research essay

Israel and Palestinian Nationalism Author(s): Seth Tillman Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 46-66 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2536318 Accessed: 27-11-2018 17:28 UTC

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Israel and Palestinian

Nationalism

SETH TILLMAN*

Whatever else might divide people in Israel's vigorous and contentious

politics, few Israelis question that the greatest danger by far to Israel's

survival is the possible creation of an independent Palestinian state. Prior to

the coming to office of the Carter Administration in the United States in

January 1977 the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict was focused on less

central issues, on the effort to draw Arabs and Israelis from limited

agreements on the Sinai and the Golan Heights "step-by-step" toward the

more difficult questions relating to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East

Jerusalem. When the Carter Administration undertook to mediate a general

settlement, and even more when President Sadat initiated in November 1977 his bid for peace based on security guarantees for Israel in return for Israeli

withdrawal from the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza came perforce to centre stage and Israelis were confronted with their most feared

spectre, the prospect of a radical, irredentist, Soviet-dominated Palestinian state.

ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

The Israeli fear of Palestinian nationalism is different in character from

the Israeli fear of Arabs in general, or of Egypt and Syria as "confrontation" states. The latter threaten Israel with what they might do, militarily or

* Seth Tillman, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a former professional

staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Congress. This article is excerpted from a

manuscript in preparation at the American Enterprise Institute with the working title The United

States and the Middle East: Interests and Obstacles.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 47

otherwise; the Palestinians threaten Israel with what they are, rival claimants

to the same land. To whatever extent the Palestinian Arabs are acknow-

ledged to have national rights in the territory of old Palestine, Israeli rights are called into question. The very term "rights," as applied to the

Palestinians, has alarming connotations to Israelis, who took it as an ominous

sign when the Carter Administration began to use that term in lieu of the previously favoured term "interests" in reference to Palestinian aspirations.

After the Camp David agreements were signed Begin assured the Israeli people that the phrase, "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people," as

contained in the "Framework for Peace," "has no meaning." He had accepted it, he said, to please Presidents Sadat and Carter, "and because it

does not change reality."' While sensibilities about the legitimacy of Palestinian claims cause Israelis acute anxiety, draconian threats, the

Palestinian Covenant calling for the displacement of Israel, and acts of terrorism strike at the very heart of historic Jewish fears. They raise the spectre of pogrom and holocaust.

Israeli fears being what they are, and Menahem Begin's background being what it was, there could be no doubt that the offer of administrative

autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs contained in Begin's proposal of December 27, 1977, and still more the "self-governing authority" proposed for the West Bank and Gaza under the Camp David agreement of September 17, 1978, represented to Prime Minister Begin and his followers of the Herut Party significant, even audacious concessions for peace. "Never before," Begin said in defence of his initial home rule plan when it came under attack, "have the residents of these areas been given such freedom to run their own lives. "2

The territory in question, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, representing 23 percent of the territory of old Palestine, was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Except for between six and seven thousand Jews living in about 100 settlements as of the late 1970's, the population of the West Bank and Gaza consists of about 1.1 million Palestinians. Another half million

Palestinian Arabs live within the 1967 borders of Israel, and another million and a half are dispersed among the Arab states, in what the Palestinians have come to call their "diaspora," adapting the term used by the Jews to refer to their own dispersal outside of the Holy Land.

The Begin plan of December 27, 1977, and the Camp David proposal for

1 Interview with Israeli television, September 18, 1978, reported by Jim Hoagland in "Dispute on Israeli Settlements Snags Accord," Washington Post, September 20, 1978.

2 "Excerpts from Begin's News Conference at National Press Club in Washington, March 23, 1978," New York Times, March 24,1978.

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48 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

a self-governing authority for the West Bank and Gaza differed in that the

latter was to be implemented on the basis of an international contract,

binding on Israel as well as on all other parties, rather than on the basis of a unilateral, and therefore presumably revocable, grant on the part of Israel. In

other important respects, however, the two proposals as interpreted by Israel, amplified by subsequent Israeli statements and proposals, had certain

common features, which were indicative of the basic position of the Likud government with respect to the Palestinians. The essentials of the Israeli position may be summarized as follows: there could be no separate Palestinian state, whether or not the Palestinian people desired it; for an interim period of five years the Palestinians resident in the West Bank and Gaza might be permitted self-government with respect to local and domestic

matters, but security would remain under Israeli control, with Israeli forces

reduced and confined but not wholly withdrawn; Jewish settlements would

continue to be emplaced in the West Bank and Gaza; Israel might permit but

would retain the right to veto the return of any Palestinian refugees to the territories; a permanent regime to follow the transition period might be

formed through negotiations among Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Palestinian representatives, but no commitment regarding the nature of that regime

would be made by Israel in advance and the Palestine Liberation Organi-

zation, as such, might not be a participant in the negotiations. As will be

seen in the next section, the Labour Party opposition tended to differ from

the Begin government as to the kind of regime which should be emplaced in

the West Bank and Gaza but concurred in ruling out a separate Palestinian state, in the necessity for retaining Israeli forces in the West Bank, and in the

exclusion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from negotiations.

Almost immediately after the conclusion of the Camp David accords in September 1978, the "Framework for Peace" began to come unstuck over the questions of Jewish settlements, the retention of Israeli forces, and Israeli claims to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. In the days

following the Camp David meeting Prime Minister Begin contested President

Carter's understanding that a five-year moratorium on new settlements had been agreed upon, insisting that he had agreed to a moratorium only for the three months within which Israel and Egypt had pledged to try to conclude a peace treaty. Furthermore, Begin interpreted the "Framework," which

authorized "all necessary security measures ... during the transitional period and beyond,"3 as thereby sanctioning the retention of Israeli troops in the West Bank beyond the five-year interim period. Speaking to members of Congress on September 19, two days after the signing of the Camp David

3 Section A, paragraph 2.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 49

accords, Begin said, "I believe with all my heart that the Jewish people have

a right to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria." The source of that right, he said, was the "books of the Bible."4 On the following day Begin spoke to

Jewish leaders in New York: "I hereby declare the Israeli defence forces will

stay in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip to defend our people and make

sure Jewish blood is not shed again. I hereby declare they will stay beyond

five years.

