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find the means to restore the legiti–
mate rights of the Palestinian
people."
"What is our object? We really
want peace ..." said the Egyptian
foreign minister.
How to bring about that peace is
the Arab's dilemma.
Soviet Goals
And what about the U.S.S. R.?
What does she want out of the
Middle East conflict?
Many are convinced that lhe
U.S.S.R. is nol seeking the annihila-
Europe quarrel with the United
States over Mideast policy
in
order
to keep
in
the good graces of the
Arabs - thereby preventing Arab
oil taps from being tumed off. If in
the fulure the Arabs turn off their
oil spigots to Europe, this will give
Russia a strategic advantage over
the NATO countries.
An lsraeli View
Most Israelis are not convinced
that the Arabs have given up their
oft-repeated goal of driving them
into the sea.
"'We have fought and we wi/1 go on fighting
to liberate our land, which was seized
by Israelí occupation in 1967, and to
find the means to restare the legitimate
rights of the Palestinian people."
-
Anwar Sadat
tion of Israel. Rather, these analysts
believe, it is Moscow's policy to
keep the Mideast in unrest in order
to further Soviet aims in that area.
According lo this line of reasoning,
Moscow needs Israel as a "source of
tension." Or as one analyst put it:
"Moscow has no wish to drive the
Israelis into the sea ... Israel is a
necessary anvil for the Soviet hammer."
Even though Russia voted for the
partition of Palestine and thereby
for the nationhood of Israel, she has
since that time champiooed the
cause of tbe Arabs in order to ac–
quire political, economic and mili–
tary toeholds in the Mideast. Russia
would like to keep the Middle East
cauldron boiling so as to generate
more anti-Americao feelings among
the Arabs. Even though the Rus–
sians don't
need
Mideast oil , they
would want to
control
it as a means
to the ultimate overthrow of capital–
ism worldwide.
Furthermore, Russia hopes to
drive a wedge between America and
her NATO partners over the Mid–
east oil crisis. Russia hopes to see
4
Israelí Prime Minister Golda
Meir recently said: "We know that
giving up means death, means de–
struction of our sovereignty and
physical destruction of our entire
people. Against that, we will fight
with everything that we have within
us."
The Jews, looking back over their
shoulders, see they have been with–
out a national borne for 1,900 long
years. They are tired of being
knocked about, tired of being driven
from pillar to post, tired of being
without a country. Jews vow,
"Never again!" Many are oow set–
tled (with United Nations approval)
in the land they once possessed.
They do not intend to give up what
they look upoo as their homeland.
Israel has insisted that she will
settle for nothing less than "secure
and recognized boundaries" - to be
negotiated directly by the Arabs
and the Israelis - not by a third
party.
Israelis compare the Arab attack
upon their nation on Yom Kippur,
their holiest day of the year, to the
1941 attack by the Japanese military
on Pearl Harbor. They shudder to
lhink of the bloodshed and deslruc–
tion they would have suffered had
the "occupied lands" nol been un–
der their control as a buffer in Octo–
ber.
U. S. Aims?
The United States, for its part,
has conlinued to
try
to be friendly
with both Israelis and Arabs. Amer–
ica has, in fact , continued to supply
weapons of war not only to Israel,
but also to Jordan and a few other
Arab states. The United States has
sought to guarantee the national
sovereignty of Israel without alien–
ating the Arabs.
But this has proved to be a diffi–
cult
if
not impossible task. Arabs
know that America has been more
pro-Israel than pro-Arab. They have
urged America to take a more
"evenhanded" approach in the Mid–
east conflict.
Mr. Nixon has said that America
is oeither pro-Israel nor pro-Arab
but is pro-peace. But how to achieve
that peace
is
America's dilemma.
Washington Holds the Key?
With slightly more of their terri–
lory under Israelí occupation as a
result of the October war, what are
the Arabs todo? How can they get
Israel to budge?
Both before and after the latest
round in the Mideast war, it became
painfully manifest to the Arabs that
the solution to lhe Mideasl dilemma
does not lie in Moscow. The com–
bined might of Syriao and Egyplian
armies, even wilh lhe initial advan–
tage of a surpr ise attack, could not
defeal Israel militarily. The Israelis
could have been beaten only if the
Russians had intervened directly by
sending their own armed forces into
the conflict. And President Nixon
bluntly warned the Russians
not
lO
intervene.
The real key to a negotiated set–
tlement is believed by Arabs to be
held by Washington. The question
is how can the Arabs persuade the
United States to use that key to
PLAIN TAUTH
January
1974