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>From NEWSMAX
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Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Middle Eastern Geopolitics
Arnaud de Borchgrave
Friday, Feb. 8, 2002
Make-believe letters from one national leader to another are
frequently helpful in jogging things along. The New York Times'
foreign affairs columnist is a master of the genre.
But his latest effort (Feb. 6) inadvertently portrays President Bush
as sadly lacking in the institutional memory department.
In an imaginary letter addressed to Arab leaders, Mr. Friedman has
Bush telling them that when they made clear to Israel's silent
majority they were interested in real peace in return for real
Israeli withdrawal, they got exactly what they wanted from Israel.
Hello!
Friedman, not Bush, has apparently forgotten that the late Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat, in January 1971, in his first interview after succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser,
said he was prepared to "sign a final peace treaty wi
th Israel" in return for an "Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 war borders and a just
solution to the Palestinian problem."
The Israelis didn't take Sadat seriously about peace until he went to war in October
1973 to prove he was serious about peace. Welcome to Middle Eastern geopolitics!
Then Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, responding to Sadat's January 1971 offer,
said Sadat was nothing but "a Soviet puppet who is incapable of telling the truth."
She also said in the same interview, headlined in the International Herald Tribune,
that there was no such thing as "the Palestinian people who, are a figment of your
[this reporter's] imagination."
The beloved Golda scoffed when told that Sadat loathed the Soviets � he had inherited
some 18,000 Soviet military advisers from Nasser � and in July 1972 he stunned the
world by giving Moscow an ultimatum that gave the So
viets 10 days to clear out of Egypt. Moscow complied.
But this wasn't good enough for Golda. So Sadat was jollied along with a series of
half measures � Sisco plan, Rogers plan � that kicked the can of total withdrawal for
total peace, and went nowhere.
The Egyptian president then resolved to give the region "shock therapy." Israeli
intelligence told Golda Meir that Sadat was bluffing, that Israel could defeat Egypt
with one hand tied behind its back, and a rumored oil e
mbargo was an empty threat "because what are the Arabs going to do with their oil �
drink it?" Such was the conventional wisdom.
Unbeknownst to Israel, Sadat had obtained a pledge from Saudi Arabia's King Feisal
that in the event of Egyptian reverses on the battlefield, the oil weapon would be
unsheathed.
Egypt and Syria launched their simultaneous all-out attacks across the Suez Canal and
the Golan Heights in early October 1973. No sooner did Gen. Ariel Sharon launch a
brilliant counterattack on Oct. 15 that took Israeli
forces across to the west bank of the canal and threatened Cairo than the Arab oil
embargo was declared.
The shock therapy worked. Henry Kissinger quickly stepped into the breach, saved the
Egyptian 3rd Army from total annihilation, negotiated a ceasefire and began his
shuttle diplomacy that led to the first Israeli withdraw
al from the Sinai.
Sadat did not get the Israelis to budge by being Mr. Nice Guy. The world was up in
arms about a quadrupling of oil prices, and the Israelis realized how their
miscalculations had led to a needless and mindless casualty to
ll of 3,000 young Israelis.
The region is now headed back to the geopolitical equation that prevailed 30 years ago
� an arrogant Israeli prime minister at the head of an overwhelmingly powerful and
self-confident Israel, and a weak, toothless Arab w
orld.
But there are plenty of Arab radicals who are convinced that only shock therapy will
get the Israelis off the West Bank and Gaza, as it got them out of Sinai in 1974-75.
Another oil embargo? Doubtful. A major explosion in the oil installations of the Gulf?
A distinct possibility. So is a small rubber zodiac speedboat with terrorist frogmen
pulling alongside a supertanker in the Strait of
Hormuz.
They wouldn't even have to be holy warriors on their way to join Allah and the 72
virgins the Koran promises them. Sticking limpet mines to the hull on a moonless night
is not necessarily a suicide mission.
Without terrorism, the PLO would still be dismissed as a figment of someone's
imagination, as Golda Meir once suggested. Without terrorism (e.g., the Stern and
Irgun gangs), the Jews of Palestine and the survivors of the
holocaust might have had a much longer wait for their own state.
Arnaud de Borchgrave has had a distinguished career as a foreign
correspondent, editor and media executive.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Middle East
End<{{{
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