Lies and war histories:
A post-script on the Hamoodur Rahman Report
A.G. Noorani
Courtesy: Frontline [Oct. 14 - 27, 2000]
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1721/17210580.htm
AS exercises in democratic accountability, inquiries into military
lapses and debacles belong to a hallowed tradition. Britain and France
defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853-56); but at so heavy a cost
that an inquiry was instituted in London. Indeed the British had an
inquiry even on the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht (April 11, 1713).
On July 18, 1916, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith announced in the House
of Commons, at the end of a two-day debate, that he would set up a Royal
Commission "to in quire into the conduct of the Dardenelles operation".
Its Report was debated in the House on March 20, 1917. That was during
the First World War (1914-18), in which Britain's very survival was at
stake.
The U.S. Senate Armed Services and
Foreign Relations Committees held joint hearings into defence and
foreign policies, following President Truman's dismissal of General
Douglas MacArthur, even while the Korean war raged fiercely after
Chinese forces crossed the Yalu river. The New York Times
published the full text of the transcripts (May 4-June 8, 1952).
Secretaries of State and Defence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff were grilled. American correspondents were chagrined to find the
Tass correspondent coming daily to buy the official record for a few
cents. "We are stripping the nation's security framework to the bare
skeleton," Chairman Richard B. Russell remarked.
These and the other British and
Israeli precedents cited earlier in this writer's article on the bogus
Kargil inquiry ("A dubious exercise"; Frontline; August 27, 1999)
show that we have yet to attain standards of accountability in our
political system. The Henderson-Brooks Report on the 1962 war remains
classified; unconstitutionally, as this writer argued. ("Looking back: A
case for publishing the Henderson-Brooks report": Frontline,
April 10, 1992). All the 25 annexures and eight append ices to the
Kargil Report remain secret despite its authors' plea for their
publication. Siddharth Varadarajan notes that of the five wars India has
fought since Independence, official accounts of only the first (Kashmir,
1948) and last (Kargil, 1999) we re publicly available. "Official
military histories of the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars exist, but successive
governments, obsessed with secrecy, have refused to make them public" (The
Times of India; September 6). The newspaper made available that da y
the 1965 history on its website. It had been submitted to the government
in September 1992; histories of the 1971 and 1962 wars, in 1988 and
1990, respectively.
Reaction in Pakistan and India to the
publication of the Supplementary Report of the Hamoodur Rahman
Commission, on Pakistan's military defeat in 1971, was on predictable
lines. India Today had a write-up on it (issue dated August 21).
In India, righteous comment on the futility of suppressing such reports
was coupled with smirk at exposure of immoral behaviour in high places
in Pakistan's set-up. The text of the document which the weekly put on
its website was not subjected to analysis; nor were the claims India
Today had made, which were utterly untrue. Not once did it avow what
the text itself proclaimed for all to read, namely, that it was a
"Supplementary Report" prepared after the Prisoners of War (POWs) had
returned to Pakistan. It was instead described repeatedly (p. 33) as
"the final report" submitted in 1974, while the one submitted two years
earlier, on July 12, 1972, was dubbed "a provisional report". A
supplement does just what it says; it supplements as a
post-script or as a long footnote. It is final only in point of time as
the last word. It is not the "main thing". The Supplementary Report
refers throughout to the earlier Report as "the Main Report". Its very
format is that of a Supplement. An Introduction, subtitled "Reasons for
Supplementary Report", is followed by three substantive contributions
based on the fresh evidence - on "the Moral Aspect" citing specific acts
of misconduct; "alleged atrocities by the Pakistan Army", and
"Professional Responsibilities of Certain Senior Army Commanders".
Chapter IV contains "Conclusions". Another sets out detailed
"Recommendations". A long section records "the sequence of the Signals"
between Islamabad and Dhaka from November 21 till December 15, 1971. One
Appendix contains the terms of reference of the 1974 probe; another, the
press release thereon.
