Martha S.

Held Military History of the Middle East 06/16/2008 Indiana University

A Parallel History of Clandestine Channels and Unreported Markets, and the Emergence of Non-State Actors in the Middle East as Principal World Players: (1967-1982)

A New Role for Intelligence; an Unforeseen Tack for Foreign Policy In 1998, two sets of events propelled the world in the direction of drastic changes in its national and international agendas. The one set was the advent of the Al-Qaeda-bin Laden brand of terrorism and the American-led coalition reaction in the form of a cruise missile attack against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. The other set of events related to the acceleration of the moves to promote proliferation of weapons and capabilities of mass destruction. The world was confronted with the necessity to gather information on these critical subjects and one of the results of this need was that Intelligence, with a capital I , suddenly became a key player in the equation of international relations. Thus were the intelligence chiefs in the major countries of the free world catapulted into roles they had never performed before and for which they were initially ill equipped. Just as they were instructed to gather the vital data without delay, so were they drawn into policy roles or into partnership with policy levels because these policy levels were so thin on their own capacities and capabilities. i Why was the world so unprepared for these events that forced changes in the authorship of foreign policy? What inspires the development of groups of non-state actors, whose interests lie beyond all national boundaries? Why do intelligence professionals present such a weighted variable in the equation of international relations? Indeed, what can they teach those who scale
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foreign policy? Diplomats and foreign policy specialists are bound to confront in their careers crises whose causes are perniciously difficult to determine. The term Humanitarian War applied to campaigns fought in Kosovo, for example, implies that armed intervention is necessary for establishment of peace between particular contenders. What is more, it suggests that within the rationale of genocide, no matter how latently rests some familiar feature of human nature It seems that Mr. Halevy, the former chief of the Mossad, was one who had addressed such grueling and alien circumstances when the Oslo channels unexpectedly began making accomplishments and reporting unusual concessions. The Oslo channels, operated by academics and incidental specialists, were an unorthodox place to mediate formal diplomacy of such portent. The Oslo channels were unofficial channels, and were what Mr. Halevy calls covert channels, which Prime Minister Shamir used cynically, for intelligence, but also for sensational publicity because they were unsecure (i.e., their operatives not protected by national security laws). Covert channels were how P.M. Shamir maintained contact with the PLO. Mr. Halevy says the following about the PLO channels and P.M. Shamirs use of them: The government of the Likud Prime Minister, Shamir, was adamantly opposed to any contact of an official nature with the PLO led by Yassir Arafat. It simply refused to sanction any unofficial or clandestine channel of dialogue with the organization and viewed it essentially a terrorist group that warranted appropriate treatment as such. Nevertheless, it would be accurate to say that Shamir did have indirect means of maintaining an open line to this key piece in the puzzle. He avidly read reports that reached him and he allowed himself to be served with information that was not necessarily obtained by the traditional method of running agents in the professional sense of the term. Instead of that, the data trickled in through, shall we say, contacts, which could be described as agents, except that they were honorable persons functioning in various walks of life, who volunteered their services in the cause of peace. ii

Why should it have been the Oslo covert channels, therefore , that nearly spelled a successful resolution, at long last, of imposed vagaries of exile that have been sustained for fifty years by the very fact that without a homeland there is no legal context in which to advocate for the most basic of civil rights? It is simply that Palestinians have been forced, in order to procure sufficient food and shelter for themselves and for their vulnerable dependents, to resort to trade on unreported markets, whose existence is interdependent with that of covert channels. Similarly, as important as are food and water for survival, so are social institutions for sustaining social groups. By extension, when such a group suffers a protracted siege, it is the social institution that best addresses the needs of the society, whether it is recognized as a legitimate one from outside , that acquires a stringent importance for the survival of the community in general. One such institution to which I refer is, of course, Rule of Law, which, in the case of Palestinians, is a most critical power of sovereign government held just out of reach to them for so long. I speak of the Rule of Law in its most empiric form: tacit recognition of basic civil rights that must underlie any legitimate judiciary, and are essential to the Palestinians as the only means to gain access, literally to the very judicial context, the courtroom in which they would be permitted to set foot in order to argue on behalf of their claims to their very homes in the lands from which they had been evicted. Rule of Law as it stands in Israel presents insurmountable obstacles to Palestinians advocating the repossession of their property. This is precisely because early in the history of Israel, David Ben-Gurion had rejected a constitution delineating recognized civil rights, instead preferring the types of arbitration of the Knesset, for example, as a mediator in such matters. By extension,

1. In Israel, negotiation of ones civil rights is part of the arbitration process. 2. If one is not an Israeli, it is impossible to negotiate for ones rights in the state of Israel.

3. The additional burden to prove the right to the claim is insurmountable. 4. Basic civil rights that should be granted to all human beings, regardless of social, ethnic, or economic status, are often placed on the same levels as rights that are derived from whatever particularities arise from the Israeli legal system. 5. The Palestinian petitioning for the return of his properties faces laws that rule that any person who fled in war, even for one day, had made a legally-binding decision to abandon his property. 6. The laws are unjust, and yet the Palestinian is made a supplicant of the state, depending on the viscitudes of its good graces. 7. The Israeli citizen is protected by legal rulings that occurred after the facts and events of 1948 on, which argue that that war flight is legal abandonment.

For the Palestinians, the substitute for Rule of Law was provided by the clandestine channels, in the same way that they provided for every other conceivable need. They are a pathetically inadequate replacement for what should be provided by a sovereign government. Therefore, legal arbitrations take place on the channels, by sheer necessity.

