Clinton's Coddling of Rabin A Disaster for Israeli Doves

By Leon T. Hadar

It is too soon to tell whether President Bill Clinton has decided to abandon entirely the relatively evenhanded Middle East policies of former President George Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker. But a series of policy choices and public statements—the Israeli-American "compromises" over the Palestinian deportees, produced with no consultation with the Palestinian leadership; a promise made by Clinton to Rabin and relayed to the press by a U.S. official that American aid to Israel will remain at its current level for the foreseeable future; and the continuing attitude of benign neglect toward Israeli policies in the occupied territories on the part of an ostensibly human rights-oriented administration—all suggest a calculated decision by the new administration to treat the government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with kid gloves.

Most observers attribute this behavior to Clinton's election campaign promises to the organized Jewish community. Clinton, who won the election by a relatively small margin, is aware that his political base is shaky. His ability to maintain the wide coalition ranging from conservative Democrats to progressive liberals that brought him to the White House and, at the same time, to attract at least some of the Perot followers to his camp, will depend on many factors. One such factor, the condition of the American economy, is tied to many domestic and international variables that no White House can control.

Clinton therefore is interested in preserving one important element in his coalition—Jewish party activists, fund-raisers and voters—who might, in theory, abandon him if and when he decides to put pressure on Israel. The perception in 1996 that Clinton had adopted "anti-Israel" policies could only play into the hands of a Republican presidential contender.

This would be especially true if current GOP front-runner Jack Kemp—expected to become the "son of Reagan," as far as pro-Israel policies go—were the Republican candidate. Democratic party chiefs recall Reagan's success in attracting an impressive chunk of the Jewish vote in 1980 by playing-up his pro-Israeli sentiment and by portraying President Jimmy Carter as "pro-Arab." They are not interested in a re-run of that scenario in the case of a Clinton-Kemp race.

However, while not rejecting it entirely, Clinton's foreign policy advisers tend to play down the suggestion that their Middle East moves are a result of cynical domestic political calculations. Instead, they point to Clinton's decision to abandon his campaign commitment to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. Christopher also promised a more "active" U.S. involvement in the peace process. That, in traditional American diplomatic parlance, suggests a willingness to pressure Israel.

The Grand Diplomatic Scheme

The kid-gloves treatment of the Israeli government, argue Clinton aides, relates less to U.S. domestic elections than to Israeli elections. The Rabin coalition, they say, is probably the most moderate government one can expect to emerge in Israel. Notwithstanding the issue of the expulsions, which the usually pro-Israel Economist compared recently to Serbian "ethnic cleansing," and the continuing Israeli abuse of Palestinian human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, the Labor-led government, its American apologists say, is committed to the land-for-peace formula on the Golan Heights and eventually will be willing to cede Israeli political control of the occupied territories.

Despite Rabin's personal popularity in Israel, however, Labor's political position is still very fragile. In the 1992 elections, after all, the Labor alliance won a margin of only one more Knesset seat than the Likud bloc. It is therefore in America's interest, the argument goes, to do everything possible to maintain Labor in power.

Any move to pressure the Rabin government, or to impose sanctions against it, could backfire by strengthening Likud and insuring its victory in the next elections. If that happened, argue Clinton advisers, not only would the peace talks collapse, but Clinton would find himself in the worst case scenario of being forced to adopt a less sympathetic posture toward Israel and, as a result, endanger his support among American Jews.

The end-result of this commitment to preserve Rabin in power has been the consensus emerging within the Clinton administration that the only realistic Middle East goal at this stage is an Israeli-Syrian agreement based on a step-by-step Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for a step-by-step Syrian move toward peace with Israel.

Public opinion polls indicate that a majority of the Israeli public will accept such an approach, especially if it is sweetened by an American agreement to increase aid to Israel—in order to "compensate" it for the withdrawal—and to station U. S. troops on the Golan. The Palestinians, according to some current Clinton administration conventional wisdom, "will have no choice" but to join the peace process and to accept a very limited concept of self-rule. This would amount to an autonomy a la South Africa's "homelands" under Israeli control.

An American success in mediating a Syrian-Israeli agreement, without any risk of getting embroiled in the more comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, could be marketed as a Clinton diplomatic victory. It would be achieved with minimal political costs for the new president, since it would not involve an American-Israeli rift over the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Rabin and Clinton both could use a Syrian-Israeli Camp David-like agreement to strengthen their domestic political bases and create the conditions for a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement, perhaps during their second terms in office.

