The False Analogy

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Yes, Iraq's occupation of Kuwait is unjust -- but so is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. is being hypocritical by threatening to oppose the first with military force if necessary but doing nothing about the second. In any case, there can be no peace in the Middle East unless both are solved -- simultaneously.

This line is an article of faith in much of the Arab world, and portions of it are echoed at times outside. Thus French President Francois Mitterrand, plugging for an international conference on the Middle East, asserted last week, "One cannot seek to defend ((international)) law in one place and neglect it in another."

But the attempt to equate the two occupations is nonsense -- on the part of some making it, mendacious nonsense. The causes, courses and consequences of the Israeli and Iraqi actions differ diametrically:

-- Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 in a counterattack against an armed assault by Jordan, which intervened in the Six-Day War despite Israeli warnings to stay out. Not even Saddam Hussein would dare to claim that Kuwait attacked Iraq. His invasion of the emirate was sheer unprovoked aggression.

-- Israel has held on to the West Bank at least partly because of a belief that it needed the territory for defense against neighboring states that have never recognized its right to exist and often threatened to destroy "the Zionist entity." No one, not even Ayatullah Khomeini, has ever proposed to wipe Iraq off the map. Nor can Iraq conceivably claim that it needs Kuwaiti ( territory for defense. It fought off Iranian assaults quite effectively throughout eight years of war without making any use of Kuwaiti soil.

-- Israel has followed harsh policies in the West Bank and Gaza, particularly in efforts during the past three years to suppress the intifadeh. But its sternness cannot be compared with the tales told by Kuwaiti refugees about looting, rape, torture, beheadings and other summary executions by Iraqi soldiers. That the outside world has to rely on refugees' stories to learn what is happening in Kuwait is itself significant. Reporters and photographers roam the Israeli-occupied territories, albeit with many restrictions imposed by the army, and report what they see and hear; they are not allowed into Kuwait.

-- Some Israeli hawks may dream of annexing the West Bank, but that has never been official policy. To the contrary, Jerusalem has often promised to permit some form of self-rule for the Palestinians, though it has dragged its heels unconscionably on doing so. Iraq initially proposed to set up a puppet state in Kuwait, but swiftly abandoned even that pretense. Baghdad now proclaims the emirate to be a province of Iraq and is trying, by such means as destruction of records, to obliterate any trace that there ever was a nation named Kuwait.

None of this excuses Israel's endless stalling on meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, nor Washington's reluctance to lean harder on its ally to do so. Nor can Israel be encouraged to believe that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait might somehow give it an excuse to hang on to the West Bank and Gaza for another 23 years. But the two wrongs simply are not equal. And any attempt to pretend that they are can only confuse and weaken the world community's response to Saddam Hussein's blatant aggression.

With reporting by Jon D. Hull/Jerusalem and Christopher Ogden/Washington