The Oslo Accords came upon the heels of the failure, Mr. Halevy notes, of the professionals who had been charged with addressing the Palestinian problem. For whatever reason, they ignored the recommendations of the wisest statesmen of our time: those who attended Pres. Gorbachev and Pres. George H.W. Bush, who in unprecedented collaboration emphasized Palestine as the most pressing casualty of the Cold War still troubling the world. The professionals (diplomats, and specialists who inform them) had refused to recognize the necessity for letting go of their portfolios of resources that were then in competition with covert channel resources: specifically, officially sanctioned arms trade in the form of defense contracts, that contended for business with the ad hoc arms trade in which non-state actors had learned to excel, par excellence. The professionals really failed to see the volatility of this hold-over casualty of the Cold War that is represented by displaced persons. The Palestinian issue may have been regarded as a casualty of the Cold War by such people as Sec. of State William Rogers, and what is more, he as such must have regarded not managing such a casualty of war as outright tactical mismanagement. This point of view was opposed to that of Dr. Henry Kissinger, who kept himself oriented only toward the very few tactics that spelled survival for the United States, and demise for the Soviet Union. What, therefore, made the professionals who had been called to the Madrid Peace Conference drop the ball in 1991, when they chose to advocate instead for preserving their resources instead of taking care of this long-neglected tactical variable remaining from the most volatile and eviscerating of wars to our human race, for it was at that point that diplomats such as Dr. Kissinger had joined with his former opponents in identifying the need to address this lingering problem (this tactical variable of the Cold War)?

Part of this is revealed perhaps in the agenda all agreed upon prior to the conference. In this cloaked menu spells the potential for prevarication of ambiguity. Regardless, the conference was called to address the human suffering, which itself is absolutely NOT ambiguous. Unfortunately, that professionals at this conference dropped the ball, and made clear the fact that they had not recognized that the Palestinian problem is itself a mismanaged resource (or, as one would have said in the Cold War era, a tactical variable), but a pivotal one, a grossly abused human resource. The menu was roughly as follows: In addition to a Palestinian governing authority to have been established before the end of one year for the purpose of immediately putting into place a governmental infrastructure, it was to have gone to work on the following, highly intriguing issues: regional arms control, water rights, and economic development, needs which Palestinians have had to fight for via the covert channels for survival. In the United States, we have developed a sophistication concerning civil rights via battles surrounding equal opportunity to education and employment, in Israel; such matters have been driven by, at times, forcibly evinced by protracted engagements falling under the rubric of economies. These economies constitute those in which non-Israeli residents are walled off from equal participation in the Israeli markets, not only materially by fences and bypass roads, but also by the law, in which, for example, Palestinians who live directly on the coast in the Gaza are denied access to the coastal waters at all to fish for industry (and for badly needed food for their families, because Palestinians live with perpetual malnutrition), and those who pass the crossings to work in Israel, usually illegally, in comparison with their colleagues who are Israeli citizens, and who perform the same work are paid so very little, and moreover, risk imprisonment for daring to work illegally.
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Use of covert channels for advocacy of water rights itself led to sets of new skills. How do Palestinians acquire water from Israel? Water rights embody the rupture that is written into the Israeli judiciary, that prevaricates between materially existing as a real, flesh and blood human being, and being perceived as having been born with inalienable rights to what is necessary for life sustenance. Water that reaches the Gaza is meager, and polluted with trace industrial byproducts. How then do Palestinians allocate these needs for themselves without the benefit of Rule of Law? It is by design an immensely difficult and demoralizing process to beg for sufficient water for your child or for your elderly parent, who are already so vulnerable to disease. People develop sets of skills related to bargaining from the disadvantage of being the lesser human because of this. Part of this is as timeless as humanity; how much is your gratification from my subjectivity worth to you, and how much is it actual part of the bargain? Palestinians became specialists, by force, in the quoi bon faire strategy that so well describes trade in the Middle East, how best to make use of the resources one has at hand, and how best to exert the optimal profit from them. Of course, covert channels were but one such resource. Of these, the arms trade channel is certainly one, and one which Yassir Arafat used to brilliant effect, for what he did with such trade produced far more in terms of political effect than it should have by its nature, to have kept Palestinian cause a vital issue for so long. Unreported economies that rely on covert channels arise out of significant, but hidden subcultures. Unreported economies proceed without oversight, often unrecognized entirely, never having registered on the scales or the balance sheets enough, nor having presented a clear enough competitive product or service on the market. As such, substantial quantities of the population proceed in lives about which people in higher political circles know very little. The

result is that in many societies, political processes address the needs of one sector of society, while there exist needs of a parallel sector that are not understood sufficiently. Instead such needs are addressed via the covert channel. Covert channels, however, by their very essence cant support a national agenda. They deal with such matters that fall across national boundaries in various simply related ways that have appeal to special groups sharing the specific matter in trade, but very little else, in social terms. The channels are incapable of coordinating resources. Since they are used by individuals, there is no normative, social process whatsoever. I believe that this is precisely why the Oslo Accords may have failed. Covert channels tend eventually to best serve objectives that are motivated from the individual standpoint. About this, Mr. Halevy provides a comment that seems to illustrate both the failure of the channels to adequately support, in this case, a Palestinian national agenda, and as well, the short-sightedness of Israeli professionals who ignored the counsel of the most experienced heads of state of our era in protecting their personal ambition and preserving a status quo that was not even going to exist within the New World Order: Over and beyond the numerous interests and influences which had their bearing on the Palestinian negotiations, there were two, in my understanding, that were paramount and are worthy of mention. On the Palestinian side there was a growing concern for the future of the Palestinian National Movement in the wake of the first Gulf War. Arafat had sided with Saddam Hussein and was therefore counted among the bad guys of the Middle East. It became essential to redeem the image of the cause and to make the necessary noises of reconciliation while yielding nothing in terms of substance. On the other side, Israel was under international pressure to do something to alleviate the plight of the Palestinians, as brethren of the Arabs who had fought alongside the coalition in the Gulf War. But there was one more element on the Israeli side that was invisible- the personal ambition of certain politicians to succeed, whatever the odds. There was no better way to illustrate this than by comparing Likud Prime Minister Shamir to Labor Prime Minister Peres. Whereas the former had his eye on history in the broader sense of the term, he preferred to delegate the actual day to-day work to subordinates and professionals and to bide his time. He certainly was sensitive to his role and place in the annals of his people
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and country, but being a cautious and suspicious person, he was never in a rush or a hurry to produce instant success, or did he court populism and instant glory. How different was his political adversary. Peres was forever seeking popular acclaim and, therefore, I felt he always threw caution and good sense to the winds. For Peres, the covert channel enabled him to neutralize any doubts from the professionals and to produce a fait accompli that even the careful Rabin was powerless to delay or even reject outright. The covert channel had come full circle. Originally designed by its Israeli creators to forge, maintain, and exploit strategic interests of Israel and so any partners who could not do business with it in public, on the one hand, and to facilitate quiet substantive negotiations bereft of attendant drama, on the other, the covert channel now became a vehicle for the personal attainment of fame and glory. The presence and participation of a legal counsel who would draft the final wording of agreements obtained between the parties1One might have thought that a lawyer would inject a note of caution and hesitation into the discussionsLawyers became purveyors of solutions on issues about which they knew next to nothing iii

