344 • 18 WAR AND THE QUEST FOR PEACEThe well-intentioned US efforts to mediate an Israeli-Arab settlement
by indirect negotiations failed to get at the roots of the problem: Israel's
fear of attack (and hence extinction) by the Arabs and the Arabs' fear of
expansion (and hence domination) by the Israelis. Israel claimed it could
not risk its security by agreeing in advance to make concessions that might
be matched only by some—or possibly none—of its Arab foes. What if
Israel gave up all or part of the Sinai, only to find that Sadat did not want
peace after all or that he had been ousted by more militant Egyptian offi¬
cers? What if Israel withdrew from the West Bank (presumably the sequel
to abandoning the Sinai), and the land did not revert to Jordan but instead
was given to a small and discontented Palestinian state? Israel's govern¬
ment and military establishment were confident about their military
superiority over the combined Arab forces, but domestic tensions were
growing. Israel's right-wing parties had left the broad coalition govern¬
ment when it accepted the cease-fire for the Rogers Peace Plan. Further
Labor Party concessions might earn Golda Meir the scathing condemna¬
tion of Menachem Begin, leader of the Herut (Freedom) Party, and of
other Israelis preoccupied with territorial expansion, which they equated
with national security.
As for Egypt, Sadat had bent as far as he dared. A separate peace would
have probably isolated Egypt from the rest of the Arab world and dis¬
suaded the oil-exporting countries from supporting the faltering Egyptian
economy. Jordan would have made peace with Israel in return for its com¬
plete withdrawal from the West Bank, including Jerusalem's Old City. In
1972 King Husayn proposed a federation between these Palestinian areas
and the rest of Jordan, to be called the "United Arab Kingdom." Neither
Israel nor the Palestinians endorsed this idea. Syria maintained that Israel,
as an expansionist state, would never give back peacefully what it had
taken by force. The USSR, seeking détente with the West, did not block US
peacemaking efforts, but it did not back them either. Instead, it went on
cultivating its own Middle Eastern friends, including Syria and Iraq, as
well as the chastened PLO and related guerrilla groups.
DANGER SIGNS IN THE MIDDLE EASTThe two years prior to October 1973 were the lull before the storm. Actu¬
ally, there were danger signals. Qadhafi, having agreed to unite Libya with
Sadat's Egypt, pressured him to attack Israel. Palestinian fidaiyin drama¬
tized their cause in ways offensive to both Israel and the West. Their tar¬
gets included Puerto Rican pilgrims in Israel's Lod Airport, Israeli athletes