A Nation Sorely Besieged
Bet She'an (House of Rest) is a dusty little village in the Jordan Valley inhabited mostly by Sephardic Jews, who immigrated to Israel from North Africa. According to the Book of Samuel, the community is the place where the victorious Philistines hung the bodies of King Saul and his son Jonathan on the city gates as trophies of war. Last week there were other human trophies of war in Bet She'an, as the townsfolk surrendered to a paroxysm of anger that symbolized the black and explosive mood of embattled, besieged Israel today.
Before dawn last Tuesday, three Arab terrorists belonging to the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine crossed the border from Jordan. They invaded an apartment building in Bet She'an, killing four of its inhabitants and wounding 19 more (including eight children). The guerrillas themselves were killed by counterattacking paratroopers a short time later in a pitched battle in which the terrorists tried to use a children's toy box as a makeshift barricade.
Kill Them Again! At Qiryat Shemona, Ma'alot and Kibbutz Shamir --other border communities that had been shocked by fedayeen attacks earlier this year--the primary response was anguish and grief, as well as anger. Bet She'an was somehow different. An enraged mob hurled the bodies of the dead guerrillas from a second-story apartment window, kicked them, spat on them, stabbed them with sticks, then doused them with kerosene and set them afire. "Kill them again! Kill them again!" some shouted. Throwing back Israeli policemen who tried to smother the flames with blankets, the crowd chanted, "Burn Arafat! Burn Arafat!" --referring to the hated leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Accumulated Rage. In the town's savage mood, some journalists also found themselves the objects of anger. Dan Drooz, reporting for TIME, was harassed for 20 minutes by one man, who shook him and shouted over and over, "Tell [Yasser] Arafat we got his message! Now look at that dead shit over there and ask him if he got ours!" Later, Drooz found the man weeping on a lawn opposite the house where the four citizens of Bet She'an--like 59 other Israelis in 25 earlier raids this year--had been killed.
The anger of Bet She'an, and of all Israel, was mingled with shame and horror, particularly following the discovery that one of the four bodies burned was that of an Israeli victim of the raid, a Moroccan Jew who had immigrated to Israel a decade ago. At the graveside ceremony, Israel's chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, declared with suppressed emotion that the desecration of bodies, even those of Israel's enemies, was prohibited by religious laws. Some clearly agree with Truck Driver Zada David Cohen, who said sadly, "Now everybody will think Israel is barbarian."
The accumulated rage that erupted at Bet She'an reflected a growing sense in Israel that the country faces yet another life-and-death crisis--perhaps the most severe in its brief 26-year history. The Israelis watched with sullen dismay when Arab leaders at the Rabat summit recognized the P.L.O. as the sole official representative of Palestinians everywhere, including those in the Israeli-occupied Gaza and West Bank. They listened hi cold fury as Yasser Arafat at the United Nations (TIME, Nov. 25) purportedly offered them an "olive branch" --but budged n6t an inch from his position that Israel must be replaced by a secular Palestinian state for both Arabs and Jews. The Bet She'an raid chillingly reinforced the conviction of most Israelis that there is no hope of compromise with the fedayeen groups. At the U.N., a spokesman for the P.L.O. --whose ranks include the group that made the raid on Bet She'an--asserted that his organization did not "feel any embarrassment" for the attack. Israel's Premier, Yitzhak Rabin, stated his government's position succinctly (see box) when he told TIME last week, "We will never negotiate with the P.L.O."
No Breathing Space. Later, another grisly drama of terrorism was played out at the international airport in Tunis. Bargaining with the lives of 47 persons aboard a hijacked British airliner, three Palestinian guerrillas demanded the release of 13 fellow terrorists--veterans of the 1973 Khartoum and Rome massacres--who were being held in Cairo. After one passenger had been assassinated, Egypt flew five of the Palestinian prisoners from Cairo to Tunis. The Netherlands also met a subsequent demand to release two prisoners. Late last Sunday the hostages were released unharmed.
To Israelis, the 13 months since the October war have been a period of frustration and despair. "Things are piling up on us very suddenly," says one of Rabin's colleagues. "The other wars never ended in a final settlement, but they at least gave us time to breathe. The 1948 war ended in an armistice and gave us eight years. After 1956 we returned to the armistice and gained eleven years. After 1967 we got a ceasefire for seven years. This time we haven't gained a moment; pressure has been on us continuously."
The pressure seems to come from all sides--and from within. Traumatized by last year's surprise attack, many Israelis have a growing sense that time is no longer on their side, that however valiantly they may fight and however superior they may be militarily at the moment, they cannot forever hold off a vastly larger Arab force armed by the Soviet Union and subsidized by the world's new capitalists, the Arab oil barons. More than ever, they have a sense of diplomatic isolation, as one friendly nation after another has come under the influence of the Arabs' oil diplomacy. Some NATO countries, for instance, have made it clear that hi the event of a preemptive strike by Israel against the Arabs, they would probably deny the use of European airbases to U.S. planes airlifting materiel to Israel. Even in the U.S., which has become Israel's chief means of support and sole arms supplier, there is a slight but perceptible erosion of the nation's traditionally unquestioning support. But the military supply line has never been more swollen with massive and sophisticated new hardware--draining U.S. strategic reserves and vividly illustrating Israel's overdependence on the U.S. lifeline (see box page 46).
In the occupied West Bank and even hi East Jerusalem, partly as the result of Arafat's U.N. speech, the Israelis have been confronted with some of the worst rioting since they seized the area during the 1967 war. Throughout Israel, moreover, life is perhaps meaner today than it has been since the earliest days of the state. Emigration has risen sharply, inflation has reached a perilous 35%, and a fortnight ago, Premier Rabin imposed a crushing austerity program (TIME, Nov. 25).
Opening Drum Roll. Yet there is no respite. Just over a week ago, the specter of renewed war returned when Israel suddenly declared a partial mobilization of its reserves. Rabin cited the recent presence of 20 Soviet ships that were unloading military supplies hi the Syrian port of Latakia; later the Israelis explained that the military alert had been called because of intelligence data suggesting that Syria was preparing for war. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, convinced that neither Syria nor Israel would be likely to attack each other on the eve of President Ford's meeting with Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev at Vladivostok, quickly obtained assurances to this effect from both President Hafez Assad and Rabin, and tensions eased, but only slightly.
The weekend alert could prove to be merely the opening drum roll of yet another crisis. Nov. 30 is the expiration date of the mandate for the presence of some 1,250 United Nations troops stationed along the Golan Heights cease-fire line, placed there last June under the cease-fire agreement worked out by Kissinger. Israel emphatically favors renewal of the mandate by the Security Council and might in fact regard nonrenewal as a casus belli.
To the ultrasensitive Israelis, the present period is all too reminiscent of the situation that existed in May 1967. Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser loudly proclaimed his revocation of the U.N. mandate in the Sinai, the Israelis mobilized, and U.N. Secretary-General U Thant precipitately withdrew U.N. forces, thereby setting the stage for the Six-Day War.
In the end, Syrian President Assad may well consent to a renewal of the U.N. mandate. Meanwhile he has made it known that he wants something "con crete" in return--for example, a sign that Israel is prepared to return to a resumed Geneva conference. Syria, like its chief supporter and arms supplier, the Soviet Union, still sees Geneva talks as the proper vehicle for achieving a final settlement. As a heavyhanded way of underscoring Moscow's support at a ticklish moment, a small Soviet naval flotilla--a cruiser, a destroyer and a submarine--dropped anchor at Latakia as the U.N. mandate was being discussed.
In demanding a return to Geneva now, Assad is at odds with his principal partner in the October war, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Like the Israelis, Sadat is still committed to seeking a settlement through the Kissinger technique of phased negotiations. To all appearances, Egypt is not nearly as well prepared for a renewal of fighting as is Syria, since it has received relatively little new military equipment from the So^ viet Union since the end of the war/ Moreover, Sadat is allowing civilians to return to the cities along the Suez Canal that were turned into ghost towns by the 1969-70 war of attrition and is pressing ahead with plans for a longterm, $7 billion reconstruction of the Canal Zone. Technically, the canal could be opened as early as next March or April (four Egyptian vessels, in fact, sailed its full length last week), but Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy insists that his country will not reopen the waterway until Israeli forces have made a further withdrawal in the Sinai.
