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34

FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1989

•

Fallout From Israel's
Obeid Abduction

ARTHUR J. MAGIDA

Special to The Jewish News

I

srael's kidnapping of
Sheik Abdul Karim
Obeid has generated a
opinionated heyday in the
news media. Some of it is con-
demnatory of Israel. Some is
critical of Western nations'
timid stand against terrorists.
And some of it — the best of
it — urges us not to get
sidetracked by what amounts
to the distractions of kidnap-
pings and murderous retalia-
tions. Instead, as New York
nines columnist Floral Lewis
wrote, focusing on a political
settlement of the Palestinian
issue is "the only way of ever
unraveling the tangled net-
works that perpetuate
violence" in the Middle East.
"I cannot condemn Israel,"
wrote Lewis, "against which
Sheik Obeid's group has pro-
claimed holy war, for giving
him his own medicine. Nor
can I blame Israel for not war-
ning the United States in ad-
vance. That would have im-
plicated Washington, but
what would that have done?
America has found no way of
saving U.S. and foreign
hostages."
Most imperative, said
Lewis, was continuing the
"delicate moves toward
negotiations on the Palesti-
nian issue." Israel's leaders,
"torn by the prospects" of
such negotiations, "found the
chance of distraction an ad-
vantage in timing" Obeid's
capture.
Each step toward defusing
the Israel Arab conflict, wrote
Lewis; produces "desperate
moves by extremists on all
sides trying to head it off." In
the category of "extremists,"
Lewis placed Shi'ite Moslem
terrorists who want "to
sidetrack" any improved rela-
tions between Iran and the
United States now that
Ayatollah Khomeini is dead
and West Bank settlers in
Israel who have been attack-
ing and killing their Palesti-
nian neighbors.
On the Times' op-ed page,
Richard Ullman, a professor
of international relations at
Princeton University, also
agreed that the paramount
issue in the Middle East is
politically resolving the
Palestinian issue. This, he
said, "would . . . do much to
erode any sympathy for
gangsters like the members of
the Hezbollah."
Ullman in the Times and
columnist Jim Hoagland in
the Washington Post both at-

tributed the Obeid kidnapp-
ing to a succession of Israeli
governments that, as
Hoagland said, have been
"peopled by ministers absorb-
ed with staying in power and
blocking rivals, rather than
charting the future. "

George Bush:
'Rally the West'

Fallout from the Obeid ab-
duction, wrote Hoagland, will
revive doubts in Israel and
among its friends abroad
"about the effectiveness of the
current leadership and the
political system that has pro-
duced a decade of divided
coalition governments . . .
The prolonged deadlock at
the top of the government
may now be reaching into the
once insulated security ser-
vices."
Operation Obeid, observed
Hoagland, had "an improvis-
ed air about it at odds with
the careful planning of risk-
calculation that went into
Entebbe, the Iraqi reactor at-
tack and other operations
that built the Israeli Super-
man image . . . The question
to be settled is not whether
the Israeli reaction was moral
or legal, but a harder one in
Middle East politics: Was it
smart?"
In the Times, Ullman
charged that Israel's abduc-
tion of Obeid was as "short-
sighted" as its reaction to the
Palestinian intifada has been.
Israeli domestic politics,
especially Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir's govern-
ment's "fears [of] losing
ground to its hardline, right-
wing opponents, he said, may
have produced the Obeid kid-
napping. It has behaved as if
under siege, both at home and
abroad . . . "

Editors Advise
On Terrorism

In the wake of the Obeid

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