The USSR and the Palestine Question, 1950–1991

The USSR was significantly involved with the Palestine question from the end of World War II until the disintegration of the country in 1991. Over these forty years, the Soviet Union consistently faced the dilemma of how to balance its ideological radicalism, which was anti-Zionist and progressive, with its desire for regional stability, which involved recognition of Israel and the need for a settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict. Moscow had another aim: to counter US influence and hegemony in the region while also enticing the United States in a joint push for a Middle East peace settlement.

Recognizing the Nascent State of Israel and Anti-Zionism

The roots of these Soviet dilemmas can be traced to the period prior to 1950. The Soviet Union was always ideologically opposed to Zionism. In 1946, two years before the creation of the state of Israel, a Soviet book on the Palestine problem confirmed the standard Marxist-Leninist position that Zionism was “the propaganda of racist exclusivity and of racial superiority, totalitarianism, and the use of terror, together with social demagoguery.” But this anti-Zionism did not stop Moscow being the first state to extend de jure recognition to Israel on 17 May 1948, only three days after the state of Israel had been proclaimed. The support that the Soviet state gave was not only rhetorical; it also sanctioned Czechoslovakia to sell arms to the Israeli forces that proved to be critical in their success in defending the new state.

In the late 1940s, Stalin clearly viewed the Jewish Yishuv as relatively more progressive than the British-dependent Arab states, and Soviet support for the creation of the state of Israel had the added value of undermining British imperialist designs. Intervening in the Middle East also confirmed that the Soviet Union, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, was a major global power that could no longer be ignored internationally. But despite this pro-Israeli stance, the Soviet Union never supported Israel as a Zionist state. Its official line of support was for a progressive Israel to be forged through the collaborative actions of revolutionary anti-Zionist Jews and Arabs. This was the political stance of the binational Palestine Communist Party that had been established in 1924.

Initial Shift Away from Israel to the Radical Arab States

Stalin’s support for Israel was brief. When Golda Meir became the first Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union on 2 September 1948, more than 50,000 Jews congregated in Moscow during the Rosh Hashanah celebration a month later. This revived Stalin’s suspicions and sense of paranoia, leading to the curtailment of Jewish rights, a vicious campaign of anti-Semitism, and a purge of Soviet Jewish intellectuals and other leading figures. The Soviet stance toward Israel also deteriorated after Israel decided to support the 27 June 1950 UN resolution condemning the North Korean invasion of South Korea, a decision that undermined its previous careful balancing between West and East. In Moscow, Israel increasingly became perceived as a proxy of the United States and the Soviet stance became actively hostile, leading to a brief rupture in diplomatic relations from February to July 1953.

After Stalin’s death, this hostility to Israel was translated into substantive support for the Arab world. Nikita Khrushchev, the new First Secretary, sanctioned Czechoslovakia in 1955 to provide arms to Egypt and to Syria, two countries that had overthrown pro-Western governments and had installed radical Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist regimes. Khrushchev’s ideological innovation was to recognize these regimes as objectively progressive and as moving toward socialist transformation even though they were often openly anti-communist.

Khrushchev’s wager on the radicalizing and anti-imperialist role of the radical Arab states was initially productive. Soviet prestige was enhanced after the 1956 Suez Crisis when Soviet support for Egypt, including the Soviet ultimatum to stop the military action on 5 November that placed “a question mark on the very existence of Israel,” was widely perceived to contribute to the humiliation of the United Kingdom, France, and Israel. On 14 July 1958, a revolution led by a “Free Officer” group in Iraq overthrew the pro-British monarchy and created a powerful new anti-Zionist alliance of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. By the early 1960s, the economic directions of these states were moving in a socialist direction with radical land reform and nationalization of key industries, including the banking sector.

