The Third World War - The Untold Story (53 page)

(5) A final peace conference to take place in Geneva under the joint chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union as before (with the Palestinians represented by their chosen leaders) to prepare and sign the peace treaties. The unanimity of support for Resolution 242 in 1967 had been thought remarkable. Unanimity on this new Resolution was no less so. In particular the readiness of the Soviet Union to comply with what was so clearly identifiable as a United States’ interest was remarked upon. Reflection, however, reminded observers that sixteen years had elapsed between the two Resolutions without there being much implementation of the first - if in this respect Camp David might be left aside. In any case, it was not at this time the Soviet Union’s intention implacably to antagonize the moderate Arab states under the leadership of Saudi Arabia when the USSR believed that its own proxy Arab states, like Syria and South Yemen, could, when actual negotiations to implement the new Resolution got under way, safeguard Soviet interests under the guise of their being Arab ones. So it turned out to be.

Before we examine how actual negotiation turned into a more dangerous confrontation between the superpowers, it is necessary to say a word or two further about Jerusalem. It had always been clear that there could be no peace in the Middle East without peace in Jerusalem. Yet real peace in Jerusalem was unobtainable through divided domination; it had to be brought about through united freedom. Jerusalem itself had to become a kind of gateway to peace. Concurrently, therefore, with the diplomatic activity in the Security Council during late 1983, European initiatives in the General Assembly, with Great Britain taking a particular lead, had led to the adoption of a Resolution dealing with Jerusalem, the implementation of which was intended to be in parallel with that of the broader Resolution of the Security Council. It’s essential outlines, after the preamble dealing with the Holy City’s future role as a symbol of peace and freedom, recognized and respected by all mankind, were these:

(1)  There would be an Israeli Jerusalem and an Arab Jerusalem each exercising full sovereignty within its own territory but with no barriers and no impediment to freedom of movement between them.

(2)  The Secretary-General would appoint an impartial boundary commission to hear representations from those concerned and make recommendations to the Security Council as to the boundary between the Israeli Jerusalem and the Arab Jerusalem.

(3)  The Holy City would be completely demilitarized.

(4)  The Secretary-General would appoint a high commissioner (and deputy) to be stationed in Jerusalem, to represent the United Nations and to work with all concerned to secure and ensure the purposes of the Resolution, and to report appropriately for the information of the General Assembly and the Security Council.

Thus not only had the need for concerted international action to bring permanent peace to Jerusalem and the Middle East been reaffirmed, but both a formula and machinery for its implementation had been established. We need not at present concern ourselves with the detailed working of this machinery during the last months of 1983 and the early part of 1984. It is the end which mattered, rather than the means. But what must now command our attention is what happened in Syria in the summer of 1984, which nearly brought the whole peacemaking procedure to a close and the two superpowers to the brink of war in the Middle East itself one year before actual war on the Central Front of Europe.

It became plain at this time that as well as peacemakers, there were peacebreakers at large. It seemed at first as if a whole series of peacewrecking events was being directed by implacable extremists. Yet so capricious and multitudinous appeared to be the motives and targets, that paradoxically these events might have been the work of a single internationally organized network, such as Black International, or even a combination of Black and Red International. The connection was never firmly established. It was suggested by Western sources that a kind of multinational strike force had been structured round the Palestinian Rejection Front, which had, of course, been armed by the Soviet Union, and was now - so argued these sources -being directed from Moscow. It was hardly surprising that the Soviet Union and its associates took a different stance, and put all the blame squarely on to the CIA. All such views were coloured of course by the political attitudes of those who expressed them. Initially, however, it was not so much the direction behind the terrible events which ensued that mattered. It was the effect of the events themselves.

The bomb explosions in Cairo airport were bad enough, killing or maiming as they did more than 350 people. Then came the assassination of the President’s special envoy in Tel Aviv, which caused some cynics to observe that this was the best blow for peace the PLO had so far struck. The murder of sixteen members of the United States contingent in the UN peacekeeping force in Sinai was similarly attributed to the Palestinian Rejection Front - certainly the bullets found in them had been fired from Soviet-made weapons. All this soured the United States view of the Soviet commitment to peace. Nor was the Soviet Union less sceptical about the USA’s real intentions when the former’s representatives at the peace conference were kidnapped, tortured and executed. There may have been evidence to show that it was the doing of the Italian-Nazi-Maoist group, but this did not prevent the Soviet Union attributing the whole affair to the CIA. These accusations and misunderstandings hardly made for smooth progress at Geneva.

The worst events of all took place in Syria, and the Syrian authorities were not slow to condemn hard-line Israeli groups, who, they claimed, were operating in Syria with the Mossad’s support. In Damascus the President’s office was blown up during a high-level meeting. Again the levity of some political commentary let it be made known that the meeting continued at an even higher level, but the fact was that the President, his brother, other ministers and some senior military officers had been killed. Simultaneously, sabotage at a dozen military bases, together with the destruction of fuel depots, power centres and telecommunications so disturbed the Syrian Government that it declared martial law. If this was a last mad attack on Syria by Israeli clandestine forces, it was certainly effective.

