M-T
The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, September 13, 1984-Page 9
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of a situation
I^OMrerfid leader
SHELDON KIRSHNER
Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese Christian leader who died last month at 78, was probably the miost powerftil Maronite politician of his generation.
The founder of the Phalange movement, and the father of Lebanon's current president^ Gemayel was a Lebanese patriot who battled for Christian rights and privileges in a country sharply divided by religion, ethnicity and ideology.
Yet Gemayel was a pragmatist who knew the limits of a situation. He was, in the words of Israeli scholar Itamar Rabihovitch, * 'remarkably flexible" in adapting himself to changing circumstances.
• He wanted to preserve the 1943 National Pact which distributes power among Lebanon's
warring Christian and ^oslem factions. But, in the waning years of his life, he was prepared to reform the system to prevent its total and irrevocable collapse.
• He was against the imposition of a Pax Syriana in Lebanon. But, bowing to reality, he accepted a dominant Syrian role in his nation.
• He saw the advantages of cooperation with Israel, but he voted with the rest of his fellow cabihet members to scrap the 1983 Israeli-Lebanese troop withdrawal agreement.
■. *. • * *
Gemayel, who yvas minister of post and teieconmiunications in his son Amin's national unity government, grew up in the mountains north of Beirut. He studied pharmacy and was an ardent athlete.
lii 1936, he went to Germany to attend the Olympic Games. During his subsequent travels in Europe, he visited Italy. Impressed by the fascist revolutions in those countries, he formed
the Phalange, which was strongly modeled on the German and Italian youth movements.
The Phalange was more than a party. It was a militia as well. In the 1950s, Geniayel entered the hurlyburly of Lebanese politics, and in the following decade, he held a variety of cabinet ■ \Posts.',. .
Despite two attempts at the presidency, he failed.
Observers agree that one of the most important periods in his career occurred in thei wake of the 1967 Six Day War.
: Prior to that conflict, the Lebanese border was the quietest facing Israel. This was soon to change as the PLO established base's iii southern Lebanon from which to strike at Israeli settlements in the Galilee.
By way of response, Israel hit back. Lebanon got caught lip in the maelstrom of the military dimension of the Ai-ab-Israeli (lispute. The tension worsened after the ouster of the PLO from Jordan in 1971.
As the scope of Israeli retaliation grew, Gemayel demanded that the government curtail the activities of the Palestinians. Gemayel, rightly, feared that Lebanon would be battered in the escalating clashes between Israel and the ; PLO..;..
On the other hand, Gemayel knew that his demands could not be fully met in a land where sympathy for the Palestinians ran rampant in the Moslem community. That probably explains his aquiescehce to a 1969 agreement under which the : Palestinians were given extraterritorial rights in southern Lebanon.
Like many Lebanese, Gemayel lived to regret that accord. It brought nothing but turmoil to Lebanon and the Middle East.
The mounting violence in the south was one of the contributing causes of the 1975-76 civil
-By
JOSEPH POLAKQFF
DALLAS
Columnist Jody Powell, President Carter's news secretary during his four years in the White House, says ' 'if we had as many Arab Americans in this country as Jewish Americans the political effect would change" in the VS. outlook on the Arab-Israeli situation.
About 3 million Arnericans are estimated to be of Arab origin, slightly more than half the number of Jews.
Powell's comment to this reporter came after he had responded to a question by another at the recent Republican Party's convention on "why is the biggest nonrissue about the Middle East" in the current presidential campaign.
'*One reason for that is all these people recognize on what side their political bread is buttered,'' Powell responded. "There is no real policy debate regarding the Middle East. These debates generally come when the Presi-(tent decides something must be done and flnds himself in a firestorm."
This reporter asked Powell if he were not Wrong in his assessment since: apparently most Americans support Israel because it is a strategic ally of the U.S. and regard a close relationship between them as a moral imperative. Powell's response emphasized the numerical difference.
At another briefing shortly afterwards, Dr. Lorn Foster, the senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political Studies, which is a largely Black research organization in Washington, said he does not assess U.S.-Israel relations as "a question of the numbers game."
