April 1991, Page 68

Jews and Israel

By Andrea Barron

AIPAC Worries about a "Bad Peace"

More than 2,000 delegates assembled in Washington, DC last month for the 32nd Annual Policy Conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), this country's principal pro-Israel lobby. More than 800 students from 177 college campuses attended—compared to about 400 students last year. AIPAC officials attributed the record-breaking attendance to the surge in American Jewish support for Israel after Saddam Hussain began launching Scud missile attacks against it.

AIPAC Executive Director Tom Dine began his address to the conference by lauding George Bush for his "masterful" leadership during the Gulf war. But the focus of Dine's speech was not the war but the peace process. He stated his disagreement with Benjamin Franklin, who said over 200 years ago: "There never was a good war or a bad peace." According to Dine, "One of our nation's early great leaders did not envision the modern Mideast. The war against Iraq was just, it was necessary, and it was good in the sense that it vanquished evil."

Dine warned that the "good war" could be followed by a "bad peace," and outlined what a "bad peace" might took like. The "peace promoters" would pay "exaggerated" attention to the Palestinian issue; equate "democratic Israel" with Arab "despots" who live by the "Hama rules"; fail to appreciate that "territorial depth" is essential to Israel's security; be too "impatient" for a settlement; and try to impose a solution on Israel by, for instance, demanding a Palestinian state while the peace process is still underway.

Delegates reveled in the tremendous victory of coalition forces over Saddam and the rise in public sympathy for Israel during the war. AIPAC cited a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted January 22 which showed "a record high" level of support for aid to Israel; 19 percent of the respondents favored an increase in aid, 7 percent supported a decrease and 64 percent thought aid should remain at current levels. But many delegates were already looking into the future and predicting that the good times might not last very long. When and if this administration starts to pressure Israel to make concessions, they'll be ready.

Senators Push Kuwait to End Secondary Boycott

Ninety senators have signed a letter calling on Kuwait to end its secondary boycott of US companies that do business with Israel. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) presented the letter to Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sheikh Saad Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah while Lieberman and 14 other senators were visiting Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), Kuwait has been one of the strictest enforcers of the boycott for many years. Lieberman told the JTA that it would be "just outrageous" if Kuwait continued to boycott American companies "after US troops have put their lives on the line to free [it]." Kuwait is expected to thank the United States for defeating Saddam Hussain by awarding 70 percent of the contracts for rebuilding the country to American companies.

The letter called the boycott "a significant impediment to the prospects for long-term peace and accommodation in the Middle East," and said that removing it would "eliminate a significant source of friction between our two countries." Kuwait may quietly end the secondary boycott, but there is little likelihood it will agree to stop the primary boycott of Israeli products before the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is settled.

Israeli "Peaceniks" Still Favor Settlement with Palestinians

Israeli peace activists Shulamith Aloni, Amos Oz and General Aharon Yariv, all of whom supported the US-led war against Iraq, still are firmly committed to a settlement of the Palestinian question based on self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. Aloni represents the Citizens Rights Movement Party in the Israeli Knesset. Oz is one of the country's most prominent writers and a leader of Peace Now, and Yariv is a respected military strategist who teaches at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. In early February, the liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun interviewed them and several American Jewish activists, including Rita Hauser, the New York lawyer who in 1988 helped convince PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to say the "magic words" that launched the short-lived US-PLO dialogue.

"Saddam represents a direct threat to our existence and our survival. So we should support everything and everybody who wants to bring him down," insisted Yariv. Aloni said, "We [Israelis] have the strong feeling and knowledge that this war is saving us. It's saving our lives." She told Tikkun that once the war ended, it would be easier to move the peace process forward because "every Israeli today knows that the Green Line is back—that there is not one unified Israel, but Israel and the occupied territories."

Oz acknowledged the divisions in the Israeli peace movement over the war, but said the peace camp would be united on the question of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The Palestinians have a right to national self-determination," he said, "not because they are nice and not because they are the victims or because they are the good guys—they have this right because they are a people."

Hauser was less optimistic about the possibilities for peace after the war. She told Aloni that there will be progress only if the US is "as tough and obdurate on this Israeli government as it was in trying to marshal a boycott against Saddam Hussain. And in speaking to many of the key US actors at the UN and in Washington, I've found no one who believes that that will happen—because of all the pressures we know, and elections coming up. It will go back to the status quo ante, and you and the other peace-oriented Israelis will be pulling your hair out at the failure of the Israeli government to do the right thing."

Andrea Barron is a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.