The Reagan No-Go Plan

Reagan proposes a plan devoid of any sense.

On 30th November 1981, in the aftermath of Camp David, the US and Israel entered into an agreement. They would cooperate on matters of security, each would provide the other with military assistance, and they would participate in joint military exercises. Ostensibly, its aim was to thwart the expansionist activities of the Soviets. There was an element of truth in this, but for the most part, it window dressing. The reason was the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel’s noncompliance with Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and the failure of the Accords. It was a bribe.

Because there had been little progress since Camp David, in 1982, the UN General Assembly convened a conference on the Question of Palestine. It took place in Genève the following year, from the 29th August to the 7th September 1983. It was attended by 117 full member states, 20 observer states, and the PLO. Israel and the US opposed the Conference. Israel had little standing in the global community and did not want a full frontal global confrontation. The US was its only real ally.

The Conference approved a Program of Action for the Achievement of Palestinian Rights, and recommended measures to be taken by all states, the UN, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. The Conference decided that Middle Eastern peace conferences should be convened only under United Nations auspices, with the participation, on an equal footing, of all parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the PLO.

Before the 1983 Conference, on the 1st September 1982, US President Ronald Reagan spoke to the nation and called for autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories, with Jordan, and a freeze on Israeli settlements. The Reagan Plan was land for peace and incorporated 242 and 338. He spoke on the very day of the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut. He expected the US military, which had engineered the evacuation to be able to leave Lebanon within two weeks.

He told the nation that the resolution of Lebanon was but the first step on the path to peace in the Middle East. Both the Arabs and Jews had been long suffering, and that the involvement of the US was a moral imperative (whatever did he mean?) The US demanded peace, and added:

• The Middle East was strategically important to the US, and the globe’s economy was strongly influenced by instability in the Middle East
• The US was committed to the survival and territorial integrity of friendly states, and it had humanitarian concerns.

He continued that while the US will certainly help rebuild Lebanon, there were two issues to deal with: Soviet expansion in the Middle East, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the latter he embraced Camp David. The next step was autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs. He failed to link the three issues. In each case the problem was Israel. It had invaded Lebanon and was the cause of the Lebanese problems, it had illegally occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights, and the Soviets had been able to expand their sphere of influence because of Israel’s insincerity, its refusal to address the issues and intransigence and its ongoing habit of breaking the law and agreements.

He emphasized that Israel’s military would not bring about a solution. He saw the question quite simplistically, in binary, black and white terms. It was how to reconcile Israel’s security with the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. He was unable to understand that a solution to the latter would resolve the former. He failed to understand that the real issue was that Israel coveted the occupied territories and was not going to give them up. So, he concluded that Israel must recognize that their security can only be achieved with peace, and the Palestinian Arabs and Arab states must recognize that Israel had a right to exist. Israel was an accomplished fact and deserved unchallenged legitimacy, that few states accepted this, and no Arab state except Egypt acknowledged Israel, but “it has a right to exist in peace … and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts”. Reagan could not see, so could not ask why Israel had so little support. Almost all on the globe recognized Israel as an illegal state, an imposter colonial settler state.

When he turned to Camp David and explained that there were two reasons for the five-year transition. The first was that the Palestinian Arabs had to prove that they could run their own affairs, and the second was to demonstrate that autonomy posed no threat to Israel’s security. Both statements were irrelevant and examples of pedestrian stupidity and untarnished arrogance. Palestine was Palestinian Arab land, and their competence or otherwise was irrelevant. In any case, they had amply demonstrated that they could run their own affairs. Israel’s security was Israel’s problem, not something for the Palestinian Arabs to be concerned with. It could only be resolved when there was peace and a Palestinian state in Palestine.

US Secretary of State George Schultz was the first member of a US administration to say that the rights of the Palestinian Arab must be addressed. He did so on the 12th July 1982. In fact he revealed his hand when he hinted that there may be a way to align the US and Arab interests if it led to displacing the Soviets. The Reagan Plan was the first high level proposal that accorded recognition of Palestinian rights, and that the West Bank and Gaza were occupied territories. It did not, however, acknowledge any right other than autonomy in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

Reagan recognized that the Palestinian Arab cause was more than the refugee problem of US administrations prior to Carter, and Israel. He demanded that as the settlements had little to do with Israel’s security, there must be a freeze. Their presence certainly degraded rather than enhanced Israel’s security, but regardless of whether it did or did not, it was irrelevant. They were on Palestinian Arab land and must go.

