Israel's Friends Go to The Hill to Speed Up Foreign Aid

By Richard H. Curtiss

Lobbyists for Israel are used to having their way on Capitol Hill and when the $12.1 billion foreign aid bill, which provides some $3.3 billion for Israel, got caught in a procedural wrangle between pro-life forces in the House and pro-choice forces in the Senate, friends of Israel swung into action.

In their biggest demonstration of strength since the "thousand lobbyists on the Hill" turned out in September 1991 to pressure then-President George Bush not to tie U.S. government loan guarantees to Israel to Israel's participation in the Middle East peace process, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations brought out their troops. Leaders of more than 100 U.S. Jewish organizations conducted what they called a "Peace Process Advocacy Day" Dec. 12 to lobby for passage of the bill. It was the same day Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was scheduled to visit the Hill to meet with congressional leaders.

Although there was no question that the foreign aid portion of the bill eventually would be passed, Israeli officials told their Washington lobbyists that they needed assurances the money would be available by the end of 1995 to avoid an increase in Israel's government deficit that would damage its international credit rating. Since passage of the loan guarantees bill in 1992, which called for $10 billion in U.S. government guarantees to be extended to Israel at the rate of $2 billion per year for five years, Israel's credit rating has risen from near the bottom of the scale to an A-minus on the Standard and Poors index, comparable to that of China, Indonesia and Chile.

"We have a lot of legislative priorities, but this is at or near the top," explained AIPAC media director Toby Dershowitz. Nevertheless, legislators expressed puzzlement at Israel lobby insistence that they separate the foreign aid bill from more controversial legislation.

"It's a given that Israel will get its money," Joseph Rees, staff director for the international operations and human rights subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee told the Washington Times. "Anybody who claims otherwise is either misinformed or is deliberately misinforming people to get what they want." Discussing the demand by the friends of Israel that family-planning funds be stripped out of the bill and put in separate legislation, a House Appropriations Committee staffer said: "That's not the way the process works. If it were that easy, we would have people asking us to do it on every bill we pass."

What he apparently forgot is that lobbyists for Israel are not just "people," or even "the people." As for his assurance that "that's not the way the process works," he'd better not put any money on that.

Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich met with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and made no secret of why the Israeli government is getting so impatient. Unlike any other foreign aid recipient, or any domestic recipient, Israel does not get its aid in four quarterly installments throughout the fiscal year. (The U.S. government makes its payments in this manner in order to reduce its own interest payments on the money it must borrow via U.S. government bonds to pay its obligations.) Instead, the U.S. gives Israel the entire amount during the first month of each new fiscal year. This enables the Israeli government to invest the money and thus earn the interest that otherwise would go to the U.S. treasury. Israel is upset, Rabinovich said, because it is losing the millions of dollars in interest it normally earns in this manner. "The longer we have the money, the more interest we earn," Rabinovitch explained to the Speaker. For his part, Gingrich told the Israeli ambassador he would try to resolve the issue by Dec. 15. In this Congress, what Israel wants, Israel gets—and generally when Israel wants it.

Middle Peace Facilitation Act Gets Powerful Assist

Fortunately for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority, the Israeli government also wants members of Congress to stop delaying the extension of the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act, which authorizes the U.S. government to provide the Palestinians with $500 million in aid over the next five years to help development in the West Bank and Gaza.

In an effort to upset the peace process, throughout the fall of 1995 a succession of retired Israeli generals and Likud party activists, including Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu, visited receptive members of Congress, including New York Republican Benjamin Gilman, seeking to derail the MEPFA by attaching conditions that Arafat could not meet prior to Palestinian elections in January 1996. In turn the Israeli Labor government asked its traditional allies in Congress to loosen up with the money, which was promised by the Clinton administration at the time the Oslo I agreement was signed at the White House.

Finally opposition to extending the act narrowed largely to Rep. Mike Forbes (R-NY), who represents a Long Island constituency. Forbes blocked even a temporary extension of the act because, he said, he was outraged by the Clinton administration's "back door action" to extend the bill for 18 months rather than the original 12-month period during which Yasser Arafat's compliance with Oslo agreement provisions would be examined.

"I blocked it not because I wasn't for MEPFA but because they [the administration and House leadership] were so insistent on 18 months," Forbes complained. "I'm not some shill for any faction or carrying water for any fringe group."

Apparently Prime Miniter Peres didn't agree. He told members of Congress during his Dec. 12 visit to the Hill that U.S. aid to the Palestinians "is important not only for the peace but for the future." Breathe easy, President Arafat. If the prime minister of Israel wants you to get U.S. aid, you'll get it.

House Defers Action on Anti-Terrorism Bill

Faced with opposition by a coalition of 25 organizations ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union on the left to the National Rifle Association on the right, and including Arab-American and Muslim- American groups, the House of Representatives deferred until after Christmas work on the stalled anti-terrorism bill opposed by Arab-American and Muslim organizations.

The Senate passed in June by a 91 to 8 vote a version of the bill that contains provisions the House subsequently has agreed to drop. This will make it difficult, if not unlikely, that a House-Senate conference committee can work out a compromise version, even if the House does eventually vote on its own version of the bill.

One member of the coalition opposing the bill, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, describes the bill as "Tap 'Em, Entrap 'Em, and Zap 'Em." Among objections raised against the bill are that it would deprive resident aliens of liberty based on secret evidence which they could not see and therefore could not refute, designate disfavored groups as "terrorist" organizations, authorize investigations of individuals without evidence of criminality, make it easier to initiate wiretapping, and involve the military in some aspects of civilian law enforcement.

