The Third World War - The Untold Story (52 page)

The whole affair had something in common with what Rommel had once described as a lightning tour of the enemy’s country. In this way Libya was subdued and all but annexed by Egypt. But the fight had been against the Libyan leader - who found refuge in Ethiopia - not against the Libyan people, whose new government was formed by a triumvirate, all of whom were recalled from exile, comprising the former commander of Tobruk garrison, Libya’s Prime Minister in the pre-military regime, and the man who was the eminence grise of Libya’s last king, the Senussi Idris.

Protests by the Soviet Union at this action by Egypt had no more effect than protests from the West when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. With the United States Sixth Fleet patrolling the central and eastern Mediterranean, the Soviet Mediterranean Squadron, the Fifth
Eskadra,
had been ordered to remain at anchorage and avoid confrontation. The Soviet High Command was much more concerned with free passage of the Dardanelles than with Libyan port facilities or the fate of the Libyan leader. The latter’s removal and his replacement by a regime sympathetic to moderate Arab policies were widely seen as almost wholly beneficial. Interference in Chad, Niger and Sudan stopped. The financing of international terrorism dwindled. Temptation to make a stir in the world simply for its own sake was put aside. Arab unity was further enhanced. Moslem fundamentalism suffered a setback. Encouragement for the less benevolent policies of South Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria ceased. What is more -and this in Western eyes was not wholly beneficial - the Arab oil weapon became more powerful with Libyan oil now under Egyptian control. Nor were the benefits confined to that part of the Middle East alone.

The fall of the Libyan military regime made it easier for Iran to escape from the pitiless rule of the mullahs in a way which also frustrated Soviet hopes of securing control of the country. The Soviet Union had long been infiltrating Iran with arms and agents for the revolutionary guards, at the same time attempting to subvert the army. They had been assisted by Libya which had subsidized a fanatical group of left-wing Iranian Army officers. To moderates who sought to overthrow the ayatollahs, a coalition between this group of fanatics with the pro-Soviet Tudeh communists and the revolutionary guards seemed a highly unattractive alternative to the mullahs themselves. Now, however, the influence in Iran of moderate, anti-revolutionary officers of the army and air force grew and infiltration into Iranian Azerbaijan was curtailed. The revolutionary guards’ endeavours to replace the army as the country’s main military force came to nothing. There was in addition a man for the moment at hand.

General Ahmed Bahram, former army commander, exiled by the ayatollahs, had established his headquarters and his army of counter-revolutionaries in Turkey in 1982. He held two strong cards in his hand. The first was his agreement with the Arab nations and particularly with the new military leadership in Baghdad that he would recognize Iraq’s shared need of the Shatt al Arab and harmonize their respective policies over Kurdistan. The second and even more important card was that he enjoyed a secret understanding both with the generals commanding the principal garrisons of Iran and with the leaders of the Mujaheddin Khalq, the Iranian People’s Militia.

General Bahram’s takeover of Iran was relatively bloodless, and the blood which was spilled could easily be spared as it was largely that of the revolutionary guards. The Tudeh communists proved to be insufficiently armed or concentrated to stand up to the alliance of regular and irregular forces, whose coup was staged with such precision and pressure.

The establishment of a more moderate and pro-Western regime in Iran, together with an end to the Gulf war, strengthened still further the axis between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and gave still more coherence to general Arab unity. The Gulf war had done much to separate Arab countries and distract them from the very issue - Palestine - for which unity and concerted action were indispensable. Instability and violence in Iran itself, bearing in mind that Soviet troops were on Iran’s eastern frontier, had always conjured up fears of direct Soviet military intervention there too. Now, with a military ruler determined to re-establish economic, social and political order, these fears were to some extent dissipated. It was not a return to the sort of Western alliance there had been with the Shah, but it offered at least some additional defence against Soviet expansionism. All in all, therefore, the Western nations had reason to be satisfied with developments in Libya, Iraq and Iran. The fly in the ointment, however, particularly in United States’ eyes, remained the immensely strong position from which the Arab nations could now wield the oil weapon.

