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PARTISAN REVIEW
Begin managed to resolve for his Herut central committee the
conflict between their demand for Jewish sovereignty in Judea and
Samaria and the new process he had initiated with Carter and
Sadat. But the West Bank Palestinians, the PLO, and Jordan killed
the process, insisting that the accords provide only for a perpetual
autonomy, thus agreeing with Likud's definition . Today the "cold"
peace with Egypt is used by all sides in Israel as "proof' for their
positions: for hawks, that the Arabs cannot be trusted to live in
peace with us and that the reason for their apparent moderation is to
whittle Israel down to its vulnerable 1967 lines. Doves see it as
evidence of their fundamental premise: that the territory can be
traded for peace. (It
has
worked rather better than Sharon's "invade
Lebanon and impose a peace" scenario .)
Of course, if something is new on the Arab side it is the public
articulations, however hesitant, about peace with Israel. The Arab
Fez plan, like the Soviet Brezhnev plan, does not acknowledge Is–
rael's right to exist strongly enough, treating it as if it were a
marginal issue. But paradoxically, this underlines its centrality . For
Israelis as for the Arabs, it is
the
issue . Still, those statements repre–
sent a welcome change, and an Israeli policy which was not blinded
by a fixation on annexation would carefully explore it.
As Fouahd Ajami has demonstrated, the change in Arab think–
ing should be challenged by an Israeli policy to articulate its inner
assumptions more clearly. But the Likud prefers the status quo. On
the eve of his departure for talks with President Reagan in De–
cember 1983, Prime Minister Shamir announced that he welcomed
the possibility of talks withJordan. Shamir was sending a message to
George Schulz, who favored including Jordan in the peace process ;
with Jordan we already enjoy tourism, trade , and a terror- free bor–
der, as the Israeli Prime Minister pointed out. In other words , Israel
already enjoys the best of both worlds, a de facto peace with Jordan
and
a de facto annexation of the West Bank.
Israeli doves also are deeply divided, both on the West Bank
and on Lebanon. To the debate in which the doves have been argu–
ing against annexation - perhaps the most fully articulate political
discourse in contemporary culture - one must now add the debate
among moderates and doves about the implications of the sixteen
and a half years of Israeli occupation on Arabs and Jews . The op–
timists say "Even if we are still capable of making a deal over the
West Bank one day, what are we going to do while we wait for the