Sadat accepts the Kissinger principle that progress toward a settlement can be made in bilateral negotiations but maintains that there can be no full-scale peace settlement between Egypt and Israel until Israel has also reached agreements with the other Arab combatants. "One party could act more quickly than others," explained an Egyptian official last week, "but it is necessary that there should be progress on all fronts." The sticking point is that "all fronts" includes the West Bank, and this would now require direct negotiations between Israel and the P.L.O.
The real problem behind the present crisis is the loss of momentum toward a negotiated settlement. In Washington's view, both Israel and Syria are partially responsible for the current rise in tension. The Israelis were too inflexible in their refusal to deal with Jordan over the West Bank in recent months, some U.S. officials believe, thereby weakening King Hussein and strengthening Arafat's position at the Rabat summit. But more important, in the U.S. view, Syrian President Assad, has been pursuing a "stalemate strategy" of seeking to prevent progress toward an Israeli settlement with Jordan and Egypt until Israel makes some concessions --like a partial withdrawal on the Golan Heights--to Syria as well.
Sweet, Fat Years. At Rabat, accordingly, Assad shrewdly maneuvered to promote Arafat at the expense of Hussein. The Syrian President knew that a public political victory for the P.L.O. would be not only an outright defeat for Hussein but a private diplomatic setback for Sadat., Assad's motive: believing as he does that Egypt and Jordan were the chief Arab beneficiaries of Kissinger's step-by-step approach to a settlement, he wanted to force a return to Geneva, where he felt Syria would have a better chance of extracting concessions from Israel. "This is the best card we have in our hands now," explained Syrian Information Minister Ahmed Iskandar, referring to the Nov. 30 deadline. "We are not giving it up for nothing. One year has passed [since the October war] and what has happened?"
The irony is that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are asking the very same question. In a country that has frequently been accused (even by its friends) of having a paranoid "Masada complex,"-the sense of discontent is all-pervasive. Almost like a biblical plague, the Arab attack on Yom Kippur 1973 swept away the sweet, fat, confident years that followed the 1967 war. The Israelis, having failed to win decisively, were left with a sense of defeat. The indecisive outcome of the war also uncovered a number of festering problems that had been obscured by the post-1967 boom. In the past year, Israel has been afflicted by a seemingly endless series of troubles: internal recriminations, personal mourning, governmental turmoil, economic malaise.
"I am pessimistic, like everyone today," remarks Professor Amnon Rubenstein, dean of the Tel Aviv Law School. "It feels like we're back where we began --a small weak country facing a much stronger power with the odds against us. In many ways we're worse off now than in 1948. We're back to Square 1 as Israelis and also as Jews. The pro-Jewish sentiment that followed World War II has disappeared, and many people today seem to feel that 30 years is time enough for atonement. Arafat's appearance at the U.N. awakened in me memories of the films of Hitler's speeches. The feeling is one of being totally alone and not realizing why or what we have done to deserve it; it is a return to the Jewish predicament."
Much of the Israelis' sense of frustration stems from the belief that they were cheated out of military victory last year by big-power intervention, and can expect similar treatment next time. "The Russians would never allow us to score a really decisive victory," says Ronnie Medzini, an aide to Rabin. "We will never be able to march into Cairo and Damascus and dictate political terms--the classical way wars are ended." Perhaps, suggests Military Strategist Yehoshofat Harkabi, "as in most great conflicts in history, there is no solution for the Middle East conflict; it will not be solved but will just peter out as history passes on."
One recent public opinion poll, by Louis Guttman of the Center for Applied Social Research, disclosed that 90% of the population believes that the condition of the country is either "bad" or "very bad." But the same poll found that as pessimism increases, so does a sense of national solidarity. Hemda Zinder, secretary of the Israel National Commission for UNESCO,-declares: "The more they bomb and kill, the more stubborn we become. It isn't said for nothing that we are a stiff-necked people. We will not put our heads down to be slaughtered."
