Israel's Fateful Hour.

IN Israels Fateful Hour, Yehoshafat Harkabi argues that it's time for Israel to make peace, even if that means talking with the PLO and giving up the occupied territories. Coming from a blame-Israel-first peacenik, this wouldn't be news. But Harkabi is a former head of Israeli military intelligence. Not long ago, in fact, he was one of the country's leading hawks, who sought to warn Israelis that the Arab forces were quite serious about wanting to wipe Israel off the map.

Harkabi says he hasn't changed; but he's convinced the Arabs have. He therefore describes himself as a "Machiavellian dove." He writes: "Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories with their growing Arab population. There are pro-PLO circles that make similar demands; I make them because I am pro-Israeli." Israeli intransigence will only harden the Arabs again; meanwhile, the demographics will steadily weaken Israel's bargaining position. Since the Israelis are in possession of Arab territory, they can't expect "symmetrical compromises" from the Arabs.

Nevertheless the onus of making concessions does not fall on Israel alone, and the Arab contribution must not be limited to an august condescension to make peace with a Jewish Israel. The peace is as musch for the sake of Arabs as for Jews. The acid test of the Arabs's peaceful intention will be their readiness to meet Israel's security needs at the bargaining table. Palestinians and Arabs are not such a weak party to the negotiations that they can only receive concessions. Both sides must bring themselves to consider the adversary not as an object to be manipulated but as a subject with whom to communicate and finally come to terms.

Harkabi's basic approach is to plead for an understanding of the enemy'. "Your enemy is not a criminal merely because he is an enemy." But to understand is not to sentimentalize; it is to avoid the sentimentalism of both love and hate, and to see the enemy as he really is, with mixed motives, multiple interests, grievances of his own, limited energies, capacity for change and adaptation: "Let Israel not be so foolish as to believe that it can win the Arabs' unending love; but neither should it assume that Arab hostility cannot be modified by Israel's behavior."

In their public rhetoric (Harkabi wrote before Yasir Arafat's December statement renouncing terrorism and accepting Israel), the Arabs remain militant. But for all but a few fanatics, the "grand design" of destroying Israel is no longer a practical policy goal, and the distinction between "ideal goals" and "realistic goals" is basic to Harkabi's analysis. A wish or dream is not the same thing as a practical intention, which involves a structure of action. Terrorism is morally hideous, but it doesn't amount to a serious threat to Israel's existence. The only serious long-term threat is a larger Arab population than Israel can assimilate politically or control by force. Neither annexation nor permanent occupation is feasible.

The bulk of the book is a criticism of Israeli ideologies that impede accurate perceptions of the Arabs by defining them as a psychocultural monolith that can only be fought, never reasoned or compromised with. Harkabi singles out two such ideologies: the "Jabotinsky-Begin ethos" and its close ally, "nationalistic Judaism." The first is a mystique of the will and of the single decisive event: it led to the disaster of the 1982 Lebanon war, which was waged, in Harkabi's judgment, for "expressivist" rather than "instrumentalist" reasons. For the Likud leadership, all that seems to matter is that the war was, in their minds, morally justified; that it failed to achieve its goals and backfired badly against Israel is secondary. "What is the point of waging a war for even a just cause if one will be worse off as a result?" asks Harkabi. "Sometimes it is better to live with an injury than to take too drastic measures to remedy it."

Harkabi argues that the Likud's annexationist policy toward the occupied territories has staked Israel's very existence to a wrongheaded ideology. He contrasts the way Begin and Shamir have pitted Israel against the world with the skillful diplomacy of the British, who have used shifting alliances to prevent their enemies from consolidating against them. Even the peace with Egypt has become frayed, and Israel's American support is weakening. Harkabi is unusually candid about the difference between American and Israeli interests, calmly penetrating much official unrealism on the subject: "From strategic considerations, the United States ought to maintain good relations with Arab countries rather than with Israel (as George Marshall believed many years ago)." The real bond between the two countries, he contends, is that both "are democracies and share common values."

But even this bond is threatened by rising forces in Israel. In the book's most hair-raising chapter, Harkabi cites the recent writing of religious extremists, some of them influential and authoritative, who favor treating Christians as "idolators" and even, in one widely publicized article, advocate genocide against non-Jews. Meir Kahane is by no means the most fanatical of his breed. Harkabi worries about the consequences of discrimination against Christians not only for Israel but for Jews everywhere. He cites the Jewish sages of other eras to prove that the new extremists do not speak for the entire Jewish tradition, and observes hopefully that "religion can lead to moderation." But at the moment, the wrong forces are gaining ascendancy. Though he appears not to be a believer himself, Harkabi offers some sensitive reflections on the wisdom of the other strain in the Jewish tradition, which has always "been careful not to make history into the proving ground of theology."

In spite of what sounds like pessimism, Harkabi shows a way out of the present impasse. He defines an area of real common interest for Israelis, Arabs, and Americans that is completely free of the standard jargon. The book is a model of practical political wisdom, nuanced without preciosity, Burkean in its attention to circumstance rather than abstract justification. It reminds the reader of a famous sentence of Burke's: "Magnanimity in polities is not seldom the truest wisdom." We would all do well to listen carefully to this wise old warrior.