Yehoshafat Harkabi, a retired Israeli general, launches his cry from the heart with an unusual statement. "I accept the democratic right of the Jews in Israel to commit national suicide and, if that happens, I will be with them. But it is my duty, and the duty of others with similar views, to warn them against such a course."
And what are those views? In Israel's Fateful Hour (Harper & Row, 288 pages, $22.50), Mr. Harkabi advocates two main changes in Israel's policy. First, Israeli forces should withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Second, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in conjunction with Jordan should be permitted to take their place.
Mr. Harkabi makes a compelling case for military withdrawal. His analysis of demographic trends punctures for all time the misty wishful thinking that Israel can permanently incorporate the West Bank without major adverse consequences. Rightly too, he emphasizes demographic trends as potentially the most decisive factor bearing on the future of Arab-Israeli relations. Further, Mr. Harkabi shows how Arab leaders have, over the years, begun to distinguish their everyday policies (accepting Israel) from their grand design (destroying Israel). To further this process, he declares that encouraging the Arabs to moderation should be "the central imperative of Israel's foreign policy."
So far, so good. But the next step, advocating a deal with the PLO, takes Mr. Harkabi onto shaky ground. Indeed, he reaches this conclusion through a series of erroneous analyses, mistakes that are all the more egregious (and consequential) given the author's standing as a pre-eminent interpreter of Arab attitudes toward Israel.
Several errors stand out. For one, Mr. Harkabi sees the Arab-Israeli conflict through terribly narrow blinders. It is entirely not true, as he posits, that the PLO is the one Arab party "directly involved in the conflict." What about the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Syria? He gives Jordanian interests in the West Bank short shrift, while Syrian ambitions there receive not a single mention. Yet the involvement of Arab states cannot be ignored. Israelis cannot simply come to terms with the PLO; they also have to defang the neighboring regimes. Agreement with Yasser Arafat still would leave Syrian fighter aircraft, missiles and chemical warheads in place. And, in the final analysis, the immense arsenal sitting in Syria threatens Israelis more than stones thrown on the West Bank.
Then, Mr. Harkabi posits that "Israel can obtain much better conditions now than in the future," because Arab moderates will lose to radicals unless Israeli policies change. This flies in the face of the trend that the author himself notes, which is that Israel's enemies increasingly accept that the State of Israel is here to stay. Also, his assumption that the balance of forces is evolving in the Arabs' favor ignores a key fact: that full-fledged Israeli participation in the modern world economy and in high technology still permits the Jewish state to make up for its relatively small army.
Mr. Harkabi calls himself a "Machiavellian dove," but it is hard to see where he differs from the garden-variety version. It is astounding that of all people, the most prominent scholarly analyst of the PLO covenant should urge Palestinians to "consign {the covenant} to oblivion by ceasing to refer to it." Does he also believe that fewer references to Marx and Lenin would change the Soviet system? Remarkably naive, too, is the statement that all Arab attacks on Israel are "more rhetoric than conviction."
Also, the book is thoroughly infected with that horrible political disease, moral equivalence. It starts with the dedication: "To the victims of their leaders - Jews and Arabs." The implication is clear, and repulsive: that the democratically elected politicians of Israel are morally no different from the autocrats who rule the Arab states. In another passage, the author refers to "the extremists on both sides," suggesting a parallel between Menachem Begin and Abu Nidal. Worse, he apologizes for PLO behavior, telling us that Palestinians "tend to ignore" that their goal implies the destruction of Israel. Can he really think this is no more than an oversight?
In short, Mr. Harkabi seems now to belong to the Israeli auxiliary of the blame-America-first crowd. Troubled relations with Egypt result from "Israeli unwillingness to make serious concessions," not anything done by Egyptians. More generally, he holds that "the ugliness of our [Israeli] policies threatens our existence." Forgive an American for intruding, but isn't it the Arabs who threaten Israel's existence?
That Mr. Harkabi, a deeply versed and often brilliant analyst of the Arab-Israeli conflict, can make so many mistakes points to the difficulty of the situation. It also points to the need for care and patience on the part of anyone who would solve that conflict.