Hebrew University Psychology Professor Daniel Kahneman is convinced that the Rabat summit and Arafat's U.N. speech rendered a service to Israeli doves by allowing them to convert their guilt over opposing government policy into anger at the external enemy. Certainly the adrenaline is rising. According to a poll last July by Guttman, 41% of Israelis expected another war within a year or two; by this month, even before Arafat's speech, the number had risen to 68%.
Dubious Lesson. One result of the pressure on Israel is the growing strength of the army, which has been overhauled and bolstered with pay increases and new fringe benefits in recent months. To the last man and woman, the Israelis seem to have learned the same dubious lesson: Next time, Israel must strike first.
The October war produced another momentous change in Israeli life: it led to the retirement of Golda Meir after five years as Premier, and it sidetracked, for the time being at least, the political careers of such heavyweights as Moshe Dayan, Pinhas Sapir and Abba Eban. The ruling Labor Party looked long and hard for a suitable replacement for Mrs. Meir. Almost as a last resort, it settled for Yitzhak Rabin, whose most compelling qualification was that he had been in Washington as Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. for most of the preceding five years; thus he bore no blame for Israel's state of unpreparedness at the start of the October war.
Rabin was subjected to a smear campaign by opposition politicians, who claimed that he had profited improperly from speechmaking in the U.S. and had suffered a one-day breakdown on the eve of the Six-Day War. (Rabin replied that the speaking fees were proper. His 24-hour collapse, caused by nervous fatigue, was understood and accepted by most Israelis.) The veterans of his party also undercut him. Mrs. Meir paid little attention to the deliberations over her successor. After the new Premier was chosen, Party Leader Sapir went abroad, leaving Rabin, who had little political experience, to fend for himself hi delicate coalition negotiations. Nonetheless, Rabin pulled together enough small parties to secure a pathetic one-vote majority in the Knesset. Scoffed Moshe Dayan, who resigned as Israel's Defense Minister following the October war: "In my wildest dreams, I could not support a government like this." Opposition Leader Menachem Begin called the new Cabinet "an insult to the nation."
Rabin, 52, took over as Premier at a time when the national morale was already low. Protest movements were clamoring for change, the economy was in trouble, the army in disarray because of large-scale resignations and replacements. Unspectacularly, Rabin took command, methodically concentrating on one important issue at a time. Even his critics grudgingly concede that he has not made a single serious mistake in the six months since he took office.
Shock Treatment. His first four weeks were an ordeal of fire. To begin with, Richard Nixon's visit, the first by an American President, was a security nightmare. Israeli troops withdrew from the Golan Heights. Palestinian guerrillas carried out a series of suicide attacks on Israeli border communities. Delicate talks began with the U.S. on new arms purchases. In July Rabin had to fend off an attempt by Israeli annexationists, goaded by right-wing parties, to settle in the West Bank. That time he used persuasion, pointing out that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, in theory at least, is only temporary; in October, when a larger attempt was made by the annexationists, he used force to remove the squatters.
From the start, Rabin had tried to widen his political base hi the Knesset. By the end of October, he was able to win over the National Religious Party --without compromising any of the principles of the government platform that the Religious Party had rejected last spring. This gave Rabin a somewhat more comfortable margin of eight seats in the Knesset and strengthened him enough to announce the stern measures of the economic "shock treatment" by which he hopes to resuscitate the Israeli economy (TIME, Nov. 25). Whether it also strengthened him sufficiently to be able to make any significant concessions to the Arabs remains to be seen.
Rabin has one advantage going for hun that none of his predecessors shared: he is a Sabra, a native-born Israeli. When he accepted the candidacy of his party last May, he declared: "The sons of the founding generation have come of age." Since that time, the Israeli public at large has come to appreciate his Sabra bluntness. In a debate on possible territorial compromises, Rabin said, "Even if we do not achieve peace, the people must be convinced that their leadership has sought every possible way to advance toward peace, has sought every possible way to prevent war. I want to be able to look straight in the eyes of fathers and mothers whose sons may fall in war, if it comes, with a clear conscience."