The Main Report had said: "Our
observations and conclusions regarding the surrender in East Pakistan
and other allied matters should be regarded as provisional and subject
to modification in the light of the evidence of the Commander, Eastern
Command, an d his senior officers as and when such evidence becomes
available." The Supplementary Report says: "Although we are now
naturally in possession of far more detailed information as to the
events in East Pakistan, yet the main conclusions reached by us on the
earlier occasion have remained unaffected by the fresh evidence now
available." The Main Report rested on the testimony of 213 witnesses;
the Supplementary, on 72. The Western sector is totally excluded from
the latter. More to the point, each section of the Supplementary Report
begins by recalling the relevant Chapter and Part of the Main Report and
proceeds - to supplement it. That is true of the Conclusions and
the Recommendations as well. It is, therefore, grossly misleading to
omit consciously the title "the Supplementary Report", any reference to
this fact and claim that it is "a final report".
Similar stunts were deployed earlier
by The Times of India's correspondent in Washington, D.C. in an
article in The Illustrated Weekly of India (October 23, 1988)
entitled "Night of the Generals". The editorial write-up claimed that he
had "recently unearthed a secret report commissioned by Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto..." Very few excerpts were reproduced, however. They were
evidently drawn from the Supplementary Report. The padding in the four
pages was heavy and spurious. The Correspondent wrote : "A xeroxed
version of the report was smuggled out of Pakistan under circumstances
that must remain secret and it became available to me in
Washington. By a strange coincidence, while this writer was researching
the 1971 developments in East Pakistan, an American friend who is
writing a book on Afghanistan, showed me a large number of secret, but
declassified, White House and other official U.S. documents that gave
almost a blow-by-blow account of what President Nixon and his National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger were doing while East Pakistan's
defences were collapsing under the joint pressure of the Mukti Bahini
and Indian troops" (emphasis added, throughout).
Had he been less ignorant, he might
have been less excited at his "discovery". For, those documents, known
as the Anderson Papers, were published sixteen years earlier. For
instance The Times of India Correspondent reproduces with relish
Henry Kissinger's famous remark on December 9, 1971 a propos
Indira Gandhi: "The lady is cold-blooded and tough and will not turn
into a Soviet satellite merely because of pique". This was known to all
since 1972 (vide the superb compilation Bangladesh: The Birth of a
Nation compiled by Martha Nicholas and Philip Oldenburg; M.
Seshachalam & Co., Madras 1, 1972. This remark is reproduced at p.132 in
the full text of the minutes of meeting of the Washington Special Action
Group).
And, indeed if "a xeroxed version of
the report" - he does not tell us which, though he does mention two
reports - "became available to me" why was he so parsimonious in sharing
it with the reader? Small wonder the article went largely unnoticed.
Not so, the scoop by Mushahid Hussain,
later Minister in Nawaz Sharif's Government (1997-99). In an article in
the Lahore daily Nation of December 16, 1990, he wrote: "The 10
recommendations of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission are being reproduce
d in their original shape, without any editing, so that past
mistakes can serve as a guide for future consolidation." He was quoting
obviously from the Main Report since the sixth recommendation envisaged
a further inquiry when the POWs in India returned to Pakistan.
Recommendations in the Supplementary Report, though more detailed, are
clearly based on the ten he set out. Mushahid Hussain was known to be
close to the army then.
In Pakistan an official spokesman
clarified, on August 18, comments on the Report attributed to the
Minister for Information and Media Development, Javed Jabbar, during his
visit to Sukkur on August 17. Jabbar was reported as having said that
the government was considering publishing the report. "The actual
position is, the Minister stated that the Government is presently in the
process of determining the authenticity of the version of the report
published by an Indian Magazine in comparison to the actual contents of
the report... whether it is unauthorisedly handled at any point during
the past 26 years. It had been incorrectly attributed to the Minister
that as the National Archives Act 1993 allowed documents to be
declassified after 20 years, any citizen could now approach the National
Archives to obtain a copy of the said report." The spokesman said the
report remained a classified document. Jabbar had obviously shot his
mouth off as he is very prone to.
Reportedly, one of the Zia-ul-Haq's
first acts after staging a coup in July 1977 was to order a search of
the ousted Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto's home in order to retrieve the
sole surviving copy of the Report from his residence. He had ordered the
rest to be destroyed. Retrieved it was, but controversy soon arose on
possible deletions and additions.