These statements, and others which followed, caused acute distress to

American officials and dissipated much of the euphoria to which the Camp David agreements had given rise. The statements were, in fact, consistent

with views which had been expressed by Israeli officials repeatedly and

insistently since the Begin government had come to office in May 1977. In

an introductory address to his staff on June 22, 1977, the new Minister of

Foreign Affairs, Moshe Dayan, said that the new government would seek a

solution for the West Bank "not by dividing it into two parts, one of which

would belong to Israel and the other to an Arab state, but by finding a way to coexist there, without annexing any part to Jordan, without handing over any part of the West Bank or of the Gaza Strip to the rule of another government."6 Again, on August 10, 1977, on the eve of talks between Foreign Minister Dayan and United States Secretary of State Cyrus Vance,

the Israeli Embassy in Washington issued a "precis" of Israel's positions, which stated among other things that "Israel will not return to the previous

boundaries nor agree to the creation of a Palestinian state in any form," that "Israel is unwilling to countenance in any form the participation of the

Palestine Liberation Organization in the Geneva Conference," and further,

that "Israel is not ready to accept any foreign government on the West Bank

and in the Gaza."7 Dayan reiterated the tough Israeli position on the

Palestine Liberation Organization on September 25 and again on September

30, 1977, stating that Israel would not negotiate with the Palestine

Liberation Organization even if the United States did, or even if it amended

the Palestinian Charter, accepted Security Council resolution 242, and recognized the existence of Israel.8

4 Quoted by Jim Hoagland in "Dispute on Israeli Settlements Snags Accord," Washington Post, September 20, 1978, pp. A-1, A-11.

5 Quoted in "Sadat, Begin Tout Accords before Friendly Audiences," Washington Star, September 21, 1978.

6 Statement issued by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, June 22, 1977. 7 Statement issued by Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C., August 10, 1977.

8 Transcript of interview with Moshe Dayan on "Face the Nation," September 25, 1977, CBS News, Washington, D.C.; Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, Middle East and North

Africa, October 4, 1977, p. N4.

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50 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

Prime Minister Begin was, if anything, even more forthright than his

Foreign Minister in rejecting the idea of a Palestinian state, and in refusing

any dealings with the Palestine Liberation Organization, both before and

after President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. At a dinner in Jerusalem for Secretary of State Vance on August 9, 1977, Begin startled his

guests with an emotional denunciation of the Palestine Liberation Organi-

zation, provoked, apparently, by the tentative, ultimately fruitless initiative

the United States government was then engaged in toward drawing the Palestine Liberation Organization into peace discussions if it would accept Israel. " ... That organization," declared Begin, "the philosophy of which is

based on an Arabic Mein Kampf, is no partner whatsoever, and never will be for us to hold any talks ..... 9 President Sadat, following his visit to Jerusalem, issued an invitation to all parties to the Middle East conflict to

attend a preliminary peace conference in Cairo. Lest anyone suppose, in the

wake of the Sadat visit, that the Prime Minister had softened on the Palestine

Liberation Organization, which he termed a "Nazi organization," Begin told reporters on November 27, 1977, that "no Israeli delegation will negotiate in

any way at any place with the so-called Palestine Liberation Organization,

whether it is Geneva or Cairo or the moon."10 Then, in a statement reminiscent of former Prime Minister Golda Meir's famous assertion that

"There was no such thing as Palestinians,''" Prime Minister Begin told the

American columnist Joseph Kraft in late 1977 that the word "Palestine" did

not exist in the Hebrew language; the term, he said, was "jargon."'12 Recurrent conflicts between the Carter Administration and the Begin

government in Israel reflected the underlying, long-standing conflict of

interests between the two countries over the principle of self-determination.

The United States has an historic commitment to this principle, a commit- ment which, in the present view, qualifies as a national interest. Zionism, by

contrast, based as it is upon the religious and historical claims of the Jewish

people to a land long inhabited by others, necessarily depends upon the

denial of self-determination to the rival claimants. To accord even the

slightest degree of legitimacy to Palestinian national aspirations is, in the

Israeli perspective, to call into question their own legitimacy as a

9 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, Middle East and North Africa, August 10, 1977, p. N-2.

10 William E. Farrell, "Israel Schedules Policy Statement and Debate on Middle East Today," New York Times, November 28, 1977.

1 Interview with the Sunday Times (London), June 15, 1969. Quoted in Larry L. Fabian and Ze'ev Schiff, eds., Israelis Speak (New York and Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace, 1977), p. 15.

12 Joseph Kraft, "A Fear of Peace," Washington Post, December 1, 1977.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 51

nation-state. The difference between Israel and the United States in this

respect is not, therefore, one of mere misunderstanding, or of the lack of a

diplomatic formula sufficiently ingenious to bridge the gap. It is, rather, a fundamental difference of outlook over an international norm, and from the

Israeli standpoint an issue filled with implications for Israel's own right to exist.

Virtually alone among the statesmen and politicians who hlave attempted to devise an Israeli-American understanding on this seminal issue of the

Arab-Israeli conflict, Menahem Begin understood that the gap was unbridge- able, that two irreconcilable principles were at stake, and that if agreement was to be reached, it would not be the result of an authentic compromise

but rather the result of one party or the other, Israel or the United States, yielding its own principle and acquiescing in that of the other. The denial of self-determination to the Palestinians became, under Menahem Begin, the

explicitly stated policy of the government of Israel. "We are not beating

around the bush," Begin said: "To us self-determination means a Palestinian state, and we are not going to agree to any such mortal danger to Israel."13

This basic proposition, variously phrased, became official Israeli doctrine

under Begin, turning up repeatedly in official statements and documents. "An independent Palestinian state," said a "Policy Background" paper issued by

the Israeli Embassy in Washington on April 6, 1978, " ... would quickly fall under the sway of Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists. It would be a

powerful focus for Palestinian irredentism, a centre of anarchy open to

Soviet penetration and a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire area.

Israel and the United States fully agree that there can be no room for such a

state and that the Palestine Liberation Organization cannot be a party to any

negotiations for the establishment of peace. "14 When Prime Minister Begin and his principal associates quickly reverted to

these themes in the wake of the Camp David accords, American officials, although dismayed, took hope in the hypothesis that Begin was protecting his flanks against domestic criticism. Supporters of the Camp David

agreement in Israel as well as the United States commended this thesis, asserting that Begin was fighting a rearguard action against an inevitable Arab "destiny" for the West Bank, which he, or more probably some successor, would ultimately be compelled to accept. So argued, for example, former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who, with other leading figures in the Labour

Party, advocated partition of the occupied territories, and believed that the

Camp David autonomy plan could serve as a "natural bridge" to such a

13 Address to the Knesset, November 20, 1977, New York Times, November 22, 1977. 14 "Principles of Negotiation," Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C., April 6, 1968, p. 3.

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52 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

solution."5 Professor Shlomo Avineri, a Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Labour government, expressed the opinion after

Camp David that Begin's Cabinet understood that they were giving up the

West Bank as an integral part of Israel, although its final status would remain uncertain for the five-year transition period called for in the Camp David

agreement. Avineri speculated that Begin himself probably expected no more

than "some residual Israeli presence" after the five-year transition period."6

To this school of thought the equivocation of the Camp David agreement as

to the final status of the West Bank and Gaza was a political necessity, if not

an asset, enabling history to move in its necessary direction without requiring recognition of that direction by those to whom it was politically

and otherwise distasteful. Begin, wrote Abba Eban, "is too precise and intelligent a man for us to believe that he does not comprehend how short a

step separates this kind of 'self-government' from some form of eventual Arab sovereignty." 17

If indeed Begin was fighting a "rearguard action" after Camp David, as

Avineri suggested,18 it was nonetheless vigorously prosecuted. There "will be no plebiscite" in the West Bank and Gaza, Begin declared in debate in the Knesset on September 25, 1978, "and there is and will not be under any

conditions or in any circumstances a Palestinian state." Furthermore, declared the Prime Minister, "The murderers' organization known as the PLO is not and will not be a factor in the negotiations...." Begin also

reiterated that, contrary to President Carter's understanding, he had promised to suspend the emplacement of new Jewish settlements on the West

Bank only for the projected three months' negotiating period with Egypt, and that even during this period Israel would reserve the right to expand

existing Jewish settlements.19 A month later, following the visit to the West Bank of Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders in which the American

official suggested to Palestinians that the status of the Israeli settlements

after the five-year transition period would be subject to negotiation, Israeli

officials emphatically reaffirmed their intention to retain Jewish settlements.

Prime Minister Begin announced on October 25 that Israel intended to

enlarge its West Bank settlements as soon as possible.20 Foreign Minister

15 Abba Eban, "Camp David - The Unfinished Business," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 57, No. 2, (Winter 1978/79), pp. 344, 351.

16 Interview at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, November 6, 1978. 17 Eban, "Camp David - The Unfinished Business," Foreign Affairs, (Winter 1978/79), p. 352. 18 Interview of November 6, 1978, cited in note 16. 19 Quoted by William Claiborne in "Begin Urges Acceptance of Accords," Washington Post,

September 26, 1978.

20 William Claiborne, "West Bank, Golan Settlements to Be Enlarged, Begin Says," Washington Post, October 26, 1978.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 53

Dayan made the same point even more emphatically the next day: " ... this

is our policy, whether other people like it or not.""21 Dayan also said the same day, "We don't dream about removing or dismantling one single Israeli

settlement."22 At a political rally in Tel Aviv on the evening of October 26 Begin reaffirmed "the inalienable and full right of the Jewish people to settle

any part of the land of Israel - including Judea, Samaria and Gaza."23 There seems no doubt that the emphatic reaffirmation after Camp David

of Israeli claims to the West Bank and Gaza were provoked by countervailing American and domestic Israeli pressures. With reference to the announce- ment on October 25 that existing settlements would be expanded, an aide to

Prime Minister Begin commented, "If Saunders hadn't come here, there

wouldn't be any announcement. It's like physics - for every action there is a reaction. "24 In the period following the Camp David agreements, as the

negotiations with Egypt bogged down over the issue of "linkage" with the

West Bank and Gaza, the Begin government found itself caught between the

need to protect its domestic base through assurances that Israel would not

give up the West Bank and Gaza and the need to keep the "peace process"

going by allowing the Egyptians and Americans to hope that Israel might eventually do exactly that. Taking note of these political factors, exper- ienced observers in both Israel and the United States continued to insist that

the evasions and ambiguities of the Camp David accords were salutary, and that as long as the United States did not force Israel into specifying prematurely what might lie at the end of the process, the self-rule plan could be expected to evolve toward some form or other of "Arab destiny" for the West Bank and Gaza. A member of Begin's Likud coalition, Zalman Shoval of the Laam Party, observed in early November 1978, when the Egyptian- Israeli treaty negotiations were going badly, that the worst mistake the United States had made was pressing Israel to say what might be expected after the five-year transition period for the West Bank and Gaza. It was, he said, "politically and psychologically wrong," and had caused the Israeli government to give "all kinds of evasive answers." Shoval himself envisioned, at the end of five years, either the partition of the West Bank or some form

21 William Claiborne, "Israel Stresses Claims to Occupied Territories," Washington Post, October 27, 1978.

22 John M. Goshko, "US, Israel at Odds on West Bank Settlements," Washington Post, October 27, 1978.

23 William Claiborne, "Begin Reaffirms Settlement Policy in Reply to US," Washington Post, October 30, 1978.

24 William Claiborne, "Israel Stresses Claims to Occupied Territories," Washington Post, October 27, 1978.

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54 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

of "functional" compromise between Israel and a Palestinian-Jordanian

state.25

For precisely the reason that most Israelis found the Camp David plan for

the West Bank and Gaza tolerable - its lack of clarity as to the long-term

future - the rival claimants to that territory, the Palestinians, rejected the plan from the outset as a scheme not for self-government but for the

perpetuation of Israeli domination, as a West Bank academic put it, by "using the natives" to help run the occupation.26 Rejecting the argument that the post-Camp David statements of Begin and Dayan were a "rearguard

action" not to be taken as definitive, Palestinians took these statements very

seriously indeed, as literal and accurate proclamations of Israeli intent.