Rabin was born in Jerusalem in 1922 to Russian parents (his father had spent 15 years in the U.S. before moving to Palestine during World War I to become a soldier in the Jewish Legion). At the age of 19, Yitzhak joined the elite, secret branch of the Jewish underground, the Palmach. Soon after, he met a high school girl named Leah Schlossberg, whom he married in 1948.
Rabin wanted to become an irrigation engineer and won a scholarship to the University of California in 1940, but he decided instead to remain in the Palmach. During World War II he and other members of the organization fought for the British in Vichy-held Syria and Lebanon. In later years he has loved to tell about the time when, as a green recruit, he was ordered to cut a telephone line in Syria; only when the pole began to wobble did he realize that he had cut the guy wire instead of the vital telephone link.
Siege of Jerusalem. During Israel's war of independence, he was a deputy commander of the Palmach under Yigal Allon (now Israel's Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister). Some of Rabin's exploits--including his command of the brigade that lifted the 1948 siege of Jerusalem, and countless raids that he led to liberate detainees who had immigrated illegally--were later attributed by Author Leon Uris to the fictional heroes of his novel Exodus.
After Israeli independence, Rabin vowed that he would remain hi the army to ensure that the country would never again have to fight from such a position of weakness. He gained international fame as the brilliant and victorious chief of staff during the Six-Day War. He retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant general in 1968, when he was appointed Ambassador to the U.S.
Today the Rabins live part of the time in the Premier's official residence in Jerusalem and part of the time in their eighth-floor penthouse apartment in a North Tel Aviv suburb. Their daughter Dahlia, 24, is an apprentice lawyer, and Son Yuval, 19, is a tank-corps officer stationed in Sinai. For years the family lived in a house in the Tel Aviv suburb of Zahala, just around the corner from Moshe Dayan, but decided to move last year. For one thing, says the vivacious Leah Rabin with a sniff, living next to Dayan was noisy because his motorcade was constantly careening around in front of their house. Her husband, by contrast, is a shy man of simple tastes who "eats only for nourishment" and has a preference for salami. As for clothing, groans Leah, "God forbid that his suits should be too modern or the lapels too wide or the cuffs too flared."
Rabin has been able to establish his authority as Premier in large part because he is an expert in two areas of crucial concern: security and foreign affairs. "When Kissinger comes here," says one of Rabin's political advisers, "they get right to the heart of the matter. Golda used to bring a big team with her, and they talked for hours on end. With Rabin, the negotiating team is small, and they get right down to business. Rabin starts with the here and now, not with 'history. Their meetings are invariably shorter."
The Premier has been criticized for his undiplomatic bluntness, his lackluster speaking style and his neglect of the Labor Party, which, in the sudden absence of yesterday's superstars, is in a melancholy state of disorganization. But he has also gained credit for being an able administrator and tactician, not to mention his striking speed-reading ability. Six months ago, Arab leaders tended to dismiss him as a weak and probably transitional figure; today they are not so sure. In Israel, most political observers now predict a long premiership for him--a remarkable accomplishment, considering the many problems he faces and the vulnerability of his original coalition.
The largest problem facing Rabin is whether there will be another Arab-Israeli war. More than a few people regard another conflict as inevitable; even U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim has warned that unless there is progress in the peace negotiations before the end of the year, the world may face a new war in the Middle East some time in 1975. On a more immediate problem, U.S. officials remain optimistic that the crisis attending the expiration of the U.N. mandate on the Golan Heights can be settled without serious incident. Kissinger has remained in close touch with President Assad and has received no ultimatum from him that he would not renew the mandate.
