[Roland Kunz]

Breakaway Ally: How Reagan's
1982 Peace Was Drowned In Blood
by Michele Steinberg


On Oct. 12, 2001, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesmen attacked President George W. Bush for speaking of a "vision" of a Palestinian state, they were implicitly warning that the radical forces in Israel's military will massacre civilians by the hundreds if that's what it takes to stop a U.S. peace initiative.

However implicit the threat, that is exactly Sharon Cabinet Minister Dan Nevah meant when he said that Israel will not accept "ideas which include at their core the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.... All history shows that when the Americans put a plan on the table, like the famous Reagan plan, the programs did not achieve their aims" (emphasis added). The same day, Raanan Gissin, Sharon's spokesman and ardent defender of the "preventive assassination" program, added: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of the Jewish people.... The United States will never submit to Israel, by surprise, a plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States has never imposed a plan that both sides have not accepted." Sharon has demanded to clear any U.S. plans in advance.

A retired U.S. diplomat confirmed to EIR that there was a Ronald Reagan peace plan issued in September 1982, which had been worked out primarily in discussions between the Reagan Administration and Arab leaders, including Jordan's King Hussein. On Sept. 1, 1982, in a national address, President Reagan presented the plan to the American public without having allowed the Israelis to "censor" what they didn't like.

According to Washington sources, because Reagan violated this "rule," the plan was "Dead on Arrival," with Gen. Ariel Sharon's massacre of 800 Palestinian civilian men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon weeks afterward—Sept. 18, 1982. According to another high level U.S. source, who has spent two decades working on a Middle East peace initiative, it was the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut in October 1983, in which over 200 Marines were killed, that was the "final nail in the coffin" for the Reagan peace initiative. By March 30, 1984, under intense Congressional pressure, Reagan pulled the United States out of the UN multinational force that he had helped create.

Without these specific war and terrorist actions, said this source, a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians could well have been finalized a decade ago.

This story—the 1982 "breakaway ally scenario"—should be a bitter reminder to Washington officials and others, that the right-wing pro-Likud party faction in Washington, especially among the "Wolfowitz cabal" (named for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) lie when they try to link Ariel Sharon to the "Reagan tradition," to manipulate President Bush and Republicans.

The LaRouche Factor
The bloody attacks on the Reagan peace plan are a chilling parallel with today's events, a parallel which has been uniquely identified by Lyndon LaRouche, the 2004 Democratic Presidential pre-candidate. Specifically, the Oct. 17, 2001 assassination of Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze'evi, and the June 1982 attempt on the life of Israeli Ambassador to London Shlomo Argov, served as identical ruses, used by right-wing forces in the Israeli military to stop any peace initiative.

On June 8, 1982, LaRouche—who had been a 1980 Democratic Presidential contender—announced that "Israeli and other sources" had provided corroborated intelligence to him indicating that "British intelligence services orchestrated the Abu Nidal gang's assassination attack" against Argov. LaRouche noted that Argov's "security screen" was dropped in London "precisely at the time the attack was deployed," and that the British government had "stripped" Argov of his security forces prior to the attack. LaRouche exposed that then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon—who promptly used the attack on Argov to invade Lebanon—had "secret agreements" with controllers of the Abu Nidal organization to facilitate Israel's occupying Lebanon. Most importantly, LaRouche revealed that "Prime Minister Menachem Begin had been attempting to prevent an Israeli military invasion of Lebanon" under agreements with Reagan, while "Sharon and U.S. Secretary of State [Alexander] Haig, London and Paris have been conniving behind the backs" of Reagan and Begin to get their invasion.

To stop the impending disaster that began with Sharon's green light to invade Lebanon on June 8, 1982, LaRouche said that Reagan, then on a "useless protracted junket" arranged by Haig, "must come home immediately, fire Haig, [Defense Secretary] Weinberger, [Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker, and a few others, and for the first time since he became President, actually begin to take charge of the situation." In fact, Haig was ousted as Secretary of State in short order, due to a combination of his secret deal with Sharon over invading Lebanon, and his collusion with British Foreign Secretary Lord Peter Carrington's preparations, in early 1982, for the British war with Argentina over the Malvinas.

But the bloodletting in Lebanon was fully under way, and would get even worse, as Reagan failed to unconditionally defeat Sharon's "breakaway ally scenario" in Lebanon, or its authors in London and Washington.

Precursor To A Palestinian State
But on Sept. 1, 1982, despite the months of bloody battles in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion, and despite the attempt by the Israelis and the Lebanise Phalangist militias to wipe out the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Yasser Arafat, Reagan deployed U.S. Marines to protect the PLO fighters evacuating Lebanon for Tunisia. It was not the finest strategy, but it was clear that Reagan intended that the place for Palestinians to be was not Lebanon, Jordan, or some other country—but Palestine; and he had been vigorously discussing this option with leaders in the Middle East and Washington.

In Reagan's Sept. 1, 1982, national address, he said, quoting Scripture, that it was "time to follow after the things which make for peace," and laid out an "initiative for a far-reaching peace effort." "The war in Lebanon," said the President, "has demonstrated many things, but two consequences are key to the peace process. First, the military losses of the PLO have not diminished the yearning of the Palestinian people for a just solution of their claims; and second, while Israel's military successes in Lebanon have demonstrated that its armed forces are second to none in the region, they alone cannot bring just and lasting peace to Israel and her neighbors."

Reagan said the evacuation from Lebanon "dramatizes more than ever the homelessness of the Palestinians"; the Palestinians' "legitimate rights" and "just requirements" must be resolved "at the negotiating table" in the framework of Camp David where the return of the Sinai to Egypt had just been effected in April 1982, Begin and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. In his speech, Reagan revealed that it was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that had stymied taking the Camp David process between Egypt and Israel to his intended next step: Israel and Palestine.

The main points of Reagan's five-page speech are much in accord with the proposals of the Mitchell Commission of 2001; especially, on the question of Israeli settlements. Reagan specified:

* Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza must have "full autonomy over their own affairs ... [with] due consideration to the principle of self government";

* "a five-year period of transition, which would begin after free elections for a self-governing Palestinian authority"; This would prove that "Palestinian autonomy poses no threat to Israel's security";

* "The United States will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of [Israeli] settlements during the transitional [five-year] period. Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlement freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed";

* "further settlement activity is in no way necessary for the security of Israel," but in fact diminishes the confidence needed for negotiations.

The President explicitly said that he was not supporting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but also that he "will not support annexation or permanent control by Israel" of those territories. Rather, said Reagan, he envisioned "self-government by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in association with Jordan," and the full adherence by Israel to the "withdrawal provision of UN Security Council resolution 242" as it applies to "all fronts, including the West Bank and Gaza."

He proudly announced that the preparation of this proposal had been accomplished "for once" with "no premature leaks" as U.S. "Ambassadors in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudia Arabia ... presented to their host governments the proposals in full detail." He also called for direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, and said that the "final status" of Jerusalem "should be decided through negotiation."

The proposal was greeted with enthusiasm by Lebanese leaders, and by the Mayor of Bethlehem, a Palestinian. But, secretly, the Begin government went into fits, special meetings, and sabotage. By Sept. 18, the hoped-for the peace initiative was killed. The White House issued a terse sentence that accompanied an official Presidential statement. "On Sept. 17, hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children had been murdered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps south of Beirut," noted the White House.