ABSTRACT
Tel Aviv - to comment it at present day and from Israel, on the prospects of peace and war in the Middle East has become a more painful endeavor than at any time in the past. It is easy enough to point to mistakes that have been committed in recent months, infinitely more difficult to point to realistic alternatives. And the task of commenting is made all the harder by the rapidly polarizing climate of opinion both in Israel and in the West, especially the United States. United States policy-makers, in one of their periodic fits of lunacy, had approached the Russians in September 1977 with a view toward giving them a greater share in the Middle East peacemaking process, and in October the two superpowers signed a joint statement that harked back to a similarly ill-starred initiative undertaken by Secretary Rogers in 1970.
