See how it looked in 1967

A win for Israel

By Joseph C. Harsch

Washington

There is nothing like a decisive military victory to settle some (few) kinds of things.
Israel has won a decisive military victory. Apparently it is as quick and decisive as the one of 1956.

It has settled two matters.

It has proved conclusively that Israel is still a much more modern and efficient military power than the combined Arab states living around Israel.

It has demonstrated that the Soviet Union is not prepared to risk its “détente” with the United States for the sake of the cause of the Arabs against Israel.

Restraint ineffective

We know now that throughout the Mideast crisis Moscow and Washington were in constant communication and Washington had reason to believe that Moscow did not want the Arab-Israel issue to break out into open hostilities.

There is a third but more tentative conclusion to be drawn.

Neither Washington nor Moscow wanted hostilities.

Both did what they thought they could do to restrain the quarreling sides.

But what was done was not effective.

Moscow could not persuade Cairo to forgo the effort to make good its blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Washington could not persuade Israel that the reopening of the gulf could be assured by any means other than Israel’s own armed forces.

In each case there was a special reason for the failure.

Two miscalculations

Moscow is in no position to give orders to Egypt. It can encourage. It can advise. But it could not order. Besides, although Egypt is a client of Moscow in power politics, it is not a satellite. Egypt is anti-Communist by faith. It lives in a different culture from Moscow.

Washington can advise Israel. And Washington can exercise some influence on Israel. But it cannot order and require obedience where Israel’s sense of its own security is concerned.

There are, obviously, two miscalculations which led up to the crisis. Moscow must have underestimated President Nasser’s reach. Had he been satisfied to reoccupy Egyptian soil without the blockade he probably would have been sitting today upon a substantial prestige victory. The blockade was his undoing.

And if Washington had appraised correctly the temper of Israel it would have undertaken to break the blockade itself. In that case Arab resentment would be no worse than it is now, and the shooting would have been avoided.

But this victory, like all military victories, leaves new problems to be faced.
This is the third Arab-Israel war in less than 20 years. Must we accept the prospect of another Arab-Israel war every 10 years, indefinitely? Is there no peace between these now hostile people?

Meshing policies

The most helpful step would be a change in the Moscow-Washington relationship which would deprive any country in the area of the temptation of trying to play one superpower off against the other.

Both have now been through another affair which could have led into another confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. It need not have happened, had they been able to reconcile their Middle East policies.

It would be expecting the millennium to expect any such meshing of Moscow-Washington policies in the immediate future. But it is something to know that both were conscious of the importance of avoiding that confrontation and did keep in communication through the crisis.