April/May 1995, Pages 10, 97

What's Next for the Middle East?—5 Views

A Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel

Rabin Needs U.S. Pressure to Stop the Settlements

An Interview with Ambassador William Harrop
by Eugene Bird

U.S. Ambassador to Israel William Harrop was abruptly dismissed two years ago. The dismissal now is seen as a key surrender by the Clinton administration to Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Hungarian-born Jewish member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who is an outspoken defender of Israel (see Washington Report, May 1993). It was primarily Lantos, along with a few other American Jewish establishment figures, who called for Harrop's dismissal because they were unhappy with his suggestion in a speech before an Israeli audience that Israel might have to learn to live with less U.S. aid.

Harrop was forced to retire after a distinguished career as a foreign service officer. Since then, the Clinton administration has not publicly clashed with the government of Israel and also has learned to live with the demands by the Likud opposition that the peace process initiated by the administration of George Bush be undone completely. For many months Ambassador Harrop kept his counsel about his dismissal by Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff, who refused to tell him why he was being dismissed and who defied the normally genteel State Department procedures by, in effect, telling Harrop to pack up and clear out immediately. However, in mid-March, Harrop made a number of telling points in an on-the-record interview with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Among them:

* Prime Minister Rabin desperately needs the United States to place public pressure on him with regard to the settlements and several other issues. The U.S. has not done what George Bush and James Baker did so well: keep the public pressure on so that the prime minister of Israel can take the steps he needs to and may even want to take.

* President Clinton is "the worst president in my lifetime" in dealing with this problem. It is not enough to tell the Israeli leadership in private that they must take steps to stop the settlements.

* Secretary of State Warren Christopher was effective in the first few months. He followed the Bush and Baker policies. But the ascendancy, or perhaps the rivalry, of the "four horsemen," Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, Anthony Lake and Edward Djerejian, led to some strange policies. And Tom Donelan, the eminence grise of the Christopher State Department, has been advising Christopher 24 hours a day, always at his right hand. Perhaps that, too, has led to a collapse of policy-making and a reluctance to engage. Clinton of course has been stepping back from principles, democratic principles, in the Middle East right along.

* An attempt should be made to "bring Hamas into" the peace process, instead of excluding the Palestinian Islamists.

* The United States failed to use its aid lever effectively after the Hebron massacre to give Rabin a good excuse for effective action to remove the settlers from the heart of the city and send a "strong signal" to all the settlers. Israelis were "horrified" at the massacre and prepared for strong action against the violence-prone minority.

* The "political electricity" of the bus bombings and killings of Israelis by Palestinians is simply not understood by anyone

* who has not lived in Israel. Israelis are willing to release 2,000 prisoners to regain one Israeli prisoner. That must be taken into account by anyone working on the peace negotiations.

* Yasser Arafat does not seem to have profited from the advice, or perhaps has not received advice, from those he has kept around him.

* Any American ambassador to Israel must recognize that the treatment of Israeli Arabs, citizens of Israel, is an issue that is terribly important to the American relationship with Israel. The Meretz party has done much to improve the treatment of Israeli Arabs, but Israel still has a long way to go before it ends discrimination such as the refusal to permit Arab members of the Knesset to serve on certain sensitive defense and strategic issue committees.

* American aid, particularly economic aid which is "misused" while America itself desperately

* needs the money for some of her own domestic programs, is "not in Israel's interest at all." The Israeli relationship with the U.S. is and will continue to be based on cultural and other "common values," not on the "charade" of a "strategic relationship."

* The proposals to "insulate" aid to Israel from American budgetary processes is a complete "chimera." It is in Israel's own interest to "taper back" aid now.

* No one in the United States wants to take on the Jewish lobby on the issue of reducing economic aid. But they forget that "the lobby is not monolithic, that is a shibboleth," and it has changed much over the years.

* The Peace Process: Neither side had the political ability to carry out the Oslo accords. The whole concept of putting off tough issues is not sustainable: The Bush and Baker requirement that settlements cease has slipped to the point that the current administration can only describe them as "complications" in the peace process. They are central to it.

* Overall, in dealing with Israel the U.S. has stepped back from its basic principles.

Summing up, Ambassador Harrop noted that he had suggested that a Jewish American should be selected sometime in the near future as ambassador to Israel. He was quoted in the Washington Post in February as being strongly opposed to the appointment of Martin Indyk to the position. He now refuses further comment, since Indyk's nomination breezed through the Helms committee and was approved by the full Senate on March 3. Ambassador Harrop cites the need to support any American ambassador once he is appointed to this sensitive position.

Eugene Bird, a retired foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest.