultural American presence, usually in several countries—and this, until the Gulf War of 1991, without the need for any significant military intervention. And even then, their presence was needed to rescue the victims of an inter-Arab aggression, unrelated to either Israelis or Palestinians. Those who look only at the Middle East are constantly aware of the difficulties and failures of policy in that region, but if one looks at the picture in a wider perspective, one cannot but be astonished at the effectiveness of American policy in the Middle East as contrasted with, say, Southeast Asia, Central America, or southern Africa.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new American policy has emerged in the Middle East, concerned with different objectives. Its main aim is to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemony—of a single regional power that could dominate the area and thus establish monopolistic control of Middle Eastern oil. This has been the basic concern underlying successive American policies toward Iran, Iraq, or to any other perceived future threat within the region.

The policy adopted so far, in order to prevent such a hegemony, is to encourage, arm, and when necessary support a regional and therefore mainly Arab security pact. This policy inevitably evokes the unhappy memory of earlier attempts, which did more harm than good. This time the proposed pact may have a somewhat better chance. The presumed enemy is no longer the redoubtable Soviet Union, and regional rulers are taking a more sober view of the world and their place in it. But such a pact, based on unstable regimes ruling volatile societies, is inherently precarious, and the chain is no stronger than its weakest link. The recent history of Iraq illustrates the different ways that such a policy can go wrong. By embracing the monarchy, we procured its overthrow; by fostering Saddam Hussein, we nurtured a monster. It would be fatally easy to repeat either or both of these errors, with considerable risk to Western interests in the region and terrible consequences for the people who live there.

In this context the willingness of some Arab governments to negotiate peace with Israel, and the American concern to push the peace process along become intelligible. Many Arabs began to realize that on the best estimate of Israel’s strength and the worst estimate of Israel’s intentions Israel is not their most serious problem, nor is it the greatest threat that confronts them. An Israel at war with its neighbors would be a constant danger, a distraction that could always be used by a new—or even the same—Saddam Hussein. But an Israel at peace with its neighbors could provide, at the very least, an element of democratic stability in the region.

There are, in general, two quite different kinds of alliance. One of them is strategic and may be a purely temporary accommodation on the basis of perceived common threats. Such an accommodation may be reached with any type of ruler—the kind of government he runs, the kind of society he governs are equally irrelevant. The other party to such an alliance can change his mind at any time, or may have it changed for him if he is overthrown and replaced. The alliance may thus be ended by a change of regime, a change of leader, or even a change in outlook. What can happen is well illustrated by events in Libya, Iraq, Iran, and the Sudan, where political changes brought total reversals of policy, or in another sense by Egypt, where even without a change of regime rulers were able to switch from the West to the Soviets and back again to a Western alignment.

The same flexibility also exists on the American side. Just as such allies can at any time abandon the United States, the United States has obviously also felt free to abandon such allies, if the alliance becomes too troublesome or ceases to be cost-effective—as, for example, in South Vietnam, Kurdistan, and Lebanon. In abandoning an ally with which there is no more than a strategic accommodation, one can proceed without compunction and without risk of serious criticism at home.