In Form and Function, Mideast Terrorism Is--or Should Be--Predictable

Once again, Middle East terrorism has reached out across 8,000 miles to shock and horrify the American people. Once again, we discover that there is precious little that can be done militarily without doing more damage to U.S. interests than to the terrorists. And once again we are tempted to ignore a critical lesson: that more bloodshed will ensue as long as the region’s politics resist basic change.

In the last few days, longstanding patterns of behavior in the Middle East have reasserted themselves, like some earthly version of celestial mechanics, with each entity moving in assigned and predictable ways.

To the extent that it can be dated, the current crisis began earlier this year when the new Bush Administration indicated that it was serious about Arab-Israeli peacemaking, in contrast to its predecessor, which, at its best, was lukewarm. But every effort to move toward peace also stimulates those who prefer the status quo, because they either profit from turmoil or fear the future.

Thus, as the United States sought to help politics “ripen” in both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, it had to steel its nerves against acts of terrorism, laid to Palestinians, that seemed designed to discredit the new-found diplomacy of the PLO’s chairman, Yasser Arafat. Israel’s coalition government had to resist assault from the right over Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s proposal for elections in the occupied territories. His leadership was further threatened by charges that, in talking with Palestinians, he was somehow negotiating with the PLO.

As much as anything else, Israel’s kidnaping last week of Hezbollah leader Sheik Abdel Kareem Obeid, presumably to try swapping him for three Israeli soldiers held captive in Lebanon, was a product of this political logic--a bow by Shamir to his right so that he could continue moving to his left. The response by a group calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed of the Earth was equally in the character of the Middle East: to apply pressure on Israel by striking at the United States.

Whether or not the figure portrayed in the grisly videotape was Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, and whether or not he was murdered this week or months ago, the United States is again faced with the unique dilemmas of terrorism, compounded in this case by threats to other Americans held captive in Lebanon. Uncertainty surrounds the identity of the group carrying out the execution and even its precise motives: Did it act simply to secure Obeid’s release? Or did it also want to drive a wedge between the United States and Israel, or to discredit the fledgling peace process? Or perhaps this was at least partly an effort to deter Western nations from developing better relations with Iran under President Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose election last Friday coincided with the Israeli raid.

There is no clear way to apply the massive military power of the United States--thus the renewal of national frustration that terrorism so often produced during the Carter and Reagan years. There will be debate about the wisdom and the efficacy of dealing with the terrorists-- “caving in.” And there will be dispute about whether Israel should be asked to let Obeid go, as the United States pressed it to release 766 Shiite prisoners in 1985 to secure the release of Americans held captive on hijacked TWA flight 847.

The classical mechanics of a Middle East crisis took a further turn when President Bush cut short a two-day trip to return to Washington, convened the National Security Council and set lights burning late at night. As he demonstrated in dealing with Panama earlier this year, there can be virtue in saying much as part of doing little when little is all that can be done. But the Middle East imposes its special logic, and Bush seems to be ignoring a cardinal lesson of the Iranian hostage crisis: Dramatizing presidential involvement raises the stakes, it provides added opportunities for terrorists to manipulate American public opinion, and it magnifies any failure to find actions that are both effective and prudent.

In the days ahead, each figure in the apparatus of Middle East politics will make his moves, and then this episode, too, shall pass. But it will surely not be the last, repeating itself perhaps in another guise, with yet more human suffering.

During recent years, U.S. debate has turned on whether there is urgency in prosecuting peace between Israel and its neighbors. Until Egypt took itself out of the military equation, the answer was clearly “yes.” But during the years since then, the risks of U.S. diplomatic reticence have been far less clear. What is happening now in the region should end the argument: For the United States, there will be no peace of mind until there is peace in the Middle East.