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Israel's Changing Situation
| Article
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17554 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1990 |
657 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
Amos Perlmutter's article in Current Issues, "The Changing Soviet Role in the Middle East," presents a persuasive picture of the effects of Gorbachev's policies upon Israel's situation. More Jews are leaving the Soviet Union and many of them are going to Israel. The hard-line Arab states clearly have been warned by Moscow that it will not support any wars against Israel and that it will not build up their forces to the degree necessary to support an attack.
Although most analyses I have seen agree with Perlmutter's, there is a downside to the change in Soviet foreign policy that friends of Israel would do well to consider. Israel's greatest claim upon the United States was not that it was a democracy but that it was an implicit, effective, and reliable ally against the Soviet Union in an area that contained only enemies or unreliable and ineffective friends. Although the Bush foreign policy is slow in adjusting to the changed meaning of Soviet foreign policy in Central America or the Middle East, the message clearly is getting through. Israel needs the United States, but there are only a few remote scenarios in which the United States needs Israel.
Furthermore, a Middle Eastern threat to Israel is not as unlikely a possibility as Perlmutter suggests, although Israel still has some time before such a threat is likely to materialize. Shortly after Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear site, I spoke to an Israeli political figure who shall remain nameless. I said that Israel likely could not repeat that strike, that it had bought time but now there likely would be several Arab states that would get the bomb. His response was that there were only seven significant Arab cities and that Israel could hit each of these. That response
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