The future of Israel briefly considered.

• Author: Jones, Curtis F.

Editor's Note: The author, a veteran student of the Middle Eastern scene, finds little encouraging about the problem-filled situation in which Israel finds itself at the end of the year. Further, his prognosis for U. S. interests in the Middle East reflects his essentially negative estimate of prospects for resolution of the Iraqi conflict in which Washington finds itself still embroiled. --Ed.

Since Israel proclaimed independence in 1948, it has been striving for acceptance by its eighteen neighbors in the Middle East. The effort has been essentially unsuccessful. Egypt and Jordan have gingerly signed peace treaties in response to American pressure and annual bribes, but in both cases the product is a cold peace--one opposed by large majorities of the Egyptian and Jordanian populations. Similar cooption of Syria is ruled out as long as Israel sees military necessity in retaining the Syrian Golan.

The Islamist opposition neutralizes the pro-Western faction in Lebanon. Turkey's alliance with Israel is an opportunistic transaction negotiated by the military bloc, primarily in hopes of advancing the cause of Turkish entry into the European Union; the alliance is suspect in the eyes of many Turkish parliamentarians. Detente between Zionist Israel and Saudi Arabia, custodian of the Muslim Holy Places (which include Jerusalem), is a nonstarter.

The Israeli-American diarchy has made two efforts to impose pro-Western regimes by armed force. In 1982, Israel applied its conventional military preeminence to the occupation of southern Lebanon as far as Beirut, but its choice for puppet president was assassinated, and after eighteen years of Syrian-backed guerrilla resistance, Israeli forces abandoned the country.

In 2003, American forces tried to achieve in Iraq what Israel failed to do in Lebanon. Once again, conventional attack knocked out the existing government. Once again the resistance went underground. The Iraqi venture is threatening to turn out much worse than the Lebanese. After three years and a half, the American forces are confronted by two challenges: a Sunni guerrilla war against the Americans and their half-hearted Iraqi allies, and an escalating power struggle among at least five Iraqi factions: Kurds, Turkmens, Sunni Arabs, along with Shiites for preserving a united Iraq and Shiites for Iraqi partition. No one can predict the outcome, but it promises to be bad for America and bad for Israel. It may be cataclysmic for the Middle East...