If one examines the Supplementary
Report on its merits in the light of known facts about the Commission
that produced it, one is driven to the sad conclusion that judges of
eminence lent their services to the state to produce a political
document dressed in the garb of a judicial verdict, a spectacle by no
means unknown in this subcontinent. The Hamoodur Rahman Commission
Supplementary Report, and its Main Report, insofar as it is cited in the
former, are thoroughly dishonest documents shorn of any vest ige of
objectivity in appreciation of evidence or legality or fairness in the
procedure the Commission followed. The entire process was disgraceful;
so were its products.
Pakistan's armed forces surrendered at
Dhaka on December 16, 1971. Ten days later, in order to assuage public
opinion, Z.A. Bhutto, President as well as Martial Law Administrator,
set up this Commission with severely restricted terms of reference;
namely , "to inquire into the circumstances in which the Commander,
Eastern Command, surrendered and the members of the Armed Forces of
Pakistan under his command laid down their arms and a ceasefire was
ordered along the borders of West Pakistan and India and along the
ceasefire line in the State of Jammu and Kashmir."
Two points must be noted. The terms of
reference covered the west also, on which the Supplementary Report is
totally silent. It was, presumably, dealt with in the Main Report.
Secondly, the entire political and military background preceding the
surrender in the east and ceasefire in the west is excluded. A lot had
happened, diplomatically and militarily since the Pakistan Army's brutal
crackdown in Dhaka on March 25, 1971, to go no further. Involved
principally were Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, Commander, Eastern Command, as well
as the Zonal Martial Law Administrator. Major-General Rao Farman Ali was
military adviser to the Governor. Niazi took over the job on April 4,
1971 from Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan who was responsible for the crackdown on
March 25. He had replaced Lt. Gen. Yaqub Khan, who, being this
honourable man that he is, had resigned on March 7. Bhutto made Tikka
Khan Army Chief shortly after he became President. Farman Ali was
reputed to be the brains behind the killing of Bengali intellectuals. He
was exonerated by the Commission. So was Tikka Khan. At the apex stood
Gen. M. Yahya Khan, the Martial Law Administrator who had staged a coup
against Ayub Khan in 1969. Niazi was the last of the POWs to be
repatriated to Pakistan on April 30, 1974. The Inqu iry was reopened on
May 25.
The Commission was headed by the Chief
Justice of Pakistan, Justice Hamoodur Rahman. The other members of the
Commission were Justice S. Anwarul Haq, Chief Justice of the Punjab High
Court, and Justice Tufail Ali Abdur Rahman, Chief Justice of Sind and
Baluchistan High Court, Lt. Gen (Retd.) Altaf Qadir and M.A. Latif,
Assistance Registrar of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and Military
Adviser and Secretary of the Commission, respectively.
The government had decided to
repatriate all Bengalis to Bangladesh. Justice Hamoodur Rahman, a
Bengali, was spared. Allegedly, his son, a Major in the Army, was not
being cleared for repatriation. Anwarul Haq was elevated to the Supreme
Court by the tim e the inquiry was reopened in 1974.
A.T. Chaudhuri, one of Pakistan's most
intrepid journalists, wrote a revealing article on the Commission in
Dawn (July 23 and 26, 1986). It was "based on incontrovertible
evidence gathered from and corroborated by several sources. The object
is to bring out how a democratic regime accountable to the people tried
to muzzle and sweep under the carpet the report of a high-powered
commission it had itself set up...
"One can say, on the authority of
unimpeachable sources, that the probe body was specifically told to
confine its investigation to the 'military debacle' and not to delve
into the 'causes of surrender', notably its political background. Chief
Justice Hamoodur Rahman is believed to have pleaded for the enlargement
of the terms of reference to enable him to look into the 'totality of
the situation' before the traumatic fall of Dhaka. But he was firmly
directed not to burn his fingers with the political nettle. The
implication was clear." The Commission was "saddled with a former
Defence Secretary". Lt. Gen. Altaf Qadir and another high-ranking
officer who was the author of Pakistan Army and who had close links with
the regime in power.
Neither Yahya Khan nor Bhutto was
examined though the former submitted a written statement to the
Commission (Khabrain; July 15-16, 1994).
