It’s War — and the U.S. Better Ensure Israel Wins It

(Washington, D.C.): In today’s Wall Street Journal, one of the Nation’s most
respected strategic
thinkers calls a spade a spade: In the following op.ed. article, Dr. Eliott Cohen insists that what
is now happening in the Levant can only be described as a “war” — not to be confused, as the
Clinton-Gore Administration prefers, with a “breakdown in the peace process,” or “the eruption
of violence.”

Dr. Cohen’s recommendations are at least as important as his analysis of the facts on the
ground
in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In particular, his call should be heeded for the
United States immediately to abandon the role of “honest broker”: “The U.S. is not impartial in
this dispute, and though it may sympathize with the Palestinians, ties of values, interests and
history link it to Israel profoundly.”

In addition, urgent action is in order on Professor Cohen’s suggestion that the United States
provide Israel with non-lethal technologies that could enable the Jewish State to deal effectively
with hostile Palestinian and Israeli Arab operations with a minimum of bloodshed.

Wall Street Journal, 13 October 2000

‘It’s War’

By Eliot A. Cohen

With the recent riots, the lynching of Israeli soldiers and the subsequent helicopter attacks
on
Ramallah, we are forced to concede that the Middle East is again engaged in war.

If you add the Palestinian revolt of 1936-39 and the war between Palestinian villagers and
Jewish settlers (1947-48) to Israel’s War of Independence (1948-49), the Suez War (1956), the
Six Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur-Ramadan War (1973), the Lebanon War (1982) and the
Palestinian intifadah (1987-93, approximately), the world has seen one major Arab-Israeli war
roughly every eight years. What is occurring now is another round, different, but alike in its
roots: the creation of a Jewish state in the predominantly Arab Muslim Middle East, over the
unyielding opposition of the local population.

Self-Delusion

One will not, however, often find the word “war” in the lexicon of American or Israeli
politicians, or even generals. Particularly in Washington the word war — connoting, as it does,
the direct use of force to achieve political goals — is shunned in favor of “break down of the
peace process” or “the eruption of violence.” This is self-delusion. Even a cursory review of press
reports reveals that the ill-timed visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount was but the pretext
for a wave of arson, shooting and rioting orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority’s militia and
applauded by the PA’s tame television and media outlets.

Think of this as war, and the deplorable becomes the entirely logical. Palestinian leader
Yasser
Arafat’s decision to use the first pretext for violence following the collapse of the Camp David
negotiations was, from a strategist’s point of view, altogether sound. He had come out of that
negotiation at a disadvantage: However briefly, world opinion sided with the Israelis, who had
made a generous offer of almost 90% of the West Bank and Gaza, showed flexibility over
Jerusalem, and opened up the possibility of the descendants of Palestinian refugees returning to
the new Palestinian state — not to mention their own recognition of that state.

This placed Mr. Arafat in difficulty with some segments of his own side, not to mention
Arab
states that have no interest in a final peace between Palestinians and Israel. So out came the
rioters. Riots mean civilian casualties, and civilian casualties look good on television. Indeed,
world opinion has once again turned against alleged Israeli brutality. This was important to Mr.
Arafat, because after Camp David there seemed to be no pressure on Israel to make more
attractive offers than those he had already pocketed, and deadlock would only give a greater
opening to Palestinian critics of his unsavory regime.

Mr. Arafat had also observed the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, under pressure,
with no formal deal, and seemingly as a result of a mere trickle of casualties. The lesson he took
from this was that Israel does not have the stomach for low-intensity war; hence the risks of a
calculated use of violence, followed by negotiation, seemed small. This is a war that involves
talking while fighting, and as America learned in Vietnam, democracies handle the ambiguities
of such conflicts very poorly indeed.

Israel will have to draw its own conclusions about the war, but the U.S. would do well to put
together its own list.

First, there will probably be no final agreement between Palestinians and Israelis now or in
the
foreseeable future. The problem with the Oslo peace process was that no one ever explained how
the incremental talks would reconcile the fundamentally opposed objectives of the two sides.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave the Palestinians about as good a deal as they could hope
to get, and they rejected it.

The Palestinian Authority has made it abundantly clear that it can never content itself with a
ministate on the West Bank and Gaza, surrounded by hostile powers, limited in its control of
water resources, airspace, and treaty-making power. Moreover, the unpleasant truth is that most
Palestinians do not accept the outcome of the 1948 war as the basis of a long-term settlement
with the Jews. Interim agreements, yes; “real peace” based on recognized borders, a sincere
renunciation of violence, and an acceptance of the legitimacy of the Israeli state, no.

Second, one of the gravest mistakes made by the U.S. (and Israel) was to ignore the domestic
actions of the Palestinian Authority. The Clinton administration, painfully sensitive to most
human-rights situations, has been remarkably silent and acquiescent in the creation of a brutal
and corrupt Palestinian demi-state that treats its citizens worse than the occupier once did. Like
their Israeli colleagues, American diplomats believed that a regime run by a thug would at least
be able to deliver its people. They forgot that it would remain thuggish in its external relations as
well.

Third, the U.S. cannot continue to be a benevolently neutral bystander in this fight. The
suicide
attack on the USS Cole in Yemen is violent evidence of that fact. To the extent the U.S.
maintains a pose of anguished discretion in this fight, it encourages the Palestinian use of
violence.

What is to be done? First, we must acknowledge a fact: A war has begun which will last for
some
time — years, quite conceivably — and which will put our Israeli allies in an acutely difficult
position. Having cut down some thousand Somalis to protect our own band of Rangers in
Mogadishu in 1993, the American government should be prepared for the possibility that there
will be some ugly television footage coming out of the Middle East.

At the same time, the U.S. has much to offer Israel in terms of non-lethal technologies that
can
reduce civilian casualties. It can also help with what has been a dismal public-relations effort by
the Israelis. The U.S. is not impartial in this dispute, and though it may sympathize with the
Palestinians, ties of values, interests and history link it to Israel profoundly.

Second, we can isolate the conflict by leaning hard on our allies to stay out of the way. Egypt
has, in the past decade, delighted in the role of spoiler for American diplomacy in
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The time may have come for Egypt to receive an unambiguous
indication of the consequences of working at cross purposes with the U.S. Among other things,
the case for continued military aid to a regime with no avowed contiguous enemy save our
closest regional friend looks increasingly questionable.

Heavy Fist, Open Hand

Third, the U.S. government must rethink its concept of the “peace process.” The truth is that
there are both peace and war processes occurring simultaneously. The two are interdependent,
and statesmen must respect the logic of each. Israel, which is now far more psychologically
dependent on the U.S. than it was 20 years ago, will need coaching in developing a strategy that
combines a heavy fist and an open hand.

Winston Churchill once complained of the unwillingness of statesmen to combine the two:
“Whereas if we were properly constructed we should use our right and left hands with equal
force and skill according to circumstances. As it is, those who can win a war well can rarely
make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won a war.”

For better or worse, the Israelis will have to do both, and the U.S. can play a constructive role
if
it begins to view foreign policy as strategy rather than, in Michael Mandelbaum’s words, social
work.