February/March 1996, Pages 81-82

Diplomatic Doings

Pelletreau Optimistic on Palestinian-Israeli Peace

The assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, Robert Pelletreau, gave an optimistic address on the peace process to an invitational audience at Washington, DC's Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine Jan. 5. Pelletreau said that although he saw "very difficult" problems ahead, he viewed the signing of the Declaration of Principles 27 months ago as a fundamental turning point in the Arab-Israel dispute.

When the PLO and Israel exchanged mutual recognition, he said, the idea of a "greater Israel" had been "put to rest."

In discussing the then-upcoming Palestinian elections, Pelletreau noted "a sea change" in attitudes. In the late 1980s, he recalled, the whole idea of elections had been perceived by many Palestinians as a dark scheme to undermine the PLO. Now there was evidence of great enthusiasm for the democratic process. Pelletreau was more cautious on prospects for success of the upcoming Syrian-Israeli talks on the Golan Heights. However, he cited a more relaxed attitude by both sides as they approached the renewed negotiations.

Opening his remarks at a time when the government was partially shut down and the State Department budget for the fiscal year that had begun three months earlier still had not been approved, Pelletreau joked that it was fortunate the Center for Policy Analysis was within easy walking distance of the State Department, since the cost of a taxi ride might have exceeded the funds available.

—Andrew I. Killgore

Helms Unfreezes 18 Ambassadorial Nominations

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms ended his annual game of chicken with the White House and allowed 18 ambassadorial nominations to clear his committee and move on to the Senate for a full vote. The senator's legendary mean streak toward virtually everything and everyone associated with foreign affairs is surpassed only by his breathtaking inconsistency on foreign aid.

In the 1970s and 1980s two of his predecessors as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Arkansas Democrat J. William Fulbright and Illinois Republican Charles Percy, began asking questions about the out-of-control nature of Israel and U.S. aid to it, and were targeted and defeated by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's Washington, DC lobby.

With Helms, things have worked out differently. The former local radio commentator came into Congress as an avowed opponent of foreign aid and soon had run up, according to AIPAC's instructions to its network of pro-Israel political action committees (PACs), "the worst voting record in the Senate on our issues." AIPAC's PACs poured so much money into the campaign of Helms' Democratic rival, North Carolina Governor James Hunt, that the 1984 North Carolina senatorial campaign became the most expensive up to that time in Senate history.

However, unlike Fulbright and Percy, Helms won a narrow victory and emerged from the ordeal a changed man. He traveled immediately to Israel with a delegation of Jewish constituents, was photographed wearing a yarmulke skullcap at the Western Wall, and became a self-proclaimed Senate friend of Israel. When this year's epic battle to balance the budget began, Helms announced that aid to Israel was "off the table." U.S. foreign aid, like most other parts of the fiscal 1996 budget, was reduced, but aid to Israel was not, giving it more than a third of the worldwide U.S. foreign aid total. (And with additional subsidies to Israel hidden elsewhere in the 1996 federal budget, the total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel now equals the total of U.S. foreign aid to all other countries combined.)

This year Helms had held up the 18 ambassadorial nominations to force the State Department to agree to a proposal whereby three independent foreign affairs agencies, the U.S. Information Agency (which includes the Voice of America), the Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) would be abolished and any of their residual functions folded into the State Department. The White House would not agree. Finally, on Dec. 12, Helms released the nominations for a full Senate vote in exchange for White House agreement to cut $1.7 billion in foreign affairs spending during the next five years. That's about 5 percent of projected U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel during that same period. Some savings!

Among the ambassadors now freed to start packing after months of waiting are six for Islamic or neighboring countries. They are A. Peter Burleigh to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Frances Cook to Oman, Richard H. Jones to Lebanon, John R. Malott to Malaysia, J. Stapleton Roy to Indonesia, and Thomas W. Simons Jr. to Pakistan.

—Richard H. Curtiss

New York Names Street on Which Israeli Consulate Is Situated After Yitzhak Rabin

The Israeli consul general in New York, Colette Avital, is the official representative of her country in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. Since New York's varied Jewish residents often reflect the divisions over the peace process so apparent in Israel itself, her job is seldom easy. However, in early December, she had the pleasant assignment of standing with Mrs. Leah Rabin at a Manhattan ceremony renaming the portion of Second Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets "Yitzhak Rabin Way." As the signs honoring the assassinated Israeli prime minister were put into place on the block, where the Israeli consulate general is situated, Ms. Avital remarked:

"The City Council in its wisdom decided to call this part of our street Yitzhak Rabin Way—not Yitzhak Rabin Street, not Yitzhak Rabin Square. I believe this is a good choice, for indeed...the only thing left for us to do now is to follow the Yitzhak Rabin way."

New York also has named a street after Israeli's first prime minister, David Ben- Gurion, and a square for Israel's American-raised prime minister, Golda Meir.

—Richard H. Curtiss

Jordan Ambassador Becoming Familiar Figure to Washington, DC Jewish Audiences

Jordanian Ambassador Fayez Tarawneh was the guest speaker at a Dec. 15 Friday night Shabbat service at Temple Shalom, a Reform synagogue in the U.S. national capital. Tarawneh, who holds B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California, told a packed synagogue audience that included retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Dov Shefi, a member of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's peace negotiating team, that private sector and direct people-to-people contacts are essential to make the peace process work. He predicted that there will be an agreement between Israel and Syria within the next year.

He reported that 21 agreements between Jordan and Israel have been completed, with a 22nd agreement in the final stages. Asked by a member of the audience about the status of relations between native Jordanians and Palestinians in Jordan, he pointed out that he is married to a Palestinian. In fact many of Jordan's leading families are of Palestinian origin, and up to three-quarters of the country's inhabitants have Palestinian roots.

Earlier, Ambassador Tarawneh had made the Jordanian embassy in Washington available to the national capital chapter of the American section of ORT, an Israeli educational organization, for a fund-raiser to benefit educational projects around the world. The Dec. 6 event was attended by Israeli diplomats as well as U.S. Jewish supporters of the educational projects of ORT in Israel. Although funds raised by the affair were not targeted for any specific ORT project, the organization has proposed a joint Israeli-Jordanian college for the border between the adjacent towns of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel to serve students from throughout the region.

—Richard H. Curtiss