Episode Transcript
You’re listening to a podcast by Lance Lambert Ministries. For more information on this ministry, visit www.lancelambert.org or follow us on social media to receive all of our updates.
In today’s episode, we’re continuing with the next chapter of the audiobook for Battle for Israel by Lance Lambert. Let’s listen to Chapter 2.
Chapter 2
How Long Peace?
On November 11th, 1973, the cease-fire was signed. Since then the Arabs have been assiduously involved in a military build-up. By June 1974, military personnel had arrived in the Middle East from Yugoslavia, Russia and other Eastern European countries as well as from North Korea, North Vietnam and Cuba. Their task is to supervise the more sophisticated weapons given to these states by the Soviet Union. For example, seven hundred and fifty Cubans are manning a tank brigade in Syria, and there are over three thousand Russian advisers at operational level in the Syrian armed forces. The Russians are manning ground-to-ground missiles and installing ground-to-air missile-launchers. There are forty-eight North Korean pilots on active duty in the Egyptian air force, and East Germany has sent pilots and electronic warfare specialists.
So Syria has become one vast arsenal and her readiness for war has doubled, or possibly trebled, since October 1973. There is a similar picture when you look at Iraq. Her armed forces have received one thousand T-54 and T-62 tanks, various missiles, including Frog ground-to-ground missiles, and three hundred and fifty planes, including the new Tupolev 22 long-range bomber. Iraq’s forces now have between one thousand and twelve hundred Soviet advisers. There are so many Soviet advisers in Somalia and Aden that through their influence they could actually close down the Babel Mandeb Straits and so block the whole Red Sea to shipping whenever they wish.
Nor are the Arabs short of money: at the Rabat Conference in October 1974, a fighting fund was set up by the oil-rich Arab states placing £500,000,000 a year at the disposal of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Another £35,000,000 per year was given to South Yemen to establish a major Arab military base at the Babel Mandeb Straits.
In the autumn of 1973, Dr. Joseph Luns, NATO Secretary- General and Dutch ex-Foreign Minister, warned the NATO foreign ministers concerning the Soviet Union’s intentions with these words: ‘I feel very much like I did in 1936−37, watching the Nazi war machine build up while they signed peace treaties and made pacts taking in most, if not all, of the governments of Europe.’ He went on to warn them: ‘Countries do not equip themselves with vast armaments and devote enormous resources to the acquisition of vast military strength if they do not contemplate exploiting it.’ While the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO countries have been talking of forces and weapons reduction, the Soviet Union and her Eastern European allies have been involved in an unprecedented military build-up.
The former British Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, patched up a quarrel between Britain and the Soviet Union over the expulsion of a hundred spies some years ago. He returned from Moscow however, to tell the same NATO foreign ministers’ conference not to sign a forces and weapons reduction agreement at the present time. Some light may be thrown on his attitude by Max van der Stoel, the present Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs, who said at the same conference, ‘We have to ask ourselves if the Soviets did not perhaps put the Arabs up to using the weapon of oil to undercut the economies of the industrialized West. Indeed, we in NATO have to find out if the Soviets did not instigate the Arab attack on Israel itself.’
The oil embargo was agreed upon by the Arab oil producing states in January 1973, nine months before the war began. Holland was selected for a total embargo at the same time. Two-thirds of Western Europe’s oil is refined in the port of Rotterdam, Holland. In the short term, disengagement seems wonderful; at least the Israeli prisoners have come back from Syria, and the Syrian prisoners have returned to their families. It has meant that war has ceased, the shooting has stopped, and lives are not being lost.
However, it is in fact a short-term peace and a long-term escalation and in my personal view is therefore a tragedy.
I was in Israel during the whole course of the disengagement talks with Syria when Kissinger was flying every day to Damascus from Jerusalem and then back again in the evening and at one point it seemed that the whole thing would break down. Russia had an interest in preventing the disengagement from succeeding, mainly because the United States, caught as she was in the middle, wanted it. The United States has been working over-time to get Egypt, Jordan and Syria into her camp and away from Russia’s. She must support Israel because of the large and powerful Jewish population in America. Yet she cannot afford to be anti-Arab because of her growing need for Middle East oil and her £ 1,500,000,000 investment in Arab oil production.
Even if Israel withdrew from her present borders, while the Arab world is still aligned with Russia, a third world war would seem to be inevitable, because the United States would have to guarantee the Israeli frontiers and the Soviet Union the Arab frontiers. There would then be the real possibility of a super-power confrontation. The Americans are fully aware of this, and they are putting colossal pressure on the Israeli Cabinet to withdraw, which means that they know they would have to guarantee Israel’s boundaries. The motive has been to entice Egypt, Syria and Jordan into the American camp, as well as Israel. This would enable them to act as guarantor to both the Israelis and the Arabs, rather than having the Russians on one side and themselves on the other.
It is reasonably clear so far that Dr. Kissinger is succeeding in getting Egypt into the American camp. Syria however, is another matter, as is Jordan at the present time. The Soviet Union tried to disrupt the disengagement talks and rumour has it that there were two assassination attempts on Kissinger while he was in Damascus. It is widely believed in Israeli government circles that these were the result of Russian KGB activities.