In the height of the Cold War, in contrast, the arms trade channels, which had such effect upon Israel/Palestine, also revealed the trends of changing strategies, and extent of grasp of social conditions by both Washington and Moscow. Yassir Arafat was thought to have been sponsored from Moscow through at least one of his channels. 2 Moreover, both Yassir Arafat and Israeli agents were arms suppliers in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia during the most intense periods of ethnic cleansing. Arafat traded arms in areas that tended to use Soviet weapons, Israel sold to Milosevic. Sharon, who sold arms quite actively to Central Americas most reactionary of regimes, was part of the political contingent in Israel that supported Milosevics basic rationale, and more than likely sold arms to Milosevic. There are perhaps three qualities that are striking about covert channels:
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This indicates the covert channels use as a substitute for Rule of Law. It establishes that the Israelis who used them as such did so with probable full knowledge their use as such was an unacceptable substitute for this institution, which provides legal acknowledgement of basic civil rights. To use covert channels as a substitute for Rule of Law is a mockery of exercise of full rights of litigants, and hence, their use comprises a denial of exercise of civil rights.

James Angleton, the counter-intelligence chief of CIA, had a photograph of Arafat laying flowers on Krushchevs grave, at the side of Zamyatin of the Soviet foreign office, and of a KGB agent known to work out of Karlzhorst, Germany, who spoke only German and Russian. Mr. Angleton learned that Arafat had studied for a degree in civil engineering in Munich.
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1) Changes in the use of the covert channels since, roughly 1960 illustrate, in a very general sense the shift from sponsorship of ideological acolytes through these channels to their use as impersonal advancement of trends for political effect by the late seventies. 2) The channels are used by preference by individuals, and they cannot exist as part of a bureaucracy in a positive way. 3) Arms trade channels cause significant, but characteristic effects in areas of conflict; they reflect emphasis on needs that are not immediately shared by the societies involved.

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Historic Correspondence between Clandestine Channels and Non-State Actors

The circumstances surrounding the principal issues of the late nineties were entirely different. The sole means of access to the principal players were, and to some extent still are, those of intelligence gathering and penetration. The terrorist cells of the various groups practicing international Islamic terror shunned contact with the outside world except by way of their terrorist operations and the publicity they wished to attract to them. Diplomatic, commercial, or academic channels to these groups were never created, and as a result of this, almost absolute reliance was placed on the intelligence net. Similarly, the countries attempting to develop nonconventional weaponry limited access to them to a bare minimum. Of the famous axis of evil declared by President George W. Bush after he assumed office, Iraq and North Korea were for all intents and purposes pariah states existing almost entirely in a state of isolation, whereas Iran, which did allow and maintain diversified conduits to the world at large, clearly monitored and controlled them Thus, as the free world was propelled into what may someday seem as the greatest of its tests in living history the means whereby it was able to accurately gather the vital data it required to assess the dangers were restricted as never before.iv The circumstances Mr. Halevy defines here: the principal players, as terrorists in his words, but whom I prefer to regard as non-state (or supra-national) actors, and the means of access to them: that is to say, what he clearly refers to as covert channels, as opposed to official channels of state, seem to me to be two sides of the same coin. What he discusses appears very succinctly to have derived from the very subject of what William Casey observed twenty-four years prior to the publishing of Mr. Halevys book, in his Middle East memorandum to Pres. Ronald Reagan assessing his 1982 trip to Africa and the Persian Gulf. DCI Casey talks of directed Soviet efforts to subvert cells of social groups there, with intention of eroding respect for sovereign rule of law. Here is part of DCI Caseys memo:

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Through Libya, South Yemen and Ethiopia, the Soviets have mounted subversion and insurgence, threats to countries which control the most strategic choke-points in the world: Oman at the Strait of Hormuz; North Yemen and Somalia at the mouth of the Red Sea, the pathway to Suez; and Morocco at the Straits of Gibraltar. In the past eight years, the Soviets and their proxies have promoted insurgencies in over a dozen countries, five of them successful and seven now under way. The Soviets experience in Afghanistan has demonstrated how much more efficient and less costly it is to conquer by subversion than by invasion. Most of these states cannot effectively use and do not need sophisticated high-priced weapons. What they need is light arms, transport, and communications to deal with multiple, widely scattered hit and run forces. This security and counter-subversion assistance should be low-profile.v (Robert Gates, 251)

Terrorists were not suddenly spirited up by the Soviet Union, for the basis for having organized to compete with the state for authority must have arisen from some prior situation of unbearable privation. Obviously, non-state actors were supported by covert channels, the only means of trade and communication available to them. The channels gain vitality by virtue of syncretism: the need to tailor the trade to terms of the client; they are also stipulating which goods and services they will trade in the markets. Therefore, I trace a parallel history of covert channels and emergence of non-state actors as principal players in todays world into three very arbitrary stages. 1) (1950- late 1970s) The United States and the Soviet Union regarded the participants of the covert channels as having been motivated from political ideology. That is to say, the effects of the channels contended right and wrong. 2) (mid-1970s-early 1980s) There exists an increasing divide between what drives the political processes that are carried out in the conventional state apparatuses, and what underlies the persistent state of lack in which many are forced to live. Therefore, there are certainly separate cultures, and there are absolutely those who have no choice but to rely
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upon covert channels for trade in unreported economies. Of course, the unreported economies comprise those such as drug, or arms trade, but are also those related in some way to sustenance of culture, such as religious education, or care and concern for extended families, maintenance of lands or industry, etc. Significantly, unreported cultures are making themselves known, at the same time that make use of the covert channels. 3) (1980s- today) The existence of non-state actors, whose sole contact with the outside world is through covert channels. This is paired with diplomacy that was increasingly conducted via covert channels, whose most renowned inception was with the Oslo Accords after the failure of the diplomatic professionals to even recognize the need to address Palestinian statehood. DCI Casey was concerned, of course, with the Soviet union, but especially with its apparent change of shift in venue and focus from one directed from conventional state mechanisms to those engaged with the unrecognized accoutrements of the non-state actors that, for whatever reason, had not attained statehood, but had developed capabilities that have transformed the international political and diplomatic terrain of our world today. 3