The Supplementary Report reveals that,
like the Main Report, it was tailored to Bhutto's needs. "After
analysing the evidence brought before the Commission, we came to the
conclusion that the process of moral degeneration among the senior ranks
of the Armed Forces was set in motion by their involvement in Martial
Law duties in 1958, that these tendencies reappeared and were, in fact,
intensified when Martial Law was imposed in the country once again in
March 1969 by General Yahya Khan, and that there was indeed substance in
the allegations that a considerable number of senior Army Officers had
not only indulged in large-scale acquisition of lands and houses and
other commercial activities, but had also adopted highly immoral and
licentious ways of life which seriously affected their professional
capabilities and their qualities of leadership."
Tikka Khan, "the butcher", was not
only exonerated of all charges but was praised: "always willing to
redress grievances." Figures of the killings provided by the Army HQs
(that is, Tikka Khan) were readily accepted. "Indian infiltrators and
members of Mukti Bahini sponsored by the Awami League continue (even
after March 25, 1971) to indulge in killings, rape and arson". Read
this: "We consider, therefore, that unless the Bangladesh authorities
can produce some convincing evidence, it is not possible to record a
finding that any intellectuals or professionals were indeed arrested and
killed by the Pakistan Army during December 1971."
In an article free of any trace of the
national chauvinism that besets most in our region, Ahmed Salim exposed
this falsehood in the Karachi monthly Newsline (September 2000).
The Sunday Times (London) of December 19, 1971 had reported the
killing in Dhaka of more than 50 of surviving intellectuals, scientists
and businessmen. On January 19, 1992, 101 well-known Bangladeshi
personalities including retired Supreme Court Judges, university
teachers, veterans of the independence war, artists and journalists
formed a committee known as the Ekatarer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul
Committee, to track down the killers and collaborators of the 1971
war of independence.
Two other bodies deserve mention - the
National People's Enquiry Commission of Bangladesh and Generation
1971. "Members of the organisation say they aim to discover why their
parents were slaughtered, to investigate war crimes, and to provide fina
ncial assistance to families who were left destitute after the '71
carnage."
It is no consolation to them that the
Report recommended court-martialling of named officers. They all went
scot-free, retiring with full pension, save for Niazi and one Brigadier
Baquir Siddique. None of those recommended for trial by courts martial
was affected one bit.
Chaudhury need not have worried.
The Commission did not confine itself to its terms of reference. It
roamed far and wide to discuss inter alia the Indo-Soviet Treaty of
August 1971; failure to achieve a political settlement between May and
Septemb er 1971; Yahya Khan's rejection of the Soviet resolution in the
U.N. Security Council; Yahya Khan's coup and even "the genesis of the
Pakistan movement, the events preceding the establishment of Pakistan,
and the political developments which took place between 1947 and 1971,
including a detailed study of the effects of the two Martial Law periods
in hastening the process of political and emotional isolation of East
Pakistan from West Pakistan."
Its studied omission to deal with
Bhutto's role in Dhaka in March 1971 and at the Security Council in
December 1971 is as indefensible as it is understandable. It was out "to
fix" his opponents; not bring him to account. (For details on Bhutto's
role vid e the writer's "The Making of Bangladesh"; Frontline;
January 10, 1997) The whole episode of "the Polish Resolution" of
December 15, which Bhutto had rejected brusquely, is omitted. The
Commission was aware of public disquiet. Outlook of Karachi, a
weekly edited by the late I.H. Burney, faced Bhutto's ire fearlessly.
Its issue of May 25, 1974 carried a brilliant documented "Staff Study"
entitled "The War Commission and the Surrender." The facts were well set
out and the issues squarely raised. It recalled that Bhutto had said on
November 23, 1971, that Pakistan should not move the Security
Council. The Report censured Yahya Khan, instead, for this omission.
Niazi's record reveals him to be a
singularly loathsome character. But every man is entitled to justice
according to the law. In his memoirs The Betrayal of East Pakistan
(Oxford, 1998; pp. 321; Rs.450) he makes the valid point that had he
been court-martialled under the Pakistan Army Act, as he had demanded,
he would have been entitled to cross-examine the witnesses, produce
evidence in defence and be represented by a lawyer. A Commission of
Inquiry's denial of these rights to any person likely to be affected by
its findings vitiates its Report completely. He writes: "Although the
Commission consisted of three judges, a legal and a military adviser,
the perennial presence of a GHQ team, comprising Major-General Qureshi,
Colonel Sabir Qureshi, a nd others, was indeed baffling. Their pompous
manner and constant interference were not only irritating, but they also
reduced the HRC to an illegal Court of Inquiry.
