Deliverance: Will Jerusalem Avoid a U.S.-Israeli Crisis By Declining U.S. Deployments on the Golan?

(Washington, D.C.): In recent months, senior American officials from Secretary of State Warren
Christopher to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili have expressed a
willingness to have U.S. forces deployed on the Golan Heights as part of a peace agreement
between Israel and Syria. Such comments appeared to reflect not only the Clinton
Administration’s undiluted enthusiasm for multilateral peacekeeping. They also seemed to
anticipate a formal request from the Rabin government for a U.S.-supplied deus ex machina, one
that would make an otherwise dubious deal with Syria acceptable to the Israeli people.

The obvious problems with such a proposition were discussed in a Center for Security Policy
Decision Brief issued on 25 April 1994 entitled, Reckless Abandon: Can Either Israel or the U.S.
Afford Rabin’s Bid to ‘Bet the (Golan) Farm’? (No. 94-D 42). These include: Assad’s
demonstrable unreliability; the high probability that American forces on the Golan Heights
would be subjected to Syrian-backed terrorism; and the likelihood that they would not
impede aggression from Syria but might deter Israel from taking necessary preemptive
action against it. Each of these factors would put at risk the security of the Jewish state,
the health of essential U.S.-Israeli ties or both.

Concerns that the Israeli government might, nonetheless, seek this sort of U.S. deployment — and
that Washington might blithely agree to it — have only been intensified by Secretary Christopher’s
shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Damascus. Leaks of Syria’s reported ‘flexibility’
strongly suggest that the United States and Israel are frantically sweetening the deal, the
only circumstance under which a thug like Assad contemplates even symbolic gestures of
compromise.

False Signals or Hopeful Signs?

Against this backdrop, one cannot be sure what to make of a report out of Jerusalem carried by
the Associated Press wire service on 6 May 1994. It says in part:

“Israel wants the United States to provide billions of dollars in weapons and
intelligence equipment to offset the risks if it withdraws from the Golan Heights in a
deal with Syria, officials said Friday….[Secretary Christopher] was told that Israel
needed to have spare parts, ammunition, satellite intelligence and sophisticated listening
devices to provide early warning of attack and ensure a fast response….

“The official said the supplies and intelligence support would be in lieu of a
U.S. role in the peacekeeping force that is expected to deploy in the Golan
Heights as part of a peace agreement. Israeli officials, who once endorsed the
idea of U.S. soldiers being involved, are now opposed. Some fear conflicts
with the force could sour overall relations with Israel’s main benefactor, while
others believe it would mean the inclusion of Russian troops.

“‘I am opposed to any presence of American soldiers on the Golan Heights.
I don’t think it would be good for Israel or the United States,’ said Ori Orr,
head of [the Israeli] parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and a
retired major general who is a confidant of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.”
(Emphasis added.)

Such statements are most welcome to those who were long accustomed to hearing such
hard-headed strategic realism from Jerusalem — and who have had too little evidence of it for too
long. They also echo the sensible views courageously expressed on this issue by such friends of
Israel as Rep. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal and leading
members of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors like Douglas J. Feith.

Needed: A Hard Look Before Leaping

On the off chance that Mr. Orr’s views are not, in fact, shared by the Israeli government and that
a deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan is, in fact, in the works, the Center for Security Policy
strongly endorses a proposal made today to Congress by Richard Hellman, director of the
Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign. In testimony before the Foreign Operations
Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr. Hellman urged that the Joint
Chiefs of Staff be tasked to perform a comprehensive study of the merits and liabilities of
such a deployment before the United States is formally committed to it.

In draft legislation prepared by Mr. Hellman’s group, this study would require:

• an evaluation of “the historic record of peacekeeping forces and peacekeeping operations
  in the Middle East”;
• an estimate of the projected “U.S. casualties and losses and losses anticipated in
  connection with” a Golan deployment;
• the prospects for “implementation and future compliance by Syria” with an agreement
  involving Israeli withdrawal and redeployment on the Golan; and
• the likely duration and optimal exit conditions of a U.S. peacekeeping operation on the
  Golan.

The Bottom Line

According to the AP report of 6 May 1994, the Chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, Gen. Ehud
Barak, told Secretary Christopher’s team, “If Israel withdraws from the Golan Heights, it
would no longer have the defenses to slow down an attack and gain enough time to call up
its reserves.”

Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that any amount of U.S.-supplied ammunition stockpiles, spare
parts and intelligence gear will alter that reality. Accordingly, the Center for Security Policy
believes that Israel should not give up the Golan Heights as long as there is a chance that a
vastly over-armed Syria might try to exploit the vulnerability that would accompany such a
step.

If Israel is, nonetheless, determined to take such a reckless step, the most that the United States
should do — as Ori Orr notes, for both Israel’s interests and America’s — should be to provide the
sort of additional materiel and intelligence assets needed to minimize the associated, grave risks.