Suspicious and fearful from the outset because of the failure of the Camp David agreement to specify or even imply ultimate self-determination,

Palestinian opinion leaders in the West Bank and outside became hardened in

their suspicion and dismay as Israeli leaders, for whatever reason, reiterated

their unalterable opposition to a future Palestinian state.

Self-determination remained the central issue after Camp David as it had

been before. If the United States would give public assurance of ultimate Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, said Khalid Fahum,

Chairman of the Palestine Central Council, in October 1978 in the presence of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, then "everything could be discussed."27 A leadership delegation from the National Association of Arab-Americans reported in late 1978, after a tour of eight Arab countries, that a

"consensus" had taken form within the Arab world for a settlement based on Arab acceptance of Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and Palestinian self-determination.28 The Israelis, on the

other hand, although divided as between proposals for "functional" and

"territorial" compromise for the West Bank and Gaza, remained-except for a small group of "doves" - solidly united in their own national

consensus, that a separate Palestinian state would pose a mortal threat to

Israel, a threat consisting not only in what such a state might do but in the very fact of its existence. As Prime Minister Begin expressed it in October

1978, "A state has a parliament, a government, an army, diplomatic relations with other states, other symbols of statehood. The inhabitants of Judea,

Samaria and Gaza cannot have these things, because, if they had them, they would determine not only their own fate, but also ours - a fate of killing,

25 Interview in Jerusalem, November 6, 1978. 26 Interview at Bir Zeit University, West Bank, November 4, 1978. 27 Interview in Damascus, October 28, 1978. 28 "NAAA Trip Report and Recommendations," December 28, 1978.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 55

murder and war. We will never agree to that. Never."29

THE NATIONAL CONSENSUS

Born of the Nazi Holocaust and the solidarity generated by the "state of permanent siege," Amos Elon wrote, "There is among Israelis today an

elemental, almost tribal sense of sticking together which sometimes confounds outsiders from the fragmented societies of the West."30 Although often masked by partisanship and vigorous debate, this deeply-rooted solidarity forms the basis of the Israeli national consensus regarding the

survival of the Israeli state and the mortal threat, as it is perceived, of a

Palestinian state.

At times, during the arduous, discouraging efforts for peace that followed

President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, American as well as

Arab leaders betrayed a longing for what had come to seem the "good old

days" of the Labour governments that had preceded the rule of Menahem Begin. President Sadat flirted openly and without profit in the period before

Camp David with the leader of the Labour Party opposition, Shimon Peres. In fact, on the basis of their recorded and public pronouncements, the

principal figures of preceding Israeli governments held positions on the

occupied territories hardly more acceptable to the major Arab leaders,

including President Sadat, than those of Begin and his Likud colleagues.

Before President Sadat's trip to Jerusalem and prior to the accession of the

Carter Administration, when the United States was seeking peace in the Middle East "step-by-step," the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli problem had

been focused on what President Sadat was later to call the "side issues" of the Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights,31 and Israeli governments were under little pressure to spell out their proposals for a permanent regime

for the West Bank and Gaza. Except for a few dissenters, however, the major figures in Israeli politics under the Labour governments were virtually unanimous in their insistence that withdrawal could be only partial, that

Israel must retain military installations in the West Bank, and that there could be no independent Palestinian state. The premise of their policy was that Israel must have "defensible borders,"7 and although Israeli officials were disinclined to specify where these borders might be drawn before Presidents

Carter and Sadat brought- the question to the fore, it was evident that, to Begin's predecessors as to Begin himself, these meant something quite

29 Quoted by David Landau in "Will Israel Accept a Palestinian State? " Washington Post, October 20, 1978.

30 The Israelis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 324. 31 Marvine Howe, "Sadat Calls Begin 'The Only Obstacle' to Mideast Accord," New York Times,

July 23, 1978.

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56 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

different from the "insubstantial alterations" of the borders of 1967 once recommended by the United States.32

Although no official plan for the West Bank was put forth by an Israeli

government prior to the Begin plan of December 27, 1977, the so-called

"Allon Plan" suggested by Yigal Allon, Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1977, spelled out in considerable detail the Labour

government's conception of "defensible borders." The plan called for an

Israeli strategic frontier along the Jordan River, with Israel to retain, or

annex, a strip of territory of varying width along the Jordan River, stretching

back to the hills of Samaria and Judea. In those territories Israel would

develop - was indeed developing before the Labour Party was voted out of

office in May 1977 - extensive rural and urban settlements as well as permanent military installations. Between the territories retained along the

Jordan River, however, and Israel proper to the west, the heartland of the

West Bank where the Arab population was concentrated would be left to

what Allon called an "Arab solution," demilitarized under a form of Arab sovereignty with a corridor to Jordan across the Allenby Bridge. Israel, under

the Allon Plan, would retain "greater Jerusalem," including the new Jewish residential areas established around its periphery after the 1967 war, but the

religious rights of all faiths would be guaranteed. In addition, Israel would

retain much or most of the Syrian Golan Heights. The Sinai peninsula would

be demilitarized under joint Israeli-Egyptian policing, but Israel would retain

actual control of eastern Sinai from Sharm al-Sheikh at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba in the south to the Mediterranean coast in the north.33

The Allon Plan was somewhat imprecise about the Gaza Strip, specifying, however, that under no circumstances would it be restored to Egypt.34 In one description, ultimate Israeli annexation was called for, with only the

Arab population who lived there before 1948 permitted to remain and the

unabsorbed refugees to be resettled either in the West Bank or in Sinai.35

Elsewhere Allon suggested that the city of Gaza and its environs "could

comprise part of the Jordanian-Palestinian unit which would arise to the east

of Israel," and would be linked to it by a traffic route across Israel. Israel, however, would control the desert area from the southern part of the Gaza

32 The "Rogers Plan" of December 9, 1969 set forth this criterion. 33 This summary of the "Allon Plan" is based upon an address by Yigal Allon at the Hebrew

University, June 3, 1973, and upon a description contained in The Allon Plan by Yoram Cohen (1972), translated from the Hebrew. Both are quoted in Israelis Speak, op. cit., pp. 207-212.

34 Ibid., p. 211. 35 Ibid., p. 208.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 57

Strip to the dunes east of the Sinai town of El Arish, which itself would be returned to Egypt.36

Two major premises underlay the policy of "defensible borders." One was

that the Arabs would not, under foreseeable circumstances, reconcile

themselves with the permanence of Israel. "Whereas the Arab states seek to isolate, strangle and erase Israel from the world's map," Yigal Allon wrote in

1976, "Israel's aim is simply to live in peace and good relations with all its neighbours."37 The other premise was that Israel could safely rely only on

her own military power, a conviction which has deep roots in Israeli minds,

and which has much to do with the Israelis' disdain of international, or even

American, guarantees. "We want the kind of boundaries we can defend and

defend by ourselves," Prime Minister Rabin told Senator McGovern in 1975,

because, as he explained, anything else would "change the very nature of Israel ...."38 "We must be capable of defending ourselves, [defence] of ourselves, by ourselves ..." Allon emphasized.39

Building on these two premises, the Israelis made their case for borders

which would allow strategic depth. The Allon Plan was designed to meet this requirement and also to satisfy Palestinian aspirations by "territorial

compromise." From the standpoint of pure strategy, Allon pointed out, it

would have served Israel better simply to move the borders eastward from

the vulnerable borders of 1967. That, however, would have placed a large Arab population within the boundaries of Israel, a prospect hardly less

distasteful to Israelis than to the Palestinian Arabs themselves. Allon

therefore came up with his proposal for Israeli deployment along the Jordan River, to the east of a surrounded, disarmed Palestinian Arab political unit,

which would be linked to Jordan by a narrow corridor through the

Israeli-held territory along the Jordan River.40

Closely examined, the Allon Plan seems not so radically dissimilar from the Begin plan of "administrative autonomy" of December 27, 1977, or the Camp David self-rule plan, as many acrimonious debates in the Knesset between Begin and his opposition seemed to suggest. None of these

proposals would permit of a separate Palestinian state; all would require the

36 Yigal Allon, "Israel: The Case for Defensible Borders," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 1 (October 1976), p. 48.

37 Ibid., p. 38.

38 Senator George S. McGovern, Realities of the Middle East, A Report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, United States Congress (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing

Office, 1975), p. 22. 39 Ibid.

40 Yigal Allon, "Israel: The Case for Defensible Borders," Foreign Affairs, (October 1976), pp. 44-48.

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58 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

demilitarization of the area - Allon specified that "Apart from civilian police to guarantee internal order, these areas would have to be devoid of offensive forces and heavy arms."'" Allon would have Israeli forces withdrawn from the Palestinian unit but stationed around it on territory detached from it; under the Begin plan of December 1977 "security and public order" would remain "the responsibility of the Israeli authorities;" and under the Camp David plan Israeli forces would be partially withdrawn and otherwise regrouped, pending the creation of a permanent regime for the West Bank and Gaza. Under all three plans the Palestinian Arab unit would itself be defenceless, restricted in its authority over its own territory, denied the right to form a political unit separate from either Israel or Jordan, and completely at the mercy of Israeli military power. The principal difference

was that the Allon Plan would permit, whereas the Begin plan, and the Camp David plan as interpreted by the Begin government would deny, Arab ''sovereignty" over the West Bank unit.

In opposition after May 1977 and even after the Sadat visit to Jerusalem

in November 1977, the Israeli Labour Party continued to adhere to the policy of "defensible borders." On the eve of the Camp David summit meeting in September 1978 former Prime Minister Rabin wrote that Egyptian demands for total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the creation of a Palestinian entity whose future would be decided "solely by Arabs" was "totally unacceptable to Israel."42 Writing in August 1978, the leader of the-opposition, Shimon Peres, noted that on certain basic issues there was "something like a national consensus." Both coalitions, Peres wrote, his own and Begin's, rejected the creation of a separate Palestinian state, which both felt certain would be militant, dangerous, and subject to Soviet influence. Both coalitions required, too, that Jerusalem remain united under Israeli sovereignty, because, Peres wrote, in words that Begin might have used, "Jerusalem is not only the heart of Israel; it is also the soul of the Jewish people." Israelis are united too, said Peres, in their insistence upon "secure boundaries." These most assuredly could not be the borders of 1967, described by Peres as "inherently indefensible," nor could the changes be limited to "minor rectifications." These, said Peres in his article, were the main elements of Israel's national consensus. Turning then to the differences between his own Labour Party and Begin's Herut Party, Peres cited as the principal difference Labour's willingness to accept, by contrast with Herut's intense opposition to, the partition of Palestine, or, more exactly, the partition of the occupied West Bank between Jews and

41 Ibid., p. 50.

42 "Prospects for Peace," Newsweek, September 11, 1978, p. 42.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 59

Arabs. Peres did not dispute Begin's rationale for retaining the West Bank. "There is no argument in Israel about our historic rights in the land of

Israel," Peres wrote. "The past is immutable and the Bible is the decisive

document in determining the fate of our land." Labour would accept

partition of the West Bank, nevertheless, historically just claims not-

withstanding, for the sake of peace. The partition plan envisioned by Peres

was essentially - or exactly - the Allon Plan, requiring Israeli defence

positions along the Jordan River, and Israeli installations at other strategic points as well. The remainder of the West Bank and Gaza, disarmed and

militarily surrounded by Israel, in compulsory union with Jordan, would be

permitted to live "under an Arab flag," freeing the Palestinians of an

unwanted Israeli rule and freeing the Israelis of an unwanted Arab

population who, with their high birth rate, "would eventually endanger the

Jewish character of Israel ....."