From Radical Reform to War

In this political context, the anti-Zionism of the radical Arab states was viewed positively by the Soviet Union as accelerating domestic social and political radicalization. But it was also recognized that translating this anti-Zionist rhetoric into military action could be premature and endanger the “peaceful co-existence” between the Soviet Union and the United States. The comprehensive defeat of the Arab armies in the Arab–Israel war of 5–10 June 1967 realized this worst-case outcome. Although there is a debate about whether the Soviet Union directly supported the Arab military escalation prior to the war, it is more likely that the Soviets misjudged the situation. The Soviet Union did contribute to raising tensions by warning Israel on 21 April 1967 that it was “playing with fire” in its aerial attacks on Syrian forces. The Soviet Union claimed four days later, on 25 April, that Israeli forces were concentrating on the Syrian border, which was not factually true. Just prior to the war on 23 May, the Soviet agency TASS warned Israel that it “will bear full responsibility for the aggressive actions that it is pursuing.” However, Moscow’s statements and actions were more suggestive of seeking to find a political victory for its Arab clients short of war rather than in inciting a war that it believed the Arab states were not ready to fight.

The 1967 war represented a significant defeat for the Soviet Union and a corresponding victory for the United States and its support for Israel. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel that only increased its lack of access and leverage on Israel. With Israel triumphant, however, the Arab nationalist states had no alternative but to rely even more heavily on the Soviet Union, not least for rebuilding their armies and seeking ways to regain the territories lost to Israel. In the 1969–1971 war of attrition between Egypt and Israel, the Soviet Union militarily intervened for the first time, with Soviet troops manning air defence units against Israeli deep penetration attacks into Egypt.

The Soviet rebuilding of the Arab armies did result in the significant political victory of the 1973 October war for the Arab states. The Arab military performance was much more effective, which greatly improved morale, and the political effects of the Soviet statement of its military moves to support the encircled Egyptian Third Army on 23 October also enhanced Soviet prestige.

But the ultimate result was more a draw than a victory. The question remained how to realize the Arab states’ key political objectives. For the Soviet Union, the danger was that the Arabs might conclude that the only way to peace was through Washington rather than Moscow, given that only the former had direct influence over Israel. The key commitment that Moscow expected from its allies was to eschew bilateral settlements with Israel through exclusive US channels and to commit to working with the USSR for a comprehensive settlement. However, President Sadat of Egypt had already shown his implicit support for unilateral US diplomacy through signing the Sinai II agreement on 4 September 1975. But his decision to undermine US–Soviet joint diplomacy, and thereby make a shift from being a Soviet to a US ally, was dramatically confirmed on 19 November 1977 when he made his journey to Jerusalem. But even for the Soviet leadership, there was a recognition that it lacked the power unilaterally to forge a peace settlement and that it needed to work with the United States to achieve that aim, while also actively working against the US if Washington sought to exclude Soviet involvement.

Toward Recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization

The creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 in Jerusalem and under Egyptian patronage brought in a new actor to the Palestine question. Despite the solicitations of its leader, Ahmad al-Shuqairi, the Soviet Union rejected his requests for political and military support. There were several factors behind this. The Soviet Union was a conservative actor in its foreign policy and privileged states over non-state actors and preferred to deal directly with Egypt rather than its proxy. Moscow also disapproved of the rejectionist stance of the PLO, which sought to defeat and supplant Israel through military means. For Soviet policymakers, the PLO was viewed as suffering from “infantile leftism” and lacked realism. Even more problematic, though, was that the PLO was enthusiastically feted by Mao Zedong’s China, now the mortal enemy of the Soviet Union,

This assessment changed after the 1967 war when the PLO was taken over by the Palestinian guerrilla factions, with a leading role played by Fatah. The popularity of the Palestinian resistance in the wider Arab world softened the Soviet stance toward the PLO. The first official visit of PLO leader Yasir Arafat took place in the Soviet capital 9–20 February 1970. However, behind the diplomatic niceties, the Soviet Union still had many reservations about the PLO. The most significant was its perceived lack of political moderation, its refusal to consider shifting its position toward Israel, and its exclusive reliance on military means. Moscow also viewed negatively the heterogeneous nature of the PLO, with its multiple competing factions. At this time Soviet diplomats viewed the Marxist factions, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), negatively and actively sought to encourage the more politically neutral Fatah.

