The Third World War: The Untold Story

So it was that in the latter months of 1984 negotiations as to the future of Jerusalem and the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian state, together with international guarantees designed to preserve the right of all states in the area to live in peace 'free from threats and acts of force', resumed, and might be said to have been crowned with success, for by the spring of 1985 a peace conference had been convened to take place in Geneva later that year under the joint chairmanship of the United States and the Soviet Union to 4make preparations for the signature of peace treaties by all the parties involved.

By this time much progress had been made. Violence had ceased. Israeli settlements had been withdrawn from occupied Arab and Palestinian territory. The boundary commission had made its recommendations, which had been endorsed by all sides. The future of Jerusalem on the lines of the UN Security Council Resolution was assured. The Palestinians had agreed on their future constitution and the Palestinian National Council together with members of the PLO made up the majority party of the newly-elected Palestinian Parliament. The principal guarantors of these new agreements were to be the Soviet Union and the United States with peacekeeping forces to be established along previously disputed frontiers, these forces to come mainly from Third World nations and exclude both US and Soviet troops. All that remained was final signature of the treaties and their implementation.

It was not to be, or at least not in this way. Events in the Middle East were overtaken by the outbreak of the Third World War.

The superpowers came very close to war in the Middle East and it is of interest to note the potential for waging war there that the various countries of the region, and those from outside it who had interests there, possessed.

If numbers alone could have determined the military balance, it would have been firmly tipped in favour of the Arab nations. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States — to say nothing of the Sudan, Algeria and Morocco — mustered between them the best part of a million men under arms, excluding reserves, while Israel's total armed forces were some 170,000, although mobilization, which would be rapid, more than doubled this figure. There were, of course, peacekeeping forces from the United Nations in positions close to previously disputed frontiers — in the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem — but these forces were small and lightly equipped. As for the United States and the Soviet Union, their presence at the centre of things near the new State of Palestine and in the countries neighbouring Israel was confined largely to advisers and training teams. It was true that the Soviet Union still had nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but they were being kept very busy, while the naval and air units which both superpowers deployed periodically in friendly Arab ports and air bases were, after withdrawal from former confrontation, of modest proportions.

But the game was not one of numbers alone. As tension in Europe became greater and the forces of the Warsaw Pact and those of NATO began their processes of mobilization, redeployment and reinforcement, so comparable processes were to be seen in the Middle East. It then became clear that the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, far from abandoning the peaceful settlement on which they had embarked, were not intent on using their military strength against Israel, but were determined to harbour it in order to keep open the path to peace. At the same time Israel had to be kept quiet. The United States would have to help. The Arab nations, in forgoing what might have seemed to be a temporary advantage, were thus able to combine magnanimity with policy, the fruits of which were to be seen in the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace conferences soon after hostilities between the superpowers had ceased.

So it was that Egypt, whose new relationship with Libya had allowed a greatly reduced force to patrol that frontier, did not increase its forces in the Sinai from the two armoured and two mechanized divisions already there, but did reinforce the garrisons in the southeast near Ras Banas, while leaving a strong reserve near Cairo and Suez. The Egyptian Air Defence Command with its 200 interceptors and missile brigades still guarded central strategic bases and the approaches from north-east and south-east. The air force's 300 combat aircraft were deployed roughly in proportion to the army, and the navy remained with its customary distribution of submarines, destroyers and patrol craft between the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.