FOR more than two decades, the U.S. has in large measure served as Israel's benefactor, a role that the Soviet Union has more recently assumed in behalf of the Arab states. Initially the U.S. position was dictated less by strict geopolitical considerations than by moral impulse—a desire somehow to compensate the Jewish people for the horrors of World War II. Politics, too, played a part, especially among Democratic Presidents who needed the urban Jewish vote. The long-term U.S. role is in the midst of a transformation, however, and the Israelis are plainly alarmed.
In Jerusalem, Premier Golda Meir spoke angrily last week of the "erosion" of U.S. policy and accused Washington of "appeasement"; one Israeli paper went so far as to call it "Mu-nichism." Secretary of State William Rogers replied that the U.S. was merely being "evenhanded." Added Rogers: "We have to conduct our foreign policy in a way that we think is best for our national interests." The statement seemed unexceptional, but it convinced some Israelis that substantial U.S. investments in Arab oil and commerce were behind the shift toward neutrality.
Coolness to Israel. What started the furor was the disclosure of an eleven-point U.S. plan for peace between Israel and Jordan. The proposals were worked up for submission to the Big Four—the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain and France—in the wake of the suspension of talks on the Middle East between Washington and Moscow. Though Rogers and several other State Department officials spent 2½ hours in Washington conferring with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban only 30 hours before the plan was submitted to the other members of the Big Four, they made no mention of what was in it. In fact, when Eban specifically asked, the Americans were evasive. The U.S. program, which would be subject to negotiation between Jordan and Israel, includes three major proposals:
1) The withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the West Bank of the Jordan River and the return to frontiers approximating those that existed before the 1967 Israeli-Arab war.
2) Israeli-Jordanian agreement on control of Jerusalem and its holy places.
3) A choice for Palestinian Arab refugees of repatriation or compensation by the Israeli government.
Israeli diplomats claim that the U.S. has also drawn up secret supplementary proposals that go even further. The U.S., they say, would give the Gaza Strip to Jordan in return for "territorial changes" that would tidy up the old border created after the 1948-49 war.