"The World Will No Longer Laugh"

Whether the Arab attack on Israeli-held territory is ultimately successful or not, it has already shattered the myth that Arabs are militarily impotent. As one Arab journalist put it: "It doesn't matter if the Israelis eventually counterattack and drive us back. What matters is that the world now no longer will laugh at us when we threaten to fight. No longer will it dismiss our threats as a lot of bluff and bluster. It will have to take us seriously." Arabs round the world last week felt that they had finally shed their image as a people who could not and would not fight, an image that had grown out of the dismal defeats at the hands of Israel over the past 25 years. At last, Arabs felt, their sharaf (honor) had been restored. "Even if we lose the war," exulted one Arab, "we have won."

It was sweet revenge for years of suffering humiliating gibes from Jews and others. Arabs had been mercilessly held up to contempt for their wretched showing in the Six-Day War, when their troops broke and ran from the advancing Israelis. The public scorn, humiliation--and self-contempt--rankled, leaving behind smoldering hatred for Israel and a lust for revenge. Among sensitive Arabs the public shame of their defeats was as bitter as the loss of territory. Pride looms large in the Arab psyche; its loss is an intolerable affront.

Arabs last week were proud not only of their armies' telling punches in the latest round of the Middle East war, but of their own relative maturity and realism. That new attitude was typified by Egypt's first lady, Mrs. Gehan Sadat, as she visited wounded soldiers in Cairo's hospitals and donated blood to the Red Crescent, the Moslem equivalent of the Red Cross. After listening to a broadcast in which Israel claimed to have knocked out 800 Syrian tanks while the Syrians claimed only 25 Israeli tanks, an Arab diplomat remarked: "You see how the Israelis exaggerate? Our side is cool and realistic, while they make all those ridiculous claims." Said a Beirut businessman: "This week, if I happened to be traveling through Europe, I wouldn't be ashamed of telling people I am an Arab."

Certainly, the low-keyed communiques coming out of Cairo and, to a lesser degree, out of Damascus were a far cry from 1967, when Gamal Abdel Nasser's propaganda machine falsely boasted that Egypt had destroyed the Israeli air force. This time there was no talk of driving Israel into the sea or excessive predictions of sweeping victory. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat clearly was not about to repeat the Arabs' mistakes of the past: he kept a tight leash on his propagandists. While the desire to remove the humiliation of past defeats played an important role in the Arabs' decision to attack Israel, there were more down-to-earth reasons as well. "No Egyptian government can accept permanent occupation of the Sinai, and it became apparent to Egypt that Israel could not be removed from the Sinai by negotiations," explains David G. Nes, former deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Cairo. "The steps taken by Israel to establish settlement and exploit the oil in the Sinai convinced the Egyptians that if the stalemate was to be broken it would have to be through military action." By breaking the impasse militarily, the Egyptians hoped to create "the chance of international intervention to help Egyptian objectives of total Israeli withdrawal."

Political Scientist Malcolm Kerr concurs. "The Egyptians are in a box. As they see it, the United States has let them down numerous times; it sold out to the Jews long ago. Russia let them down. They haven't had much support from any of the great powers. Yet they feel--and they are right--that they are supported by most countries of the world, as measured in the United Nations. So they don't feel they owe the world a damn thing. They have nothing to be ashamed of. They feel they're liberating Egypt the way the French liberated their country in 1944."

No Hope. One by one, the alternatives were explored by the Arabs, who concluded that there was no hope--except through concessions they found unacceptable. Secretary of State William Rogers' peace initiative in 1970 aroused hopes of a negotiated peace the Arabs could live with, but it foundered when President Nixon publicly undercut the plan. At the suggestion of Saudi Arabia's King Feisal, Sadat expelled Russian military advisers from Egypt last year, but the backing he hoped to reap from the U.S. never materialized. U.S. and Soviet moves toward detente seemed to the Arabs to limit the possibilities for diplomatic action, since the superpowers gave every indication of being satisfied with the status quo.

The fact that the cease-fire was proving to be very profitable for the Israelis was particularly galling. Observes William Polk, director of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs: "Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank poured into Israel daily to perform the chores, like the Turks in Germany and the Pakistanis in England, that Israelis preferred not to do; tourism was increasing; massive American private and governmental support was forthcoming; the economy was not only booming, with a growth rate comparable to Japan's, but Israel was rapidly becoming self-sufficient even in armaments."

Several other factors appear to have brought to a head the Arabs' decision to attack. One was the rumor that Israel and the Soviet Union were about to exchange ambassadors, which would have meant a further decrease in Arab influence among the big powers. Another was the belief among Egyptians that newly appointed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would present a peace plan that would put insurmountable pressures on them. Another theory making the rounds in Cairo held that Kissinger might persuade Israel to resume fighting to produce a crisis conducive to negotiations, which the Arabs feared would permanently place in Israeli hands the territories occupied in 1967.

Not the least of the considerations was the sense of frustration in Egypt itself, particularly in the huge, idle Egyptian army, which, as one observer put it, was "sitting on the canal, trapping sand flies." Sadat could not hold off critics who questioned his credibility much longer. He either had to act or face increased criticism at home that could possibly have led to his downfall.

Arabs were betting last week that Sadat's gamble would pay off and that even if he loses on the battlefield he will survive in power. Said an Egyptian diplomat: "We have proven to ourselves that we are capable of meeting the challenge and of paying the price. We are beginning to learn. This time we are a little bit better."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.