It is interesting that he had chosen to visit the Middle East at a moment when Leonid Brezhnev was dying, for some aspect of this change could be explained by Yuri Andropov having succeeded as authority of these matters.
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What he identifies as hit and run strategy was unfortunately underestimated before September 11, 2001. When such a strategy is highly informed and calculated, it can strike at an axis of a vital national infrastructure. The power posed by the autonomous human being, as opposed to the force of nuclear annihilation comes across quite well in his memo. This he might have restricted to matters of national security, but others, such as Sec. Rogers and Pres. Carter would have extended this capacity to matters of diplomacy, especially in the urgent redress of the decimation of human dignity that is forever presented in putting off determination of Palestinian statehood. The stability of nations rests upon a context in which one can have faith in the integrity of contracts. The foundation of such a context is always the recognition of the most basic of human rights: that upon acceptance of the contract, the human being one faces is equal in capacity and intent in its transaction. Guillermo ODonnell writes: only when the rule of law bolsters these democratic dimensions of rights, equality, and accountability will the responsiveness of government to the interests and needs of the greatest number of citizens be achieved. vi

National or regional security therefore lies in part on responsiveness to (i.e., observation and full comprehension of) the needs of the greatest number of people considered under its auspices. 1) Thus, I begin discussion of the parallel development of non-state actors as principal players and the use of covert channels with the events surrounding the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. 2) I will then discuss briefly Dr. Kissingers Shuttle Diplomacy. 3) Then I turn to Pres. Carters Camp David Peace Accords.

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4) Finally, I look at the events of 1982, which led to Philip Habibs behind the scenes advocation for the evacuation of the PLO form Beirut, speculate about the role of covert channels in all of these events, and consider the extent to which Sec. of State Alexander Haig, and U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib seemed to be aware that the Cold War had shifted at some unknown point in the past, from the official circles of foreign policy, to its vital existence on the clandestine channels, in exclusion of the official channels of the political infrastructures in Moscow and Washington (and to a frightening extent, to those who had discerned this).

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The Six-Day War of 1967: A Call from Moscow to Washington Suspends Time

June 10, 1967 Some minutes after he (Sec. of Defense Robert S. McNamara) reached his office-as usual at 7a.m.- there was a call from the Pentagon War room. Chairman Kosygin is on the hot line waiting to communicate with the President. Why call me? Bob asked. Because the hot line terminal is here in the Pentagon, the duty officer replied. The hot line was not a telephone as it has been described in the press. It was a dedicated Teletype device through which enciphered telegraph messages could be exchanged between the incumbent head man in Moscow (at that time the chairman of the Council of Ministers) and the President in Washington. The system was established on the heels of the Cuban missile crisis when it was realized that such a means of rapid communication was a prudent precaution. The hot line had never been used, and none of the officials most concerned remembered that it had been installed in the Pentagon rather than in the White house Situation Room. Bob had ordered Kosygins message patched to the White House and directed the immediate relocation of the cipher device. Kosygins message was indeed threatening. As President Johnson describes it in his memoir, the prime minister said a very crucial moment had arrived, and spoke of the possibility of an independent decision by Moscow. Kosygin foresaw the risk of a grave catastrophe. Unless Israel unconditionally halted operations within the next few hours, the Soviet Union would take necessary actions, including military. The Russian also charged Israel with ignoring all Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire. For the next few minutes, each of us who had any knowledge of Russian checked the translation of Kosygins message. Ambassador Llewellyn Tommy Thompson, home briefly from his post in Moscow, said, no doubt about it, the translation was accurate. There could be no question that the prime minister had used the word military in the context of necessary actions. The room went silent as abruptly as if a radio had been switched off After a few moments contemplation, Lyndon Johnson nodded agreement, but did not say a word. McNamara picked up the phone with a direct line to the Pentagon. President Johnson later wrote, There are times when the wisdom and rightness of a Presidents judgment are critically important. We were at such a moment. The Soviets had made a decision. I had to respond. vii (Richard Helms)

