Arms Edge Helps Israel, To a Point

Not long ago the United States and Israel signed a memorandum affirming an arrangement under which Washington would largely foot the bill for development of an Israeli missile-defense rocket called the Arrow.

Considering the spread of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, the Israeli interest in missile defense is natural. But time is running out on Israel’s heavy reliance on military means for safeguarding its security.

According to persistent reports from the Middle East, the Palestine Liberation Organization is moving toward implicit or even explicit recognition of Israel, coupled with announcements of a provisional Palestinian government. If that happens, the ball will be in the Israeli court.

Ever since the birth of Israel 40 years ago, the Israelis have fought wars against hostile, more populous Arab states that denied Israel’s very right to exist.

What the Israelis lacked in numbers they had to make up with qualitative superiority: More advanced weapons, able military leaders and highly motivated fighting men.

The combination has succeeded brilliantly. But Arab oil wealth and the spread of missiles in the region are beginning to make a difference.

The Soviets have long been major arms suppliers to such Arab states as Syria, Iraq, Libya and, in earlier years, Egypt. But the Israelis managed to stay ahead, thanks in part to their access to U.S. military technology and advanced weaponry.

The Israelis are also widely assumed to have components for dozens of nuclear weapons that, if all else failed, could be used to destroy the capitals and economic infrastructures of attacking Arab states.

A combination of circumstances threaten the relevance of the Israelis’ military edge.

Israel and the occupied territories already contain more than 2 million Arabs. Around the turn of the century these Arabs may actually come to outnumber the Jews. Military might is of limited usefulness against this challenge.

Then there is the alarming spread of ballistic missiles.

Soviet-supplied Scud-B missiles with a range of 170 miles have long been aimed from Syria at Israel, whose own Jericho missiles are capable of striking Arab targets through most of the Middle East.

Until recently, however, the missiles have not been considered dangerously destabilizing. That assessment is changing.

Thousands of people were killed by missile exchanges in the Iran-Iraq war, where both sides were equipped with Soviet-supplied missiles bearing conventional, non-nuclear warheads.

But the alarm bells really went off with the Chinese sale to Saudi Arabia of East Wind missiles with a range of at least 1,500 miles--enough to strike at Israel from anywhere in the region.

Now Libya, Kuwait and Syria all are reported interested in Chinese missiles of their own. Medium-range missiles under development in Brazil and Argentina are attracting interest in Egypt and Iraq.

Military purists note that the Chinese-supplied missiles are inaccurate and vulnerable to preemptive attack.

But Israel, 90% of whose population is crammed into an area the size of Dallas, could suffer terrifying losses even from inaccurate missiles if they were armed with chemical or nuclear warheads.

As the Egyptian foreign minister recently warned, it is unrealistic to expect that the Arabs will permanently accept a situation in which Israel has a nuclear capability and they don’t.

Nuclear weapons aside, chemical arms were used to horrifying effect in the gulf war. The Israelis cannot be sure that they won’t someday be used against Tel Aviv.

Israel relies chiefly on the threat of devastating retaliation to keep such things from happening. But building a missile defense system in case deterrence fails makes sense--up to a point.

At best, Israel’s Arrow defensive system will work only against shorter-range missiles. And no missile defense system can be leak-proof anyway. The inescapable conclusion is that, in the future, no amount of U.S. military aid can keep Israel secure in the absence of movement toward political accommodation with its neighbors.

Such an accommodation is impossible until the Arabs are prepared to accept the existence of Israel and live in peace. Up to now, the PLO and the more radical Arab states have failed that test.

Under these circumstances the Israeli government has refused, despite prodding from Washington, to consider the trade of occupied territory for peace.

However, the riots in the occupied territories, coupled with King Hussein’s renunciation of Jordanian responsibility for the West Bank, may be creating a new situation in which the PLO must reckon with support among West Bank Palestinians for recognition of Israel in exchange for Palestinian self-rule.

Long experience has given the Israelis ample grounds for skepticism. But even if an offer of recognition were to be judged sincere, the Likud bloc of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir appears inflexibly opposed to the surrender of any or all of the occupied territories in exchange.

Still, the world has a right to expect that the Israelis, while being prudently skeptical of PLO leaders bearing gifts, bring the same skill, imagination and energy to a quest for peace that they have devoted to the quest for a now-fading military superiority.