38 Friday, March 30, 1984 - THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS U.S., Israel, Lebanon, West Bank: divergent policies at loggerheads MUFFLERS BY VICTOR BIENSTOCK Special to The Jewish News SPRINGS • SHOCKS BRAKES CUSTOM PIPE BENDING/FOREIGN CABS AMERICAN EXHAUST SYSTEMS, INC. 15441 W. 9 Mile Rd. • (Corner Greenfield) • Oak Park, MI 48231 I MUFFLERS oN INSTALLED MOST L s Y 24 95 LIFE TIME GUARANTEE • Our Mufflers are Aluminum Wrapped over Galvanized Steel • 3 Baffles & 3 Tubes for the Quietest Ride • These Mufflers are the Best for the Money • Compare! • Foreign Cars • Custom Bending BRAKES & SHOCKS at low low prices 968-0662 ATTENTION Men With A Hairpiece COMFORTABLE PRIVATE STUDIO ABSOLUTELY NO OBLIGATION Call for Your Free Trim & Style and Compare ask for John DiCaro 14 YEARS EXPERIENCE 569-3555 The APARTMENT MEWS HAIR STUDIO 17125 W. 12 MILE, Southfield Yuu're invited to have a complimentary Hairtrim & Style! And Compare • Quality • Professional Service • Custom Hairpiece "The Good One" under $400 Good for 1st Time Clients CLOSED MON, Offer Expires 4-7-84 Window Fashion Sale Discounts to Free Measuring 60°/ 0 F 17- -7 _L- • • • • • • • Horizontal 1" Blinds Horizontal 1 & 2 - Wood Blinds Vertical Blinds Verosol Blinds By Window Shades Woven Woods Carpet Anso IV • • • • • Levolor Delmar Sun Pro Graber Galaxy Mills The Great Cover-Up Showroom in Congress Bldg. (by appointment) 5665 W. Maple Rd. W. Bloomfield, Mi. 48033 851.1125 Miami — The point of no return is rapidly approach- ing oil the West Bank and the closer it gets, the less hope there is for all, includ- ing supporters of Israel in the United States who genuinely want to believe that a peaceful future for Is- rael based on an accommo- dation with the Palesti- nians and the Jordanians is still achievable." That is the conclusion reached by Larry L. Fabian, secretary of the Carnegie Endowment for Interna- tional Peace, in a review of the year in the Middle East appearing in America and the World 1983, the special annual review of American foreign policy published by Foreign Affairs, the quar- terly journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Israel's ongoing West Bank and settlement policies," Fabian asserts, "now pose an immense chal- lenge to American policymakers." Former di- -rector of Carnegie's Middle East program, he makes the direct charge that "impor- tant elements of those policies have been con- sciously framed in the past five years to limit the scope of any Camp David au- tonomy agreement that might be negotiated, in ef- fect to pre-empt the possible outcomes that the au- tonomy negotiations of the late 1970s and early 1980s were intended to hold open, at least in the American view." The sheer scale of the new settlement plans, says Fa- bian, "will make their ulti- mate success dependent in- directly on the continuation of present American aid levels to Israel." No one doubts, he adds, that "Is- rael's economy, more than ever before, can only man- age with large infusions of American assistance." The historical momen- tum of the changes on the West Bank is now "so pow- erful that it has become a political fact in its own right," he declares, pointing out that the question now is "whether the process of ab- sorption has become — in a practical sense — irreversi- ble." President Reagan's peace plan of September 1982 was based on a series of gambles, according to the Carnegie . Endowment director. The first was a gamble that King Hussein of Jordan "would challenge a reluc- tant and suspicious Israel with a genuine negotiating option, that he would be Washington's lever against an Israel whose Likud gov- ernment was determined never to relinquish the West Bank." _ The assumption was that after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the time was ripe: the Palestine Liberation Organization was weakened and Yassir Arafat had lost his military option, Syria had been be- aten and humiliated, Prime Minister Menachem Begin could not last forever and the Israeli public and the Labor Party might be amenable to a West Bank compromise. "The Israeli- Palestinian war in Leba- non," he says, "must now become the basis for an Israeli-Palestinian peace." The second gamble was that "Israel's apparently re- lentless drive to absorb the West Bank could be stem- med by the President's peace initiative and even- tually reversed by a suc- cessful negotiating process. Begin's last words on these matters, Reagan was wa- gering, might not be Is- rael's." President Reagan's third gamble in his peace initia- tive, Fabian says, "was the hope that the diplomatic spotlight could be kept pointed at the West Bank and Gaza Strip which had become the focal issue for Washington's Arab-Israel diplomacy since Camp David." But this gamble, he re- ports, was lost almost im- mediately in the events that followed the massacre of Palestinians by Phalangist militia in two Beirut refu- gee camps. Lebanon, he says, "sucked Washington into deeper - and increasingly unmanageable commit- ments, throwing American Middle East policy away from the central issues of. Arab-Israeli peace and war and into the multiple crises of a country which had never been a confrontation state." By miscalculation and de- fault ; " Fabian says, "Re agan had encouraged a lin- kage between the peace plan and progress in Leba- non; and in their way, Hus- sein and other Arab leaders