The Soviet position toward the PLO changed substantively only after the 1973 war. Along with the Arab states at the Arab League Summit in Rabat in October 1974, Moscow formally recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO’s official status as a Soviet ally was now confirmed. The PLO also now had a key role to play in the political ambitions of the Soviet Union to forge an Arab–Israeli peace agreement. In the spirit of détente between the Soviet Union and the United States, there was an expectation in Moscow that the US would work with Moscow to forge a Great Power resolution of the Arab–Israeli conflict. In the aftermath of the 1973 war, the Nixon administration did agree to the idea of a jointly sponsored peace conference in Geneva. For Moscow, there was a mutuality of the two superpower’s interests: the Soviet Union had the power to put pressure on its Arab allies in exchange for US pressure in Israel. A key card that Moscow hoped to play was that the PLO would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli recognition of the PLO.

There were, though, several obstacles to this scenario. The most significant was that US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had no intention of allowing the Soviet Union to play a substantive diplomatic role and sought instead exclusively US-brokered bilateral agreements between Israel and the Arab confrontation states. For a brief period in 1977, during the Carter administration, there was renewed US–Soviet cooperation, leading to a joint statement on 1 October 1977 that set the terms for the convening of the Geneva Conference. But this was then undermined by Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem a month later (19–21 November), at least in part due to his fears that a US–Soviet joint settlement process would not be in Egypt’s interest and would undermine a separate Egyptian–Israeli settlement. But, frustratingly for Soviet diplomats, the PLO also consistently refused to shift its position on recognition of Israel, despite considerable Soviet pressure. This meant that it could never pre-emptively play its key card – a PLO commitment to recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli recognition of the PLO – that was at the heart of its diplomatic strategy.

The Last Decade before the Collapse

During the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was in full confrontation with the United States, particularly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There was no prospect for joint US–Soviet action in the Middle East, and so the Soviet focus was on consolidating the anti-US and anti-Zionist position of its remaining Arab allies. With Egypt’s shift to the US, the key Soviet ally was now Syria, and priority was given to consolidating Syrian capacity for resistance. In this context, the relative importance of the PLO declined and Soviet sympathies increasingly aligned with the more radical pro-Syrian factions within the PLO, such as the PFLP and DFLP, rather than with Fatah, which was perceived to be increasingly rightist in orientation and in danger of compromise and accommodation with the United States. This deterioration in Soviet support for the PLO can be seen in the contrast between Soviet criticism of Syria in its attacks on the Palestinian – Lebanese-leftist alliance during the Lebanese civil war, as set out in a letter that Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev wrote to Syrian president Hafez Asad on 11 July 1976, and the later lukewarm support that Moscow provided to Arafat when he was confronted by the rebellion of the Syrian-supported Fatah “dissidents” in 1983. By the early 1980s, a PLO that had lost its main base in Lebanon and was also seen to be flirting with the Americans was now much less a significant strategic actor than Syria.

This all changed in the second half of the 1980s. With the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev as Secretary General in March 1985, a new cooperative spirit pervaded Soviet diplomacy, which included working again with, rather than against, the United States in seeking to find a resolution of the Arab–Israeli conflict. This time the Soviet Union’s longstanding efforts toward moderating the PLO’s political stance produced fruit. In 1988, the Palestine National Council convened in Algiers, and on 15 November the Palestinian Declaration of Independence was pronounced that included implicit recognition of the state of Israel. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Soviet Union also finally achieved its long-desired ambition to be a co-sponsor of an international conference to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors. This international conference took place in Madrid in 1991. By this time, however, the Soviet Union was a pale shadow of its former self, and the country imploded only a few months later in December 1991. There were few who doubted that the conference was primarily an American initiative and achievement. With the collapse of the USSR, the US became the unilateral hegemon in the region and was no longer constrained by any Soviet opposition in asserting its exclusive role in the resolution of the Palestine question.