A Jewish-American Peace Activist

A Cowardly U.S. Congress Is Destroying Chances for Mideast Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

If the Middle East peace negotiations that began with such promise four years ago in Madrid should end up as another lost opportunity, it could be the U.S. Congress that delivers the final blow. Others, of course, have helped undermine the process.

Palestinian suicide bombers driven by rage and hopelessness have reinforced Israeli paranoia and given the Israeli government an excuse to renege on its pledges. Israeli settlers who shout "Death to Arabs!" as they rampage through Palestinian neighborhoods smashing windows and firing automatic rifles deepen Palestinian doubts that peaceful coexistence with Israel is possible. Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat's failure to recognize grassroots leaders and include them in the decision-making process has weakened support for his leadership among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

President Bill Clinton's pretense that Israel and the PLO meet at the bargaining table as equals, and therefore U.S. intervention on behalf of the Palestinians would be unseemly, has discouraged Palestinian hopes that Washington will help bring about a just peace settlement. (The U.S. aid that pours into Israel at the rate of nearly $6 billion a year, including funds for a new ballistic missile, is of course not "intervention" but "a contribution to the peace process.") And finally, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's arrogant repudiation of the agreements he signed with the PLO; his refusal to dismantle Jewish settlements; his iron-fisted resort to border closings, mass arrests, death squad killings, and the replacement of Palestinian workers with thousands of foreigners, have convinced many Palestinians that the Oslo agreement was a bad joke.

Now Congress seems bent on bringing to a halt the few small steps that are being taken toward peace—even if this means running counter to Israeli government policy. Congressional willingness to follow the dictates of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has long been a factor in determining U.S. actions in the Middle East. As Israel's chief lobby in the U.S., AIPAC dutifully responded to the Labor Party's election victory in 1992 by abandoning its former support for Likud's hard-line and instead defending Labor's effort to defuse hostilities with Israel's Arab neighbors and patch together an agreement, however one-sided, with the PLO. Congress, however, has been reluctant to show the same flexibility. The same legislators who in the past responded with knee-jerk obedience to whatever Israeli government was in power now are willing to defy the wishes of the current Labor government, perhaps with an eye on Israeli polls that predict an almost certain victory for the Likud Party in 1996. Likud's likely candidate for president, Benyamin Netanyahu, has promised to undo any agreements Rabin reaches that involve withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and the Golan Heights or the dismantling of Israeli settlements.

Rabin's only chance of survival lies in his ability between now and the coming election to reduce the level of violence against Israelis and to reach agreements with the Palestinians and Syria that satisfy Israel's security concerns. To achieve these objectives, Rabin favors U.S. aid to the Palestinian National Authority—if only to help lessen the economic disaster his border closings have brought on the Palestinians and prevent a renewal of the intifada. He also wants the U.S. to follow through with the $250 million in aid that the Clinton administration promised Jordan's King Hussein in return for signing a peace treaty with Israel. Rabin hopes fulfillment of the U.S. promise to Hussein will help convince Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad that Syria could receive similar benefits by making peace with Israel.

The Israeli prime minister's strategy is to use the prospect of financial aid and warmer relations between Damascus and Washington to induce Assad to soften his demand for Israel's full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a condition Assad has insisted on ever since Israel seized the territory in a surprise attack in 1967. Although the press makes frequent references to Israel's offer to withdraw from the Golan in exchange for peace, in fact Israel never has made such an offer.

On Sept. 8, 1994, Rabin told the Israeli cabinet that Israel was willing to undertake only a "very slight" withdrawal, to be phased in over a three-to-four-year period. After that, his government would wait to see how far Syria went in normalizing relations with Israel before deciding on a further withdrawal. Assad in turn is offering peace with Israel if its troops leave the Golan entirely in two years and Jewish settlements in the area are removed.

Israel not only has rejected Assad's terms but is demanding that in exchange for its own minimal pullback, Syria completely dismantle its defenses in the area of the Golan, and, even more important, terminate all ties with Iran. Even then, Rabin promised the Knesset last October, "any significant withdrawal" by Israel would first have to be approved in a popular referendum.

The need for a peace treaty between Israel and Syria, and the requirement that Syria break its ties with Iran, are essential components of joint U.S.-Israel policy in the region, according to a report on Israeli-Syrian relations published in February by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. The report cites a statement by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake in May 1994 that calls for isolating Israel's potential enemies—Iran, Iraq and Libya—by inducing the other Arab states to form alliances with Israel.

Syria would be the linchpin of the new alignment of forces in the Middle East, and therefore a peace treaty between Syria and Israel is a top priority in both Washington and Israel. The need for such a treaty became even more urgent in early March when relations between Egypt and Israel became strained over the issue of nuclear weapons. Despite U.S. urging, Egypt has refused to sign an extension of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty unless Israel signs it as well. Israel, which has at least 200 nuclear weapons, was unwilling to sign the original treaty and the U.S. has not pressured it to do so now, a fact that is causing increasing resentment among Arab leaders.

Another obstacle to Lake's plan of lining up moderate Arab states on the side of Israel is the Rabin government's refusal to implement the Oslo agreement. Although their relations with Israel thawed somewhat following the signing of that agreement, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states again are distancing themselves from Israel now that the agreement is producing no positive results. In February an anonymous Saudi official told Youssef Ibrahim of The New York Times that members of the Gulf Cooperation Council agreed that "any talk of regional cooperation with Israel is premature until Israeli troops leave Arab lands in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon."