had too, by insisting that the peace process could not get under way until Wash- ington demonstrated its credibility in Lebanon. a resolution of the West Bank problem "and was prepared to slow down the withdrawal negotiations so that the Palestinian peace process would not get off the ground.") When it announced its five-year plan for West Bank settlement, Fabian declared, "Israel's un- equivocal rebuff to the Re- agan plan was sealed not merely with words but with bulldozers and bricks and mortar and macadam that together are remaking the map of the West Bank." The writer does not think highly of the new "strategic cooperation" between Israel and the United States which he describes as "a peculiar love feast" made necessary by the fact that Washington had "run out of short-term leverage against Damascus and wanted to show clear evidence of joint Israeli-American determi- nation." Israel, he declares, was not prepared "to be Wash- ington's sword against Syria in Lebanon" and Washington, for its part, "made it plain that corn- bined military operations with the Israelis in Lebanon were not in the cards." Both sides knew, he says, that "fundamental, perhaps even irrevocable differences remained between U.S. and Israeli views on the overall peace process and on the West Bank in particular." Israel's unequivocal rebuff to the Reagan plan was sealed . . . with bulldozers .. . - it was a trap," he asserts, "that victimized the Reagan initiative throughout early 1983. Those who controlled events in Lebanon, espe- cially Israel and Syria, were given a veto over the peace initiative which they both opposed vehemently. Presidential assurances were not followed by urgent diplomacy from Washing- ton to keep the. Reagan in- itiative alive." (In a global review of America's foreign policy problems appearing in the same issue, William P. Bundy, editor of Foreign Af- fairs, asserts that it was al- ready clear by the end of 1982 that Israel saw the link between an agreement on the withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon and re- sumption of negotiations for Thus, he asserts, "the so- called strategic cooperation boiled down to a genuine convergence of important tactical aims, immediate diplomatic objectives and mutual political needs, cemented by the fact that both countries' installations in Lebanon had been sub- jected to terrorist attack. "There were to be new understandings on techni- cal military ventures of var- ious kinds, as well as enhanced intelligence coop- eration. American aid was to be more generous, and Washington hoped that Is- rael would ease its opposi- tion to American arms sales to moderate Arab states, especially Jordan." Israel's new Prime Minis- ter, Yitzhak Shamir, "had reason to be pleased that he could show at home that Is- rael's essential relationship with the United States was being and presumably would be preserved under Likud rule. Reagan had reason to be comfortable in the knowledge that he could enter an election year with- out the disadvantage of 'an Israel issue' working against him from Demo- cratic Party challengers vis- ibly eager to plan on such an issue." When Yassir Arafat and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt publicly embraced last December, after Arafat's eviction from Tripoli ; hopes were aroused in Washington, Fabian says, that Jordan would be encouraged to preSs again for a Jordanian-Palestinian understanding to facilitate negotiations over the West Bank. But Syria's opposi- tion, he says, was "as cer- tain as anything can be" and Israeli leaders said they would respond by accelerat- ing the settlement program. "All of this," Fabian finds, "left America's peace policy dangling in a nether world of high ambitions and low credibility, a mix even more unpromising at the end of the year than at the begin- ning." Fabian is severe in his criticism of Gen. Ariel Sha- ron, the former Israeli De- fense Minister. "The ar- chitect of Israel's invasion of Lebanon was also the ar- chitect of Israel's immediate postwar diplomacy," he de- clares. Sharon "wanted to dictate to Lebanon a peace settlement that would jus- tify in Israel the tragic and costly war that he had engineered. Sharon envisaged a so-called new order in Lebanon, a Maro- nite Christian-dominated state led by Bashir Gemayel and allied with Israel. And as nothing less than a self- appointed nemesis for Washington, Sharon also wanted to demonstrate that Israel did not need Wash- ington as an intermediary in Lebanon or concerning the West Bank." Sharon staked out his claim with Bashir's sue., cessor, his brother Amin, "narrowing the room for compromise with Muslim and leftist forces" and in- sisting on "a fundamentally political agreement with Lebanon, a deal as close as possible to a full and firm peace treaty, coupled with a strong Israeli security presence in southern Leba- non." This, Fabian points out, was in conflict with Wash- ington's objective: an agreement that provided for Israeli security, for an inde- pendent and unified Leba- non resistant to Syrian domination and -remaining in an Arab rather than Is- raeli orbit. Orthodox chair New York — Rabbi Simcha Krauss of Flushing, N.Y. has been named chairman of the 48th Na- tional Convention of the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest Or- thodox rabbinic group in the world. The convention will be May 28-31 in Lancaster, Pa. •