An almost identical outline of a peace settlement had been put forth early in 1978 by the former Labour Minister of Foreign Affairs, usually regarded

as a "dove" in Israeli politics. Abba Eban, like Peres, ruled out a separate Palestinian state, would restore "substantial areas" west of the Jordan River to Jordan "after territorial changes essential for Israel's security were made," and rejected out of hand a return to the borders of 1967, which, as Eban put it, "none of us would accept." Eban, like Peres, pointed to the principle of partition as the essential issue between the Begin government and its

opposition. "For over four decades there has been only one essential debate

in Zionist and Israeli diplomacy," Eban wrote in March 1978. "It is the debate between the partition logic and its opponents."44

So intense and agitated was the debate in Israel over the "partition logic" that at least two pertinent considerations were obscured, to Americans no less than Israelis. First, the issue of partition, which until 1967 had to do

with the disposition of Palestine as a whole, was redefined after 1967 to apply only to the 23 percent of the territory of old Palestine which remained outside of the control of Israel after the 1948 war and which was occupied by Israel in 1967. Second, whereas previously the discussion of partition applied to hypothetically equal parties, it came perforce after 1967 to apply to the relationship between a military dominant Israel and a projected Palestinian enclave with severe restrictions on its sovereignty, surrounded and disarmed, permitted to live "under an Arab flag" but otherwise denied the right of self-determination.

43 Shimon Peres, "Herut and Labour," New York Times, August 6, 1978.

44 Abba Eban, "Begin's Choice: Peace - or Party Platform," Washington Post, March 24, 1978. For a fuller exposition of the "partition logic," see Eban, "Camp David - The Unfinished Business,"

Foreign Affairs, (Winter 1978/79), pp. 343-54.

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60 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

Another basic element in the Labour-Likud consensus has been the

palpable desire for a separate peace with Egypt. Even before President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, leading Israelis and supporters of Israel in the United States had pointed to the tractability of the territorial issue of Egyptian Sinai compared to the more difficult questions of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Throughout the protracted negotiations preceding

and following the Camp David meeting, it was widely assumed - by many Arabs as well as by Israelis - that Egypt's economic difficulties, along with the desire to recover Egyptian national territory, had motivated Sadat to seek what would amount to a separate peace, provided some diplomatic

facade, or vaguely worded statement of principles, could be devised to give

the appearance of Egyptian loyalty to Arab brothers.45 In advance of the Camp David summit in September 1978, Prime Minister Begin spoke favourably of the possibility of a "permanent partial peace" between Israel and Egypt.46 In a pre-summit article in the Jerusalem Post, former Foreign

Minister Eban urged the summit participants to "climb down from the slogan of 'a comprehensive overall settlement,' " because "the only realistic

aim at this stage is an Egyptian-Israeli accord accompanied by a statement of principles on the Palestine question that would enable Anwar Sadat to avoid implications of a 'separate peace.' "47 Realistic or otherwise, the possibility of a separate peace with Egypt was attractive to Israelis of otherwise diverse persuasion for exactly the reason that it was greatly feared by Egypt's Arab brothers: it would detach from the Arab coalition its most significant military force, allowing Israel greatly increased latitude in its subsequent

dealings with Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the restive

Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

A final tenet of the Israeli national consensus often called up to explain

and justify the Israelis' rejection of any dealings with the Palestine

Liberation Organization was that Jordan would ultimately provide fulfilment for Palestinian national aspirations. Noting that Palestinians made up a majority of East Bank Jordan's population and, except for the army, most of

its governing elite, Israelis of both the Likud coalition and the Labour Party

opposition have tended to see Jordan as the future "Palestinian state,"

although views vary as to whether the prospective Jordanian-Palestinian state

45 "It's just not true" that Egypt's policy would be governed by Israel's settlements policy and

other matters affecting the West Bank, a Foreign Ministry official stated in an interview. Egypt's stake

in peace, he said, would be determined by its "domestic agenda." Interview with Gad Ranon, Director,

North American Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 6, 1978.

46 William Claiborne, "Israel to Repeat Earlier Proposal at Camp David," Washington Post, August

28, 1978.

47 Quoted in "For the Record," Washington Post, September 3, 1978.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 61

would remain under the Hashemite monarchy or take some other form. General Ariel Sharon, Minister of Agriculture in the Begin government and a strong proponent of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, made the

point more bluntly than others when still in opposition in 1975, asserting

that he would annex the West Bank to Israel and turn Jordan over to the

Palestinians. "Hussein," said Sharon, "is not a partner in this thing."48 The foregoing is not intended to suggest that there were no important

differences between Begin and his predecessors in their respective approaches

to peace but only that these differences were less significant than the vigorous debates which characterize Israeli politics made them appear. More

important still, neither Begin nor his opposition offered a programme for a general settlement with any real prospect of acceptance by any of the Arab parties except Egypt. In the view of Arie Lova Eliav, the prominent dissenter

and member of the Knesset until 1979, a Labour government would have

been hardly more responsive than Begin's to the initial Sadat peace initiative: "They would still be sitting in their councils and fighting. Peres would fight Rabin, Rabin would fight Peres and I don't think they would give Sadat any

answer of any kind ...."49 Asked in August 1978 if he thought that an Israeli Labour government would have acted like Begin's government, the Pales- tinian-born President of the National Association of Arab-Americans replied:

"Yes I do, except probably with more cleverness, with greater ability to

mystify the issue than Begin, who is a sincere, outspoken person for which,

as a Palestinian, I'm most grateful."50 At the heart of the Israeli national consensus, second only to the shared

sense of Israel's destiny and mission, is the fear of Palestinian nationalism. Lacking a territorial base or conventional armed forces of their own, the Palestinians threaten Israel's existence only in the long term, by challenging the Jewish state's legitimacy. Drawing upon their own experience, the Israelis appreciate well the potential power of an exiled people with a shared sense of historic injustice and a tenacious yearning for a lost homeland. Whatever their differences as to the best means of suppressing or deflecting it, Begin and his opposition, with minor exceptions, were united in their view of Palestinian nationalism as a mortal threat to Israel.

