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PARTISAN REVIEW
be hostile to Israel. But it will not disarm any of Israel's enemies, either
European or Arab; it will simply deprive them of leverage and purchase
and that is a lready a considerable advance.
David
Pryce-Jones:
I think a lot of people in Europe, perhaps the major–
ity, would prefer to bomb Israel rather than Iraq.
Conor Cruise O'Brien:
I'm afraid that's right.
David
Pryce-Jones:
And if the European Union had an army now, which
it's projected to have in about two years, and if it would use that army,
which it won't be able to, it would wish to invade Israel. I understand
that the European army is a fantasy, like so much of this thing is a fan–
tasy, but it's a fantasy that's nonetheless very felt by the people that do
feel it. All ideas are welcome about the Middle East, and Conor Cruise
O'Brien has lots of ideas. But there are a lready, in Israel, an awful lot of
migrant workers from elsewhere, and the problem with that is that they
create a problem that the Germans have discovered with the Turks, and
the Dutch with Muslims: what rights are you going to give these peo-
. pie? And if you import, as the Israelis have done, lots of Filipinos and
Sri Lankans, on what terms are they going to become citizens, or are
they going to live in your country for a long period of time without any
civic rights, and just hew wood and draw water? That's a very awkward
question, and Israel is an immigrant society that has done very well
assimilating all sorts of people. I don't know if you remember, but Begin
accepted Vietnamese boat people and gave them citizenship. And I
understand from Israeli friends that the children of those Vietnamese are
now in the army. There was an officer in Jenin who was a Vietnamese
captain, fighting with the Israeli defense force. That's a sign of great
assimilation . But if you're going to take on migrant workers, it very
much alters the nature of the society. Israel did, in fact, also take
between
10,000
and
15,000
Shia people from south Lebanon and inte–
grated them. They were members of the SLA from that occupied strip
of south Lebanon which Barak so unwisely and intemperately gave up.
Conor Cruise O'Brien also went on to say something about removing
the settlements by force. But imagine that scene. There were
3,000
peo–
ple at Yamit and the Israelis had to remove them by force and lift some
of them into trucks. Three thousand people you can do. There are
200,000
in the settlements, and it's civil war if you're going to remove
them, because they have the backing of a very large part of the Israeli
population. The idea of removing them forcibly inevitably escalates into
