Conference taveng::bagels

902.0. "Bourguiba's Peace Plan for Israel" by TAV02::FEINBERG (Don Feinberg) Tue Mar 06 1990 10:13

                        Bourguiba's Plan:  Contain Israel



                                Michael Widlanski



                The writer, formerly Middle East correspondent  of

                the  U.   S.   Cox  Newspapers, is director of the

                Palestinian project at the Institute for  Advanced

                Strategic and Political Studies in Jerusalem.




      Reprinted without permission from the "Jerusalem Post", 2 March, 1990





      Twenty-five years ago, two  important  events  occurred  in  the  Arab

      struggle  against  Israel:   the  unofficial  founding  of  the  Fatah

      organaization (begun with  its  bombing  of  Israel's  National  Water

      Carrier), and the official creation of the "Doctrine of Stages".



           The second and  more  important  event  was  not  the  result  of

      Arafat's  Fatah or Ahmed Shukiery's PLO (whose leadership Arafat would

      inherit).  It was, rather, the important contribution of  one  of  the

      Arab world's great moderates:  Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia.



           Bourguiba, who had ousted French rule in Tunisia using a doctrine

      of  gradualism,  proposed  that the Arab world do the same for Israel.

      The Tunisian President,  in  a  speech  in  Jordanian-controlled  East

      Jerusalem,  proposed that the Arab states accept Israel officially, if

      Israel pulled back to the boundaries set forth  in  the  UN  Partition

      Plan of 1947.



           The Bourguiba Plan was hardly moderate.  Bourguiba told his  Arab

      interlocutors  that  his  aim  was  to  contain  and  to reduce Israel

      gradually until the Zionist entity fell apart entirely.



           "Neither myself nor any other  Arab  leader  can  decide  on  the

      method  of  struggle  that  the  Palestinian  people  should follow in

      winning liberation from a colonial regime," declared  Bourguiba  in  a

      speech in March, 1965.



           "We propose our methods, not impose them," he  added,  trying  to

      fend off criticism from Arab hard-liners who said that gradual methods

      would not push Israel off the map.



           This idea was rejected by  the  Arab  militants,  such  as  Gamal

      Nasser  of  Egypt,  but  years  after  Nasser's  dreams  lay  in dust,

      Bourguiba's idea survived.



           Indeed, it got a second life in 1974 when the Palestine  National

      Council  (PNC) of the PLO ratified the "Strategy of Stages".  This PLO

      plan called for setting up a Palestinian State on any part of what was

      once  Palestine,  using it as a launching pad for the "armed struggle"

      against Israel.


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           The  PLO's  version  of  Bourguiba's  idea  was  posited  on  the

      understanding  that  Israel's  power  base  would  be  weakened  by  a

      reduction in it's territorial base,  especially  its  withdrawal  from

      strategic  high  ground  in  the West Bank.  The internal dialectic of

      both ideas stressed the importance of reversing the tide, changing the

      momentum  --  if  only a little -- against Zionism.  Once the momentum

      shifted against Israel, then the Arab states  could  try  to  truncate

      Israel  further  diplomatically  or  militarily.   Moreover,  the Arab

      states, once Israel was "cut down to size", could work even harder  to

      make  Israel  an  even  more unattractive place for prospective Jewish

      immigrants while formenting Israeli Arab strife from within.



           Just as Bourguiba knew that Israeli statehood would be  untenable

      in  the  boundaries  of the Partition Plan, so the PLO understood that

      Israel's frontiers would become less defensible once Israel was forced

      out of the West Bank and Gaza.



           Both Bourguiba and the PLO viewed (and view) Zionism as a dynamic

      doctrine that requires an Arab version of the "Containment Doctrine.".



           The next stage after containment would be reduction.



           Both the Bourguiba plan and the PLO  Strategy  of  Stages  shared

      many common points, especially the means at the end:



       o  Using a pose of moderation to  attain  territorial  advantages  by

          diplomacy nor gained by war;



       o  Aiming for the ultimate liquidation of Israel by stages.





           Both Bourguiba  and  the  PLO  also  won  the  coveted  title  of

      "moderates" from some well-meaning but ignorant Western observers, and

      they both shared several philosophical antecedents.



           In the early 1950s, Britain's  Anthony  Eden  actually  tried  to

      encourage  Israel to consider Egypt's proposal to give up the Negev to

      Arab rule so the Arabs could have a direct land-bridge from  Egypt  to

      Jordan,  i.   e., from the Asian part of the Arab world to the African

      part.  Unspoken was the strategic logic of further strangling Israel.



           A still earlier antecedent  of  the  Bourguiba-PLO  strategy  was

      strategy  employed  by  Saladin  in 1192, accepting a "truce" with the

      Crusaders only to violate is and to oust them thereafter -- first from

      the high ground , and then from the coastal ports.



           When Yasser Arafat offers "peace" to Israel, he explains  to  his

      Arab audiences that he means the "peace of Saladin".



           But the real copyright on the strategy of seeming moderation  was

      Islam's  prophet  Mohammed himself.  He made a 10-year treaty with the

      Jews of Mecca --  known  as  the  Treaty  of  Hudaibiya  (628),  later

      violated  it,  and  swept  the  Jews from Arabia, expelling two Jewish

      tribes, and slaughtering the third (Banu Quraida).


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           Mohammed's victory over the Arabian Jews  has  shaped  many  Arab

      attitudes  towards  "foreign presence" in the "Dar al-Islam" (House of

      Islam),  especially  when  foreigners  are   represented   by   Jewish

      statehood.   Jews  may  live  as  citizens under Arab sovereignty, but

      Jewish paramountcy may not be tolerated -- just as a synagogue may not

      be taller than a mosque.



           One of the sites of the massacre of  Arabian  Jews  was  a  place

      called Khaybar.  It is no accident that more than one of the pamphlets

      released during the intifada included the phrase "Remember Khaybar."



           As we remember Habib Bourguiba and his  seminal  contribution  to

      Arab  strategic  thought, we should also remember "Khaybar" as well as

      the "Peace of Saladin."



           This  does  not  mean  that  peace  with  Arab  states  and  with

      Palestinian Arabs should not be sought by Israel.



           Peace  should  be  sought,  has  to  be   sought,   but   Israeli

      policymakers  and  Western observers have to distinguish between peace

      sought by Arabs for the sake of peace versus  peace  sought  by  Arabs

      only  as  a "truce" (salaam) to be repealed when there is a chance for

      final victory over the Jew still pictured as  modern  variant  of  the

      Christian crusader or the old Arabian Jew.