September 1990, Page 45

From the Hebrew Press

How Israel Can Provoke Another War

By Israel Shahak

In late June 1990, such major English-language magazines as The Economist, Time and Newsweek, in writing about prospects for the next war in the Middle East, acknowledged that such a war could be initiated by Israel. At the same time, Israeli government officials propounded to Uzzi Benziman, the political commentator of the daily Haaretz newspaper, an elaborate argument to prove that the Shamir government is not interested in launching a war. In the resulting article ("You, I and the Next War"), Benziman on June 22 discounted the Shamir government's arguments. It is well known that every Israeli aggression is always preceded by elaborate professions of Israel's desire for peace, as was the case in the Suez War of 1956, Six-Day War of 1967 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The October 1973 War, initiated by Egypt and Syria, was the exception.

Although the Israeli government has formal, and exclusive, authority to initiate a war, its orders to initiate the wars of 1956 and 1982 were issued only a few hours before the military operations began. This is because the decisions of the Israeli government come to the attention of the Americans almost as soon as they are taken, and any lapse of time between their initiation and their execution provides the U.S. president an opportunity to intervene personally to reverse them.

Israel's 1974 Attempt

A 1974 Israeli attempt to start a war in a manner that would rule out any possibility of rapid American intervention to avert it was alluded to in an interview by Alex Fishman with Reserve General Israel Tal, published June 22, 1990 in the daily Hadashot. General Tal, probably the most respected living Israeli general, retired from the army in 1989. His distinguished career included top field command positions, as well as designing the Israeli "Merkava" tank.

Despite his advanced age, Tal is still employed by the Ministry of Defense. His reminiscences about the 1974 attempt to launch a war, although well-known to many Israelis from oral accounts, have never previously appeared in print.

The events he describes took place in the aftermath of the October War of 1973, during a six-month period in which no firm cease-fire existed and during which Israel kept some 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers under arms. When the Israeli leaders of the time realized that the U.S. would support a firm cease-fire only after a significant Israeli retreat, there ensued a series of "limited operations" designed to provoke the Egyptian army to war. When the Egyptians, on Sadat's orders, did not respond to these unprovoked Israeli attacks on their positions, Moshe Dayan, then the Israeli minister of defense, tried to begin "a full-scale war" without formal authorization by the Israeli government. This is how Tal recounts it in responding to a question by Fishman:

Fishman: "A few months afterwards, in 1974. . . you refused to execute an order of the minister of defense to renew the fighting. At that time, some. . . wrote that you wanted the minister of defense to resign."

The General's Account

Answer: "I never demanded that Dayan or any other minister be dismissed. . . What happened then was simple. I received an order to perform operations which would clearly mean the outbreak of a full-scale war.

"A paramount example was an order received by the troops under my command to attack Jebel Atka, a position held by the Egyptian forces. I opposed it because it could only lead to the renewal of war, and I knew that the Israeli government had not resolved to open a full-scale war with Egypt.

"On the contrary, on the same night I received the order, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was about to return to Israel from Aswan, with Sadat's replies to the Israeli government. Since only the government can launch a war, I perceived the order to attack as clearly illegal, in the constitutional sense. I reported back that I would refuse to carry out this order, unless I was told that it was the government's decision. And that, even then, I would have to make up my mind.

"When I refused to carry [the order] out, I was told, 'All right, then don't carry it out.' This was the culmination of the sequence of 'limited operation' incidents. I knew that such incidents were of no importance, except that from time to time some [Israeli] boys were killed in them. This was why I opposed them and prevented some of them from occurring. I proposed to the prime minister [Golda Meir] and to the minister of defense [Moshe Dayan] that they put me on trial, to establish a legal precedent clarifying the duties of commanding officers who receive orders that are illegal from the constitutional point of view. But I was told that the slate was clean: there were no complaints against me."

Although Dayan's orders clearly contravened Israeli law (let alone international law, which qualifies such orders as war crimes), there followed no legal action. In particular, there was no investigation by a Knesset committee, even a strictly formal one.

General Tal even now does not seem concerned that the persons who gave orders described by him as "clearly illegal, in the constitutional sense," should have been held legally accountable for them. A secret deal with some unnamed persons to cover-up the illegality apparently suffices to close the affair. Curiously, General Tal does comment on the fact that what he refers to "as a sequence of limited activity incidents" (popularly known as "forward crawling of the army") involves systematic lying.

The same method also was used repeatedly against the Syrians in 1982 in Lebanon. In each case, Israeli authorities solemnly declared they were "merely responding" to enemy provocations, while in reality the provocations were their own. This would have been the case again in 1974, no doubt, had Tal obeyed Dayan's order. Dayan would have then claimed that he only responded to an Egyptian provocation.

Dayan Intended to Deceive

Finally, the timing of that provocation during Kissinger's night flight from Aswan to Jerusalem could not have been a matter of chance. Dayan intended to deceive all, but in the first place the American government.

We can use knowledge of the past, however, to predict the future. Let us hypothetically suppose that the present Israeli minister of defense or the prime minister, or both, speak to a general, possibly at a time when the U.S. president is more than usually concerned with affairs elsewhere, instructing the general to attack a major military position in Jordan or Syria.

In my opinion, the chances are good that the Israeli general of 1990 will obey such an order, even when he doesn't receive it in writing. In terms of the potential for official mendacity, the situation in 1990 seems to be even worse than in previous instances. One can also predict the sort of lies (for example, the invocation of the Holocaust) that would be resorted to after the event. In such a way, Israel can launch a new Middle East war without informing the Americans, not even just a few hours before it starts.

Dr. Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israel League for Human and Civil Rights in Jerusalem. His translations From the Hebrew Press are available to Washington Report subscribers at $25 a year from the American Educational Trust.