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To begin with, the Middle East was a backdrop for the changing qualities which statesmen attributed to strategic geographic locations. The Middle East has been critical historically for shipping of staple and crude mineral goods. Transport continues to be the backbone of trade. The Middle East is at critical points in both maritime and aviation navigation, providing maritime passage from Europe to Asia, and providing landing sites for aircraft in somewhat more dense traffic from all directions. Trade is, of course, the reason for international relations, for the most part, especially when essential goods are not produced within ones country. Therefore, The Middle East had, since the 1920s experienced deep investment in protection of certain geographic points in order to secure critical ability to trade freely. Free trade became much more crucial to defend in the late forties, and increasingly so through the 50s and 60s. It is the basis for success of the western markets, and interruption of trade through these critical venues is one manner in which to disrupt the integrity of the markets. For this and many other reasons, Middle Eastern nations developed complex military infrastructures. Israel was funded primarily by the United States, but also by Germany, which made reparation payment to Israel in the way of high quality industrial technology, such as oil production, electricity production, mining, and telecommunications technologies. This ended in the late 50s when East German scientists began an intensive missile development program in Egypt, and Israels successful request of a European boycott of East German products caused West Germany to cancel any extant contracts in protest. France took up where Germany had left off. They supplied small arms, conventional weaponry, aircraft, but also secretly began a nuclear program in at least two sites in Israel. The one that had most success was in the northern city of Dimona in the Negev. This program has not been revealed as having existed in fact until very recently. However, its presence was probably a
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factor in the events of the 1967 war, for it began to establish missile production capacity in 1968, which had been delayed, due to the interruptions in delivery of uranium. The United States became the major military supplier after the 1967 war. Israels neighbors, Syria and Egypt each became clients of Soviet Military technology. Egypt, as the more powerful partner in the United Arab Republic that temporarily joined Syria and Egypt in the late 50s, became the site of a highly developed military establishment. After the East Germans left, the Soviet Union sent supplies and military personnel to administer the technology. Because of the fact, however, that the Soviet advisors occupied the upper ranks, the lack of ability to be promoted as a commanding officer of a technological unit left little incentive for learning how to deploy the technology effectively. Syria was itself the recipient of advanced light offensive air force technology. By the end of the 1970s, the Soviet Union had also established sophisticated radar tracking and electronic monitoring facilities throughout Syria. In 1967, these tiny nations in the Middle East had become virtual and actual battlegrounds, for those dispatching fire from abroad, and for those who were caught unaware as mercilessly uninformed and innocent victims of the cross-fire. In 1967, the Soviet Union had sent preponderance of military supplies to Egypt. Pres. Gamal Abd Al-Nasser had some right to believe that a joint offensive with Syria from the North would prevail against the Israelis. However, the reality was that since the U.S. had been providing supplies to Israel, the Soviet Union had been scaling back offensive weaponry, in order to dissuade an Egyptian attack against Israel. Such an attack would have forced a confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which was in 1967, not tactically advantageous for the Soviets. The Israelis were superior far in excess to the Egyptians in offensive weaponry, especially in air strike capacity. As well, that the Egyptian personnel were undertrained in weapon deployment had gone unnoticed.
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Therefore, Nasser received a false message from Moscow (the actual sender is unknown to this day) that reported Israeli troops massing on the Syrian frontier. He requested and received the withdrawal of the U.N. troops stationed in the Sinai. He then chose to send Egyptian troops across the Suez Canal. Once there, he hesitated to, but with pressure from other Arab leaders, occupied Sharm Al-Shaykh, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, cutting off access to the Red Sea. He had no reason to believe that this in itself would inspire an attack by the Israelis. He was wrong; in a short time, Israeli aircraft had destroyed much of the Egyptian Air Force, and indeed much of the military capacity, as a result. Then, a curious event occurred to provoke the rage of Pres. Lyndon Johnson. An unarmed U.S. Naval Intelligence vessel (the U.S.S. Liberty) was attacked by Israeli torpedo boats and fighter/bomber jets, killing nearly half of the personnel on the vessel. The vessels mission had been to monitor all radios from its position off of the Sinai at its border with the Negev. (Its proximity to the nuclear facility in Dimona might have had something to do with this attack. Nevertheless, in a few years, the presence of permanent electronic monitoring stations manned by U.S. Personnel would have made that impossible for the Israelis to repeat. ) During the 1967 War, Israel seized the Golan Heights, driving into the city of Qunaytra in the East, a strategic elevation form which they were to monitor Syria electronically from then on. Israel drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes on the West Bank, demolishing their villages so that they would never return. The most significant loss, and such an important one in cultural terms to Arabs, was the annexation of East Jerusalem, depriving Arabs charged with protection of it most sacred sites of the sober of its religious responsibilities. It was a psychological as well as a material desecration of the sites.

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1967 was the first time that the hotline between Moscow and Washington had ever been used. P.M. Kosygin issued warning of military (i.e. nuclear) action from Moscow. What occurred after the fact of this chilling engagement was a taxing effort to negotiate a proposal to resolve the eviction of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. This was passed by the United Nations as Security Council Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967. Resolution 242 calls for immediate repatriation of the refugees to their homes and for immediate negotiations to begin to ensure peace to all states included within the territory, and Resolution 242 has provided the basic template for all peace negotiations to this day. The peace process emerged and was presented with the most honorable of intentions. Its threads combined with and colored those of other matters that had not been acknowledged. Regrettably, the peace efforts that were to have addressed the casualties of the Cold War in Israel/Palestine had been defeated by the more horrific prospect of casualties on a global scale, for, in fact, the battles in Israel/Palestine/Sinai had struck at the hearts within Moscow and Washington. This matter therefore, continued to resonate with everyone in Washington. When Pres. Nixon took office in 1969, U.S. Sec. of State William Rogers became involved in the arbitration of these issues. Along with United Nations envoy, Gunnar Jarring, and in careful collaborative (and controversial) efforts with Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin, he produced a proposal to require Israel to honor the terms of Resolution 242, saying to an angered Israeli contingent that repatriation of refugees to their homes was minor in comparison with what was indeed at stake for Israel.

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It is absolutely critical to note that he was, of course, trying to appeal to the Israelis in what seemed to be a crucial moment in the type of ideology destined to underlie the tenets of their domestic and foreign policies. Without question, the forced eviction of thousands of its citizens on an ethnic basis had undoubtedly had its roots in mitigations of the Cold War from Moscow and Washington. For some reason, this policy of ethnic cleansing was being packaged in Tel Aviv as necessary for national security. There surely had to have been an alternative that would have protected Israeli national security just as well. In truth, as an American statesman, on the other hand, he may have seen dealing with the casualties if the Cold War as management of one of the tactical variables of the Cold War, whose neglect would affect success of the Cold War campaigns. The Nixon White House, however, as a result of Dr. Kissingers own initiatives, did not agree with Sec. Rogers that as such, it was then important to deal with this horrific human suffering. The result is, of course, that the lack of negotiation of a settlement of Palestinian statehood has been deflected as impersonally ever since. This is due to the sheer lack of the legal context in which human beings are granted equitable recognition enough to reach an honorable, and therefore enduring agreement. Rogers may have wished to engage his counterparts in Moscow in recognition of their mutual obligations to tend to casualties caused by deployment of the Cold War in territories that belonged neither the U.S. nor to the Soviet Union. However, his point of view was regarded with cynicism by Dr. Kissinger, special assistant to Pres. Nixon. Rogers plan was consequently not given the support it needed to have been implemented. Dr. Kissinger, as opposed to Sec. Rogers, believed in directing all efforts in the few weaknesses in the Soviet government structures, that if compromised, would cause the Soviet Union to fall.

