AIPAC's Win, Israel's Loss

Israel's mighty U.S. Lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has done it again. It's only February and they've already managed to pull off their first great "victory" of 1986. President Reagan will not provide King Hussein after all with the fighter planes and anti aircraft missiles he promised him last year. The President withdrew the "package" before Congress even had a chance to veto it. This saved the President's face. Slightly. Israel is stronger in Congress than Reagan, the most popular U.S. President in our history, could ever hope to be. But he's at least spared the embarrassment of having the general public become aware of it.

"Victories" by the Israel Lobby have become routine, but in this instance we ought to ask who really won and who really lost by the Lobby's show of muscle. As usual, it's easier to identify the losers ... King Hussein, Jordan, the "Peace Process," the Palestinians, the United States, Prime Minister Peres of Israel ... than to determine who won. The list of losers might be extended indefinitely, but no matter how long it became, "Extremism" would certainly never appear on that list.

King Hussein and Jordan are our friends of thirty years, with a military supply relationship with us nearly that long. Obviously Hussein loses. Militarily weak, but working towards a peace settlement in the Middle East, a moderate Jordan was to have received some modern arms, partly as a reward for its peace efforts. The Lobby, on Israel's behalf, pressed with astonishing chutzpah the argument that these arms would threaten Israel. Just how a weak Jordon would threaten the world's fourth strongest military power was never explained. But Congress deaf, dumb and blind under AIPAC's spell pulled the rug out from under Hussein anyway.

Was this at the behest of Prime Minister Peres and Israel's Labor Party? No. The inside story is that Peres, who has seemed serious about the Peace Process of late, told AIPAC he wouldn't much mind if King Hussein did get the promised arms. But the hardline Likud Bloc in Israel's rickety "National Unity" government took an adamantly negative stance. And when the Israel Lobby has to choose between supporting moderate or extremist forces in Israel, it's the extremists it always seems to prefer.

This was demonstrated after Camp David when then Prime Minister Begin and President Carter publicly argued over whether Begin in fact had agreed to halt Jewish settlements in the West Bank for a period of five years, as Carter maintained, or for only three months, as Begin was claiming. At that time, when perhaps more than half of Israel's Jewish population believed the settlements were a mistake, AIPAC supported Begin. When President Reagan put forward peace proposals for the Middle East on September 1, 1982 AIPAC at first reacted favorably. But at the first grunts of disapproval from Begin it did a complete flip flop. Social psychologists might be able to divine the reasons for the Lobby's apparent predisposition to back the more extreme position. If they could, and were corrective action taken, peace prospects in the Middle East would brighten considerably.

King Hussein had taken real risks for peace. Where does AIPAC's ban on the needed arms leave him? He still has no effective air defense. The credibility of his regime and his own personal status have taken a severe blow: He can no longer claim that President Reagan, whose promise he trusted, will actually push Israel towards the peace table. He may wind up pursuing reconciliation with old enemies like President Assad of Syria. He may turn to the British or French for the arms. Or, as moderate and sensible as he is, he might take a step toward Moscow in pursuit of the arms he feels he must have. And a Soviet arms deal with Jordan might well trigger a real crisis and spark yet another Arab Israeli War.

In fact, surveying the predicament of King Hussein is a vivid reminder that AIPAC's action has left the Peace Process, on which so much hope was riding, in one hell of an awful mess. If anything, Prime Minister Peres' situation is just as bad, if not worse, than Hussein's. The dearest hope was that he would take a forceful enough stride towards peace and bring down his coalition with Likud. In the ensuing elections the Israeli electorate would give him the mandate he needed to proceed towards reconciliation with the Palestinians and peace with the Arabs.

But, alas, what's in store for Peres now? He stands to forfeit credibility at home. The peace process, the backbone of his electoral appeal, ties near shattered. His efforts to warm up relations with Egypt have gone nowhere now that the life has seemingly been drained from his overall peace initiative. The staggering military burden of on going confrontation with the Arabs and the equally oppressive cost of foregoing trade with its natural trading partners Israel's immediate Arab neighbors continue to exacerbate the ills of Israel's troubled body politic. These are the bad blood between secular and religious Jews and the even worse blood between Israelis of European origin and Oriental origin, who feel left out of social and economic progress.

If there were some vibrant hope of real peace, Peres might be able to boost from the current 40 percent to 55 or even 60 percent the number of Israelis ready to make serious sacrifices for peace with the Arabs. With peace prospects now looking bleak and the outlook for the Israeli economy even bleaker, Peres may well lose an election, should he call one, or simply have to hand over the Prime Ministership to Yitzhak Shamir, or even Ariel Sharon. That would certainly put the chill on the possibility of a territorial compromise, and greatly increase the probability of another war with the Arabs. The deteriorating quality of life in Israel would scare off potential immigrants from Western, and especially American, Jewish communities, and the gradual flow of Ashkenazi Jews from the country might well turn into a torrent. The Israel Firsters at AIPAC should seriously consider whether their "victories" might not be actually helping to destroy the kind of Israel they presumedly want to preserve.

If AIPAC could somehow say it had enhanced America's standing in the Middle East, its actions might be rationalized. If it could claim it had weakened real Arab extremists like Abu Nidal or Israeli ultras like Rabbi Meir Kahane, its actions might be applauded. But its actions have only further undermined America's Middle East position and strengthened the extremists there.

By its sabotage of the Jordan arms deal the worst kind of "victory" has been won. A defeat posing as a victory.

Andrew I. Killgore, former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, retired after 32 years in the Foreign Service. He is now a political and economic consultant in Washington, D.C., and also president of the American Educational Trust.