"Don’t give us gas-masks," pleaded Dan Margalit ("Ha'aretz" February 12). Israel, Margalit argued, has always seen attack as the best defence. "Only this [giving back the gas-masks] will free Israel from mentally turning inwards, enabling her to rely on her offensive capability, and only this will convince Saddam that, this time, the IDF’s intentions are serious."
According to Amnon Barzilai, in an account of the history of the provision of gas masks to civilians ("Ha'aretz" February 18), MK Benny Begin agrees. "Begin’s approach is that the only way to save human life in wartime is to shorten the war. To achieve this aim, he argues, we should equip ourselves with offensive weaponry, and not invest huge sums in civil defence."
What price life?
"This cold, technocratic and economic approach," says Barzilai, "is supported by the Ministry of Finance budgets division and the military research department of the government’s Armaments Development Authority (Rafael)." The latter has estimated the cost of each life saved through protective kits in an attack by missiles armed with unconventional warheads - a remote possibility in any case - at $50 million, "far higher than the accepted normal investment in saving human life in Israel and around the world."
In fact, only a petition to the High Court of Justice by Meretz leader Yossi Sarid forced the government to abandon its intention of adopting the Rafael and Ministry of Finance recommendations and ceasing distribution of protective kits.
Mid-East MAD
Dan Margalit was quoted in a previous edition of Press Cuttings as saying that Israel should be concerned that, in the end, the US might not launch an offensive against Iraq. Ruth Gabizon ("Ma'ariv" February 19) thinks otherwise. "I suggest that Israel should counsel against an attack," she wrote, arguing that the planned limited offensive is unlikely to achieve the objective of destroying Iraq’s capacity for unconventional warfare, and will only invite retaliation against Israel.
Gabizon’s recommendation for dealing with the Iraqi threat is deterrence. "It’s true that we live in an unpleasant part of the world, but, for the time being, the balance of threats is more effective in preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction than limited military operations... such operations only make the threat worse, and prolong the cycle of violence and destruction."
Not everyone has such faith. Amnon Barzilai quotes Yossi Sarid as saying: "If deterrence worked, Israel would not have taken part in five wars," while MK Efraim Sneh told him: "Around here, you cannot assume that the other side will behave rationally. A deterrent balance can only exist between countries that are symmetrical. The capacity of the US and the Soviet Union to absorb attack was more or less the same. But there is no symmetry between Israel’s absorption capacity and that of Iran and Iraq. Therefore, there is no deterrent balance."
Amir Oren ("Ha'aretz" February 6) looks at it a little differently. "Despite the propaganda about ‘bloodthirsty rulers’", he wrote, "countries act out of rational considerations." Saddam Hussein will only use weapons of mass destruction against a country capable of defending itself if his back is to the wall. And, according to Oren, the reason the Cold War is an inappropriate model for the strategic balance between Israel and her neighbours is not that the other side is irrational or can better absorb attack, but that Israel and the Arabs are fighting over real issues of land and water resources, sovereignty, and rights of migration and settlement, which was not the case in the confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union.
Netanyahu indecisive
In the current crisis, according to Oren, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the big loser, in that he has lost what little status he had in the eyes of the IDF. "Netanyahu has been dragged in Saddam Hussein’s wake, and pulled this way and that by the Ministry of Finance and the newspaper headlines and public alarm... he has failed to make the transition from spokesperson to decision maker." Moreover, "people in the defence establishment say that if Netanyahu had not hardened his policy towards Syria and the Palestinians, the Iraqi danger would be even lower today."
Oren says Netanyahu has allowed Saddam Hussein to forge once again a link between the Gulf and the Israel-Arab conflict. Like several other commentators, among them Labour Party leading light Professor Shlomo Ben Ami, he foresees a danger of Israel being forced into a process akin to the Dayton Conference that settled the conflict in Bosnia, with Russian and European participation.
Against this, others hold to the view that Saddam is simply capricious, and as such stands for the intractability of the entire Israel-Arab dispute. For example, referring to Palestinian demonstrations of support for Saddam Hussein. Moshe Zack wrote ("Ma'ariv" February 16): "Israel cannot halt the wave of ugliness in the Palestinian street, because there are no grounds for the claim that the Palestinians would behave differently were it not for the standstill in the negotiations with Israel."
Lesson of the past
Whatever its current by-products, Danny Rubinstein ("Ha'aretz" February 16) believes that the freeze in negotiations cannot work in Israel’s favour. Citing the Yom Kippur war and the intifada, Rubinstein says the lesson of the past is that "what Israel was unwilling to return to the Arabs under a US compromise, she eventually returned after force was used against her... The standstill will presumably last another few months, until the next outbreak of violence, the nature and scope of which no-one can predict. One can only estimate that its peak will come in May 1999, when the interim arrangement period comes to an end, and Arafat declares a independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."
Weizman Watch Out
According to a "Makor Rishon" survey (February 13), Shaul Amor is doing better in the popular vote for State President than we thought (though only the Knesset actually has a say). Makor Rishon has Weizman at 52% of the vote, Amor at 39% (up 16% since a similar survey in December), and physics professor Yirmiyahu Branover at 5%.
Meanwhile, "Ma’ariv" (February 19) reports that both Amor and Weizman have passed the minimum level of Knesset sponsorship for their candidacies (ten MKs). The National Religious Party, which would like to vote for Amor, is being embarassed by a letter in which its late leader, Zevulun Hammer, called on the party to vote for Weizman. Many MKs are suspected of having lied to the candidates about their voting intentions.
Published by Israel's Business Arena February 19, 1998
Responses to Press Cuttings are welcome. Please send comments to davidg@globes.co.il
Israel’s Main Hebrew Dailies:
| Readership as % of population |
| | Weekday | Weekend |
| Yediot Aharonot | 48.4% | 62.5% |
| Ma’ariv | 23.5% | 33.3% |
| Ha’aretz | 7.1% | 9.8% |
| Globes | 3.5% | 2.8% |
Other newspapers referred to in this edition:
Makor Rishon Right of centre weekly.
The above figures are based on a survey carried out by the Israel Advertising Association in November 1996. The survey covered a sample of 2,500 people representing a cross-section of the population of Israel.
Recent Editions:
- Hate Thy Neighbor (February 12)
Tension between Israel’s ultra-orthodox community and the secular majority.
- Nobody Loves Us (February 5, 1998)
Does the Iraq crisis prove the Middle East is as bad a neighborhood as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says it is, or that Israel should try harder to fit in?
- Scud Poker (January 29, 1998)
How anxious should Israelis be about Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological arsenal, as sabers are once again rattled in the Gulf? Plus: Monica Lewinsky and the culture of lies.
- Change Your Partners (January 22,1998)
Did Netanyahu emerge from his summit with President Clinton as a smooth dancing statesman, or as a scrambling politician putting off the choice between his coalition and his country’s greatest ally?
- The Man They Love to Hate (January 15, 1998)
Press hostility towards the Prime Minister - a sign of loss of touch with reality, or of healthy instinct? Plus: Interesting times in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
- Levy Leaves (January 8, 1998)
The significance of David Levy's resignation as Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Barak Burner (December 25, 1997)
Why has Labour Leader Ehud Barak not set the political scene alight? Plus: For and against Hannuka.