In earlier times it had been plausible to deny the fact of Palestinian nationhood. Before the coming of the Jews the Arabs of Palestine did not have a strong sense of themselves as a separate and distinct nationality. The

48 McGovern, Realities of the Middle East, op. cit., p. 24. 49 Interview with Mark Bruzonsky in Worldview, Vol. 21, Nos. 1-2 (January-February 1978), p. 8.

50 Interview of Professor Hisham Sharabi with Mark Bruzonsky, "Forum," The Middle East (August 1978), p. 41.

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62 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

early Zionists, bemused by their own missionary zeal, permitted themselves

to believe, as David Ben-Gurion put it in 1917, that in the "historical and moral sense" Palestine was a country "without inhabitants.""5 After

Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, visited Palestine in 1898 -

according to the modern Israeli writer, Amos Elon - his report contained no reference to the Arab population, although they probably numbered over

half a million at the time, nor did Herzl take notice of the Arabs in his extensive private diary.52 Golda Meir asserted in 1969 that "there was no such thing as Palestinians," and expanded in the same interview on the basic

proposition: "When was there an independent Palestinian people with a

Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War,

and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a

Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and

we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."53

The perspective of the old-time Zionists was not wholly without basis in

reality. Palestinian self-awareness was spawned and nourished by Zionism

itself, by the incursion of an alien population and by the bitter experience of expulsion and exile. The callousness of the assumption that Palestine was a

land "without inhabitants" should not obscure the fact that Palestinian

self-awareness is of recent vintage, a by-product, by and large, of Zionism

itself. It is not wholly surprising that the sudden appearance of Palestinian nationalism and the militancy of its expression through the Palestine

Liberation Organization caused old-time Zionists to feel not only perplexed

but, in a sense, betrayed. As Amos Elon wrote, "They did not imagine that the Arabs who had been living there for centuries could possibly object to

becoming a minority - a fully respected minority that would live in more

comfort and wealth under the most liberal of regimes - through the advent

of massive Jewish immigration from abroad."54 Elon comments: "There are

few things as egocentric as a revivalist movement. For decades the Zionist

leaders moved in a strange twilight zone, seeing the Arabs and at the same time not seeing them. Their attitude was a combination of blind spots and naivete, of wishful thinking, paternalistic benevolence, and that ignorance which is often a factor in international events, and sometimes their cause. "55

51 Elon, The Israelis, p. 156. 52 Ibid., p. 159. 53 Quoted in Israelis Speak, p. 15. 54 Elon, The Israelis, pp. 156-57. 55 Ibid., p. 157.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 63

Since the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of a large part of the Palestinian population, Israeli leaders - Begin's predecessors no less than Begin himself - have sought to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian

nationalism and at the same time to absolve themselves from responsibility

for the Palestinian refugees. They have done so by pointing out that there

are twenty-one Arab states covering a vast territory and only one small

Jewish state and arguing, accordingly, that it was the responsibility of the

Arab states to take care of "their own." Asked in November 1977 whether

Israel might ever accept a Palestinian homeland as called for by President

Carter, former Prime Minister Meir commented, "I think not. It is not necessary for the Palestinians. It's dangerous for Israel. It is a threat to

Israel's existence and of no necessity for Palestinian refugees."56 "... We rejoice," said Prime Minister Begin in early 1978, in the expression by the

"great Arab people" of their right of self-determination in "twenty-one

sovereign Arab states .... "57 But as for Palestine, Begin contended on more

than one occasion, the Jews were no less "Palestinian" than the Arabs of old Palestine. "Everyone should say Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews."58

While mainstream Israelis, with a few exceptions,59 adhered to their view of Palestinian nationalism as essentially bogus, as a thin disguise for the destruction of Israel, a few Israelis, outspoken but outside of the national consensus, argued not only for the authenticity of Palestinian nationalism

but for the necessity of Israel, for the sake of its own long-term security, coming to terms with it. "Even if in some miraculous way a temporary or permanent settlement is reached with the Arab states that are south, north, and east of us," wrote Arie Lova Eliav, "the problem of the Palestinian Arabs will still not be solved. We will not achieve true peace, and the Jewish-Arab conflict will not come to an end, until a solution is found to this problem."60 The problem, in Eliav's perspective, was moral as well as practical: "We struggled for the right of self-determination of Jews, and succeeded. How can we deny this right to others then, to people who wish to see themselves as a nation? "61 Nahum Goldmann, who would allow the

56 Quoted in "Carter and Golda Meir Differ in Talks on Mideast," New York Times, November 9, 1977.

57 "Remarks by Begin at the Dinner for Participants in Jerusalem Talks," New York Times, January 19, 1978.

58 "Excerpts from Interview with Begin," New York Times, December 14, 1977.

59 One notable example is former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who concedes the validity of Palestinian nationalism but stops well short of advocating Palestinian self-determination for the West

Bank and Gaza, arguing instead for partition of the occupied territories and some ultimate undefined

form of Arab sovereignty in "large areas west of the River." See, for example, Eban's article, "Camp David - The Unfinished Business," cited previously, in Foreign Affairs, (Winter 1978/79), pp. 343-54.

