"Out
of Control: Violence, retaliation shatter hopes for peace in the region"
by Geoffrey Kemp. From The San
Diego Union Tribune, October 15, 2000.
Ten years ago the United States orchestrated a global coalition to challenge Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein, who had ordered his troops to invade Kuwait in August 1990. By October 1990 the key coalition players included the Soviet Union, Western Europe, Japan, Turkey and the moderate Arab governments including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as the radical leader, Hafez al-Assad of Syria.
The subsequent war against Iraq in January and February 1991 would have been impossible without this coalition. At that time the international pariahs were Iraq, the Palestinians, who backed Iraq, and several radical Arab states including Yemen and Sudan. The coalition victory in the Gulf War succeeded in liberating Kuwait but unfortunately failed to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Today, in October 2000, a new Middle East crisis is upon us with profound consequences for security, the future of peace negotiations, and America's role in the region. This time the United States finds itself increasingly isolated, along with Israel. A reconstituted alliance is emerging against Israel and for the first time since 1967 Israelis are fearful of a direct existential threat as more and more Arabs join in the call for a new intifada against the Jewish state.
Ironically, but predictably, it is the Palestinians who will be the biggest losers in the current crisis. They are leading the call for violence against the Jewish state even as they, too, worry about their very existence. Their neighborhoods are surrounded by Israeli tanks and their airspace patrolled by Israeli helicopter gunships.
Intense diplomatic activity by President Clinton, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and moderate Arab leaders can dampen the latest crisis between Israel and the Palestinians but the situation will remain dangerous and the crisis could get out of hand.
If Israeli-Palestinian fighting spreads to include military actions along the Israeli-Lebanon border, an escalatory spiral could be unleashed that could precipitate another Arab-Israeli war. How such a war would unfold cannot be precisely calculated. What is clear is that in recent months the Israeli defense forces have suffered some serious psychological setbacks including the unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May. The kidnapping on Oct. 7 of three of their soldiers along the Lebanese-Israeli border by Hezbollah is the latest trauma. Many Israelis feel unless they soon demonstrate resolve and retaliate for such actions, the radicals will become emboldened and Israel will be progressively weakened.
If Israel retaliates against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it could lead to Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel's northern towns and villages. If one or more of the rockets kill Israeli civilians, Israel will likely hold the Syrian government responsible and retaliate against Syrian military targets. At this point Syria might feel impelled to respond in kind and conflict in the north might be inevitable. Under these circumstances it would be difficult for Jordan and Egypt to avoid a diplomatic rupture with Israel. In the extreme, it could lead to military engagements between Israel and Egypt and Jordan, and we can be sure that Saddam Hussein is capable of exploiting this opportunity for his own ends, including shutting down his oil production.
The ingredients for this scenario, which benefits no one except the radicals, are in place.
There is passion and hatred in both the Arab and Israeli streets as a result of the actions of the past few days, including the lynching of Israeli soldiers and the retaliatory rocket attacks by Israel against Palestinian targets. Vigilante groups on both sides are openly seeking revenge for killings. Arafat has released a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists from prisons, raising the specter of more suicide bombings against Israel. Riots have taken place within Israel between Jews and Israeli Arabs. And some well-armed Israeli settlers are vowing to join the fight.
The leaders in the region, particularly Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, are politically weak and are unable to take bold risks for conflict resolution, let alone a final peace settlement.
In addition, there is a seething resentment of American hegemony in the region and the belief that the United States will do nothing to pressure Israel into making further concessions for peace. Most Arabs believe that while the United States provides moral, financial and military support to Israel, it continues to enforce a policy of brutal and inhumane sanctions against the people of Iraq. Many voices in the Muslim world preach for revenge against Israel and the United States for past humiliations and current indignities.
The terrorist attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole, in Aden, Yemen on Thursday raises the regional stakes ever higher. Add to this political-military cauldron the economic dimension including a tight global oil market and Iraqi oil production accounting for nearly 2.8 million barrels a day, and it is easy to see how a new war would impinge immediately on short-term oil supplies. Oil prices would rise even higher, with concomitant negative impact on financial markets.
If the region were to be drawn into a wider war, it would surely be against the wishes or interests of Israel's immediate Arab neighbors. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt would be defeated in any conventional confrontation in Israel, even though they could raise the costs to Israel of military victory. In theory, Iraq could fire missiles at Israel again but this would be a futile gesture unless they were armed with chemical or biological warheads, in which case Israel would respond with its own awesome weaponry, including, possibly, nuclear weapons.
The danger is that in the heat of crisis, emotion and political pressure can outweigh rational decision making.
All this would be a major setback for American diplomacy and the carefully nurtured security framework that has been established in the Middle East over the past 20 years. A new Middle East war prompted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would find the United States isolated and vulnerable to both political and military actions by its key enemies.
Arab friends -- with the exception of Kuwait -- would be most reluctant to help the United States if, say, Saddam moved his forces into the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, or took some action against Israel or U.S. forces in the Gulf. Of course, if Saddam blatantly violated obvious red lines and tried once more to invade Kuwait or use weapons of mass destruction, it would be a different matter. But he would certainly get away with more today than in the past because he is now seen by many Arabs, including Arabs in friendly countries such as Jordan and Egypt, as a hero. Saddam is breaking out of his box and his officials are to attend the first Arab League Summit in ten years in Cairo on Saturday for what will be a predictable harangue against Israel and the United States.
To minimize the dangers of the situation, the United States must continue a full diplomatic offensive to end the current violence. Crisis management must be the priority, not the peace process.
In the wake of the violence in Israel and the Palestinian areas, it will be some time before either Barak or Arafat are prepared to go back to the negotiating table with serious compromise proposals for a final settlement. Barak's hold on power is razor thin and he will probably have to form a coalition government with opposition parties opposed to his peace talks. This will effectively end peace negotiations for many months.
Even if serious talks were to resume because of adroit diplomacy by President Clinton, both sides would be much tougher on a number of issues. For instance, in view of the rioting in Israel by Israeli Arabs, any Israeli government will be loath to permit more than a token number of Arab refugees to return to Israel proper as part of a final settlement.
The desecration of Joseph's tomb in Nablus by Palestinians following the Israeli army's withdrawal from the site raises profound questions about the reliability of any Palestinian guarantee of protecting the rights of all religions to worship at sites under their control. Any suggestion that Israel relinquish its control over the Jordan Valley will be difficult to accept.
In short, even the most dovish Israelis are going to become more hawkish on all security issues with the Palestinians since the latest fighting. Likewise, the Palestinians will toughen their policy on Jerusalem, security and Israeli settlements and will undertake a worldwide campaign to generate support for their cause.
The reality is that the Clinton legacy in the Middle East will likely be the most immediate foreign policy challenge a new administration will have to deal with in January. It will be a depressing end to a brave but sometimes flawed effort by the administration to forge a lasting Middle East peace.
President Clinton still has three months to salvage the crisis but to do so he will need both luck and stamina. The one ray of hope is that Arab leaders such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah realize that if there is no forward movement, there will be regression and further violence and they could be the prime victims.
Kemp is director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C. He was special assistant to President Reagan from 1981-84.
