How Will George Bush Use the Political Capital of Victory?

By David R. Bowen

It has become one of the enduring cliches of the Gulf war that the biggest losers after the Iraqis will be the Palestinians. Certainly, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Likud government insistently tell us that, hoping it will become true.

This thesis holds that because the Palestinians and their inept PLO leadership climbed aboard the sinking ship of Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, they will go down with him in discredit and defeat, never to see the light of Palestinian statehood.

Whatever one may think about the PLO's judgment in supporting Saddam, thereby rejecting the principles of international law and UN authority which have sustained the Palestinian cause for all these years, the end of this war will present the best opportunity since 1967, perhaps the only one we will see for another quarter century, to address the most persistent and pervasive source of violence and instability in the Middle East.

One Man's Decision

That decision will rest with one man, the man who will coordinate the economic and political reconstruction of the region, the development of an arms control and regional security program, the man who will determine the future of the Palestinian people:

US President George Bush. With his overwhelming victory over Iraq and his skillful domination of the international arena, he will stand unchallenged as the globe's most powerful leader.

And who will try to discourage him from accepting this mantle of leadership? The Israelis, probably, since they trust neither George Bush nor his secretary of state, James Baker. Yet with the Scud honeymoon over, they need US help for survival more than ever. Moreover, now that America has won a war Israel wanted so badly, and especially if it is followed by the departure of Saddam, continued Israeli efforts to block the only route to peace with their neighbors will be difficult to justify.

Nor do the Arabs of the Middle East stand eager to welcome George Bush and his American legions as their new masters. Sympathy for the beleaguered Iraqi people runs deep throughout the region. But there is one way, and perhaps only one way, to avoid a harsh anti-American backlash which may jeopardize not only our own fortunes in the region but also the stability of our Arab coalition partners. That is to resolve—or to set in motion a process to resolve—the Palestinian problem. To do otherwise will be the clearest prescription for winning the war and losing the peace.

What about the US Congress, so consistently dominated by Israel? Will Congress insist on business as usual in the Middle East (and domestic politics as usual), which means acceding to Israeli demands with no reciprocity? The thought that George Bush might actually do something beyond winning the war is shocking. Even now, one hears phrases like "only if acceptable to Israel" and "we must not impose a settlement" tumbling from the lips of politicians like a mantra, echoed by bureaucrats who aspire to congressional favor.

This might be called the myth of voluntarism. It is the assumption that, if in some way you manage to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together, after overcoming Israeli insistence that the Arab world must first make peace with Israel and that Israel should handpick the negotiators for the other side, the result would somehow be constructive. That is like asking the Iraqis and Kuwaitis to sit down with each other and voluntarily resolve their differences.

There are some bold congressional leaders who have decided it is time for a change. "Every Arab nation must in the end be willing explicitly to recognize Israel and her legitimate security interests," said David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, which controls the purse strings for Israel. He added, however, "We also have a right to demand of Israel one very big thing—a recognition of the right and necessity of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland .... Recent talk that the West Bank and Gaza can now belong to the Israelis for 50 years is dangerous nonsense and cannot be tolerated by any American government determined to see to it that the blood of its citizens will never again be shed on Middle Eastern battlefields."

No, the US Congress will not insist on politics as usual if George Bush decides to be the same kind of leader at home he is abroad. Congress has never seen sustained leadership from the White House on this subject, and the Congress and the country will, in this hour of triumph for George Bush, accept a strong stand if he takes one.

The great question is, does he have the will to act? Does he have the will to insist that the path to peace in the Middle East does not lie in vindictiveness toward the Iraqis and their allies? Is he willing to press for some kind of wealth-sharing in the region, for more democracy, for arms control and regional security, and for the one thing that will negate all the rest if it is not achieved, the keystone of any long-term Middle East peace, a Palestinian settlement? Without the will to win on fields other than those of mortal combat, his legacy of military victory will be poverty, violence, and more war.

Many, perhaps most, Israelis (though not the Likud government), after living in fear of Scuds and gas, now see more clearly than ever that territory cannot buy security, neither from rockets nor terrorism. As Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua said recently, "The strange, soldierly alliance that has been created between Israel and the Arab states of the coalition will endure only if the Palestinian problem does not poison it."