Oil Diplomacy. Moreover, TIME learned last week from a ranking Soviet diplomat in Damascus that a letter had recently been sent by Leonid Brezhnev to Assad asking the Syrian leader to remain calm. Brezhnev wrote that the Soviets would "make every possible effort" to have the Geneva Conference reconvene as soon as possible but probably not before the Soviet leader's visit to Syria in January. In exchange for such an assurance, the Soviet diplomat added, the Syrians were "very likely" to renew the U.N. mandate before it expires Nov. 30. To do otherwise, as the Syrians must know, would involve a very serious risk of war.
Over the longer term, an important unknown in the diplomatic equation is Israel's increasing nervousness over its isolation. For many months the Western European nations have demonstrated their susceptibility to Arab oil diplomacy. Last week, however, they showed that despite their dependence on Arab oil, they would not knuckle under to Arab demands at the U.N. During the General Assembly debate on the Palestinian problem last week, all nine European Economic Community nations supported a policy calling for a Middle East settlement that would enable Israel to live peacefully within its pre-1967 borders. At week's end, when the General Assembly endorsed (by a vote of 89 to 8) the Palestinians' right to "national independence and sovereignty" in Palestine, the nine members of the EEC were among the 37 nations that abstained.
In the U.S., several public opinion surveys have reported a shift in American support over the past year, but hardly a large-scale change in attitudes toward Israel. Some studies suggest that any change is due less to a growth in anti-Israeli feeling than to a new awareness of the Palestinians and their cause. But if there were to be another Arab-Israeli war, perhaps accompanied by a new oil embargo, the U.S. commitment that Israel has long taken for granted might be placed under severe strain. Some U.S. officials worry that at some future time, an Israeli government might misread a flare-up of anti-Israeli sentiment in the U.S. as a prelude to American abandonment and be tempted to launch a last attack while they still had American support.
At the moment, Secretary Kissinger is known to believe that he may have only one more round of phased diplomacy left before negotiations return to Geneva. If this happens, a great deal will depend on the format of the conference. The Soviets favor a massive plenary meeting, which U.S. officials regard as a surefire prescription for stalemate. Instead, they advocate an arrangement providing for small working groups that deal with specific problems and allowing for bilateral diplomacy behind the scenes.
The alternatives to such courses are grim. Israeli and Syrian troops are currently at battle strength and are so close on the Golan Heights that they face each other in a "no-warning" standoff. In the event of renewed fighting, the Syrians would probably seek to lure the Israelis into Syrian territory and inflict high casualties; Damascus, the Syrians are fond of saying, rightly or wrongly, would be like Stalingrad.
Both sides would probably use missiles, and in consequence there would probably be a large number of civilian casualties. The Israeli aim presumably would be a fast, decisive strike against Syria to avoid a three-front war, with Egypt, Jordan and Iraq joining forces to crush them.
The Arab-Israeli conflict sometimes seems to have a cruel perversity all its own, a self-fulfilling prophecy that leaves the participants forever locked in a death struggle. The rise of Yasser Arafat's P.L.O. as the acknowledged voice of the Palestinians has not helped the cause of negotiation, but it is a fact that Israel must face. Nor does the game of brinkmanship, such as the one that is being played in the waning days of the U.N. mandate, bring peace any closer.
Confucian Step. Obviously there is no serious alternative to negotiation, no solution except a radical accommodation that neither the Arabs nor the Israelis have yet found acceptable. The first step could be a very simple one: a withdrawal by the Israelis of only four or five kilometers on the Golan Heights, to permit a widening of the U.N. buffer zone. Such a modest gesture, high U.S. officials believe, could be the Confucian first step that could lead to the necessary 10,000 miles of negotiation. For Yitzhak Rabin, the challenge will be to compromise, to conciliate, perhaps even to try to deal with his people's ultimate enemies, to decide whether to renounce the "fortress risk" in favor of the political risk. It may be the hardest decision that an Israeli Premier has ever been asked to make.
*In a ludicrous snub led by a bloc of Arab and Communist states, UNESCO voted last week to bar Israel from participation in the organization's European regional group. The group charged that Israel, in the process of developing Jerusalem, had failed to protect certain historical sites. *A reference to the mountaintop fortress of Masada, where 960 Jews committed suicide in A.D. 73 rather than surrender to their enemies, the Romans.
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