TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022007.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 84 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 42

THE MIDDLE EAST

The False Analogy


    Yes, Iraq's occupation of Kuwait is unjust -- but so is
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. is
being hypocritical by threatening to oppose the first with
military force if necessary but doing nothing about the second.
In any case, there can be no peace in the Middle East unless
both are solved -- simultaneously.


    This line is an article of faith in much of the Arab world,
and portions of it are echoed at times outside. Thus French
President Francois Mitterrand, plugging for an international
conference on the Middle East, asserted last week, "One cannot
seek to defend [international] law in one place and neglect it
in another."

    But the attempt to equate the two occupations is nonsense
-- on the part of some making it, mendacious nonsense. The
causes, courses and consequences of the Israeli and Iraqi
actions differ diametrically:

    -- Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 in a counterattack
against an armed asby Jordan, which intervened in the Six-Day
War despite Israeli warnings to stay out. Not even Saddam
Hussein would dare to claim that Kuwait attacked Iraq. His
invasion of the emirate was sheer unprovoked aggression.

    -- Israel has held on to the West Bank at least partly
because of a belief that it needed the territory for defense
against neighboring states that have never recognized its right
to exist and often threatened to destroy "the Zionist entity."
No one, not even Ayatullah Khomeini, has ever proposed to wipe
Iraq off the map. Nor can Iraq conceivably claim that it needs
Kuwaiti territory for defense. It fought off Iranian assaults
quite effectively throughout eight years of war without making
any use of Kuwaiti soil.

    -- Israel has followed harsh policies in the West Bank and
Gaza, particularly in efforts during the past three years to
suppress the intifadeh. But its sternness cannot be compared
with the tales told by Kuwaiti refugees about looting, rape,
torture, beheadings and other summary executions by Iraqi
soldiers. That the outside world has to rely on refugees'
stories to learn what is happening in Kuwait is itself
significant. Reporters and photographers roam the
Israeli-occupied territories, albeit with many restrictions
imposed by the army, and report what they see and hear; they
are not allowed into Kuwait.

    -- Some Israeli hawks may dream of annexing the West Bank,
but that has never been official policy. To the contrary,
Jerusalem has often promised to permit some form of self-rule
for the Palestinians, though it has dragged its heels
unconscionably on doing so. Iraq initially proposed to set up
a puppet state in Kuwait, but swiftly abandoned even that
pretense. Baghdad now proclaims the emirate to be a province of
Iraq and is trying, by such means as destruction of records, to
obliterate any trace that there ever was a nation named
Kuwait.

    None of this excuses Israel's endless stalling on meeting
the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, nor
Washington's reluctance to lean harder on its ally to do so.
Nor can Israel be encouraged to believe that the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait might somehow give it an excuse to hang on to the
West Bank and Gaza for another 23 years. But the two wrongs
simply are not equal. And any attempt to pretend that they are
can only confuse and weaken the world community's response to
Saddam Hussein's blatant aggression.


By George J. Church. Reported by Jon D. Hull/Jerusalem and
Christopher Ogden/Washington.