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Therefore, it was at the end of the 60s that U.S. foreign policy, in turning away from the Palestinian problem in favor of other tactical issues of the Cold War , encouraged the setting in which dispossessed groups existed permanently in a state of lack. It was because of the jousting of the superpowers that left dispossessed groups of people without homelands or recourse to sovereign government institutions to provide them with safety, exercise of civil rights. Without access to government institutions, all that was left to them were the unreported resources. As such, the relationship between the two: non-state actors and the covert channels was intensified to a great extent by the Cold War.

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The 1973 Yom Kippur War

This third round of fighting in 1973, between Israel and the Arab world did not affect, nor was it founded on, the Palestine question. It is one of the more curious twists in this narrative of conflict that the bloodiest of all the Arab-Israeli confrontations was fought over issues that did not concern most of the people living between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. The only relevance of the war for these people was that it weakened the hegemony of the Israeli political elite, and shattered the illusion of unity of purpose within Israeli society viii

In the first few days of the October War of 1973, the Arabs states around Israel accrued immense military successes. The Syrians dispatched 35,000 troops, artillery and air strikes to the heavy fortifications on the Golan Heights. The Syrians pushed through at several points, and occupied to the edge of the escarpment overlooking Israel. Nassers troops took key installations, crossing the Bar-Lev line. Nevertheless, upon securing a ten-kilometer strip along the canal into the Sinai, the troops dug in and became inactive. It was at this very moment that Israels air support was defending the Golan Heights, and when they would have had difficulty defending the strategic military installations at the Mitla and Giddi passes of the Sinai. When Israeli intelligence detected the inactivity of the Egyptians, they exerted the full intensity of air strikes on the Golan Heights, which they retook, after which they routed the Egyptians form the Sinai, destroying their SAM missile batteries.

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The 1973 October War nearly ended in a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. War had never threatened with such viscerally clear intentions. Brezhnev had positioned all citizens in the Middle East as potential casualties, albeit, probably as a bluff. However, it was a bluff, perhaps, that had been turned in some way into a real possibility, and a troubling one to a tactician such as Brezhnev. . Before the October War, Brezhnev had visited Nixon in California. He had warned that Asad was planning a joint offensive with Egypt against Israel. He requested that the United States take any necessary measures to avoid the war, but Nixon and Kissinger had dismissed this as an attempted maneuver. Therefore, Kissinger had continued to direct all of his efforts on making Israels military capacity superior to that of its neighbors. In order to diminish the influence of the Soviet Union in such a strategic region as much as possible is never as clear as in his shuttle diplomacy. Such measures could not have been accomplished under those circumstances while fulfilling the terms of Resolution 242. When it comes to res. Sadat of Egypt, why did Sadat lapse at such a critical point? What Syrian Pres. Asad, Sadats ally had not known is that Dr. Kissinger had been in contact with Sadat each day of the war. Kissinger had begun communicating with Sadat in 1972, as Sadat had watched the Israeli military obtain that had far surpassed Egypts, with the arrival of American Phantom jets and sophisticated electronic technologies. Sadat, who saw his sudden extent of power become irremediably deficient, requested assistance from Moscow. Leonid Brezhnev and Alexi Kosygin plainly were not interested in falling into their own Middle Eastern Vietnam, nor in provoking a confrontation with the United States. Sadat was angered, therefore, that the nations relations with Moscow had become a one-way street. He retaliated on July 13, 1972, by issuing an ultimatum through prime minister Aziz Sidqi, whom he sent to Moscow, for the Soviets to withdraw their advisers and instructors. Whereupon, much to the astonishment of both Washington and Jerusalem, the Russians in fact set about evacuating the largest numbers of their personnel from Egypt . For the watching Israelis, the schism between Cairo and Moscow appeared at last to validate their determination to hold firm, resisting both Egyptian warnings of even larger-scale conflict in the future. (697)
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If Kissinger had been in contact with Sadat each day of the war, recall that Watergate was in the height of its progress. In spite of this, the better intentions kept by the Americans in the Middle East had asserted their value there. Both Nixon and Kissinger had won substantially at the gambit that had been first suggested by the Soviets. Nevertheless, there still remained complex knot of problems presented by the dispossession of those who had been the casualties of the war.

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Pres. Jimmy Carters Cold Mission of State: Camp David Peace Talks; 1978

Pres. Carter took yet a different approach to the issues of Palestine. He met with the heads of state to listen in earnest to their views, to some extent without regard to having been cliented by either superpower. This was in some small way a cautious act of faith. To really understand the extent of crisis requires courage and faith that others will commit themselves to correcting what would inevitably concern a most difficult and treacherous series of problems. When he invited Hafiz Al-Asad to the United States, Asads reply was that he intended to never visit it. Instead, Pres. Carter met with him in Switzerland in 1977. There, he met someone, who, he concluded might be sufficiently independent and flexible to modify his political tactics to accommodate changing times and circumstances. Even in his bitterness toward Israel he retained a certain wry humor about their conflicting views (79) Pres. Carter had attuned himself to the forces that had been developing outside the diplomatic circles. Having listened to Yassir Arafat and to Al-Asad also emphasize the need for repatriation of Palestinians to their homelands, he returned to Sec. Rogers idea of approaching those counterparts in Moscow to lend whatever expertise they could in this matter. However, his collaboration with Moscow resulted in a document in which the signers had committed to a conference, in which representatives Israel, Egypt, Syria, and the PLO would agree to implement the terms of Resolutions 242 and 338: the repatriation of Palestinians to their homeland. It caused Begin and Dayan to threaten a campaign of harassment against Pres. Carter from the

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Jewish/American organizations in their support. 4Pres. Carter was forced to withdraw his commitment to the document. Interestingly, it wasnt only the Israelis for whom the idea of meeting with the Soviets and with the PLO was nerve-wracking; Pres. Sadat also seemed to not welcome the idea. Since he had broken with the Soviet Union, he had been left without protection in some regards. Pres. Qadaffi had tried to have him assassinated. Begin arranged a meeting with Sadat via King Hassan of Morocco, whose goal it had been to establish peace between Israel and its neighbors. In meetings, his representatives made demands for repatriation of Palestinians to their lands, to which the Israelis responded that no settlement in the West Bank would ever be relinquished, but that other matters could be negotiated. Both avoided an international conference by signing a treaty in Sadat rejected war as a solution to conflict, and Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. It stunned the Arab world. It shocked Pres. Carter. It perpetuated the Palestinian problem. It was also a use of a high level covert channel among heads of state in avoidance of formal state processes. It involved Sadat, Begin, Ceausescu of Romania, and King Hassan of Morocco.

Conclusion:
4

This threatened campaign contained a shocking amount of threat to the presidency, considering that they were not vested with powers of the state.

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Pres. Carters Mission of State

1) In its day, divisions over Rogers plan caused a stir in the Republican Party. The fact that his plan was neglected in favor of Kissingers meant an important shift in really basic ideological principles regarding, such ideas as the role of human casualties as tactical variables in the Cold War. This debate had been acrimonious, for it had involved such arguments as how human rights are interpreted as the bases of the tenets on which is founded the Constitution of the United States of America. 2) Pres. Carter, who could not have known of these battles within the Nixon White House, intuitively perceived the importance of taking up again this question of dispossessed peoples, perhaps sensing it as a live debate related to Constitutional interpretation. 3) In his attempt to take up this question again, he called all parties to the bargaining table, in a proposed Geneva Conference: America, the Soviet Union, Israel, Egypt, and the PLO. 4) It was rejected. a. America and Moscow agreed to a proposal that vowed to support Resolution 242. b. Israelis had a stake in defending the Nixon-sponsored Military/Industrial complex.

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c. Sadat had broken with the Soviet Union officially (i.e., with Brezhnev), but he had not necessarily broken with someone else in the Soviet Union (perhaps related politically to Andropov), and someone furthermore perhaps in competition with Brezhnev. One should consider whether or not Sadat might have seen himself in competition with Arafat, in terms of some service provided to the Soviet Union via the covert channels (ad hoc arms trade in the third world, for example). Pres. Sadat had escaped an assassination attempt ordered by Qadaffi, of Libya. In their meetings with him in Morocco, the Mossad had implied their protection of Pres. Sadat, giving him complete lists of PLO assassins in Cairo. d. Arafat needed a solution for the Palestinians, desperately, more than he a claim to covert channel trade.

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A Look at Types of Military Infrastructure Funded by Superpowers: Israel, Syria

Dr. Kissingers view concerning a strong security infrastructure is quite clear as a result of his intensive negotiations at the close of his famous shuttle diplomacy. The results of his treaties with Israel/ Egypt (1974), and Israel/Syria (1974) were for Israel to withdraw from the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal and Egypt to withdraw for the Sinai, and Israels partial withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Israel remained fast in the Sinai, lined with defense installations facing in constant alert squarely toward Egypt. The first of these defense installations was begun in 1968, a multimillion dollar Distant Early Warning Line (DEW line) in the Mitla and Giddi passes (some 25 miles from the canal). From these points, Israel had placed a complex of electronic monitoring devices to scan for hundreds of miles. They combined radio, seismic, heat and acoustic sensors that could detect jet engine blasts on airfields inside Egypt, for example, or vibrations from troop deployments. Years later, reflecting increasing Soviet desperation, in terms of the accelerated high tech arms race the U.S. had undertaken, Soviet Union a series state-of-the-art missile arrays, and electronic defense and monitoring systems. Robert Fisk describes this system: The SAM-5s, with a range of over 160 miles , were in their turn protected by five batteries of SAM-3s , six batteries of SAM-6s and belts of SAM-2s The sites were locked into a system of 30 early warning stations that spread more than halfway across Syria towards Iraq. They
30

represented the most complex and modern air defense brought into the Middle East by the Soviet Union. It was a missile trap for the Israelis. (Fisk, 468)

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This paper, of course, traces the emergence of covert channels as the media of diplomacy in the Middle East, with the thesis that they tie in more closely with matters that conventional diplomatic circles dont govern, and matters which resonate with the reasons, furthermore, why non-state actors develop quasi-political organizations. These matters are, in fact troubles, and they are as real as are the non-state actors. It seems to me that there stand two kinds of diplomacy, one that presumes inevitable obstructionism, if permitted, and one that recognizes the payment in human lives if one does not imagine the hint of good intention, and therefore permit the possibility of good faith. What occurs for the second type of diplomat is never anything as seminal as treaty document, and rarely is what happens attributed to the diplomat. This is because of the intense danger involved, and that the diplomacy rests in the efforts of unidentified persons. Philip Habibs negotiations on behalf of the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut in 1982 (prised from the siege imposed by Gen. Sharon) give a fair image of the diplomacy of the second type. U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib was assisted by those who operated covert channels, in addition to his official channels. This situation begins with the signing of the Syrian-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1980, which provided mutual protection in either a conventional or nuclear attack. Sec. Haig, for his part, on his visit to the Middle East, pointedly refused to meet with Assad, condemning Syria as a Soviet Client. Sec. Haig was one of the architects of Israels National Security infrastructure, and was greatly concerned with the threat of a Soviet/American engagement in the Middle East. This situation begins with the signing of the Syrian-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1980, which provided mutual protection in either a conventional or nuclear attack. Probably for this
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reason, Sec. Haig therefore fully supported the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the brainchild Gen. Sharon. The plan Gen. Sharon presented to the Knesset was a quite different endeavor form the one which actually took effect. What he wanted was to have routed all Palestinians from Lebanon, all Muslims from southern Lebanon, and all Syrians from Lebanon as a whole. What he presented to the Knesset was a plan for a small buffer zone in southern Lebanon where Lebanese Christians would live. To help implement this would be Bashir Gemayel, a sometime CIA operative whose election to the presidency of Lebanon was being sponsored by the Mossad. In the course of the invasion, an Israeli battalion joined with a Phalanges (A Lebanese Catholic Christian group) battalion, to cut off all Syrian troops in Beirut from their support units in the Beqa valley. Gen. Sharon, upon reaching the Beqa valley, made his intentions clear, that is to say, not to remove PLO from southern Lebanon as he had stated to the Knesset, but to rout his enemies form Lebanon. He chose to turn not toward Beirut, but toward the valley lined with portable Syrian SAM missile batteries. These were stateof-the-art missile arrays, of which one, a complete SAM-6 missile battery was sold to the U.S. by Egypt in 1981, so that Americans and Israelis were able to learn how to jam the frequencies of the ground and missile guidance systems. This had been tested when Israelis had sent reconnaissance drones, which were attacked by the missiles on site, the drones taking measurement of the signals. The actual attack by Sharon was supported by a Hawkeye Command plane, designed to target electronic technologies. It jammed the radar, so that not a single missile deployed.

