Chutzpah Tax—What Israels Price for Peace Will Cost Americans

By Gene Bird

Israel surfaced an "unofficial" trial balloon in January, which was covered by very few newspapers in the U.S. but immediately noted in Washington. The Israeli government will ask for additional aid of $12 billion to come down from the Golan and make peace with Syria. The report came from sources close to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, including minister without portfolio Yossi Beilin, who only two years ago suggested that Israel should do without foreign aid.

The Israeli price for a Golan land-for-peace deal, therefore, would be more than $2,000 per person in addition to the more than $1,000 per person Israelis already are receiving in annual U.S. aid to Israel. The Golan "surcharge" would come mostly, if not entirely, from the United States, since no other country really believes in paying Israel to do what it should do anyway.

The initial report, which came out in the favorite newspaper for trial balloons, the English-language Jerusalem Post, indicated at first that the price tag for Israeli withdrawal was $15 billion. Another Israeli newspaper immediately corrected the report, saying that the Israeli government was expecting only $12 billion: $7 billion to support the "equipment for military provisions of the agreement," $3 billion for unspecified water projects, and $2 billion for relocating the 13,000 Israelis living on the plateau.

Even Washington strategic planner and former high-ranking Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, always a friend of Israel, seemed outraged by the request. In an article in the Jan. 5 Washington Times he wrote: "It is one thing to provide Israel with resources to meet legitimate defense needs created by an agreement with Syria. It is quite another to buy a peace agreement. In the end, bribery will not bring peace to the Middle East. But it will wreak havoc on an already devastated American budget." (The article is reprinted in "Other Voices" on p. 136 of this issue of the Washington Report.)

Zakheim said this was not the first time he had criticized high levels of aid to Israel. This latest proposal, he remarked, "is exactly the kind of thing that could derail the [peace] process." He added that the Arabs would no longer believe in a balanced American position if such aid levels were approved.

Although the latter consideration has never preoccupied Congress as aid to Israel has increased to more than one-third of the world-wide U.S. foreign aid budget, it nevertheless seems unlikely that legislators concerned with cutting federal programs would agree to such a large dollop of additional aid going to one party in the peace process. In fact, Congressman Sonny Callahan, a real friend of Israel, already has suggested that if additional aid were needed for the peace process as a whole, it would have to come from the present more than $5 billion given Israel and Egypt every year since the beginning of the current peace process.

The Israeli government will ask for additional aid of $12 billion to make peace with Syria.

Zakheim suggested in his article and repeated in person the necessity of nipping in the bud any thought about increasing aid to such a level before it grows to an official request backed by the Zionist legions operating through AIPAC and other Jewish groups to lobby Congress.

Meanwhile, in the latest rounds of talks in Syria, President Assad apparently hinted at his own needs in making peace. Since the present American aid to Israel is about equal to the entire budget of Syria, perhaps the Syrian need will be much smaller. And perhaps in the case of Syria, there will be some money from Arab oil-producing states to supplement or even surpass any contributions by the United States.

All of this Israeli talk about the need for billions more from the U.S. in order to make peace comes as a substitute for American troops on the Golan. A few hundred Americans sprinkled among a few thousand U.N. troops keeping peace on the Golan would be a far cheaper solution. But already on the Hill the idea of sending Americans to the Golan, which has not seen an incident in 20 years and which already has some U.N. troops along its eastern flank in Lebanon, is being opposed by a phalanx of pro-Israel groups and writers, including indefatigably pro-Israel syndicated columnist William Safire. His admitted reason for opposing such a U.S. deployment might give pause to members of Congress when they are asked to rubberstamp the new Israeli aid request. Safire has written that the reason U.S. troops should not be sent to the Golan is to preserve for Israel the latitude to mount pre-emptive strikes against Syria in the future.

After the next "pre-emptive" strike into the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in its "pre-emptive war" against Egypt and Syria in 1967, will the U.S. be asked to pay Israel to bring its troops back down again? American troops would be much more cost-effective. And if so, will Dov Zakheim again be outraged and will whatever party then controls Congress nevertheless pay up? Indiana Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton once referred to U.S. aid to Israel as a "growth industry." But he went right on voting for it anyway year after year. Clearly the government of Israel is planning another banner year for its principal economic "industry."

The Peace Process is Accelerating—But the Toughest Issues Remain

If Yitzhak Rabin had lived, been reelected, and continued as the "General Who Could Make Peace," would he have changed enough to create a real basis for ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Or would he have reverted to type and, with the younger generals, insisted on an occupation by another name, Jerusalem only for Jews, and thus set the stage for a second century of conflict in the Middle East between Jew and Arab?

