Part 1 ----In January 1958 the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) concluded that a logical corollary of increasing opposition to growing Arab nationalism would be to support Israel as the only strong pro- Western power left in the Middle East. The above conclusion may be an exaggeration, but it is also clearly an affirmation of the general U.S. strategy analysis which identifies indigenous nationalism as its primary threat, a threat that could emanate anywhere else in the Third Worldwith overwhelming clarity in Latin America and South-East Asia. The NSC analysis also affirmed the conclusions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1948 which showed they were much impressed by Israel's military prowess and suggested that Israel might be a suitable U.S. powerbase for the region.

Much more accurate in his analysis, former Israeli military intelligence officer Gen. Shlomo Gazit, after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., is quoted as having said, Israel's main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial importance. Its location at the center of the Arab Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it.

Its role is to protect existing regimes, to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization and to block the expansion of Islam. By the early 1970s, a de facto alliance was in place between Israel and Iran, the two major local gendarmes within the newly articulated Nixon Doctrine. The Senate's leading specialist on Middle East and oil politics, Henry Jackson, described the partners as two reliable friends of the United States who have served to inhibit and contain those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab states who would pose a grave threat to our principal resource, petroleum, in the Persian Gulfa resource that the U.S. hardly exploited but is needed as a lever to gain world control for its obvious vast potential for use.

With the fall of the Shah in 1979, Israel's importance as a regional gendarme increased. Israel had also been providing important secondary services for Africa and Asia, but it was particularly of importance to Latin America where Washington was inhibited from providing direct support for the brutal tyrants and killers of the region by popular opposition and by (U.S.) congressional human rights legislation that reflected the popular opposition and popular mood.

Carter and Reagan loyalists were able to turn to Israel to take over such tasks by the 1980s as part of an international terror network which included Taiwan, Britain and Argentine neo-Nazis, and perhaps others more. The Israeli cooperation in weapons development and testing under live battlefield conditions was also a matter of increasing interest in Washington, along with providing base facilities for the U.S. fleet and for pre-positioning of weapons, contingency planning, joint exercises and the like, again within the general overall strategy and independent of the Cold War alliances and, hence, persisting in such cooperation with no notable repercussions.

These matters are reported in Pentagon testimony to the U.S. Congress and the writings of U.S.-Israeli strategic analysts. An interesting case in point is the analysis made by one of Netanyahu's close associates, Dore Gold, spellling out Israel's role as an international force in non-Soviet scenarios, i.e., against radical nationalism, thus expand (ing) the range of American options. After the 1967 war, the great powers agreed on UN Resolution 242 as the basic framework for a diplomatic settlement, calling for Israeli withdrawal from the conquered territories in return for a peace treaty between Israel and the Arab states.

Though supporting documents are not yet available in official archives, enough has been disclosedincluding a leaked U.S. State Department historical account that establishes the fact that the U.S. understood UN Resolution 242 to require full Israeli withdrawal to pre-war borders, with at most the implementation of the 1969 Rogers Plan. Under Washington's interpretation, UN Resolution 242 called for full withdrawal for full peace.

The Arab states refused full peace and Israel refused full withdrawal and settled instead on the Allon Plan in 1968. The plan has undergone various modifications leading to the Oslo agreements which led to the notion of land for peace. A lot has happened since then with Israel having gained everything, the U.S. exerting its veto on any provision contradictory to its and Israel's interests.

(To be contd)