Reagan then announced his bombshell. The US did not support the establishment of a permanent Palestinian state, nor did it support Israeli annexation, nor sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza should form a self-governing body with Jordan! He announced that important issues like borders would be determined in the future. This was absurd. Borders were a large part of the problem. His proposal, if implemented, would have resolved very little. Israel would have been able to define the borders in any way it wanted, and Israel wanted the West Bank and Gaza.
Similarly, Jerusalem was to be undivided, but a matter for future negotiation. The Reagan Plan ignored an essential issue.

One of his summing points framed his ignorance. He said that Israel’s act of giving up of territory would be heavily affected by the extent of true peace … and security arrangements offered. It was not Israeli territory to give up, and of course, one has peace, or one does not. It does not come in degrees. The copout was a disguised Israeli threat.

It is important to consider the context in which Reagan made his remarks and note the views that Israel had made public in late 1981 and in the spring of 1982, in the months before Reagan spoke. In December 1981, Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli Defense Minister said the two major threats to Israel were the Arab states and the Soviets. His message was a plea to the US. He wanted the US to understand that Israel was a democratic buffer against Soviet expansion and stable ground in the Middle East. Given the occupation, Israel was neither democratic, not a buffer. It was certainly not a place of stability. It was rather a lever which cranked up instability. Consider its wars.

In respect of the Arab threat, he was correct. They were a threat to Israel’s existence, but he missed the point when he set out the reasons. Sharon explained that the source of unrest were the radical ideologies of some Arab regimes. These included Syria, Libya, Iraq and South Yemen. They and the PLO, wanted to wipe Israel of the map. They did, but the reason was not because of a radical ideology. In this respect their converging ideologies were rather conservative. The animosity came from Israel’s belligerent, illegal occupation of Palestinian Arab land. For some this was all of Palestine, for others it was the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, Israel consistently flouted agreements, most recently, the Camp David Accords. It had refused to vacate the occupied territories, it claimed sovereignty over them and would not recognize the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. It was clear that absent any resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict the default option was to dismantle Israel, using any available means.

Sharon was also correct when he said that the Arab states looked to the USSR for support. The Soviets wanted to expand their sphere of influence by leveraging the Arab states. Their goal too, was to eliminate Israel. Sharon was hardly insightful.

Sharon punctuated his statements with remarks about terrorism, stability, danger to the free world and vital interests without applying these epithets to the source of the problem, Israel itself. True to form, he said that Israel must be pro-active, and acquire superior weapons and be vigilant. It must react to possible threats of danger, like troop movements in non-Israeli territory.

A few months later, in the spring of 1982, Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and ex-Irgun terrorist leader, added to the conversation. He attempted to deflect attention by claiming that the Arab-Israeli conflict was but a small part of the problem in the Middle East, and not related to the wider unrest. He denied that the problem was the Israeli presence in the occupied territories for the reason that they were not Palestinian land. The home of the Palestinian Arabs was Jordan! He said that Israel would not bestow sovereignty on the 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories because the territory was Israeli. These remarks besides being ludicrous, were inflammatory and a measure of the logic, and self-serving fact free nonsense to expect.

He claimed that the Camp David autonomy plan for the occupied territories had resolved the issues, which of course, it had not. He told us that the solution was transitional in order that the Arab and Jewish occupants could learn to live with each other. He explained the reason why Israel had not exercised its sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza. It was that at the end of five years, the Arabs would accept Israeli sovereignty, and as Israel had not then claimed sovereignty, neither should the Palestinians. For Sharon, the pre-1967 armistice lines were unacceptable, and Israel would not return to them. Finally, to talk to the PLO, “would elevate its standing from that of a terrorist organization to that of a recognized aspirant to a totally superfluous political entity”.
Shamir shut the door on peace with Israel’s neighbors by saying that Israel would only welcome peace treaties that were based on the Accords. He said that as Israel had invested heavily in the Sinai, and returned it to Egypt, Israel had gone a long way to implementing Resolution 242. This was more nonsense. It was Egyptian territory, and there was nothing to return.

Shamir, remember he was a terrorist wanted by the British Mandate Administration for premeditated murder, larceny, and terrorism, was crazy. There was little point discussing anything with him.

The Palestinian Arabs and the neighboring Arabs state all rejected the Reagan Plan, as did, ultimately, Israel (Reagan thought he could bring them around!). There were many gaps: it disregarded the refugees right to return, self-determination, establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the recognition of the PLO.

Copyright (c) 2018, Christopher John Brickill. All rights are reserved, and the moral rights of Christopher John Brickhill as the Author have been asserted by him.