As was to be expected, it was wielded not bluntly or brutally, but with forbearance and subtlety. The Saudis had long understood that next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing was to know when to forgo an advantage. Opportunity had to be nourished before it could be seized. Advantage, which would follow, had to be savoured before it could be forgone.

The Arab summit at Taif in mid-1983 appeared at first to underline some continuing disagreement rather than to signal a unified stand which would enable Arab leaders to persuade the United States to bring further pressure upon Israel. There appeared to be little change in the position of the rejectionist front. Despite Libya’s forced acceptance of Egypt’s way of thinking, Syria, South Yemen and Algeria were still opposed to any arrangement with Israel. There appeared to be no general acceptance of Egypt’s return to the Arab camp, although at Saudi Arabia’s insistence Egypt was represented at the conference. Iraq and Jordan seemed still to be at odds with Syria. The PLO although accepted as a voice to speak for the Palestinians, persisted in omnipresent intrigue and still presented the face of timorous foe and suspicious friend. It was even thought that they had had secret meetings with the Israelis in Vienna. Nonetheless the representative Palestine National Council - the so-called parliament of the PLO - began to take a more positive and constructive part in PLO leadership.

Such appearances, if inauspicious, were deceptive. The Saudis, who as hosts had more control of the agenda and procedures than anyone else, displayed to advantage their singleness of purpose and toughness in diplomacy. The eight-point plan of Crown Prince Fahd, in spite of not having been endorsed at the 1981 Fez summit, remained firmly the vehicle for discussion and agreement. This plan had, of course, the respectability and authority of being not merely an Arab plan, but a Saudi Arabian one. Saudi Arabia had long enjoyed a special position as the custodian of the Holy Places of Islam. Now, with Egypt once more by its side, and with the fruits of consistently moderate statesmanship and inexhaustible economic strength to draw upon, Saudi Arabia’s claims to the political, as well as the religious, leadership of the Arab nations were hard to challenge. Moreover, their determination to bring about United States participation in putting intense pressure on Israel remained unchanged. In this they were supported (which was indispensable for their purposes) by the bulk of other Arab nations, including the oil producers. In effect, and despite the continued uncertainties of Syria, Algeria and South Yemen, the
jihad,
or holy war, which Prince Fahd had called for three years earlier as the only means of asserting Islamic rights in Jerusalem and breaking the Palestinian deadlock, was now a reality. Furthermore, Syria’s reluctance to conform was to some extent offset by the PLO’s further detachment from Syria and by its willingness to play the ‘last card’ as a preliminary to actual negotiations over the outstanding issues.

During the Taif summit the US President’s special envoy to the Middle East sat in Cairo, being briefed by all those emissaries from Taif and elsewhere whom he chose to see. Outwardly he remained serene and his despatches to the President were couched in the language of a diplomat whose options remained open. But in fact these options were rapidly dwindling to only two: silence or placate the Jewish lobby in New York, Washington and the rest of the USA, or let the Western world go short of Middle Eastern oil.

At the same time, Western European governments had been active. The former British President of the Council of Ministers of the EEC had put his and Western Europe’s weight behind a drive for two objectives, whose achievement they felt would greatly enhance the possibility of new international peace initiatives. One was that the implicit acceptance of Israel’s right to exist contained in the eighth point of Prince Fahd’s plan - guarantee of the right of all states in the region to live in peace - should somehow be made explicit. The other was that the PLO’s part in the peacemaking machinery should be acknowledged by all concerned, including Israel itself, on the understanding that explicit mention of Israel’s right to exist in security and peace was in turn endorsed by the PLO. At the time of the Taif summit in mid-1983 these objectives seemed to be within reach.