Then two more acts of violence shocked the world. In the Syrian naval base at Tartus two minesweepers and a visiting Soviet frigate were destroyed by limpet mines, killing and wounding many Syrian and Soviet sailors, while at Riyadh an AWACS aircraft which was about to be handed over by the US Air Force to the Royal Saudi Air Force disintegrated in flight. All on board perished.

Fear, increased by uncertainty, gripped the peacemakers. The Soviet Union accused the United States of sabotaging peace efforts in order to maintain a position of strategic dominance in the Middle East through its ally Israel. The United States in reply taxed the Soviet Union with the intention to establish a military base in Syria, from which to spread its influence east and south.

For this last accusation there appeared to be some grounds. Syria, either motivated by panic or manipulated by those determined never to compromise with Israel, had once more appealed to the Soviet Union for instant and substantial demonstration of friendship and fulfilment of their security pact. The appeal was not made in vain.

The Soviet Mediterranean Fifth
Eskadra
moved to Syria’s naval base at Latakia, and reinforcements from the Black Sea Fleet were moving through the Dardanelles as frequently as the Turkish Government would permit, under the Montreux Convention. The surface ships of the Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron, consisting of a missile cruiser and two frigates, with three auxiliaries, returned to Aden. Meanwhile a stream of
Antonov
transports bringing arms, equipment and troops to Damascus overflew Turkish airspace, having given minimum warning through normal diplomatic channels. Turkey protested in strong terms and received a discourteous and threatening reply from the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding these threats, Turkey moved air and ground units nearer to the Syrian frontier, as did Iraq and Jordan, while the Turkish Navy concentrated some of its submarine, mine-laying and patrol craft astride the Dardanelles. Egypt moved more combat aircraft and armoured formations into the Sinai. The United States reaction demonstrated its determination to go on reassuring its friends while cautioning the Soviet Union. Units of the US Air Force and Rapid Deployment Force were despatched to Egypt and Somalia. Even Jordan accepted some US advisers and AWACS aircraft. The US Sixth Fleet took up a waiting position south-east of Cyprus. Two US destroyers exercising in the Red Sea with the Egyptian Navy, off Ras Banas, departed to rejoin their carrier group further south.

So serious did the situation appear to be that NATO commanders called for certain alert measures to be taken in Europe, while Warsaw Pact forces prolonged and reinforced manoeuvres which were under way in Bulgaria. In Britain some reserves were recalled and the House of Commons debated the question of embodying the Territorial Army. France and Italy undertook joint naval exercises in the western Mediterranean.

Worse was to come. There were several sharp sea and air engagements in the eastern Mediterranean between US and Syrian forces and between Soviet and Israeli, all naturally disavowed or hushed up at the time. By good fortune there were no TV cameramen present at any. Both US and Soviet forces were under strict orders to avoid direct engagement with the main antagonist, but it could only be a matter of time before, whether by accident or design, they fired upon each other. It really appeared as if the superpowers were on the brink of war. And all for what? For Syrian intransigence. The hot line between Washington and Moscow became very hot indeed. What was said lent great strength to the UN Secretary-General's call for an immediate international conference under his chairmanship in Geneva to resolve differences and resume Middle East peace negotiations. All parties concerned agreed to it.

So it was that in the latter months of 1984 negotiations as to the future of Jerusalem and the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state, together with international guarantees designed to preserve the right of all states in the area to live in peace 'free from threats and acts of force', resumed, and might be said to have been crowned with success, for by the spring of 1985 a peace conference had been convened to take place in Geneva later that year under the joint chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union to 4make preparations for the signature of peace treaties by all the parties involved.

By this time much progress had been made. Violence had ceased. Israeli settlements had been withdrawn from occupied Arab and Palestinian territory. The boundary commission had made its recommendations, which had been endorsed by all sides. The future of Jerusalem on the lines of the UN Security Council Resolution was assured. The Palestinians had agreed on their future constitution and the Palestinian National Council together with members of the PLO made up the majority party of the newly-elected Palestinian Parliament. The principal guarantors of these new agreements were to be the Soviet Union and the United States with peacekeeping forces to be established along previously disputed frontiers, these forces to come mainly from Third World nations and exclude both US and Soviet troops. All that remained was final signature of the treaties and their implementation.

It was not to be, or at least not in this way. Events in the Middle East were overtaken by the outbreak of the Third World War.

The superpowers came very close to war in the Middle East and it is of interest to note the potential for waging war there that the various countries of the region, and those from outside it who had interests there, possessed.

If numbers alone could have determined the military balance, it would have been firmly tipped in favour of the Arab nations. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States - to say nothing of the Sudan, Algeria and Morocco - mustered between them the best part of a million men under arms, excluding reserves, while Israel's total armed forces were some 170,000, although mobilization, which would be rapid, more than doubled this figure. There were, of course, peacekeeping forces from the United Nations in positions close to previously disputed frontiers - in the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem - but these forces were small and lightly equipped. As for the United States and the Soviet Union, their presence at the centre of things near the new State of Palestine and in the countries neighbouring Israel was confined largely to advisers and training teams. It was true that the Soviet Union still had nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but they were being kept very busy, while the naval and air units which both superpowers deployed periodically in friendly Arab ports and air bases were, after withdrawal from former confrontation, of modest proportions.