Gorbachev's Middle East Strategy

Galia Golan

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1987

Article preview: first 500 of 6,056 words total.

Summary:  The process leading to a resumption of Soviet-Israeli diplomatic relations shows a new direction being taken by Soviet Middle Eastern policy. The Soviet government appears more willing to make practical and ideological concesssions to improve relations with Middle Eastern states. Its objective remains to limit US influence and to break Washington's monopoly on the Middle East peace process.

Galia Golan is Darwin Professor of Soviet and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her most recent books are The Soviet Union and the PLO, published in 1980, and the forthcoming The Soviet Union and Third World National Liberation Movements.

In April 1987 General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev declared that the absence of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel "cannot be considered normal." This comment reflects a growing belief among Soviet policymakers that the rupture in Soviet-Israeli relations, dating from the Six-Day War of 20 years ago, should at last be repaired. And, to give it more significance, the remark was uttered in the presence of Moscow’s oldest Middle Eastern ally—and Israel’s most implacable adversary—Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

Three months later, in July, an official Soviet consular delegation arrived in Jerusalem, including a deputy head of the Middle East department of the Soviet foreign ministry. Carrying Gorbachev’s air of glasnost with them as they traveled, the Russian visitors set about attending a series of cordial and well-publicized meetings with various Israelis at all levels of society.

These tentative moves toward an opening to Israel mark a new direction in Soviet policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, a deliberate effort by the Gorbachev leadership to broaden Soviet options in the Middle East. Gradually but consistently, Moscow is showing greater willingness to make practical and ideological concessions to improve relations with Middle Eastern states from Egypt and Israel to the Persian Gulf.

The primary Soviet objective, to set up limitations on the military and political influence of the United States, remains unchanged. Both in the Gulf and the Arab-Israeli theater, this objective now dictates a policy of conflict avoidance, possibly even of conflict resolution, to eliminate pretexts for American military engagement. Thus, the Soviet Union is taking a constructive stance in new mediation moves at the United Nations to bring about a cease-fire in the seven-year-old Iran-Iraq war.

II

After nearly two decades without significant official contact between Israel and the Soviet Union, Gorbachev has seized the initiative. But the process was slow in getting under way.

The first visible step was an informal meeting in Paris in July 1985 between the Soviet and Israeli ambassadors to France. Substantive reports of this meeting were leaked to the Israeli media and denied by the Soviets, but Moscow did not deny that a meeting had taken place. Then came various contacts between Israeli and East European diplomats at different levels, resulting in an agreement in principle on the establishment of Polish and Israeli "interest sections" (diplomatic offices without diplomatic relations) in the two respective countries. At the same time Soviet spokesmen, official and unofficial, offered numerous comments to the effect that it had been a mistake to sever relations with Israel in 1967; some even suggested that Moscow wished to put an end to this situation, thus anticipating Gorbachev’s own remark.

Less tangible hints also appeared, such as the publication in the Soviet press of Israel’s message to Moscow on the occasion of the anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany; the occasional easing of entry restrictions for Israeli tourists to Eastern Europe; the Bulgarian government’s invitation to visit Sofia to the Bulgarian-born wife of Israel’s then foreign minister (and soon to ...

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