They cross-examined witnesses at will, while we were
denied this fundamental right</ I>. Their constant interruptions were
demeaning and an affront to the Commission, who nevertheless put up with
this behaviour without a whimper of protest. They were neither law
officers nor members of the Commission, and it is unclear what legal
authority they had for cross-examining us."
A parallel Army inquiry was set up to
record statements "suitable" for production before the Commission. "The
HRC invited Maj. Gen. Qureshi to attend the proceedings as an
observer... Under what law of the land did they allow him to sit in when
none o f us were even allowed to listen to the witnesses or to
cross-examine them, particularly where our character and reputation was
involved?" It was a solemn farce. Bhutto suppressed the Reports because
they would have revived controversies about his co nduct in 1971 and
strained relations with Bangladesh. Zia suppressed them because they
exposed the criminality of the Army's usurpation of power since 1958.
FROM precedents of dubious worth it is
refreshing to turn to a classic for all time - the Report of the Inquiry
Commission headed by Dr. Shimon Agranat, President of Israel's Supreme
Court, and comprising four other members, on the Yom Kippur War. It beg
an on October 6, 1973 and ended on October 22 when Egypt agreed to a
ceasefire. The Israeli Cabinet appointed the Commission on November 18
to probe, mainly, into two matters - intelligence and deployment of
Israel's Defence Forces. It submitted a Report on April 1, 1974 but
promised a further Report which would contain "a detailed description of
the facts and a complete exposition of the Commission's conclusions".
The "Partial Report" was published in 1975. The Commission cautioned
that the later Repor t would "contain many secret facts which, in all
probability, will rule out publication in full." On April 4, 1994, the
Cabinet authorised release of the final Report. It runs into seven
volumes and is in Hebrew. Fortunately, significant extracts from th e
classic were reproduced in Revisiting the Yom Kippur War edited by P. R.
Kumaraswamy. It was published last March (Frank Cass; 249 pages; £ 39.50
hb, £ 16.50 pb).
The editor reminds us: "With fewer
than 3,000 killed, 15,000 wounded and about 1,000 POWs, the Israeli
casualties were the highest since the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1984...
When the initial counter-offensive against Egypt failed on October 8,
some feared the fall of the Third Temple. Driven by apprehensions and
even panic, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan apparently sought nuclear
options to reverse the military trends."
Israel received invaluable help from
the United States. King Hussein of Jordan, smarting under the loss of
the West Bank to Israel in the 1967 war, which he had joined, went to
the other extreme and lost again. Prof. Efraim Karsh writes in the
Preface th at the King went "so far as to warn Israel's Prime Minister
Golda Meir of its imminent outbreak (the 1973 war)... Had he ventured
into the West Bank, he would have been able to establish a foothold,
which would have possibly made him a partner to any future settlement
over the territory". Instead, the Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO) emerged as the representative of the people of the West Bank. In
1967, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert McNamara gave the "green signal" to
Israel for its attack on Egypt - three weeks in advance.
In 1973, Israel was taken by surprise,
despite at least 11 strategic warnings, informing that the increasing
military preparations near its borders were not geared to defensive
needs (Syria) or exercise (Egypt), but were intended for war" (emphasis
here, as in the original).
The essays deal with varied aspects of
the war with a wealth of material and remarkable detachment. Nothing of
comparable quality in either respect has been written in India on any of
its wars. India fought limited wars. Israel battled for survival. With
China our relations improved qualitatively. In 1971, we defeated
Pakistan, as we had in 1948 and 1965. Yet, to this day, let alone
officials even academics are unwilling to face the truth; worse, some
hold that in the national interest the truth should not be told. None
other than S. N. Prasad, General Editor of the 1965 war and editor of
the 1947-48 war in Kashmir, has propounded this disgraceful doctrine in
an interview to The Times of India (September 25, 2000).
