Israel’s Tightrope

If you want to understand Israel’s role in America’s new war on terror, think back to a time when the World Trade Center was still standing. In 1974, the French aerialist Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope suspended between the twin towers. Israel is now Philippe Petit.

The delicate walk became apparent immediately after the attack. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon echoed the feeling of many Israelis and their American supporters by rushing to declare that Yasser Arafat is "Israel’s own Osama bin Laden." He acted as if Israel now had carte blanche to deal with the Palestinian Authority’s tacit support of terror swiftly and freely.

It was left to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to read the signals from Washington and tiptoe back across the high wire, toward a meeting with Arafat himself. Peres understood that in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel would not be riding shotgun on America’s charge into war.

Instead, President George W. Bush has put together an international coalition against terror that includes Saudi Arabia and Syria. Israel and Jewish groups find this particularly galling, given the amount of money Saudi Arabia has poured into supporting fundamentalist movements, including the Taliban, and Syria’s reported ties to specific terrorist acts.

Moreover, last week, the White House froze the assets of 27 terror organizations. But the list included only groups allegedly associated with bin Laden, not Hamas and Hezbollah, which have carried out repeated terror attacks against Israelis.

As much as Israeli and American Jews would like to raise the absurdity of excluding from America’s war on terrorism groups like Hamas that are assumed to have ties to bin Laden, they tiptoe back. The trick is to balance, Petit-like, the concerns over America’s bedding down with Israel’s enemies with the need to be supportive during a tough and tragic time.

The tightrope became even slicker this Tuesday, when the Bush administration released a Middle East diplomatic initiative calling for a Palestinian state and a shared Jerusalem. Again, Israeli officials who had been praising the way Bush had backed off from pushing a Clintonian peace agenda are now confronted with Secretary of State Colin Powell’s stated determination to force a breakthrough and Bush’s statement to congressional leaders that "the idea of a Palestinian state has always been a part of a vision, so long as the right to an Israeli state is respected."

The realpolitik at work here has to be clear to anyone with a sixth-grade history book and a $2 globe. America’s war cannot succeed without the support of the Arab world. There are a billion Arabs, whose nations dominate the Middle East and the Near East. Pakistani airspace, Saudi bases, Syrian intelligence, Jordanian moderation and Iranian neutrality are key components of this war, and all of that comes with a price.

An atrocity that at first seemed to consummate Israel’s "special relationship" to America has now provided Arab states with a way to strain it. And Arafat, whom Sharon and most Jewish leaders assumed would be tangled up in any anti-terrorism net that America cast, will no doubt soon be a White House guest.

America will turn to Israel privately, drawing on that nation’s anti-terrorism expertise. But when it comes to overt military operations, Israel will again have to tiptoe. America needs its coalition, and Israel can only flourish by the good graces of American support and American billions.

I don’t know if such tiptoeing is good for the Jews, and I’m even less convinced that it’s good for America. The administration’s hope, of course, is that Sept. 11 will shake up the world order enough so that old foes will become new allies, Arab tyrannies will be scared straight into ending support for terrorists, and Israel and the Palestinians will quickly resolve what must seem to some in Washington as a nagging territorial squabble in the midst of America’s major war.

But why should the rest of us be so sanguine? What is to stop our new allies from using our planned arms shipments to them against us, or against Israel sometime in the future? Isn’t that precisely what happened with the arms and training we provided the mujahadeen in their struggle against our old enemy, the Soviet Union? What are these new allies doing to change the anti-Western and virulently anti-Semitic rhetoric taught to new generations of Arabs in their school systems and promulgated in Arab media? What’s the point of killing today’s generation of terrorists while acquiescing to the creation of the next?

As for Arafat, what’s the point of helping him to his state if he doesn’t overhaul an educational system that nurtures terrorism at Israel’s doorstep?

There is no sense in tiptoeing around these questions. The answers President Bush can provide to them will determine whether we win this war over the long haul, or whether we all fall off the wire.