Despite his statement shortly before he died at the hands of a Jewish extremist connected with an American settlement in the West Bank that "the dream of a Greater Israel is dead," the prime minister remained intractable on giving up any settlements in the West Bank, Gaza or on the Golan Heights. The proof is that his successor is scrambling hard to change the Rabin negotiating style and the substance of the Israeli offer to Syria. Rabin's stated position that the Israeli extent of withdrawal depends on the extent of peace offered by Syria remains the public position of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. In fact, Peres is offering much more today than would have been offered if Rabin had lived.

If you ask them whether Prime Minister Peres is going down a different road and seeking a different kind of peace both with the Palestinians and with Syria than the old general would have sought, most observers, off the record, say that Rabin's basic instincts would have guaranteed a more obdurate Israeli policy than now seems likely if Peres survives the Israeli election next fall.

No one is saying this in Israel, yet. But the fact is, if Prime Minister Rabin had not left the scene, his presence would have made the peace process colder, the chances of a break-through with Syria slimmer, and the openness to compromise of another Rabin-led government less than might be true now.

Initially, William Safire and other journalists compared the assassination of Rabin to that of Abraham Lincoln. That is standing history on its head: If Lincoln had lived, the extremist Reconstruction period might never have happened. He had three years left to start the healing, and perhaps more since there then was no limit on his re-election to a third term. But Rabin had less than a year left of his term, and that alone would have discouraged any conciliation toward the Arabs and, particularly, the Palestinians of the West Bank. Rabin was not a Lincoln, not a Kennedy.

Having said that, one should add that Rabin the man evolved a whole lot in the final year of his life. His Nobel prize, shared with Yasser Arafat and Peres, seemed to change the man and his own perception of his place in history. The fact is, without Rabin and his political ability to win elections, the George Bush and James Baker policies would have stalled, and it is unlikely that the incoming President Clinton would have had the gumption or the inclination to press a Likud government and confront it the way Bush did.

Certainly, Department of State negotiators have taken full advantage of the change in direction, the speed-up on the Palestinian track and the atmospheric changes by Peres with regard to Syria and the Golan.

"The speed-up would probably not have occurred without the change in personalities," one U.S. State Department observer said. "The fact is that Rabin was not moving fast enough and events were beginning to overtake him. Down the road, there would have been trouble for the entire Palestinian process as it moved to final status issues, particularly the settlements and Jerusalem. Rabin would have given the Palestinians very little, and the negotiations would have been prolonged and difficult."

It will take a long time to reach an historical consensus on what this general, who could change his mind and take the grave political risks that eventually led to his death, really believed personally about Arabs and Jews living peacefully together without domination or occupation.

In May of 1993, months before the revelation that the Labor government was negotiating with the Palestinians, I remember talking with Shimon Peres and with Abdel Rahman Darawshe, the Labor Party wheelhorse in the Israeli Arab community. Both dropped broad hints about there being a more hopeful track than the one laid down by Washington in Madrid for the Palestinian negotiations. Darawshe in particular said that he had just come from an hour spent trying to persuade Rabin that only recognition of the PLO and negotiations with Arafat would move the process towards peace and away from a resumption of the intifada.

None of us, I must admit, took the Israeli Arab politician seriously. Rabin recognize the PLO? Not very likely. But it was already happening and that is very much to the credit of the general.

Yet, four months later, he was obviously highly embarrassed to stand on the same platform with Arafat and as late as March 1995 he would tell a Jewish-American audience of 2,000 hard-line AIPAC members that he was very uncomfortable to have been there, even with the American president by his side.

Rabin tried breaking Palestinian bones as an answer to the intifada, and he might have tried to break the spirit of the Palestinians at the negotiating table. He was, when all is said and done, a realistic maximalist when it came to his country. He was realistic about the true extent of Israeli power, and angry at the settlers and at Jewish Americans who were interfering in Israeli politics almost as much as they were interfering in American policy toward the Arab states and the Middle East. He did seem, however, to be developing a vision of peace that, over a very long time, might have resulted in a rough Realpolitik when it came to dealing with the Palestinians.

But he was Zionist to the core, although he might, perhaps, have been willing to limit Israel to something less than an undefined Greater Israel. However, the fact is that he never wrestled with the problem of removing even the most egregious settlers, such as those in Hebron. He never dealt with the problem of water sharing, and he certainly never tried to cut back on settlements around Jerusalem—most of them built under his urging over the years. It seems likely that he would never have given an inch on sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians.

And that is the bottom line. How he disappeared from the scene is unfortunate. But historians will probably say, 30 years from now, it was fortunate for Israel and the world that he did not continue to practice his brand of political hard-ball into the 21st century. He may have left at exactly the right time.

Eugene Bird is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.