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It was on June 10, 1982, one day after the attack on the missile batteries that Asad flew to Moscow to request intervention on their behalf. The call to Washington raised alarm. Begin had presented the plan dishonestly. Haig continued to argue or the invasion. The United States, however, had already voted in the Security Council for Resolution 508 on June 5, which called for an immediate end to all action both sides of the border. Habib traveled between Damascus and Tel Aviv. He worked at length with Pres. Asad for acceptable cease- fire terms. They agreed that he should pull back his troops. Habib left to propose the cease fire to Israel. However, Israel had intercepted his call to Washington, and recognizing that they would have to end the invasion, declared a cease fire publicly, which Asad accepted, not realizing that the cease fire had no terms , and that it was worthless. Asad missed any chance of relieving the siege that Sharon had placed on them in Beirut. Sharon subjected them to three devastating attacks, Artillery, air, and conventional attacks. Asad was helpless to assist them. Habib, however, continued to negotiate for them as well as for the PLO, who were trapped with the Syrians in Beirut. The media had its eye on their plight. By August, Habib had exerted influence enough with the United Nations to make possible or Tunisia to accept most. Once that had been arranged, Sharon would have been taken to task for impeding the evacuation. It is difficult to imagine how he accomplished this, unless he used all resources available to him, those in use by non-state actors, as well as those in use by Presidents.

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Conclusion

1967 was the first time that the hotline was used in a call from Moscow to Washington. The call pertained to the situation on the current battleground of the Cold War extant in Israel/Palestine. Who was to know that Foreign Policy that turned to those issues that played out only in the circumscribed realms of diplomacy in the highest of political echelons would result in human suffering that has endured for so long, that the world has been presented with its effects? Was there an alternative? It occurs to me that Sec. Rogers might have been left to defend what had been a diplomatic gesture interrupted in its execution. To make an appeal to another diplomat in a perilous context, on behalf of those human beings caught under ones auspices, and therefore are ones obligation, is an act of faith in human will to preserve humankind. The similarity between the mission of Philip Habib and Sec. Rogers mission might have been the unpredictability of the result, in that one may not know how it (good will) would manifest. What is curious to me is that it wouldnt have taken very long, after having worked with Ambassador Dobrynin. It seems to me that for whatever reason, it was extenuated while caught under the public eye, and he defended it as the hallmark of his underlying philosophy toward diplomacy.
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Such is the extent of the courage a diplomat assumes in defense of humankind. Defense of humankind is the most fundamental and therefore, universal of human values. A diplomat, such as Sec. Rogers, or Pres. Carter would find some way to reach counterparts in the enemy camp to attend to matters in which extensive human suffering was being caused by affairs of state. The current problem of terrorism is a direct result of not having attended to such suffering caused to people caught within the crossfire. The role of that covert channels play in promulgating todays terrorist acts sponsored by nonstate actors can be understood when considered in terms of common sense. The fact that covert channels operate so far beyond social and even national boundaries, usually serving a fairly basic function of trade in goods, information, or ideas, means that those who use them are fairly immune to the social problems that cause people to turn to them in times of need. People who dont have resources provided by a government, such as Palestinians, are forced to ask for humanitarian assistance for the vulnerable people in their midst, such as medicines, or foodstuffs, from the people who operate these channels: people who are viscerally violent and more than likely, the most dangerous people in existence. The cost to human nature is understandable, for the gamble between whether or not one will succeed in fulfilling ones obligations to protect ones community is ceaseless. One is forced to accept the damage that occurs to ones nature, for one has no choice but to protect the elderly and young in ones community, for nobody else can. The current problem of terrorism is absolutely the direct result of the failure of professionals (diplomats, and specialists who inform them) such as those at Madrid in 1991, to fulfill their most sacred of duties to their nations, and to mankind. The current problem is not hopeless, and can be addressed. I submit that conditions that were equally as perilous and complex have always

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existed regarding this problem, whether they had been faced with equanimity by Rogers, Carter, Habib, or eventually, Kissinger and Haig. We dont lack for inspiration. In 1976, Jimmy Carter took up a cold mission once again. In spite of his disappointment at not having succeeded in its complete execution in his tenure as president, it was a lasting testament to a gesture having been made in good faith. Such gestures are timeless, and have long dividends on all channels.

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Bibliography

Halevy, Efraim, Man in the Shadows, (New York: St.Martins Griffin, 2006) p. 180 Halevy, Ibid. p. 43

3 Halevy, Ibid. p.51 4 Halevy, Ibid. p. 179 5 Gates, Robert M., From the Shadows (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p.251 6 Assessing the Quality of Democracy, ed. Diamond, Larry, and Morlino, Leonardo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university Press, 2005), p.3 7 Helms, Richard, A Look Over My Shoulder (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003) p. 302 8 Pappe, Ilan, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land two Peoples, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2006), p. 207. 9 Carter, Jimmy Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2006) p. 79 10 Fisk, Robert, Pity the Nation (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 2002), p. 468n.

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