BACKGROUND

Gulf
'Aftershocks'
Worrying
Israel

Has the Persian Gulf crisis
damaged its alliance with the
United States?

"Tell him to stick'em up!"

HELEN DAVIS

Foreign Correspondent

ong after the Gulf
crisis has been
esolved, whether by
war or diplomacy, the after-
shocks will continue to re-
verberate through the Mid-
dle East, with far-reaching
implications for the United
States and its traditional re-
gional alliances, not least its
alliance with Israel.
Even if Washington
achieves all of its objectives
in the Iraq/Kuwait im-
broglio — objectives that
have still not been clearly
defined — it is evident that
the United States will have
to maintain a substantial
military presence in the re-
gion, at least as large as its
current force levels, for an
indefinite period of time.
Such a protracted com-
mitment in the Middle East
to the protection of the
West's oil supplies — a
deployment of military
might which prefigures a
new world order in the wake
of the Cold War — will carry
a high price tag in political,
military and economic
terms
Indeed, the effect of an ex-
tended military involvement
in the Middle East could
have serious domestic' con-
sequences on both sides of
the Atlantic. And it has sent
political leaders scurrying
back to their history books to
revise those chapters which
describe how Jimmy Carter
stubbed his presidential toe
on the revolutionary Iranian

regime of Ayatollah Kho-
meini.
Domestic dissent is al-
ready building in the United
States States, Britain and
France, the three leading
protagonists lined up
against Iraq, where isola-
tionist voices at both ends of
the political spectrum are
organizing to oppose the
Western military presence
in the Gulf — because it
smacks of bad old colo-
nislism or because it is con-
sidered unfair that a handful
of states should bear the cost
of protecting the interests of
the many
It is these growing voices
of concern that led President
Bush to suggest that those
countries which are being
defended and those which
derive benefit from the
stability of the Gulf should
contribute to the action,
whose cost is estimated to be
running at some $20 million
a day. Foremost among
those states are Saudi
Arabia, West Germany,
Japan and South Korea.
Disenchantment with
Western involvement,
however, is not confined to
the participating nations. In
the Arab world, too, popular
dissent is being expressed,
even in those countries
whose regimes have thrown
their weight behind the
Western effort and which
have most to lose from an
Iraqi victory.
Syrian President Hafez
Assad — the latest and most
unexpected American ally
(and, incidentally, the arch-
rival of Saddam) — has had

to contend with a slew of pro-
Iraqi demonstrations in
cities and towns along his
eastern border with Iraq.
Even in Saudi Arabia,
whose protection against an
imminent Iraqi invasion
provided the pretext for the
West's military deployment,
growing unrest has been re-
ported. Demonstrators in a
number of major cities, in-
cluding Dhahran and others
along the Saudi border with
pro-Iraq Yemen, expressed
hostility toward the House of
Saud and called for the

The harsh facts of
life are that the end
of the Cold War has
almost entirely
eliminated Israel's
strategic value to
the United States.

removal of the "American
infidels."
Jordan's King Hussein,
one of the most seasoned po-
litical performers in the
world and perhaps the most
vulnerable to local insurrec-
tion of the major Arab
players, has not even tried to
stem the outpouring of pop-
ular domestic support for
Iraq's Hussein. He knows
that his kingdom could very
quickly become the 20th
province of Iraq and he has
opted, perhaps wisely, to go
with the flow, performing a
jet-lagging feat of perpetual
diplomacy which took him to
no less than 10 capitals last
week alone.

The Hashemite monarch is
a master of the high-wire act
and if anyone can bridge the
gulf between the Arab and
Western worlds, he can.
Aftef 37 years on his
unsteady throne, however,
observers believe that he
may be about to run out of
rope.
No less than Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak,
leader of the largest and
most populous Arab state, is
having to watch his back.
Saddam Hussein, after all,
will have to contend with
Mubarak — a "former
friend," the Iraqi leader
somewhat ominously told
Dan Rather in his celebrated
television interview — if he
is to lay claim to leadership
of the Arab world.
All the states mentioned so
far possess, to a greater or
lesser degree, powerful ar-
mies and sophisticated
military technology; how
much more vulnerable, then,
are the tiny Gulf states —
Oman, Qatar, Dubai, Abu
Dhabi, the United Arab
Emirates — which, like
Kuwait, are easy prey to
predators from abroad and
destabilization by dissidents
at home?
Having only recently been
hailed as the savior of the
Gulf after fighting the Ira-
nian fundamentalists to a
standstill, Saddam Hussein
has now consolidated his
position, igniting both the
pan- Arab dreams and re-
ligious fervor — notwith-
standing the essentially
secular nature of his regime
— of literally hundreds of

thousands of Arabs.
He has articulated their
profound disaffection with
the Gulf leaders, whose con-
spicuous wealth ac-
cumulated over the past 20
years, has bred deep resent-
ment. Not least, he has rais-
ed expectations that their
demise will lead to Arab oil
wealth being equitably
distributed throughout the
Arab world.
Mr. Hussein has also suc-
cessfully tapped the rich
seam of Arab xenophobia,
particularly with regard to
the West, exploiting "the
American control of the
Moslem holy places" in
Saudi Arabia and laying the
groundwork for dissent in
those Arab states which
support the Western
intervention.
It is this combustible mix
of resuscitated passions,
suspicions and expectations
with which the American-
led West will have to con-
tend in the future.
The Gulf crisis, however,
will leave the United States
with yet another important
political bequest, one that
goes to the heart of its 23-
year-old alliance with Israel.
Over the past five weeks,
Jerusalem has been pro-
foundly concerned about the
increasingly close alliance
that the United States has
forged with its Arab
neighbors, the sophisticated
array of weaponry that has
been placed at their disposal
and, not least, its own
marginal part in the crisis.
Jerusalem's role, according
to the message from Wash-

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 37