Or as Harvard political scientist Stanley Hoffman has said, "The Palestinian issue must be addressed immediately after Iraq's defeat. To leave such issues unattended by arguing that they are not ripe for settlement is a recipe for disaster: Ripeness depends not only on the antagonists' good will but also on the determination of third parties to put pressure on them in order to create the conditions in which this good will may develop."

The Requisite Carrots and Sticks

As to how we grasp this thorny nettle, an international conference may be the formality, the door opener and closer, but only the United States and George Bush can make something happen. Only we have the requisite carrots and sticks. Only the US can give Israel the security guarantees it must have in order to make territorial concessions, along with the economic assistance it depends upon. The relationship between the US and Israel is now closer than ever. The time is right for structuring that relationship so that it will serve the interests of both nations instead of just one.

There are obvious barriers to a Palestinian settlement on the Arab side (or sides) too, but they are more easily overcome. With a few possible exceptions (perhaps Libya, or Syria so long as the Golan Heights are occupied by Israel), the Arab states have for a long while been prepared to make peace with Israel and enter into mutually beneficial commercial and political relations, so long as that process can be effectively linked to one for Palestinian independence, a task that is not beyond the skills of our diplomats and those of the Israelis and Arabs.

The Israelis, of course, never tire of talking about "The Arab-Israeli problems," which they imply are like a field of mines and traps that have to be traversed before reaching "the Palestinian problem," far down the road. There are no Arab-Israeli problems that do not grow out of or devolve into the Palestinian problem. To solve the Palestinian problem is to eliminate the outstanding Arab-Israeli problems.

Could this process be criticized as a reward for the Palestinians? Some will say so. In light of the fact, however, that Palestinians throughout the Middle East, especially in Kuwait, have lost almost $15 billion in assets, savings, salaries and wages, with some hundred thousands of additional Palestinians displaced and homeless, they are not likely to regard any turn of events in the region as much of a reward. No, this process is a reward for Israel, for all the Arab people, for the United States and all the blood and gold we have poured into the Middle East, and, only finally, for the Palestinians, who have been poorly led (as have the Iraqis and the Israelis) and who have been victims of an inconstant and vacillating American foreign policy, a harsh Israeli military occupation, and now the hostility of many of their Arab neighbors. This process is a reward for all those who want peace in the Middle East.

With a fractured Arab world—pro- and anti-US, rich and poor, winners and losers in the Gulf war, Islamic fundamentalists and moderates—there is no panacea for peace in the region. One thing is clear, however. Without some kind of Palestinian solution, there will be no peace. The US created Israel, sustains it, and is its only friend in the world, not because the Israelis are inherently unlovable, but because we have allowed them to maintain an obsolete foreign policy, one perhaps appropriate for the Arab world of the 1960s and '70s but not for the 1990s. With some justification, we will always be held responsible for Israel's policies and actions, and the time has come to have a voice in them.

Victory's Burdens

Our leverage is now paramount not only in Israel but throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. The question is what we will do with it. Victory carries burdens. Will George Bush shoulder them or pack up his diplomatic bags and come home when his troops do, leaving the Middle East poorer and wiser, one tyrant down and more to come? Or will he actually try to make his new world order more than just a slogan?

He could decide to treat the Levantine Middle East as a special laboratory for a new world order, replacing the escalating weapons pressures of traditional balance-of-power politics—so costly and unsuccessful—with collective, principally American, enforcement of international law. The United States does not have the economic or military resources to do that globally, whatever Bush may say, but we could do it in the Middle East.

Ultimately, George Bush could take a giant step toward being regarded by history as more than a good or even a distinguished American president not just by soundly defeating a desert despot through force of arms, but by demonstrating the ability and the determination to bring order out of chaos in the Middle East. He has the power to do it. If he has the will to use that power, the result could be a Middle East freed from its principal source of violence and demagoguery, the Palestinian issue, with Arabs and Israelis moving ahead together into the 21st century.

(Chairman Lee Hamilton has inserted the above text into the proceedings of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle Fast.)

David Bowen, a former Democratic House Member from Mississippi, is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.