Asked why publication of the war
histories had been delayed, he revealed that while the services cleared
them, officials in the Defence Ministry and - mark these words - "even
more so the External Affairs Ministry opposed publication without giving
any convincing reasons". Indeed, "the MEA wanted to do some 'retouching'
of some small sections relating to external affairs". He amplified: "The
official history has to be vetted by half-a-dozen departments. Each of
the glorified babus there believe t hey know whether this is the better
adjective or that." Prasad added meaningfully and revealingly: "Over a
lifetime one learns to realise the limits you can go if you want the
things to get cleared." Comment is superfluous. One has heard of a
historian in the employ of the U.S. State Department who sharply told
off his bosses, when they asked him to portray the Viet Cong as Hanoi's
stooges, "I am a historian, not a writer of fiction".
However, Prasad himself, while
berating "public ignorance", and "the flamboyance available to a
journalist", gives ample evidence that, irrespective of the truth of his
charges against others, he is himself not poorly endowed with
"ignorance" and "flambo yance". He tells us that "the parliamentarians
of the time pressurised and coerced Pandit Nehru into adopting a
military posture" against China. Doubtless, the Opposition was ignorant
and chauvinistic. But no historian can ignore the material that has co
me to light of Nehru's own arrogant chauvinism on the border (1950-59)
years before the issue became public. To Prasad, Lt. Gen. B. M. Kaul was
"exceptionally able in general matters, but turned out to be unlucky".
The Ministry of External Affairs told
him that the official history of the 1962 war with China might spoil
India's good relations with the country. Could they do more damage than
the reckless comments of Defence Minister George Fernandes? And how can
you write an honest account without revealing the truth about the
Forward Policy followed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Defence
Minister V. K. Krishna Menon with Kaul's "professional" endorsement?
This brings us to S.N. Prasad's own
commitment to the truth. He holds: "About the Bangladesh war, they (the
MEA) perhaps were on stronger grounds because it deals with the entire
gamut of the national effort - intelligence, Mukti Bahini and so on -
which perhaps should not have been revealed." This is a good expression
of the mentality that prevails among a large and influential section of
the foreign and defence policy Establishment - journalists, academics,
officials, retired as well as serving , and the rest. But you can count
on your soldiers to speak the truth. Witness: Major-General Sukhwant
Singh's book The Liberation of Bangladesh published in 1980 by Vikas.
India's arming of the Mukti Bahini and the Government's orders to the
Army are truthfully recorded.
It is therefore futile to expect an
official history of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka.
When a senior correspondent of a journal of repute, now editor-in-chief
of a national daily, reported on the arming of the Tamil outfits on
Indian soil, he received a warning from the Joint Secretary of the MEA's
External Publicity Division.
Neither the media nor academia should
ever be deflected from doing their duty by the nation in the only manner
they are professionally required to - write the truth. After the Bay of
Pigs fiasco in 1962, President John F. Kennedy publicly warned the medi
a to ask of every story they proposed to print: "Is it in the interest
of national security?" However, as Tom Wicker of The New York Times
revealed in his book On Press (Prentice Hall, 1979) Kennedy himself,
"two weeks later, in the privacy of White House, told Managing Editor
Turner Catledge of The New York Times: May be if you had printed more
about the operation you would have saved us from a colossal mistake"
(p.199). Which is why Wicker advised the press "to take an adversary
position toward the most powerful institutions of American life"
(p.259).
For the press the issue was settled in
the classic editorial retort to Lord Derby in The Times (London) of
February 6, 1852: "The Press can enter into no close or binding
alliances with the statesmen of the day, nor can it surrender its
permanent interests to the convenience of the ephemeral power of any
Government."
All the greater the duties of both the
war historian and of the official inquiry into the conduct of war.
Greater access to the records imposes a more stringent duty to the
nation which demands to know why precious life and treasure were
expended in conflict.
The Agranat Report and contributors to
the book on the Yom Kippur War reveal a keen awareness of that duty. The
War had two consequences, immediate and long-term. Publication of the
1974 Report led to the resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir. "A whole
generation of political leaders," including Moshe Dayan and Abba Eban,
"were sent into the wilderness." While it made some more hawkish,
"successive opinion polls in the wake of the October War showed a steady
growth in public support for the 'territory for peace' formula".