Israel ignoring its own lessons
THOSE WHO believe that Israel has never been so beleaguered as it is today should remember that 30 years ago, on the Jewish day of atonement in the holy month of Ramadan, an Egyptian and a Syrian army successfully and simultaneously crossed the Suez Canal and poured down the Golan Heights to catch Israel unprepared and in mortal peril.
It was considered to be a classic surprise attack, but we know now that Israel knew almost everything there was to know about Arab preparations for war. King Hussein of Jordan even made a secret visit to Tel Aviv to warn Israel. But because the Arab armies had been so easily defeated in the 1956 and 1967 wars, Israel ignored all the warnings, choosing to believe that the Arabs simply didn't have it in them to fight.
But fight they did, with masses of modern Soviet equipment, new tactics, and bold leadership. As Abraham Rabinovich, the author of a new book on the Yom Kippur War, has said, it was "a monumental display of intellectual arrogance" on the part of Israel's generals. Golda Meir, prime minister at the time, kicked herself in her memoirs for believing them when the danger was so clear.
The Israel Defense Forces were sent reeling back. Defeat on both fronts seemed a real possibility, and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan spoke darkly of the destruction of the "Third Temple," meaning the State of Israel. "What those days were like to me I shall not even try to describe," Meir wrote. "It is enough, I think, to say that I couldn't even cry when I was alone." There were reports, never confirmed, that Israel's nuclear arsenal was being prepared for battle.
The Soviet Union and the United States soon rushed to resupply their clients. Their Mediterranean fleets moved in closer; the United States went on nuclear alert. In the Cold War context, the superpowers couldn't be seen to let their clients lose.
But Henry Kissinger, just a month in office as secretary of state, "was capable of sniffing diplomatic subtlety half way around the globe," as Rabinovich puts it. He sensed that Anwar Sadat was not going for broke, but wanted to jog the stalemate and make a deal. As Kissinger would later write, "our definition of rationality did not take seriously the notion of starting an unwinnable war to restore self-respect." But that was Sadat's rational.
After a time of agony, Israel gained the initiative, and in a bold Suez Canal crossing which would seal the military reputation of General Ariel Sharon, and with Syrian defeats on the northern front, final and complete victory seemed in Israel's grasp. But Kissinger obtained a cease-fire that left the Egyptian Army in place on the east bank of the canal, a cease-fire that even required the Israeli Army to give the Egyptians food and water. It was a move that Golda Meir treats with scorn in her memoir, but it saved Egypt from another humiliation and prepared the way for peace. Four years later Sadat was in Jerusalem, and with Egypt out of the war equation the threat of Israel being pushed into the sea was reduced to zero. The peace has been a cold peace, but one that has been observed "to the last grain of sand," as the Israelis say.
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed any chance that Israel could be again challenged in a conventional war, and now Jordan has also signed a peace treaty with Israel.
Today, Israel fights a different battle against a people whom it holds in military occupation. But despite the horror of suicide bombings, it does not threaten the existence of the state. The haunting tragedy is twofold: that both sides came so close to peace before it slipped from their grasp into violence, and that both sides are now so badly led.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the hero of the hour in 1973, is still seeking a military solution as he did with such daring -- and a touch of insubordination -- 30 years ago. And too many Palestinian extremists also believe they can wear down Israel and finally win. At the moment, as terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp puts it, the "extremes have become empowered on both sides," but in the end there is no military solution, no physical canal to cross or wall to put up that will make Israel safe, and no Henry Kissinger to persuade Israel that total humiliation of an enemy may be counter-productive.
Sharon, however, cannot ignore army Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon and four ex-chiefs of Israel's Shin Bet, the internal security service, who are boldly speaking out, with a touch of insubordination, saying that it is madness to give the Palestinians no hope by continuing to try to pound them into submission.
It is these Israelis who are showing the flexibility and daring that Sharon showed 30 years ago, but lacks now, to gain back the initiative. It is they who realize that there is a psychological canal to cross and that the genius of Israel has always been to grasp such opportunities even in the darkest hour.