Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume Xii, 1988

Ami Ayalon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429718984
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A unique annual record of political developments in the Middle East, the Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS) is acknowledged as the standard reference work on events and trends in the region. Designed to be a continuing, up-to-date reference for scholars, researchers and analysts, policymakers, students, and journalists, it examines in detail the rapidly changing Middle Eastern scene in all its complexity. Each volume is divided into two parts: the first provides a series of essays on broad regional issues and on the region's foreign relations; the second offers country-by-country surveys of all the Arab states, as well as Turkey, Israel, and Iran. They elucidate the inner dynamics of each country's polity and society. Volume XII covers the year 1988-an eventful and in many ways momentous year in the Middle East. In the West Bank and Gaza, the intifada grew and conflict intensified, creating profound changes for all Palestinians, for Israel, and for the region at large. In 1988, the civilian uprising paved the way for the Palestinian declaration of independence and the concomitant boost in the PLO's international standing, generating new impetus for the long-stalemated Middle East peace process. The intifada also led to King Hussein's dissociation from the West Bank in word and deed. Among the other major themes covered in this volume are the sudden termination of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War with its domestic and regional repercussions; the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan after nine years of occupation; the impact of glasnost on Moscow's new political style, specifically its Middle Eastern policy; the ongoing disintegration of Lebanon; and the general elections in Israel, whose results led again to the formation of a National Unity Government.

Part One:
Current Issues

The Middle East in Perspective

1988: A Shift of Accent

ITAMAR RABINOVICH

The year 1987 was defined by Haim Shaked in MECS as one in which the stalemate that had characterized the Middle East for some time was broken. The process of movement and change was accelerated in 1988. Furthermore, two sets of developments shifted the focus of regional politics from the Gulf area to the Arab-Israeli part of the region.

One set of developments concerned the war in the Gulf. For nearly eight years the war between Iran and Iraq had been a dominant factor in the international and regional politics of the ME. The superpowers had managed for several years to steer clear of direct involvement in the war, yet they had been interested and active. Then they were drawn into more open intervention, which increased the danger of escalation. The war’s repercussions for the oil industry and oil economy of the ME had similarly been very significant. In theory, a war in the Gulf between two major oil producers that included attacks on oil installations and oil tankers could have played havoc with the international oil market and could have driven prices up. In practice it did not; rather, it induced the two combatants and other oil producers to seek an increase in production, thus contributing to a decline in prices and to a decline in the region’s oil economy. The loss of oil income and the preoccupation with threats of armies and the Iranian revolutionary message led to a considerable reduction in the Arab world’s collective power.

Loss of income, power, and confidence led to a rearrangement of priorities. Iraq, the Arab oil-producing states of the Gulf region and, to a lesser extent, most of the other Arab states were preoccupied during much of the decade with the war and with the menacing prospect of an Iranian victory. In fact, some Arab states were almost as alarmed, particularly during the war’s early years, by the prospect of a sweeping Iraqi victory. In this scheme of things the conflict with Israel lost some of its acuteness in Arab eyes. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, which had been universally condemned in the Arab world at the time, came to be seen in a somewhat different light. It was now viewed as a measure which stabilized the other part of the ME while the Gulf region was aflame; which freed the Egyptian Army to serve—should the need arise—as a protector of the weaker Gulf states; and which contributed to the safety of the Red Sea as an alternative waterway to the Gulf.

Gideon Gera’s essays in MECS 1987 and 1988 describe how the patterns of the Gulf War changed in these two years. The growing direct involvement of the superpowers, the escalation of the war’s level and, finally, Iran’s inability to shoulder the burden led in August 1988 to the termination of fighting in circumstances that amounted to a slight Iraqi victory.

This particular turn of events brought about an immediate sense of relief from the threat of an Iranian victory. The specter of victorious revolutionary armies sweeping west and south, and the prospective boost to the fundamentalist challengers of the regimes in power were removed. Iraq’s Arab neighbors were also relieved by the modesty of its victory. A sweeping Iraqi victory might have turned Saddam Husayn into an unbearable neighbor.

The immediate sense of relief was accompanied by the realization that the end of fighting did not necessarily signify the end of war, and certainly not the end of the conflict. Well before the cease-fire of 1988, the conflict between Iran and Iraq came to be widely perceived as a long-term dispute, similar in some respects to the Arab-Israeli conflict. From this perspective, the termination of hostilities in August 1988 could be seen as marking the beginning of a transitional period during which the belligerents would rehabilitate their economies and seek to prepare for a potential renewal of fighting at a later date.

A feeling that this, indeed, could be the case seemed to be substantiated by Iraq’s conduct in the aftermath of the cease-fire. Saddam Husayn’s regime chose to settle two scores—with the Kurdish minority at home and with the rival Ba‘th regime in Syria. The Kurds in northern Iraq were dealt with swiftly and brutally with gas. Against Asad’s Syria, Iraq acted with some caution, avoiding a direct confrontation and choosing to punish its archrival by encouraging the latter’s own rivals in Lebanon. One important consequence of this trend of events was the effective Maronite resistance to Syria’s attempt to impose a staunch Syrian supporter as Lebanon’s new president in September. The willingness and ability of the Maronites to ward off Syrian pressure and to foil, later on, a joint American-Syrian attempt to impose another pro-Syrian candidate derived apparently also from promises of Iraqi aid and support. An overoptimistic interpretation of these promises may also have prompted Gen. Michel ‘Awn, the head of Lebanon’s “Christian Government,” to challenge Syria with unprecedented audacity.