Much still depended, however, on the United States’ willingness and ability to change Israel’s position and policies. In 1983 the governments of the major European members of NATO made a proposal which could not fail to be attractive to the United States, and at the same time would relieve some of their own anxieties. It was, in brief, that the European members of NATO would now at last reduce their real vulnerability by more efficient co-operation between them in defence efforts and less reliance on US forces in Europe. It was to be hoped that this would enable the United States to pursue more vigorously a Middle East policy leading on from Camp David to a full settlement, an essential feature of which would be to oblige the Israelis to accept the need to involve the Palestinians and the Arab nations on the basis of Prince Fahd’s plan, perhaps with modifications. This European proposal added much weight to the pressure on the United States from the more or less unified Arabs, particularly since it was accompanied by the setting up of machinery, in the shape of the Western Policy Staff, to consider common action by NATO member states outside the NATO area where common interest arose. This the United States found particularly gratifying. Faced with the prospect of either antagonizing the Jewish lobby or denying the Western world adequate supplies of oil - and comforted by the reflection that he would not again be standing for office - the President chose the former. He would try to hold the Jewish lobby at bay.

Once more the President despatched his special envoy to Tel Aviv. This time his mission was made public by carefully orchestrated leaks to the media. In plain terms the United States’ message to Israel’s leaders was this: either Israel must now agree to move on from Camp David and begin to negotiate a settlement of Palestine and Jerusalem, or US military and economic aid would be run down.

The reaction of the Israeli Government was as capricious as it was self-destructive. In a desperate but fruitless demonstration of their immediate strength, but ultimate impotence, they announced their intention of annexing South Lebanon and instantly mounted air attacks on airfields near Damascus, on Syrian troop concentrations in the El Bekaa valley, and pushed aside UN troops in South Lebanon. Syria responded in kind with artillery, missile and air attacks on the Golan Heights. While the reaction of the United States Government might have been predicted, what took the world by surprise was that for once the United States and the Soviet Union were at one - Israel must be made to toe the line. In an unprecedentedly cordial and fruitful meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Soviet Foreign Minister, which took place in London late in 1983, it was agreed that unless Israel instantly accepted the conditions for peace negotiations based on the Fahd plan, economic sanctions against it, including total blockade of its ports of entry, would be initiated at once. The Israeli Government thereupon resigned and was replaced by one from the main opposition party with the declared policy of negotiating peace with the Arab nations in order to solve the problems of Palestine and Jerusalem.

One by one the obstacles to negotiation had been going down. A significant degree of Arab unity had been restored; the PLO together with Arab leaders had expressed their willingness to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist; pressure had been brought upon the United States both by the Arab nations and Western Europe to take that uneasy leap from Camp David to the determination of Palestinian autonomy; and now Israel, responding to a choice of action put before it by the United States and the Soviet Union, had a new government willing to reciprocate by formally declaring abandonment of the previous Israeli policy of colonization and annexation. The way for negotiation at an international peace conference was at last open. What was now wanted was an agreed formula and machinery to enable negotiations actually to begin. During December 1983 work towards these ends proceeded. At length, after intensive international diplomacy in the Security Council of the United Nations, agreement was achieved and a new Security Council Resolution emerged.

The main difference between this new Resolution and 242 was, of course, that Palestinian self-determination was now a cardinal feature of it. In bringing the original Resolution up to date and providing for its implementation, therefore, the new one did much to acknowledge, while not absolutely conforming to, Prince Fahd’s eight-point plan. The new Resolution dealt with five main issues:

(1)  Cessation of all violence and all Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

(2)  Creation of a boundary commission to hear both sides and make recommendations for a permanent ‘secure and recognized’ frontier.

(3)  A period of international trusteeship over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (and also the Golan Heights) during which period the Palestinians could exercise self-determination, elect their own leaders, and decide both on their own constitution and on their relations with neighbours.

(4)  Provision of international guarantees (together with demilitarized zones, and restriction on the deployment of certain weapons systems, particularly SSM and SAM) to preserve the right of every state in the area to live in peace ‘free from threats and acts of force’.