'*It is almost a political taboo that there should be a Middle east policy that has some balance," Foster said in response to a question. He said that since the Six Day Arab-Israeli War in 1967* "it has become increasingly difflcuh for political figures to question any economic or military aid devoted to Israel."
"It takes us out of real dialogue," Foster said. Most candidates, he added, have "a unilateral view" and "enormous pressure" is put on can-. didates who do not accept the "party line."
Foster did not identify the pressure source or candidates. He said that after a candidate had spoken to PLO Chief Yasser Arafat in 1978-80 he would not get "Jewish contributions." The candidate, Foster indicated, only wanted "a broader base of information" at his meeting with Arafat.
"No candidate,'' Foster added,' 'wants to dis-
party
ociate himself from his political constituency."
With rare exceptions, Americans known to have met with Arafat have expressed sympathy for PLO aspirations and criticized Israel.
Pierre Gemayel
war. Another factor turned on the refusal of Lebanon' s Christians to reform the antiquated political system.
Gemayel was one of those Maronites who was loath to tinker with the National Pact, for he knew that any meaningful modification would diminish the influence of Lebanese Christians.
During the bloody civil war, which left 100,000 Lebanese dead, Gemayel made one major volte face. Initially against Syria's intrusion into the fighting, Gemayel changed his mind when he realized that Christian forces would have been overwhelmed by the Moslems had the Syrians not intervened.
The Syrians, of course, had their own reasons for supporting the Christians. They feared that Lebanon's delicate balance of power — from which they always benefitted — would be upset with a smashing Moslem victory.
When it appeared to the Syrians that the Christians would win, they came down on the side of the Moslems.
Syria's switch embittered Gemayel, but he was realistic enough to know that nations have no permanent friends, just interests.
Before the dust of the war had settled, Gemayel was exploring the possibility of forging hew ties with Israel. At the behest of his son, Bashir, he met Israeli leaders. Their discussions were fruitful. Israel, delighted by the prospect of making friends with the Christians, supplied them with military equipment and advice.
In the late 1970s, the relationship bloomed. Yet Gemayel was no overly enthusiastic advocate of the Israeli "card." As Itamar Rabinovitch points out, Gemayel believed in a limited, surreptitious and even temporary alliance with the Jewish state.
Lebanon, he theorized, was part and parcel of the Arab world, and therefore, could not risk alienating Arabs for the sake of ties with Israel. Gemayel, too, was of the opinion that the establishment of Israel was the root cause of the Palestiniaii question in Lebanon.
Gemayel's views on Israel fell somewhere between his two Christian rivals — Camflle Cha-moun and Soleiman Franjieh. Chamoun was in favor of greater links with Israel. Franjieh, who was staunchly pro-Syrian, wanted to keep Israel at arm's length.
The reticence displayed by Gemayel toward Israel was boldly expressed during the 1982 war in Lebanon. Bashir, the gung-ho Israeli partisan, was reined in by his father. As a result, the Israeli army received very little help from the Lebanese Forces — the striking arm of the Maronites which incorporated Gemayel's Phalange and Chamoun's Tiger militia.
Israel was disappointed by the performance, or lack thereof, of the Lebanese Forces. And Israel was staggered by the subsequent assassination of Bashir Gemayel.
Bashir's older brother, Amin, is far less disposed to Israel than Bashir. Having distanced himself from Israel, Amin embraced Syria. No one in Israel is astonished: Pierre would probably have done the same.
Christian policy toward Israel, however, has not solidified; It is not cast iii iron. There are forces in the Maronite community who prefer better relations with Israel.
It will be interesting to see how they fare with Pierre in his grave and with Amin in the presidential palace. .
We nmst talk arid Us^
MAX GOODY
One of the major problems that exists in the field of human relations is the difficulty we have in communicating. We talk to each other without understanding; we listen but we do not hear.
The art of communicating amongst people of diverse languages is complicated by the need to understand the subtle nuances by which we try to express what we want to say — such nuances not being common to all languages.
In addition, people have different understandings as to what is implicit in the use of certain words. For example, the Korean armistice agreement signed in 1953 in Panmunjom constituted a termination of war. But that did not necessarily, mean that peace prevailed which . . . in fact, it did not. Armistice does not always bring peace and peace can have different meanings in different languages.
