Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee376part well,” the Labor Party journal Davar wrote, commenting on the visitto the U.S. by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that ended with aphotograph at the White House with Reagan looking somber instead ofsmiling at his guest, a symbolic “message” that elicited muchcommentary by Washington watchers in the U.S. media—thecounterpart of Kreminologists who pore over pictures of Soviet rulers totry to determine who is in favor today. Israeli Washington watchersinterpreted the message differently, and more realistically. “I think that[Shamir’s] visit was extremely positive,” the Washington correspondentof Davar continued, even though it offered the U.S. administration theopportunity to “come down on Israel” in public. “This fact in itself—though it is not comfortable and pleasant—does not harm us from apractical point of view. The [U.S.] government is compelled to make apublic show of a hard line towards Israel-in part to respond to publicpressure and also to deflect the pressures from the Arabs—and to usethe same opportunity to extricate itself from the image of a participant inthe Israeli operation.” In private discussions with government officialsand Congress (including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who isreputed to be the Administration’s sharpest critic of Israel), the Davarcorrespondent claims, Shamir was told that it is time to “finish quicklywith this matter of West Beirut.” The expert opinion conveyed to Shamirby his American contacts was that a quick military blow will beacceptable in Washington. “This is the background for the decision ofthe Israeli government to carry out, starting yesterday, what its leadersprefer to call ‘different means’ for solving the Beirut problem”—moreintensive bombardment, presumably. 87The conclusion seems eminently reasonable, given what is nowknown. Recall also Reagan’s careful avoidance of the issue ofsettlements in his private discussions with Menachem Begin, one of theways of signalling that public rhetoric on that issue is not to be takenClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky