India has once again reiterated its stand on the Palestinian issue. This is legitimate on several counts. Israel has been wholly intransigent in negotiations with Egypt on the issue of autonomy for the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza. It has capped it with an invasion of Lebanon. Thousands of people have died and many have been rendered homeless as a result. Tel Aviv under Mr. Begin is in fact behaving as if it recognizes no international law. But it is one thing to state the unexceptionable proposition, as Mr. PV Narasimha Rao has done, that a permanent solution has to be found to the long-standing Palestinian issue, and quite another to offer suggestions which bear some relation to the reality on the ground. India, it is true, does not command sufficient clout to be heeded in the present Lebanese crisis and as such is not well placed to make specific proposals. But that only shows that it serves little purpose to reaffirm principles.
The Lebanese crisis has provided another demonstration of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over its Arab foes. It has shown that the gap has grown enormously since 1973 to Israel’s advantage. Similarly, it has not only provided another demonstration of the inability of Arab governments to unite in the face of the Israeli challenge, but also exposed their ambivalence towards the Palestinian armed struggle. For, none of the Arab states has shown the slightest willingness to provide asylum for the guerillas now trapped in West Beirut. Above all, it has shown that in their extremity the Arabs, too, have nowhere else to turn than the United States for protection against Israel. It is notable that the Syrian foreign minister has gone to Washington to offer a plan for the evacuation of the Palestinian guerillas and not to Moscow for more arms. Syria has a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union which entitles it to ask for more military assistance. But such aid has not enabled it to stand up to Israel and is wholly irrelevant in the present context. President Brezhnev himself must know that to be the case. On his own, he has contented himself with verbal denunciations of Israel and the United States, opposition to the introduction of US troops and a vague proposal for placing a UN peace-keeping force in Beirut. All in all it is self-evident that only a solution acceptable to Israel can help avert the destruction of West Beirut and the PLO guerillas with it and that only the Reagan administration can bring pressure to bear on Tel Aviv. The rest of us can do no more than use such influence as we have in Washington to persuade it to take a tougher stand with Israel. For all we know, Israel’s victory may turn out to be a pyrrhic one. It may set in motion a chain of events which Israel and the United States with their combined power may not be able to control. But that is in the future. At the moment, it is necessary to concentrate on finding a solution to the Lebanese crisis.