60 Eliav, Land of the Hart, p. 120. 61 Ibid., p. 120.

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64 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

Palestinians to decide freely between confederation with Jordan and a

separate West Bank state,62 rejected the claim that Palestinian nationalism

was illegitimate or bogus because it was of recent vintage: "The Israeli and Zionist leaders refuted this claim when they raised their demand for the

Jewish state without being able to show that a Jewish state and people had

existed during the last two thousand years. In recent years dozens of states have been established that did not exist before, so what is this claim which

says that no Palestinian state or entity can be established in the future

because it did not exist in the past? "63 What was really meant by the contention that "there are no Palestinians," wrote Meir Merhav, a senior

correspondent of the Jerusalem Post in 1977, was that "those who call themselves Palestinians have no right to be," because the label was false,

masking their true, hostile purpose. The rejection on this basis of Palestinian

self-determination, Merhav commented, was "partly the result of a false perception of reality, partly the outcome of faulty logic and partly the

product of an irrational mixture of mystical beliefs, aggressive romanticism and traumatic fears, which cannot be upheld in today's world."64

When peace with Egypt became a palpable prospect in the wake of the

Camp David accords, the Israeli doves turned their thoughts to the new possibilities, and new pitfalls, which the accords opened up for a Palestinian

settlement. Simha Flapan, the editor of the journal New Outlook, warned

that a separate peace would "not survive the tensions" of an unresolved

Palestinian problem, because Egypt could not, even if it- wished, separate

itself from the Arab world. He feared too that the vague provisions of the self-rule plan gave the Palestinians insufficient incentive to cooperate. Uri

Avnery, a former member of the Knesset who was to become a member

again in 1979 as part of the miniscule, dissident Shelli Party, observed that if

the Palestine Liberation Organization and West Bank leaders had a Zionist

psychology of pragmatic incrementalism, they would take the opportunity

offered by Camp David, inadequate though it was from their standpoint, and

build upon it just as the Zionists had built upon their once modest opportunities, year by year and step by step, until at last they had their

state. "But they cannot; it is not their way."65 Arie Lova Eliav made the

same point: the great Zionist leaders, he said, especially David Ben-Gurion,

62 Nahum Goldmann, "The Psychology of Middle East Peace," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 54, No. 1 (October 1975), p. 121.

63 From a series of articles by Nahum Goldmann in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, November 8-13, 1974, entitled "Israeli Policy: Proposals for Action." Reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. IV, No. 2 (Winter 1975), p. 129.

64 Meir Merhav, "The Palestinian Reality," New York Times, November 7, 1977. 65 Joint interview with Flapan and Avnery in Tel Aviv, November 3, 1978.

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM 65

had known the art of the possible and prospered by taking opportunities as

they arose, whereas the Palestine Liberation Organization, by contrast,

would not take small openings. It was their way, rather, said Eliav, to demand all or nothing - and get nothing. If the autonomy plan were left to

the Begin government and the PLO, Eliav observed, they would collaborate to reduce the plan to "shambles."66

Taking into account the prospect, as it seemed to them, of both Palestinian intransigence and resistance by the Begin government to a prompt, liberal implementation of the autonomy plan, the Israeli dissenters

saw merit in the opening of dialogue between the United States and the

Palestine Liberation Organization as a means of breaking the prospective

impasse. Israel cannot be expected to move, said Flapan, <'unless there is a

thaw in US-Palestinian relations."67 Eliav urged that the United States pursue a two-part policy of bringing forth moderates within the Palestine

Liberation Organization and applying pressure to the Begin government.

Conceding that such an approach would draw the American Administration into deep controversy, domestic as well as international, Eliav conceded,

"'It's a quagmire but not Vietnam."68 The generally held view of the Israeli dissidents - a view which was also strongly put forth by the West Bank

Palestinian mayors - was that only the Palestine Liberation Organization

could bring the West Bank leaders to participate in the Camp David

autonomy plan, and that the only prospect of gaining the Palestine

Liberation Organization's acquiescence was through some form of dialogue

between the PLO and the United States. Eliav stressed the importance of

seeking a simple, forthright, unqualified statement by the PLO; "We will

recognize Israel if Israel will recognize us." If they did this, Eliav said,

Begin's government would be "cornered," because the only good argument

mainstream Israeli politicians had against dealing with the PLO was its

refusal to disavow unequivocally the intention of annihilating Israel. This

simple option, which the PLO thus far had declined to exercise, remained, in

Eliav's view, the best hope for realizing Palestinian aspirations - "a million

times better than terror."69 Unlike the vast majority of their countrymen, the Israeli dissenters

accepted with equanimity the prospect of a Palestinian state. They did so in the belief that Palestinian nationalism was authentic, legitimate, and, in an age of national liberation movements, irrepressible, posing, therefore, a far

66 Interview in Tel Aviv, November 3, 1978. 67 Interview in Tel Aviv, November 3, 1978. 68 Interview in Tel Aviv, November 3, 1978. 69 Ibid.

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66 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

greater threat to Israel's security if forcibly suppressed than if allowed

fulfilment within the territorial confines of the West Bank and Gaza. The

dissenters had little doubt that the Camp David autonomy plan, after much conflict and commotion, would nonetheless evolve toward Palestinian

self-determination. They expected this to occur because world opinion

would support Palestinian aspirations; because the United States, in keeping

with its own tradition, would be drawn toward a solution based on

self-determination; and because Israel itself could be expected to become less fearful of Palestinian nationalism, and more responsive to its own democratic

impulses, in the wake of peace with Egypt.

Whatever prospects the dissenters' views had for gaining wide acceptance

through the evolution of events following the conclusion of Egyptian-Israeli

peace, the "doves" remained, at the time of the signing of the peace, an

isolated minority. Notwithstanding the extraordinary events culminating in

the treaty-signing at Washington on March 26, 1979, the national consensus

seemed solid: that Israel must have "defensible borders," extending well

beyond those of 1967, and that, except insofar as Jordan might be defined

as "Palestinian," there could be no separate Palestinian state. Perhaps even more important as a factor shaping their national policy, the Israeli people

still adhered to the ancient Jewish conviction that they were a people alone

in the world, and that the only difference of attitude toward them among the nations of the world was between those who actively sought Israel's destruction and those who would be indifferent to it. All the assurances and exertions on their behalf from President Truman's time to President Carter's notwithstanding, Israelis continued to find reasons to doubt the loyalty and steadfastness of the United States. They could rely, they felt sure, only upon themselves, and upon the Jews of the "Diaspora," welcoming help where they could find it but trusting no one.

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