Unusual Occupation

In its June victory over the Arabs, Is rael found itself occupying territory three times its own size. The conquest brought obvious security advantages to a nation so small that its principal cities were within easy range of Arab ar tillery, but it also brought obvious problems. Along with the land, Israel also inherited its population of 1,330,000 Arabs, most of whom feared and hated the Jews. Nonetheless, by all accounts and on almost all counts, the occupation has gone remarkably well.

As occupiers, the Israelis have sur prised the Arabs by treating them in a civilized, if firm, manner. They have, in return, won the Arabs' grudging toleration, if not their full cooperation.

There have been no mass protest movements, no major street demonstrations, no successful civil-disobedience campaigns. While some terrorism exists, it is sporadic and isolated. The Israelis have made it almost impossible for any Arab to be a terrorist for very long.

The Israelis are admittedly and purposefully tough in their efforts to stamp out guerrilla activities. Last week troops arrested 54 members of a major sabotage ring that had been operating along the West Bank of the Jordan; two other terrorists, caught in a cave north of Jerusalem, were killed trying to escape.

In the six months since the war, Israeli security forces have hunted down and killed 63 armed guerrillas, captured more than 350 others. They have also impressed upon the Arab residents of the occupied lands that it is folly to co operate with the terrorists in any way.

In the Gaza Strip village of Dir el-Bel-lah, troops destroyed ten Arab houses in direct reprisal for the murder of a young Jewish settler. On the West Bank, bulldozers leveled the entire town of Jiftlig (prewar pop. 6,000) because it was a suspected staging area for terrorist units.

Despite such tactics, incidents of terrorism still occur. Arab "commandos" last month infiltrated close enough to Tel Aviv to lob nine mortar shells into the suburb of Petah Tiqva, and two weeks ago another guerrilla band shot it out with police near the city's international airport. Terrorists also blew up the water reservoir of a kibbutz in Upper Galilee, almost succeeded in cutting the rail line to Jerusalem and derailed a passenger train in the Negev

Desert near Beersheba. A warning by the Arab guerrilla organization El Fatah that Christmas tourists would not be safe in the Holy Land led the Israeli government to station 950 security police in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to set up roadblocks in the area.

Such incidents are, however, minor exceptions to an otherwise peaceful coexistence between the two peoples. Jews now frequent Arab restaurants in East Jerusalem, and Arab patients are freely admitted to the $30 million Hadassah Medical Center in West Jerusalem. The Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem were scheduled with little change in the traditions established while the town was under Arab rule. As many as 40,000 Jewish pilgrims a day travel to Hebron to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), which for 700 years has been an Arab mosque. Jewish tourists literally swarm over the Golan Heights every weekend. On 9,211-ft. Mount Hermon, in what used to be Syria, a group of enterprising kibbutzniks plans to open a ski resort that might just be called the Shalom Slalom.

Coercive Noninterference. The Israelis have tried not to disrupt Arab life unnecessarily, but there is no mistaking the fact that they are there as conquerors, not as friends. Arab farmers on the West Bank of the Jordan have been forbidden to sell their crops in Israeli markets for fear that they might undercut Israel's farm prices, which are on average 25% higher. Instead, they have been quietly permitted to export their produce to Jordan; a temporary bridge has been built next to the war-wrecked Allenby Bridge to allow Arab trucks to cross over to collect such produce.

To ease the friction of occupation, the Israelis wisely decided to let the Arabs govern themselves as much as possible, and to ensure Arab cooperation they have invented a technique that might be called coercive noninterference. When the prewar mayor of Nablus (pop. 44,000) announced that he would resign rather than front for the Jews, the occupation authorities simply informed him that no one would be appointed to replace him; since the local government could not function without a mayor, that meant that it would undoubtedly collapse, throwing the town into chaos. The mayor stayed. When Arab teachers throughout the West Bank called a general strike, the Israelis made no attempt to stop them. It was perfectly all right with Israel, the teachers were told, if Arab children had no schools to go to. The strikers returned to their classrooms.

The success of the occupation has been so great that it has led many Israeli politicians to demand outright the annexation of the conquered lands once and for all. The government, whatever its intent may be, publicly rejects such ideas. "It is not enough for us to look down from the Golan Heights, see our settlements lying safe below, and say that now peace is assured," said Defense Minister Moshe Dayan two weeks ago. "We shall have to look at it also from the point of view of the Syrians, who see our troops 38 miles from Damascus and who do not see that as a situation guaranteeing peace."

Not that Dayan, the one-eyed hero of the war, wants to give back any part of the lands before the Arabs agree to make peace--if they ever do. What he was telling his countrymen was that the occupation, although necessary, has hardened the fears of Arab leaders that Israel is bent on conquest and has made them, if anything, more determined than ever to destroy the Jewish state. The occupation, Dayan warned, is therefore likely to last a very long time.

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