In some languages there can be two separate words for peace, each having its own separate meaning as to the kind of peace intended. Not so in Hebrew where there is only one word for peace — Shalom. The root means complete, and originally referred to the completion of a peace treaty upon the cessation of hostilities. Siinilar-ly, in English * 'peace'' connotes a normalization of riplations between former belligerents and the word is etymologically related to "pact" or "to make a treaty."
My concern is that there are so many tensions in the world today that are caused by not understanding one another. I am not so naive as to believe that all of our troubles stem from semantics only, but surely we must recognize the importance of talking to and understanding each other. And this is as true between East and West as it is between Arabs and Jews. -Neither the United States nor Russia is correctly reading^he real dangers of pur times. While the threat of nuclear war is always present, I do not believe that the strongest nuclear power will rule the world of the future. It is my opinion that the greatest threat from nuclear power comes from the possibility that it could be exploited by some minor radical
demomc demagogue — which could potentially drag us all in.
Far more ominous and perilous are the alarming forebodings of population explosion, large scale starvation and malnutrition and the rapid depletion of the world's natural resources.
It took the world up to the year 1850 to build a population of one billion but in 80 years it doubled to 2 billion. Then it added a third billion in 30 years and a fourth in 15 years.
It is estimated that by the year 2000 (only 16 years hence) the world's population will be between 6 and 7 billion. And then within a few decades it could be as high as 15 billion. About 400,000 babies kre bom every day — 500 babies were born since you started reading this article.
Ten out of every 11 babies are bom in the world's poorest nations. By the end of the century 80% of all mankind will live in Third World countries where food, education and health care are the least available. Billions will be living in conditions of malnutrition, illiteracy and disease.
The interesting if not frighteining fact is that the worid's poor are nO longer unaware of their plight and are not likely to tolerate it in the future. If this problem is not acted on it will be solved by famine, riot, insurrection . , . and wars completely unrelated to the tensions which prevail today.
Three quarters of the coal taken from the earth was mined in this century alone. Since 1940 there has been more oil consumed than during the entire history of the world prior to that year. And our natural resources are being consumed unequally — the United States which has less than 6% of the world's population consumes 40% of its natural resources.
And it is not only oil which is being rapidly consumed but the source of fish, beef, grain, lumber and minerals of all sorts.
Every country will be competing for everything it needs and wants thereby creating shortages and further fueling inflation. .
The world of the 21st century will be dominated by those who have access to and control the world's natural resources.
Empty stomachs do not differentiate between
political philosophies. But even that theory cannot ultimately prevail for it will be overrun by a population growth which it will not be able to satisfy, and riots and world insurrection will consume us all.
These are warning signs and portents that con-cem us all — that impinge upon the very survival of mankind.
Try an4^ imagine a world that would spend on scientific and technological development the billions that it presently spends on armaments. To our Arab friends I say ■— try and envision the improvement in living standards that your people working together with Israel's advanced scientific knowhow could bring to the entire Middle East. There is enough room for all of us — there are enough challenges for all of us to build a future for both our peoples that .would rival the paradise of our dreams.
And it is time that both the United States and the Soviet Union acted with a maturity that reflects the awesome responsibility they share for the future survival of humanity. I cannot believe that a major world power like Russia needs to stcop so low as to terrorize a handful of people who wish to emigrate to Israel — in order to display her authority. It is a sign of weakness and cowardice that it needs to torment Andrei Sakharov and his wife as a means of defying the United States. It was pure childishness to boycott the Olympics, even if there were some perceived intimidations from the United states. Such actions highlight the weakness and not the strength of the Soviet system.
If the Soviet Union wishes to play a part in Middle Eastern affairs^ which I believe she should, she should show some signs of being able to act with the competence that such_a role must have in bringing peace and tranquility to the region. There is nothing in her conduct to date to warrant such an expectation. -
It cannot be in the interjests of either the United States or Russia nor of the future survival of all of us to continue the escalation of tensions between them. The potential dangers that could engulf us all are not that far away ... unless the major powers start talking to each other and acting sensibly, riesponsibly, maturely . . . and NOW.