Faulty Assumptions

All this grand diplomatic design sounds very promising. Unfortunately, it is based on misguided assumptions. It is based upon the expectation that the Middle East will remain static. It does not take into consideration the fact that the increasing power of the Islamists in Egypt, and in Syria, might make it difficult to implement.

Internal pressure from the Islamists would make it extremely difficult for Syria to sign a separate peace with Israel. Moreover, the rising power of the Islamists in the West Bank and Jordan suggests that unless there is a dramatic breakthrough in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, the Jewish-Arab conflict over Palestine in Israel, the occupied territories and even Jordan will turn into a bloodbath that will make Lebanon, and even Bosnia, look like a picnic.

Nor will the American public, in its current isolationist mood, be inclined to support an infusion of additional massive aid to Israel and the stationing of U.S. troops in the Golan, unless Americans become convinced that such a major involvement would contribute to a stable and long-term Israeli-Arab peace on all fronts and would not get the U.S. involved militarily in a Middle Eastern quagmire.

There is still another factor that suggests that the let's-not-let-Rabin-fall strategy is based on faulty assumptions. The American press has failed to inform Americans Meretz representatives in the cabinet, including Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, who before the 1992 elections had met frequently with PLO officials, promising to support self-determination for the Palestinians when they came to power, were the first to applaud Rabin's decision to deport the alleged Hamas supporters. Nor did Meretz ministers, or Labor peaceniks like Health Minister Haim Ramon or Tourism Minister Uzi Baraam, raise major objections to the continuation of Rabin's "iron fist" policies in the territories.

Rabin's authoritarian style resembles that of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Rabin has placed both the prime minister's office and the defense ministry under his control and has marginalized the role in the peace negotiations of relatively moderate Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who behind the scenes raised objections to the deportations. Rabin's refusal to go beyond the Likud's program of limited self-rule for the Palestinians, and his unwillingness to state clearly that Israel must withdraw fully from the Golan if it is ever to have peace with Syria, suggests that under his leadership Labor might turn into a Likud II.

Will the U.S. Fill the Vacuum?

The Likud, however, had to contend with the active opposition of both the Labor and the coalition peace camp. One can imagine the mass demonstrations that Meretz would have organized if a Likud government had expelled hundreds of Palestinians. And if Shamir had adopted the current Rabin approach, his Labor opposition would have been leading a public drive for realistic Israeli policies toward Syria and the Palestinians.

The disappearance of the peace camp as a viable political force in Israel suggests that this is not a time for American kid gloves treatment of Rabin. In fact, only American pressure can fill the political void that now exists in Israel, by creating incentives for Israeli diplomatic flexibility. One clear lesson that can be drawn from the history of more than four decades of U.S.-Israeli relations is that a lack of pressure on Israeli governments plays into the hands of those who would like to maintain the status quo. By contrast, pressure on Israel, as the Bush-Shamir confrontation demonstrated, strengthens those forces in Israel which support diplomatic compromise for peace.

The lack of a clear American signal that deportations would impose major costs on Israel eroded the credibility of those Israelis who had warned of a harsh reaction from an American administration that placed human rights and a commitment to the United Nations at the top of its agenda.

Nachum Barnea, a commentator for Yediot Ahronot, wrote that following the American-Israeli "compromise," Rabin bragged to his ministers that the Clinton reaction proved the wisdom of his decision. Similarly, the Palestinians feel that Clinton has given a green light to Rabin to use any means he chooses to suppress the intifada.

Clinton's promise to Rabin that U.S. economic aid to Israel has become, like social security, an untouchable entitlement program only delays economic reform in Israel and props up for a bit longer Israel's bankrupt socialism. (Ironically, Clinton gave that assurance even as he searched for economic resources to alleviate the much more serious long-term problems of Russia's economy.)

President Clinton sooner or later will discover that the peace process cannot move forward without frank discussion between Israel and the U.S. on their separate goals in the region. Such a discussion will lead, inevitably, to a confrontation between the two countries, since U.S. interests cannot permit the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem to remain forever under the diplomatic rug. To put it differently, there will be no gain in the peace process without the pain of American-Israeli acrimony, and the resulting political costs it will produce for the president.

Clinton is likely to postpone paying the costs involved in such a confrontation. Following the yellow brick road toward an illusory Syrian-Israeli agreement, and acceding to Israeli attempts to fan the fear of Iran and "Islamic fundamentalism" as the basis of an even more unlikely Israeli-Arab "strategic consensus" might result in a few photo opportunities in the Rose Garden. But, wasting precious years in the long run, building such castles in the sand will only help perpetuate the Israeli occupation and turn Israel into a Middle Eastern version of South Africa. With the death of the Israeli peace movement, it seems at this point that only America can help Israel help itself.