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Intransigence is not an Israeli monopoly, nor reasonableness a dominant trait in Arab policy. So interwoven are the rights and wrongs of the Arab and Israeli cases, so conflicting their claims to a twice-Promised Land, so much death and grief and hurt a part of existence to both peoples, so real their fears and so inescapable their hostility, that outsiders who arrive there to talk of evenhandedness, fair-mindedness and rational solutions find themselves instantly suspect for their naiveté. The most egregious assumption that outsiders make is that their detachment gives them superior wisdom. In fact, the intractable problems of the Middle East have been endlessly considered and eloquently argued on both sides. In candid private moments, Israeli leaders can discuss Arab rights and needs with sympathy and understanding. On the Arab side, Hussein has acted with courageous prudence, Feisal with caution, and Sadat has proved a more subtle and rational strategist than Nasser. On almost every major issue, solutions that could be made palatable to both sides have long been canvassed—a demilitarized Sinai and a demilitarized West Bank that would protect Israel without its occupying Arab lands; territorial adjustments in the Golan Heights, juridical solutions to the problem of Jerusalem; compensation and compromises on the Palestinian Arab refugees; face-saving devices so that the two sides could meet together. Most of these points were talked out in Secretary of State Rogers' futile journeys around the Middle East. But at no time have both sides simultaneously felt the same necessity to settle, and the final dismissing phrase to outside mediators was an objection to "imposed" solutions. The logic of such attitudes was that a new bloodletting was necessary before a new equilibrium could be ratified.
Wars are rarely that obliging, and may produce instead of a new equilibrium only exhausted winners and losers and no change of heart. But this time necessity may impose solutions. The Arabs, even if ultimately defeated, have already restored their pride. The Israelis, even if again victorious, might take counsel of the loss of so many men and ask whether they can safely commit their future to a succession of "rounds" of fighting. The U.S., in helping Israel with Phantoms, is taking risks and acquiring rights and interests of its own, including a say in the timing of a cease-fire and a commitment to a settlement. A more active American and Soviet presence in the Middle East is a mixed blessing to all concerned, the U.S. included, but it makes possible for the first time a network of big-power agreements and internationally policed borders that could guarantee, in any settlement that the Arabs and Israel themselves work out, the peace that Israel has never found by its own arms alone.
· Thomas Griffith