I believe it would be self-deception to think that this disengagement is the first step in peace. Israel has lost every advantage that she so dearly fought for with the lives of her sons. The disengagement zone in the Golan is so narrow, that the
Syrians can fire right over the United Nations forces into Israel. It is, however, Mount Hermon, the most strategic military strong point in the whole of the north that Israel was so anxious to control. From its summit you can see the whole of the road to Damascus and you have not only a commanding view of the Golan Heights and all Southern Lebanon but also all of upper Galilee and on a clear day all military manoeuvres can be spotted from this peak. Israel was particularly interested therefore in regaining the Mount Hermon fortress and all three peaks of Hermon. Before the Yom Kippur War Israel held the lower two peaks, but not the highest which actually overlooks Damascus. This she obtained through bitter fighting indeed, relatively more men were lost in the battle for the Hermon peak than in any other campaign in the war. In the disengagement however, the Hermon peak was taken away from Israel and went under United Nations control. This is a pathetic position for Israel because the Syrians could now build military posts all around the United Nations area of control. Then all Syria would have to do would be to order the United Nations out and the United Nations would have to go. They cannot hold the area.
There are a number of other disadvantages to the ceasefire. Syria for example refused to guarantee officially that terrorists would not act against Israel from Syria. Understandably it was felt in Israel that if Syria really wanted peace, she would have guaranteed this. Then why did Israel agree to a cease-fire with such humiliating disadvantages for her? An Israeli expert on foreign affairs whom I asked about the Hermon peak said that it was a total waste of life as indeed all the loss of life on the Golan front. I then asked him, ‘Isn’t it better to keep fighting, rather than agree to something which is so much to your disadvantage?’
He replied, ‘No, we cannot do anything else, because of the pressure that Kissinger is putting on us.’
Kissinger, although he later denied it, implied that the United States would withhold economic aid unless Israel was prepared to withdraw from ‘occupied territory’. This is why Israel agreed to give back the Hermon peak, to withdraw from Syria and for the first time to give up territory already claimed by Israeli settlers on the Golan, that is the El Quneitra triangle. El Quneitra which was once the centre for the whole of the Golan is now a ghost town. Under the terms of the agreed disengagement, Syria was to resettle the civilian population in Quneitra. Only sixteen civilians have been allowed to return and that appears ominous to Israel.
Syria is not satisfied. She wants back all of the Golan. Many have accused the old Israeli Cabinet of a tactical error in giving back El Quneitra because it means that Israel has now no more ground to hand back. If she surrenders any more, the whole of Galilee will be at the mercy of Syria. From the Golan Heights she could then fire down upon all the settlements in Northern Galilee. At the present time therefore, Israel considers Syria the real threat rather than Egypt.
It is widely believed that Egypt wants peace at least far more than Syria does, because she has reopened the Suez Canal. She wants to make Port Said a great tourist centre and the civilian population has already begun to return. From January 1, 1976, Port Said has been declared a tax-free haven to encourage foreign investment. Furthermore, both Ismailia and Suez are being rebuilt and resettled. Egypt has even condemned some forms of Arab terrorism for the first time. She may therefore really mean what she has said about ending hostilities. Moreover, Israel is in a better position to negotiate with Egypt about Sinai as there is much more of Sinai which Israel is prepared to surrender to Egypt than there is of the Golan to give back to Syria. As things are now if Syria demands that she move back, Israel is almost forced to refuse. That is why she gave priority to talks with Egypt, in order to avoid a confrontation with Syria.
We are beginning to see a very interesting regrouping in the Middle East. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are gradually moving together into a block which is for peace on certain terms. Certainly, Egypt is moving towards the American sphere of influence, and away from the Russian. On the other hand, Syria, Iraq, Libya and the Palestinian Liberation Organization are becoming more and more adamant in their demands and have moved further into the Soviet camp, while Jordan and the Lebanon have become unwilling partners with them. It is interesting to note the change of policy in Jordan. King Hussein wisely kept Jordan out of the Yom Kippur War, but his influence and prestige suffered as a result. In the Spring of 1975 he began what he publicly called ‘the panic buying of arms’. Having been ruled out as the representative of the Palestinian people, he realized that in the next round of fighting he must play a practical role. Since the U.S. was somewhat reluctant to supply him with all the arms he wanted, he has now turned to the Soviet Union for military help and aid and Syria and Jordan have set up a united military high command. Furthermore, the whole Jordanian frontier with Israel has been prepared for war. Israel has taken this new Jordanian policy very seriously and has responded by preparing defences along her entire border. King Hussein’s dilemma is sad. He does not want war, yet he is being forced to compromise and to go to war in any renewed fighting.
The Lebanese dilemma is even more sad. Having played with fire Lebanon herself is being burned. She allowed her country to become the springboard for many PLO actions against Israel and now finds herself well-nigh powerless to cope with the Marxist minority bent on the destruction of her country as a Christian- Arab state. In 1975, in ten months of civil war, ten thousand Lebanese have died. By now the number of dead may well have doubled. Twenty-two thousand have been wounded and three thousand six hundred businesses in the capital alone have been destroyed. It will take years for Lebanon to recover to the kind of state she was and in the meantime Syria and the PLO both emerge with a stronger influence over the Lebanon than ever before.
