To the Editor:

Michael Reisman and Amos Perlmutter [“Letters from Readers,” September] have not really grasped what I was trying to say or do in my article, “The Alternatives in the Middle East” [May]. Moreover, their remarks betray one of the worst features that have bedeviled and rendered futile most debates on the Arab-Israeli conflict, namely, an essentially simplistic thinking clad in the garb of aggressive, pompous jargon or arrogant moral authoritarianism.

Mr. Perlmutter, for example, classifies and reclassifies me in all sorts of schools I do not recognize in the course of attacking my territorial swap scheme, but fails to take notice of the simple and clear fact that I propose this scheme not as a translation of the peace-without-annexation idea, but as an alternative to it as well as to the idea of a settlement short of peace, which has constituted the subject of the big-power talks. At the end of part two of my article, on page 58, I introduce my swap proposal by saying: “I believe there is a third course which could be pursued if and when it should become apparent that the chances of an American-Soviet agreement on peace without annexation (to my mind, the most desirable outcome) were definitely and irretrievably blocked.” When a critic misreads an author so completely on such a central structural point, it is a bit difficult for the author to take him seriously on any other point.

Both Mr. Reisman and Mr. Perlmutter fail to take me seriously when I say that “the key to my proposal is an effort to disentangle all these interacting struggles and conflicts,” i.e. the Arab-Israeli, Arab-Arab, and big-power clashes. I do not aspire, nor do I think it possible, to settle all these conflicts for good and to reach some kind of Utopia, but I simply wish to find a way whereby the Arab-Israeli conflict could be disengaged from the other two problems sufficiently to render it more susceptible of solution. That the other struggles will go on I believe to be quite likely. I do argue that, with the Arab-Israeli conflict out of the way, the relation of forces in the Arab-Arab and the big-power struggles may be altered in such a way as to make possible the crystallization of a de facto stalemate that would in turn make possible genuine stabilization. But even if this should not come about, and even if the inter-Arab struggles should become intensified, the settling of the Arab-Israeli conflict would still be a net gain. The danger to world peace presented by the Middle East situation does not derive so much from the sharpness of the struggle going on there—the Yemen war, the Kurdish-Iraqi war, the civil war in the Sudan, for example, have each claimed many times more victims than all the Arab-Israeli wars combined, yet they have at no point endangered world peace. Nor does the danger to world peace arise from any deliberate disposition on the part of either of the big powers to risk mutual confrontation in the region, as was the case, for example, in the days of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The danger, rather, springs from the complexity of the situation which renders it extremely volatile, makes possible at any given time drastic and abrupt changes in the constellation of forces like those that produced the May-June 1967 crisis and war, and places all parties concerned in a position of having to make fateful decisions in haste. In this perspective, reducing the explosive complexity of the situation by abstracting from it the Arab-Israel conflict is not something to be sneered at, especially by people addicted to moral thundering.

How is the reduction in complexity to be achieved? I said in my article: “The most obvious feature of the plan is that it would disentangle the question of Israel's existence from the question of Arab unity.” Get Israel out of the way of pan-Arabism. Does this mean, as Mr. Reisman charges, urging “great-power complicity in the ambitions of a would-be Mussolini of the Middle East”? Only if one accepts his own naive premises.

In the first place, Mr. Reisman seems to believe for purposes of this particular point that if Israel got out of the way in accordance with my scheme, then Nasser would sweep everything before him. This betrays a very poor understanding of the Arab situation. Mr. Reisman is sufficiently informed to know that there are various Arab forces that are opposed to Nasser even while subscribing to the ideal of Arab unity and even while finding it necessary occasionally to appease Nasser in order the better to resist him. But he is not, it seems, sufficiently versed in the situation to realize that these forces may very well be able to take care of themselves without the Israeli buffer. When I argue that Nasser is obsessed about the Israeli wedge and thinks that it is this that has frustrated his dreams of unity, I expound Nasser's own “hangup” and the “evidence” he uses to support it; I do not speak of “objective reality” or objective probabilities. Furthermore, insofar as there is some element of reality in Nasser's conception of the obstructing role of Israel, there is at least an equal element of reality in the opposite notion (which Nasser may not see because he doesn't like to see it) that the existence of Israel in a state of conflict with the Arab countries has given him the means to whip the Arab peoples and their reluctant governments into line behind him and thus to give ever renewed impetus to his claim to Arab leadership. The removal of the Israeli wedge, according to my scheme, then, while presumably satisfying Nasser enough to induce him to contemplate peace, would not by any means determine the outcome of the inter-Arab struggles. It would probably precipitate a decision one way or the other about the issue of pan-Arab-ism, and this is all to the good. For as long as that issue is not put to a free test, unhindered by the Israeli complication, it will continue to haunt the stability of the region as a myth that is too strong to die and too weak to command fulfilment.

But let us assume for a moment that what I have just said is all wrong, and that Nasser would actually sweep away everything before him if the Israeli wedge were removed. I would still ask Mr. Reisman: is it Israel's business to be the policeman of the Middle East, to see to it that no would-be Mussolinis arise? Israel needs to protect its own security against Arab hostility no matter who leads it, and this, it seems to me, is accomplished in the plan I propound taken as a package that includes a swap of territories leading to formal peace buttressed by big-power guarantees, demilitarized zones, arms limitations, and so on.

