When I wrote in these pages two years ago that “1977 is shaping up as a year of possibly unprecedented political confrontation between Israel and the United States,” the Ford-Kissinger “reassessment” of American Middle East interests was. still alive, though crippled by what Kissinger termed “the prevailing domestic political situation.” The Brookings Report had emerged a few months earlier, detailing what was to become during the first months of Jimmy Carter's presidency his personal outline for a “comprehensive Middle East settlement.” And the Palestinian issue was just then affecting the American consciousness as one of self-determination and legitimate nationalist fervor.