Could Israel have won the Yom Kippur War? I do not think that the Israeli defence forces ever thought that it would be feasible to take either Damascus or Cairo. The reason, of course, is that it would take a large number of men to govern such antagonistic populations. At the same time, the general feeling was that Israel was robbed of a decisive victory by Kissinger’s diplomacy, for the Israelis had the Egyptians on the run and surrounding them and bringing them to surrender would have meant a decisive victory. Kissinger believed, however, that Arab pride would only make such a humiliating blow the ground for further war.
Both sides consider it a grave possibility that the war will be resumed. King Hussein, interviewed on the BBC at the beginning of 1975, solemnly warned that unless the lost momentum for peace is quickly regained, war is inevitable and would be a disaster for the whole world. The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin said in the spring of 1975, ‘We must expect the resumption of war
from the north, that is from Syria.’ Probably the first sign will be that Syria will order the United Nations out of the buffer zone. Israel’s new policy appears to be that the moment that happens, she will make a pre-emptive strike. Of course, that would incur the wrath of the Third World and much of the Western world. What will Israel do about the missile problem which caused her to lose so many planes in the Yom Kippur War? I am not a technical expert, but I understand that a number of Israeli planes have been fitted with a new chiming device to track incoming missiles. We must remember that the Yom Kippur War very quickly became a trial run for a third world war. The Soviet Union began to send in all kinds of new weapons in order to try them out under conditions of actual war. Even the Pentagon did not know of the existence of some of these. One example is the latest SAM missiles which have no equivalent in the West. Another is the mines in the Gulf of Suez which neither the American and British navies nor the Israeli navy were able to neutralize. They had to call in the Soviet navy to do this, because the West has no equivalent mines. The Yom Kippur War was therefore a kind of testing ground for new weapons.
Along with the other problems confronting Israel is the spectre of insolvency. It cost Israel up to one hundred million pounds sterling for every day between October 6th and November 11th, 1973, and since then around four million pounds for every day of general mobilization. The threat of renewed war and continual terrorist activity both out and inside Israel have reduced her tourist earnings which are her most important means of gaining foreign currency. Moreover, the new-found Arab wealth is influencing not only the many nations of the Third World, but the elder nations of the West also. According to an expert’s report submitted to a foreign relations subcommittee of the American Congress in the Spring of 1975, the Arabs could buy up every share on Wall Street within seven months if they so desired, simply by using the surplus profits from oil. Such wealth has its own influence upon the nations seeking economic well- being. There is no doubt whatever that this wealth has been used to influence certain nations against Israel. It is now an accepted fact that if the Arabs withdrew their money from London it would spell disaster for Britain. It is now apparent that the Arab intention is to keep up the war atmosphere in order to drain away Israel’s life and smash her economy, then when she is at her weakest, the Arabs can deal her a death blow. This plan appears to be working very successfully. With inflation of about twenty-five per cent (it was twenty-three and a half percent in 1975) recrimination as a result of the war and a good deal of industrial discontent, Israel is facing insolvency. Humanly speaking, her future is bleak. The enormous military resources of her neighbours, the rapidly expanding Arab wealth, Israel’s growing isolation, the aloofness (if not coolness) of her former friends, her dwindling foreign exchange and the inevitability of war, all spell Israel’s collapse.
There is, however, in this dark and gloomy scene one ray of hope which is like the morning star shining in the darkest part of the night to herald the coming of a glorious dawn. It is the Word of God. For Israel is now the cornerstone of world politics and will be to the end of this age. Through Israel God reveals that history is not a tangle of confused strands, but that in it He is working all things according to the counsel of His will. In Zechariah 12:2, 3, 6, God says, ‘I will make Jerusalem and Judah like a cup of poison to all the nearby nations that send their armies to surround Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be a heavy stone burdening the world. And though all the nations of the earth unite in an attempt to move her, they will all be crushed ... In that day I will make the clans of Judah like a little fire that sets the forest aflame−like a burning match among the sheaves; they will burn up all the neighbouring nations right and left, while Jerusalem stands unmoved’ (The Living Bible). That is the one thing we can say, with certainty. Come what may, Jerusalem will be where Jerusalem has ever been, because God has decreed it.
Of course, I deplore the fact that so many lost their lives in the Yom Kippur War, but I thank God that it is one of the means by which he is driving that nation to Himself. For I believe that God is bringing the Israelis step by step and stage by stage to realize that they don’t have sufficient resources within themselves with which to face the future and that they must therefore look beyond themselves. Their growing isolation among the nations means that they cannot depend on any other nation. The plan of God is in this and something tremendous is happening.
You’ve been listening to chapter 2 of the audiobook for Battle for Israel by Lance Lambert. For more information, or to purchase the full audiobook, please visit our website www.lancelambert.org. May you know the deep deep love of Jesus.
