Daniel Pipes: The Winds of War Are Blowing in the Mideast

(Washington, D.C.): This week, President Clinton risks further compounding the
damage he has
done to date to Israel’s security by further abetting Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s delusion that
the Jewish State can ever satisfy what are, in fact, Yasser Arafat’s insatiable demands. No good
can come from Mr. Clinton’s once again allowing U.S. authority and sponsorship to promote
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under artificial deadlines (the Israeli election less than two
months away and the end of the Clinton presidency on 20 January) and, in the process, enabling
Barak as he abandons one red-line after another to appease the unappeasable.

Unfortunately, such a “process” is not simply doomed to produce a false peace. It is, as Dr.
Daniel Pipes — one of our era’s most thoughtful, knowledgeable and insightful experts on the
Middle East — has noted, creating a perception among Arabs not seen for decades: The war
option against Israel is once again viable.

President-elect George W. Bush has properly expressed real misgivings about the Clinton
approach to the peace process and has expressed his determination to reaffirm America’s
commitment to the security of the Jewish State. Yet, his transition spokesman, Ari Fleischer,
made an extraordinary statement on Monday. According to yesterday’s Wall Street
Journal, Mr.
Fleischer said — in connection with another of Mr. Clinton’s foreign policy debacles, North
Korea — “‘We won’t weigh in on decisions the administration has to make between now and Jan.
20.”

Dr. Pipes makes a persuasive case in today’s Jerusalem Post that “the winds of
war” will be
unleashed on Mr. Bush’s presidency if Israel does not change course. The only hope that it will
do so, if for the President elect now to discourage his predecessor from making matters worse
over the next month. The need for fresh thinking won’t wait; it must be hoped that neither will
the Bush-Cheney team.

The Winds of War
by Daniel Pipes
The Jerusalem Post
20 December 2000

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators may be meeting in Washington, but the atmosphere of
Arab-Israeli relations today remains fundamentally altered from what it was three months ago. In
fact,
it resembles the bad old days of pre-1967.
Back then, Israel’s enemies widely believed that they could dispatch the Jewish state with one
good blow. Their overconfidence explains why, with no one planning or wanting it, full-scale
war broke out in June 1967.
Israel’s astonishing victory in the Six Day War then seemingly destroyed Arab exuberance and
forever closed the question of its permanent existence. But it was not to be. The Oslo process,
along with other signals of Israeli demoralization over the past seven years, reignited Arab
overconfidence and wakened the sleeping dogs of war. During the past two months, especially,
in
ways reminiscent of the years before 1967, the enemies of Israel are again tempted by the
military option.

In brief, the security that war had achieved for Israel, diplomacy has undone. Listen to how,
over
the past two months, making war on Israel has become a real choice for the Arab states and Iran.
As usual, Iraq acts the boldest, calling for a jihad to “liberate Palestine” and “put an end to
Zionism.” Saddam Hussein has noisily recruited two million volunteers to fight Israel and sent a
division of soldiers to his border closest with Israel.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, has called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that
must
“be removed.” The untried Syrian regime of Bashar Assad has rattled sabers with talk of war. In
Cairo, reports the Middle East Newsline, the current debate is about “whether the
Israeli-Palestinian mini-war will escalate into a regional confrontation. At that point, the question
is
whether Egypt will enter the fray.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denies plans to make total war (“A war until the last
Egyptian
soldier is definitely not in the cards”) but makes ominous-sounding threats about “entering the
tunnel of the unknown.”

Israeli analysts recognize this danger. For example, Yuval Steinitz, the thoughtful Likud
member
of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, observes that “Egypt is preparing for a
conflict with Israel, though not necessarily an all-out war.”

The U.S. government has, in the person of Martin Indyk — its ambassador to Israel —
acknowledged this danger. Indyk noted how the Israeli-Palestinian clashes of recent weeks have
caused some in the Arab world to float the idea of resorting to a military option against Israel.
He calls these “a very dangerous challenge.” How might a full-scale war actually come about?

Hizbullah, the Lebanese Islamist organization that expelled Israel’s forces from south
Lebanon
earlier this year, is probably the key, for Israel has promised to punish Hizbullah aggression by
hitting Syrian targets.

Here is one scenario of a conflict starting without anyone intending it to (as in 1967) from
The
Jerusalem Report‘s cover story, “What Could Trigger War”: Palestinian snipers kill Jewish
children, Israeli forces respond with artillery shells, one of which goes astray and kills 20
Palestinian children.

Furious demonstrators pour into the streets across the Middle East. Riding these sentiments,
Hizbullah attacks northern Israel. As promised, Israel retaliates against Syrian targets, prompting
a mobilization of Syrian, Egyptian, and other forces, including Israel’s.

At this point, concludes the Report, “All-out war on all fronts is one pull of the
trigger away.”
Who would pull the trigger? Saddam is a likely candidate. A Palestinian source notes that “What
Saddam wants is to spark a regional war which he can lead.” Israelis agree: a senior military
officer expects that the Iraqis “would love to participate” in a conflict against Israel.

If such a descent into war is not to take place, Israel must carefully calibrate its actions to
achieve
two nearly contradictory goals: deter potential enemies (be willing to use force and lose lives);
and not agitate the Arab street (deploy violence in an intelligent and controlled way).

This is an exceedingly difficult pair of objectives and they are getting even harder to achieve
as
each new day of violence simultaneously diminishes Israeli deterrence and heightens Arab
anger. To be sure, the government of Israel has taken some steps (for example, sending a private
warning to Damascus and reinforcing troops on the Golan Heights) but such easy gestures alone
will not suffice.

The sooner Israel begins the effort seriously to dissuade its potential enemies, the better its
chances to dispel the winds of war.

The writer is director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum.