In 1982 the Hebrew-language magazine Kivunim (Directions), the official organ of the World Zionist Organization published an important article entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties". The Editor of Kivunim is Yoram Beck, Head of Publications, Department of Information, of the World Zionist Organization. Also on the Editorial Committee of Kivunim is Amnon Hadary, a member of the Palmach during the 1948 atrocities.

Israel Shahak, professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights translated the article into English and wrote the following foreword to it. It was published in 1982 as a pamphlet by the Association of Arab-American University graduates. Professor Shahak states:

The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states.
I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:

1 . The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking.
For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the 'best' that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq :
"The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz, 2/6/1982). Actually this aspect of the plan is very old.

2. The strong connection with neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author's notes.
But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the 'defense of the West' from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an imperial Israel into a world power.

3. It is obvious that much of the relevant data, both in the notes and in the text, is garbled or omitted, such as the financial help of the US to Israel. Much of it is pure fantasy.
But, the plan is not to be regarded as not influential or as not capable of realization for a short time.

Israel Shahak

• In the long run the Arab Muslim world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes.
  The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account.
  It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorities and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging.

  In Egypt there is a Sunni Muslim majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt: some 7 million of them, so that even Sadat, in his speech on May 8, expressed the fear that they will want a state of their own. something like a 'second' Christian Lebanon in Egypt.

  Syria is fundamentally no different from Lebanon, except in the strong military regime which rules it.
  But the real civil war taking place nowadays between the Sunni majority and the Shi'ite Alawi ruling minority (a mere 12 % of the population) testifies to the severity of the domestie trouble.

  Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi'ite and the ruling minority Sunni.
  In addition there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren't for the strength of the ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq's future state would be no different than that of Lebanon in the past or of Syria today.

  Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and North Yemen:
  All the Gulf principalities and Saudi Arabia are built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil.
  In Kuwait, the Kuwaitis constitute only a quarter of the population. In Bahrain, the Shi'ites are the majority but are deprived of power. In the United Arab Emirates, Shi'ites are once again the majority but the Sunnis are in power. The same is true of Oman and North Yemen. Even in the Marxist South Yemen there is a sizable Shi'ite minority. In Saudi Arabia half the population is foreign, Egyptian and Yemenite, but a Saudi minority holds power.

  Jordan is in reality Palestinian, ruled by a TransJordanian Bedouin minority, but most of the army and certainly the bureaucracy is now Palestinian. As a matter of fact Amman is as Palestinian as Nablus.

• A sad and very stormy situation surrounds Israel and creates challenges for it, problems, risks but also far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967.
  Chances are that opportunities missed at that time will become achievable in the Eighties to an extent and along dimensions which we cannot even imagine today. The 'peace' policy and the return of territories, through a dependence upon the US, precludes the realization of the new option created for us.
  Since 1967, all the governments of Israel have tied our national aims down to narrow political needs, on the one hand, and on the other to destructive opinions at home which neutralized our capacities both at home and abroad.
  Failing to take steps towards the Arab population in the new territories, acquired in the course of a war forced upon us, is the major strategic error committed by Israel on the morning after the Six Day War. >
  We could have saved ourselves all the bitter and dangerous conflict since then if we had given Jordan to the Palestinians who live west of the Jordan river.
  By doing that we would have neutralized the Palestinian problem which we nowadays face, and to which we have found solutions that are really no solutions at all, such as territorial compromise or autonomy which amount, in fact, to the same thing.
  Today we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade otherwise we shall not survive as a state.

• Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority.
  If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt.
  The vision of a Christian Coptic State in upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized govemment as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.

  Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track.
  The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.

  Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.
  This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.

  Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria.
  Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.
  An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us.
  Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.
  It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.

  Saudi Arabia: The entire Arabian peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia.
  Regardless of whether its economic might based on oil remains intact or whether it is diminished in the long run, the internal rifts and breakdowns are a clear and natural development in light of the present political structure.

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  Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our
  sole guarantee for national existence

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  There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel's policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime< and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority.
  
  Changing the regime east of the river will also cause the termination of the problem of the territories densely populated with Arabs (Palestinians) west of the Jordan.
  The Palestine-autonomy plan ought to be rejected, as well as any compromise or division of the territories.
  
  It is not possible to go on living in this country in the present situation without separating the two nations, the Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river.
  Genuine co-existence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan.

  It should be clear, under any future political situation or military constellation, that the solution of the problem of the indigenous Arabs will come only when they recognize the existence of Israel in secure borders up to the Jordan river and beyond it.
  
  Judea, Samaria and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence, and if we do not become the majority in the mountain areas, we shall not rule in the country and we shall be like the Crusaders, who lost this country which was not theirs anyhow, and in which they were foreigners to begin with.