Can Israel be stopped?
Nicholas von Hoffman
Mr Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli Foreign Minister, left his meeting with Presi- dent Reagan with the humble mien and con- trite swagger of an old-time Jewish gangster who had just finished telling a Congres- sional investigating committee to blow it out the other end. The evening before this less than historic encounter, Mr Reagan had come back from the sylvan pleasures of Camp David affecting a grim face. Disem- barking, or 'off-loading' as they say, from Marine One, his helicopter, our leader had stuck out his jaw and indicated that he had no patience with those who violated cease fires in Lebanon. Who such malefactors might be, he did not say.
Before the meeting with Mr Shamir got under way pictures were taken of both sides looking serious in the Cabinet room. No More Mister Nice Guy. However, when all was said and done, if Mr Reagan did tell the Israelis to stop or else, the threat is a well kept secret. The noises escaping from the State Department are those we have heard before, to the effect that the amiable diplomatic wreck Philip Habib is attemp- ting miracles in his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. The 'Habib peace mission' has now taken the place of 'the Camp David peace process' as the single most cynical phrase being used in international discourse.
Even as the Israelis declare cease-fires on- ly to bring up more ammunition and reload their guns, they are coming under increas- ingly heavy fire of a different kind here. Television is showing every night pictures of the carnage of Beirut which, a year ago, Would never have appeared on American screens. Before viewers saw Mr Reagan alight from Marine One they were shown a close-up of a mutilated Lebanese baby; the following evening, before they saw the all- Conquering Shamir take his proud shoulders out of the White House, they had been treated to perhaps ten minutes, at least on NBC, of pictures of blown-up hospitals and blown-down schools. Rescue workers Were shown brushing debris off a red cross Painted on the roof of a hospital which had taken a direct hit; an interview with the doc- tors had them saying there were no military installations nearby. Then a reporter asserted that Israeli descriptions of artillery `duels' were fabrications, that the PLO has no cannons to fire at their enemy.
John Chancellor, the network's only commentator, who has made a career out Of uttering innocuous phrases in wise and friendly tones, was displayed ashen- Auberon Waugh is on holiday faced, on top of a Beirut building, talking about 'imperial Israel' and its 'savage' at- tacks. Most amazing of all, given the con- secrated blandness of our television, Chancellor dared to compare the latest bombing attacks on the city with Nazi avia- tion during the Spanish Civil War. The politicians, perhaps intimidated at the thought of losing Jewish campaign con- tributions, remain silent for the most part, although a growing number of Jews, many of them ardent believers in the dream of a Jewish homeland, are as shocked and griev- ed as their non-Jewish fellow countrymen.
A sympathetic Jewish group turned up to give support when the wives of the am- bassadors of a number of Arab states stak- ed themselves out in front of the White House the other day and announced that they were going on a hunger strike until food and medical supplies were allowed in to those trapped in Beirut. Americans of whatever religious background, as opposed to the ambassadors' wives, for the most part still believe that the United States has been manipulated and tricked by the Israelis and that the 'Habib peace mission' is a serious effort. Only a few, although the number has started to grow, point out that you are not likely to have much success at mediating between two warring parties it you will not speak face to face with one of them.
Few people, as yet, have questioned why Mr Habib is using such talents as he may possess as a diplomat in trying to arrange the deportation of the Palestinians.
Americans have accepted their government's presumption that 'the Arab world' has a peculiar responsibility for tak- ing in the Palestinians. This may be a cor- ollary to the axiom that Arabs, being clannish and different, are united in a special, almost conspiratorial way. That the Palestinians might refuse, for example, to be shipped off to the Sudan — a delusion that was being seriously entertained in this city for several days — has not occurred to many. That the Palestinians might be reluc- tant to march off and leave their parents, their wives and their children to the care of the somewhat inaccurately named Israeli Defence Force is an idea even fewer have entertained.
It was not that long ago that most Americans were unquestioningly accepting the proposition that the PLO, with your typical Middle Eastern fanatics' disdain for human life, anybody's human life, were putting amunition dumps in the basements of the schools which their own children at- tend. Nevertheless it might still seem just and reasonable to ask the PLO to take ship and sail for Devil's Island. Yasir Arafat could be given Alfred Dreyfus's cell.
We have not yet discussed the possibility that, unless the United States stops the Israelis, the Palestinians will make their stand where they are in Beirut and die of famine, plague or as the Jews of Poland did in the Warsaw Ghetto. Scenes yet more frightful may play on our television screens but we, as a people essentially untouched by this century's horrors, are incredulously op- timistic. Bad things don't happen because bad things have not happened to us. We know nothing about the sieges of cities in our own time or our ancestors'. Whether it be the Duke of Parma's siege of Amster- dam or Hitler's killing of a million people at Leningrad, 400 years ago or 40, it's all news to us.
As for the Administration's heavy hit- ters, they seem to be pulled in one direction by the advantages of having the Israelis kill their enemies and police the region for us, and pulled in the other by their antipathy for the bellicose theocracy anchored at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The let- ter from the Russians blaming the United States for letting the Israelis make so many corpses is bound to get their backs up; on the other hand they may get irritated at the Israelis' lack of deference. If they think the President has been publicly insulted or de- meaned by Israeli indifference to his wishes they might get testy with these allies who are as good at war as they are poor at manipulating Western public opinion.
Or we may have a case of Washington and Jerusalem misreading each other. It could be that Washington would not be dissatisfied if the Palestinians were put to the sword so long as it looked as though the American government hadn't sanctioned it. In which case they may be nettled in the White House that the Israelis keep striving to make us look more like accomplices than we do already.
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