Congressional budget-cutting is making chances of an agreement between Israel and Syria even more remote. To the dismay of Clinton and Rabin, a House appropriations subcommittee voted in late February to cut the White House request for $275 million for Jordan to $50 million. The reduced figure would not be enough to retire Jordan's debt to the U.S., which Clinton promised Hussein he would do. The committee's action also was bad news for those hoping for a more compliant Assad. King Hussein is popular in America; Assad is anything but. He is widely demonized as the head of a state that still is officially listed by the State Department as supporting terrorists. If Congress is willing to short-change Hussein, and perhaps even cut aid to Egypt, it is unlikely to show any generosity to Syria. Consequently, the Clinton administration is in no position to offer the Syrian president a big enough carrot to make concessions on his part worthwhile.

In any case, Congress may end hopes of even a partial Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. Members of Israel's hard-line opposition, aided by extremist Jewish groups in the U.S., have begun pressuring senators and representatives to oppose stationing
a U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan between Israel and Syria to oversee an agreement. William Safire, in a column of Nov. 24, 1994, gave a revealing explanation of why he and such senators as Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), Al D'Amato (R-NY) and Robert Packwood (R-OR) oppose sending American soldiers to the Golan: "The U.S.," he warned, "would then become 'neutral' in the struggles between Syria and Israel in lieu of continuing as Israel's ally...Israel's freedom of action would be compromised, with no preemptive action possible without U.S. permission." In other words, with U.S. soldiers on the scene it would be harder for Israel to launch another sneak attack on Syria.

Keeping Up the Pressure

Last November, three Likud officials led by a close aide to Netanyahu, Yossi Ben Aharon, met with 60 members of Congress and their staffs to lobby against the involvement of U.S. troops. They intend to return for similar meetings if peace talks between Syria and Israel should make progress, and meanwhile their American allies will keep up the pressure. The Likudniks told Congress they are concerned for the safety of U.S. soldiers, but according to columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, their "real interest is...driving a stake through Rabin's peace strategy. Without the insurance policy of a U.S. presence on the Golan, Rabin would lose Israeli support for peace with Syria...and Middle East peace will take another tumble." Even if a majority in Congress approves the deployment of U.S. forces to the Golan, Senator Jesse Helms, who fiercely opposes it, could use his considerable parliamentary skill to delay approval indefinitely.

Finally, the most worrisome obstacle to Middle East peace may be Congress's hostility toward the Palestinians. Neither Syria nor any other Arab country can afford to establish close relations with Israel while the plight of the Palestinians continues to worsen. Clinton promised Arafat $500 million in aid when he signed the agreement with Rabin, but so far the U.S. has come through with only $70 million. In order to receive more, the PLO must satisfy pro-Israel senators that it is complying with that agreement.

"The way it is now, it's going to be very difficult getting a majority vote in favor of aid to the PLO," a Senate source told a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last January. Some Jewish organizations already are lobbying against renewal of the aid legislation when it expires June 30.

But what ultimately may prevent a renewal of aid to the Palestinians is legislation currently being drafted by members of both parties that would require the PLO to amend its covenant and do more to prevent terrorism in order to receive additional funds. The PLO can hardly fulfill either requirement. Most Palestinians believe the concessions so far have all been on their side and that since agreeing to peace with Israel their lives only have become worse. Consequently a majority of PLO Executive Council members have refused even to attend a meeting on revising the covenant.

Nor can Arafat do much to stop terrorism as long as Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank grow increasingly desperate. As a former head of Israeli military intelligence, Shlomo Gazit, pointed out in the Jerusalem Post, "Arafat can only demand an end to terror if he can come to his people with a political success that neutralizes the justification for continued Palestinian struggle." To expect otherwise, Gazit wrote, "is asking the impossible." So if the proposed legislation passes, which seems likely as members of Congress trip over one another trying to please hard-line Jewish voters, the Palestinians will lose aid they desperately need and with it any remaining faith in the peace process.

As if to make sure that process is aborted, several members of Congress also are attempting to determine the fate of Jerusalem before it comes up for negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians. More than half the senators have signed a letter drafted by Moynihan and D'Amato calling for the U.S. to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as proof of Washington's support for "a united Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Arizona Senator Jon Kyl are demanding that the embassy be moved next year, and may sponsor a bill to that effect. If so, considerable damage could result. An anonymous congressman told a New York Times reporter last February that "The fear is guys like Gingrich and Kyl will push this as an issue for their own domestic political purposes and blow up the whole peace process."

Gingrich, who recently hired AIPAC's former legislative director Arne Christensen as his senior policy aide, obviously hopes his all-out support for Israel will persuade the traditionally liberal Jewish community to go along with his efforts to gut social services, provide tax breaks for the rich, and allow prayer in the schools. Gingrich's opportunism, like that of D'Amato, Robert Packwood, Connie Mack and others who pander to fanatically pro-Israel Jews and Christian fringe groups, is matched by the timidity of their colleagues who know better but are fearful of being labeled "anti-Israel."

The irony is that by lavishing funds on an Israeli prime minister who is "making peace with the enthusiasm of a prisoner being led to the electric chair," as Israeli journalist Ze'ev Sternhall wrote in Ha'aretz last January, Congress is not helping Israel but doing lasting harm to its citizens. The majority of Israelis, like Palestinians, want a chance to live their lives free of the fear that they or their children will become victims of violence. Instead, their future is being held hostage by militant ideologues who insist on remaining on another people's land, by a government that is fearful of confronting this extremist minority, and by members of Congress who rely on that government's lobby for campaign funds. If negotiations collapse and the Middle East conflict escalates, the blame can be laid on political leaders in both Israel and the U.S. who are too cowardly to make peace.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.