Talking in the Middle East

Resumption of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian authorities is significant and welcome and not the only important news lately to come out of the Middle East. The need for that last bit of perspective is keen in the U.S., where laudable activism on behalf of peace in Israel contrasts with a drift toward dangerous oblivion elsewhere.

Oct. 6, 1997

4 min read

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks deserve international support. They demand much from participants. Suicide bombings in Israel by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) this summer showed how far opponents of peace will go to make their hateful point. The threat of violence puts tremendous political and security pressures on Israe* President Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who took huge risks to renew talks after a chilly 6-month pause. If negotiations are ever to produce durable peace, each leader will have to risk even more.

Iraq, Iran

While Israel's important drama entered its new stage, however, much was happening in Iraq and Iran, targets of a U.S. policy called "dual containment" and premier holders of oil and gas reserves.

Iraq, toward the end of September, sustained military incursions on two fronts. With the backing of Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party, Turkey sent troops, tanks, and warplanes into northern Iraq to fight separatist Turkish Kurds of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Turkey said it was responding to reinforcement of PKK guerrilla forces from Syria and Iran. The PKK has been fighting for independence since 1984 and is blamed for terrorism in Turkey.

The Iraqi foreign ministry, meanwhile, said Iranian aircraft attacked parts of Iraq's Daiyla and Kut provinces. The strikes apparently targeted bases from which the Mujahideen Khalq, which opposes the Islamic government in Tehran, directs operations in Iran. At about the time of the reported air assaults, Total of France was confirming that it had signed a multibillion-dollar agreement with National Iranian Oil Co. to develop South Pars field in defiance of U.S. sanctions (see related story, p. 31).

Dual containment should not make the U.S. aloof to portentous border skirmishes and world-class business deals in countries where it has interests. Dual containment is a poor reason to act as though the only issue of significance in the Middle East is whether Netanyahu and Arafat are speaking to each other. Dual containment is beginning to look creaky.

Part of America's rigidity grows out of refusal to acknowledge that Middle Eastern oil matters greatly to U.S. interests. Talk about ending U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil is wishful thinking. The U.S. participates in an interdependent global economy that needs internationally traded oil, a significant share of which will always come from the Middle East. U.S. interests are thus linked through those of all trading economies to the political developments of Middle Eastern producers.

Fault lines

It should raise concern in the U.S. that Iraq's fault lines are showing strain: the Kurds in the north, the restive border with Iran, the heavy and repressed population of Shi'ite Muslims in the south. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein can't live forever. When he is gone, what happens to Iraq and its lavish oil endowment? And how long can the U.S. afford to sustain its wholesale snub of Iran, the resource-rich land bridge between the Persian Gulf and resurgent countries surrounding the Caspian Sea?

It is ironic that the nation so uniquely able to keep Palestinians and Israelis talking about peace so clumsily mishandles important affairs nearby. There's no need for a cozy U.S. embrace of the Middle East's renegades; indeed, there are good reasons to remain tough. But if the U.S. government continues to assert the value of meetings between Netanyahu and Arafat in Israel, as it should, it can hardly support the case for blind disengagement from other Middle Eastern countries where its interests are similarly strong.