The bill has been pushed heavily by Jewish organizations in the U.S., and the hasty Senate action was taken in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Now as critics of the government both on the left and the right examine the many ways it would strengthen the government and weaken individual rights, enthusiasm has cooled considerably.

Congress Sends Deliberately Mixed Signals on Bosnia Deployment

From the time Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) indicated that he would reluctantly back President Bill Clinton's commitment of U.S. ground troops to a NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, it was clear that the Senate would not seek to hold up funding of the project, and increasingly unlikely that the House would repeat its earlier votes in this regard.

Dole's support was conditioned, however, on including provisions in a Senate resolution that will require that the Bosnian government forces be armed and trained so that they can defend their own borders after NATO forces leave. Dole had introduced a "lift-and-strike" bill in the Senate early in the summer of 1995 which called upon the U.S. to cease observing the United Nations embargo on all of the former Yugoslavia.

He pointed out that the embargo was preventing the Muslim-led Bosnian government, but not the Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Croats, from obtaining arms. The focus of Dole's earlier bill was to protect the Muslim-led Bosnian government with air strikes while equiping its army to defend its own borders without U.S. ground troops.

The proposed bill had a catalytic role in focusing administration attention on Bosnia, starting last July. By the end of August NATO bombing of Serb anti-aircraft positions, military communications, artillery, tanks, and some bridges had begun. Within days the Bosnian Serbs had delegated Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to represent them at the Dayton, Ohio meeting which resulted in the peace agreement presently being enforced.

On Dec. 13 the Senate voted 69 to 30 for a bill to acquiesce to the deployment of U.S. troops for one year but specifying that the U.S. will arm and train forces of the Muslim-led Bosnian government. The bill was sponsored by Senators Dole, John McCain (R-AZ) and Sam Nunn (D-GA) among others.

The Senate rejected by 52 to 47 a resolution sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) stating that "Congress opposes Clinton's decision to deploy United States ground forces in Bosnia" but "strongly supports the U.S. troops sent there." The Senate also defeated by 77 to 22 a bill proposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) that was identical to one approved by the House on Nov. 17 which would prohibit any federal funds being obligated or spent for the Bosnian deployment unless they were specifically provided for that purpose by Congress.

In support of the resolution that President Clinton had said he needed in order to demonstrate to U.S. allies that the administration had congressional support, Senator Dole said: "This is not about politics...this is about a lot of frightened young Americans going to Bosnia."

Former Senate Democratic Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virgina also called upon his colleagues to give clear backing to Clinton rather than vaguely worded support. Opposing Senator Hutchinson's bill, Sen. Nunn said: "It may be what some senators need, but it is not what our troops need. He said it offered "the worst of both worlds—full speed ahead on a risky mission that we don't agree with, don't approve of."

The House, which had previously approved a resolution for a funding cut-off, reversed itself on Dec. 13 by voting 218 to 210 to drop its support for a funding cut-off. The House approved by 287 to 141 a resolution opposing President Clinton's policy but supporting the troops while maintaining U.S. neutrality. The House also voted 237 to 190 to reject a Democratic resolution that supported the troops without reference to the policy.

In general, the Clinton administration has predicated its intervention on a plan to seek parity among the contending forces by working for six months to persuade the Serbs to draw down their weapons stocks in Bosnia, and then spending the next six months arming and training the forces of the Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia to make them the equal of the Serb forces in Bosnia.

The Republican approach, articulated by Senator Dole, has been to prepare an "exit strategy" by starting to arm and train the Muslim-led Bosnian government forces earlier in recognition of the fact that only rough parity between all three contending forces, Croats, Serbs and the Muslim-led government forces, can deter aggression after NATO forces depart. There seems little disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over the actual mechanics of arming the Bosnians. The U.S. participated, along with Germany, in a secret, similar and demonstrably successful buildup of the Croatian army using some German funds and some retired American military personnel who were contracted through private U.S. security firms.

The Clinton adminstration proceded with the initial phases of deployment of ground troops to Bosnia without awaiting congressional action. American negotiators also pointed out that in Dayton Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke had committed the U.S. verbally to providing parity to Bosnian government forces.

Pro-Israel Groups Pleased With Watered-Down Lobby Reform

Pro-Israel groups breathed a sigh of relief at the final shape of the lobby-reform measure passed by a 421 to 0 House vote in late November. The relief was because a proposal by Rep. Ernest Jim Istook (R-OK) that would bar federal funding to groups that seek to lobby Congress as part of their activities was rejected.

The Istook amendment would have had a major impact on Jewish organizations like the Council of Jewish Federations, which receive a variety of federal grants while also maintaining advocacy operations in Washington and in state capitals.

As passed, the law will have little effect on groups whose primary function is lobbying like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which already are required to register. But it will not require the Jewish groups which mobilize to support AIPAC when necessary to register.

"As far as I can see, the disclosure requirements don't seem more onerous than current law," Richard Foltin, legislative director of the American Jewish Committee, told James David Besser, political columnist for a number of U.S. Jewish weeklies. "And this law should clarify some of the ambiguity in current law about the definition of exactly who is a lobbyist."

Besser reported, however, that Council of Jewish Federations Washington director Diana Aviv warned that hers and like-minded organizations may not enjoy a respite for long. "There are tremendous pressures driving this proposal," she said. "There are people in the congressional leadership who still regard this as a top priority. So it would be a major mistake to assume that we've heard the last from Istook."

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs.