From: adam@endor.uucp (Adam Shostack)
Subject: Re: Israel's peace talks with Syria
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 22:50:48 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.224643.21830@usl.edu> pssres12@ucs.usl.edu (Vignes Gerard M) writes:
>In article <1992Sep11.174905.11245@cs.brown.edu> hm@cs.brown.edu (Harry Mamaysky) writes:

>>disputes. When Israel has launched attacks against Arab targets it has
>>*ALWAYS* done so either in retaliation for past Arab terrorist activity, or
>>(as in the case of the Six Day vistory) to insure a strategic advantage in an
>>inevitable conflict.
>
>	There is no fighting strategy more clever or promised
>	greater success than to feign weakness and tempt ones
>	enemies to an attack which, had they know its futility,
>	they never would have undertaken.  Israel did exactly
>	thus in the 1967 war.

Israel did not fiegn weakness, Israel was outnumbered.  Egypt alone
had, before the war, many more planes as Israel, more tanks, far more
troops.  Egypt and Syria were confident that they could win.  They
chose to fight.  A failure of their intelegence apparatus does not
mean Israel choose to portray themselves as weak.  The Israeli
advantage was in strategy, tactics, and training, not in anything that
was hidden from Egypt as a means of drawing them into war.
 
As an example, Israeli tank crews in (March?) of 1967 destroyed Syrian
construction equipment 1.5 km distant, behind Syrian lines.  6 or so
heavy vehicles, incuding tanks, were destroyed with fewer than 50
shots.  Good, honest, after action reporting by the Syrians, along
with intelegence sharing with Egypt, would have alerted the high
command that Israels ability to destroy heavy vehicles at extreme
ranges had improved significantly since the 56 war.  No such
intelegence assesment was made, as Egyptian and Syrian tanks did not
change their tactics before the start of the '67 war.

>	Your reference to this imagined
>	innocence of the nation are as professions to
>	the virginity of a matron and would have us think
>	perhaps you describe the exploits a harlot.

You come up with such lovely and trite similies.  You forgot the
article before the final noun, too.

>>operation of 1982, Israel risked Jewish infantry lives in attacking terrorist
>>positions (as opposed to air bombing the entire area) so as to avoid any
>>innocent casualties.
>
>	One of the Palestinians greatest handicaps is an American
>	perception that should the peace process fail, the policy
>	of terrorist attacks against American civillians and
>	military personel will resume.

A perception, unfortunately, that they have done little to counter.

>	While this might seem
>	to offer a bargaining advantage to the Palestinains,
>	it will prove to be an albatross about their necks.

A bargaining advantage only if they were bargaining with the US.  But,
Pres Reagan, in one of his more lucid moments, said "we shall never
bargain with terrorists."

A good starting point for any negotiations.  Don't bargain with a man
who has a gun at your head until he puts away the gun.


Adam Shostack 					adam@das.harvard.edu

What a terrible thing to have lost one's .sig.  Or not to have a .sig
at all.  How true that is.