Iraq also lent support and encouragement to another foe of Syria, Yasir ‘Arafat, but this, too, was conducted with a light touch. Saddam Husayn’s attention continued, for the most part, to be focused on Iran.

During the first half of 1988, while the Gulf War was coming to an end, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—the intifada—was altering the state of the other major regional dispute—the Arab-Israeli conflict. The intifada broke out in December 1987 in the immediate aftermath of the Amman Arab summit of November. That conference, the first full-fledged summit to have met since September 1982, reflected the Arab world’s concerns and priorities at that time. It focused on the Gulf War, paying little attention to the Palestinian issue. ‘Arafat, furthermore, was slighted by the host, King Husayn, and by other Arab leaders—yet another manifestation of the PLO’s declining fortunes at the time.

Against this background, the outbreak of the intifada and, as it turned out, its success provided an ironic and telling illustration of the manner in which a perceived political reality in the ME could be transformed swiftly. It was widely assumed in December 1987 and during the early weeks of 1988 that the “events” in the West Bank and Gaza were no more than yet another violent spasm, and that the techniques applied so effectively for 20 years would take their effect shortly. Only in the early spring of 1988 did the novelty and full import of the intifada come to be widely understood.

The extent of the change which had taken place since the Amman summit was manifested by the next Arab summit conference, held in Algiers in June 1988. This summit was devoted to the intifada and centered on the PLO and its chairman. The change of priorities thus displayed by the Arab world was but one of the intifada’s several important consequences. It may be useful to list them under the following headings:

(a) The intifada broke the pattern of Israeli-Palestinian relations as it had crystallized and existed for 20 years. Since June 1967, Israel had been able to control the West Bank and Gaza with relative ease. Critics of Israel’s official policies pointed to the long-term costs of the occupation and to the dangers it posed to the future of Israeli society and polity, but successive Israeli governments found it expedient to maintain the status quo rather than pay the price and run the risks of seeking a far-reaching solution in the terms available at the time. Successive PLO attempts through a variety of strategies to challenge and undermine Israel’s control failed. The dominant element in this configuration was the readiness of the bulk of the Palestinian population to comply with Israel’s rule. This changed with and through the intifada, as a sizable portion of the population willingly defied the Israeli authorities and participated in acts of semiviolent opposition.

The limited violence exerted by the Palestinians was matched by the limited use of violence by the Israeli Government in its own effort to quash the intifada. The public debate in Israel ranged along a broad spectrum, from those advocating a political solution and the concessions it required, to those arguing that a swift suppression was both necessary and feasible. The minister of defense and the Israel Defense Forces opted for a middle-of-the-road formula: the intifada was contained but not suppressed. Life in Israel itself was barely affected, but the political ramifications of this state of affairs were far reaching.

(b) As has already been mentioned, the Palestinian national cause and the PLO as a movement and organization, have been the main beneficiaries of the intifada. The uprising was not begun by the PLO and initially was not controlled or guided by it. But in the absence of national political leadership in the West Bank and Gaza and with a tradition of the local leadership’s deference to the PLO, it took the latter little time to take charge of the intifada. As will be argued below, this did not amount to full control; but the degree of control and identification sufficed for the PLO’s political purposes. The PLO’s gains were made primarily at the expense of its three main adversaries—Israel, Jordan, and Syria.

(c) By spring Jordan felt clearly that its position in the West Bank and Gaza was seriously eroding, that the option of being Israel’s negotiating partner over the future of these territories had been, at least temporarily, invalidated and that more ominous dangers lurked in the future, such as a spillover of the intifada into the East Bank and the far-reaching implications of either Palestinian statehood or a radicalization of Israeli policies. The loosening of the Jordanian State’s ties to the West Bank and Gaza, effected in stages since the summer of 1988, was a response to these developments. King Husayn was seeking to control damages, to clear the way for the PLO to try (and fail) to accomplish what he himself had failed to provide, and to prepare for a potential exacerbation of the challenge to his kingdom.

(d) Syria’s response to the success of the intifada was ambivalent. The Asad regime savored the blow inflicted on the attempt to bring about an Israeli-Jordanian or Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian settlement. In a similar vein, it argued that the intifada supported the Syrian line that there was no reason to capitulate and that Arab perseverance and resistance were bound to win. At the same time, the leaders of the Syrian Ba‘th, like other wielders of power in the Arab world, could not fail to see the potential ramifications of the intifada for their own regimes; a civilian population defying a superior military force could become a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Series and Editors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Transliteration
• Recommended Method for Citation from MECS
• List of Initials and Acronyms
• List of Sources
• Notes on Contributors
• PART ONE: CURRENT ISSUES
• PART TWO: COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY SURVEY
• Index