Behind the Headlines the Hope and the Reality

Conor Cruise O’Brien–the former deputy chief of the Irish delegation to the United Nations, a former Member of the Irish Parliament and one-time editor-in-chief of The Observer in London–has written a wonderfully readable and informative history of Zionism and Israel in “The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism” (New York, Simon and Schuster, 798 pages. $24.95).

But for this reader, who like most American Jews — and a majority of Israelis for that matter — hope that a solution can be found for the Arab-Israel conflict, reading the book, as well as talking to O’Brien about the book, was slightly depressing. This is because he believes the hope for a settlement is nothing more than hope and not grounded in reality.

As the title of his book suggests, O’Brien believes that Israel from its very beginnings has been under siege because of the refusal of the Arab world to accept its existence. This threat to Israel’s existence continues despite what he calls the “constrained acceptance” by Egypt, and O’Brien predicts it will go on through the end of this century and beyond.

O’Brien rejects the idea that Israel can obtain peace through giving up territory, the basis of the United States-backed peace process centered on United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. It is not just the question over how much land Israel gives up, O’Brien pointed out, but of Jerusalem, which Israel will never relinquish and the Arabs will never accept as remaining under Jewish control.

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY

“Israel is not free to be other than the Jewish State in Palestine, and the Jewish State, once in possession of Jerusalem, is not capable of relinquishing that city,” he writes in his book. “The Muslim world is also not free to be other than what it is, and is certainly incapable of acquiescing openly, fully and voluntarily in a Jewish State in Palestine, with Arab subjects, and its capital in Jerusalem.”

That is why neither President Reagan’s peace initiative, or the recent unsuccessful attempts to have King Hussein of Jordan and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat work out an agreement for negotiations with Israel had a chance for success, O’Brien said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

No Israeli party is willing to give up all of the occupied territory, O’Brien stressed. He said the most Israelis would be willing to give up is part of the territory minus areas needed for defense and minus East Jerusalem.

Hussein would “be in trouble and in danger if he were negotiating with Israel at all,” O’Brien said. “But if he reached an agreement in which he recognized that Jerusalem was part of Israel, the capital of Israel, and also leaving Israel in possession of that defense strip along the Jordan, he’d be extremely unlikely to survive the conclusion of such a development. I think he knows that very well.”

As for Arafat, in the unlikely event he was to agree to negotiate with Israel, O’Brien believes he would not survive long from assassination by dissidents from within his own group, the Abu Nidal group or the Syrian-backed PLO factions, among others.

TOO MUCH WISHFUL THINKING

“What astonishes me is that there is so much wishful thinking on this subject which refuses to recognize those realities,” O’Brien said. He conceded that his assessment may be due to his being Irish and his belief that there is no solution ahead for the centuries-old quarrel between Catholics and Protestants in his own country.

But O’Brien does not see the situation on the West Bank as necessarily a bad thing. He would like to see a policy that has existed since 1967, except for the period during the second government of Premier Menachem Begin.

“I would hope in the future there would be a return to the policy of leaving the West Bank Arabs, as far as possible, alone and treating the area as necessary to Israel’s security, but to be treated for other purposes as effectively part of Jordan,” O’Brien told the JTA. “That doesn’t require the signature of a treaty. It doesn’t require Hussein to relinquish formally any of his claims.”

While O’Brien knew something about the Arab-Israel conflict from his years at the UN, it was not until he left his editor’s post at The Observer that he decided to study the situation closely, visiting the Middle East and doing research in the field.

PARALLELS WITH IRISH HISTORY

O’Brien makes many parallels with the history of Ireland, although he knows this can be overdrawn. “The Irish people have also a history of being a stigmatized people,” he told the JTA. “With the exception of the Jews, we are the European people that have the most experience of discrimination, persecution and oppression.”

The book offers different insights into the history of Israel, both before and after it became a State, and O’Brien shows sympathy and understanding for both Jews and Arabs.

There are many interesting disclosures. One is that he believes if the U.S. had not closed its doors to immigration in 1924, aliya to Palestine would have been much less, and even the Yishuv may have disappeared and there may never have been a State of Israel.

He also notes that the British, who broke every one of their World War I promises on the Mideast, kept the commitment to a Jewish national home in Palestine, even though George Curzon, who succeeded Lord Balfour in the Foreign Office, disliked the whole idea.

“Deep down, I suspect that there was at work a feeling that it would not be lucky to break a promise to the Jews to help them return to the Promised Land,” he wrote in his book. This argument is not so far-fetched if one has ever heard American evangelicals use the same argument in talking about the need for the U.S. to support Israel.

There is much in this book that is of value not only to those who know little about Israel but also for Jewish readers. O’Brien understands the meaning of the Holocaust for Israelis and their determination that they will not allow Israel to be destroyed in a second Holocaust.

“Israel is obliged, by the nature of its predicament, to remain on its guard, and to be the judge of its own security,” O’Brien writes. “And those who condemn Israel should reflect that Israel’s predicament is not the creation of Israel only, but is also the creation of all the rest of us — those who attacked and destroyed Jews in Europe, and those in Europe and America who just quietly closed doors.

“Against that background, the statesmen of Europe might have the grace to be more sparing in their admonitions addressed to Israel, bearing in mind that so many of the people those statesmen represent did so much, over so many years, and in so many ways, to impress upon Jews the necessity of creating the Jewish State.”