ton, not fully appreciating the importance of the is-
sue in the region in general, decided not to press
Israel too hard. However, there were a few rough
patches in the relationship.
In the fall of 1981, the Reagan administration de-
cided to sell airborne warning and control systems
(AWACs) to Saudi Arabia, implementing a policy ini-
tiated by Carter. Israel opposed the sale, as it did the
eventually aborted plan to supply advanced Ameri-
can weapons to Jordan. (Both of these Arab coun-
tries were considered to be moderate and thus
friendly to the United States.) On the American
side, Washington objected to Israel’s air strike
against a nuclear power plant in construction on the
outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, in June of 1981, as well as
to a number of Israeli air attacks against alleged
guerrilla bases in Lebanon and the full-scale inva-
sion of southern Lebanon by Israel in June, 1982.
The United States also rebuked Israel’s annexation
of Syria’s Golan Heights in December, 1981. These
disputes were interspersed with the intermittent sus-
pension of American arms deliveries to Israel or of
U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation talks.
At any rate, on November 15, 1988, the Palestin-
ian National Council proclaimed an independent
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and ac-
cepted U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and
338 implicitly recognizing Israel. When Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir
Arafat tried to do the same at the U.N. General As-
sembly in the fall of 1988, he was denied a U.S. entry
visa on the grounds that he represented a terroristThe Eighties in America Middle East and North America 645
Palestinian demonstrators attack Israeli troops during an uprising in Nablus, West Bank, on December 13, 1987.(AP/Wide World
Photos)