Volume 38, Number 17 · October 24, 1991
Showdown
By Arthur Hertzberg
For the first time, an administration in Washington has linked further American generosity toward Israel to Israel's willingness to stop further settlements on the West Bank. The government in Israel and officials of American Jewish organizations have reacted by denouncing President Bush for using a humanitarian cause, the need to finance the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews, as a weapon in his battle against Yitzhak Shamir's expansionist policies. But these denunciations fail to conceal the real issue, which is whether American-backed aid is to finance the absorption of the West Bank into Israel, thus making an eventual exchange of territory for peace impossible. Both the Israeli government and the leaders of American Jewish organizations know that, whether a peace conference soon takes place or not, the long-predicted fight over the future of the territories that Israel acquired in the war of June 1967 has finally begun.
Feature, 3095 words
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