I may be wrong in this assessment and I am receptive to arguments that would show me to be so; but until I am convinced that Israel's security situation would be worse off in the conditions under discussion than under other feasible alternatives, I must tell the Reismans of this world: “If you want to make the Middle East safe for democracy, you go ahead and do it. Don't ask Israel to do it for you. It is too small a country to aspire to such a role, and it has plenty of challenge within its own confines in trying to live up to the best dreams of its progenitors.”

Mr. Perlmutter attacks my scheme as impractical on the grounds that Nasser would never accept it. Nasser's pan-Arabism, he contends, is “total”; it is “ideological, political, and cultural” and would not therefore be “limited” or “satisfied” by the removal of the Israeli geographical obstruction. I do not quite understand the meaning of all the terms Mr. Perlmutter uses, but I guess he means to say that Nasser's hostility to Israel is due not solely to the fact that Israel in its present and pre-June boundaries cut him off from Arab countries east of Suez, but is rooted in additional factors that impel him to wish the elimination of Israel from the Middle East altogether. I readily grant this reading of Nasser's mind, but I think that the conclusion Mr. Perlmutter draws from it (that Nasser would therefore never accept a scheme like mine) is childish. How can one make an assessment as to what is possible and what is impossible in diplomacy by basing oneself solely on desire without regard to capabilities, experience, and circumstances? What the United States wanted in Korea and in Vietnam, to mention one example out of scores of possible ones, is one thing, and what it has had to accept in the one place and will have to accept in the other is quite another thing. Mr. Perlmutter himself asserts that Nasser cannot destroy Israel and knows it, and cannot even recover lost Egyptian national territory unaided; then what is the point of all the verbiage about Nasser's “ideological, political, and cultural” pan-Arab-ism besides giving hifalutin justification to the hysteria that has again and again prevented cool and calm reasoning on this problem? Why is he so certain that Nasser would not accept something very important that he can get, though it be less than what he would ideally like but knows is beyond his reach? I am not certain myself that Nasser would actually accept something like my proposal—he may feel that “ratting out” on the other Arab countries would destroy all claim on his part to leadership of the Arab world, or he may simply not have the courage or the gumption to break out of the rut in which he finds himself. However, in a situation in which all the obvious approaches have been tried and failed, I feel that a new approach with any chances of success at all should not remain unvoiced.

Finally, the question of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. Both Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Reisman attack my scenario regarding them and the guerrilla movements they sprouted as cynical and unrealistic, and Mr. Reisman further levels the same charge at my treatment of the Arab countries other than Egypt. I cannot treat effectively the “unrealism” part of the charge, since what is realistic and what is unrealistic can only be determined by an extensive study, supported by complete concrete data, of the history and behavior of the countries and governments concerned. Here I can only suggest to the reader two things: to consult my recent study of the subject entitled From War to War: The Arab-Israeli Confrontation 1948-1967 (Pegasus, 1969), and to compare the degrees of realism in my various proposals with those of Messrs. Reisman and Perlmutter.

As for the “immorality” part of the charge, I believe that in making it Mr. Reisman and Mr. Perlmutter provide two fresh examples of the hypocrisy and casuistry that have attended the discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mr. Reisman generously insists that the Palestinians' right to self-determination must be recognized, but then goes on in effect to do the determining for them. Surely he must know that true self-determination for the Palestinians must mean the elimination of Israel? Since he does not want that, he has to set up limits as to the time in which the self-determining is to become operative (e.g., now and not retrospectively), and the area in which it may apply. On what grounds would he set up these limits? And then, how does he propose to have whatever he has in mind enforced against certain resistance? Does he really think he has answered this question when he says that the four big powers should “see to it” that the Palestinians' right to self-determination should be respected by Israelis and Arabs? Or is he merely trying to assuage a guilty conscience by acknowledging a right he knows cannot be applied?

Mr. Perlmutter's ingenuousness is even more striking. Let Israel recognize the principle of the 1947 partition resolution, says he, and let Israelis and Palestinians negotiate new and secure borders. . . . How nice and simple; all you need to do is assume that the problem you want to solve does not exist. Then, adds Mr. Perlmutter, let Israel indicate to the Palestinians that it “would not mind” if they took over Jordan, as long as Israel's own security is not thereby affected. I do not know whether this is an integral part of the deal, but in any case what if they fail to take over Jordan because King Hussein crushes them, with the support of loyal Palestinians? Would the West Bank Palestinians then continue to live in their new and secure borders within that part of the West Bank that remains after Israel has constituted its new and secure borders, or would the deal be off?

No; there will be no end to the hypocrisy and casuistry so long as it is not recognized that the moral claims of Jews and Arabs respectively over Palestine are at one and the same time unassailable and irreconcilable. They are so because they rest on two different moral planes and because there is no third plane onto which both might be raised and morally adjudicated. The rights of one side can be acknowledged as valid and as having been violated or denied without ipso facto establishing a moral obligation on the other side to correct this wrong, for correcting the wrong may well mean denying or violating one's own right. In such a situation, any solution to the problem will have to be based primarily not on absolute justice but on prudence and the realities of the situation. This is not a universal formula for sanctioning the right of might; it is rather a prescription for a unique and tragic situation, which says that where you cannot right a wrong without creating another wrong, the best solution is that which promises to put an end to the tragic cycle as soon as possible. Not to see this is in effect to opt for the continuation of the cycle.

Nadav Safran
Stanford, California