Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April/May 1999, page 46-48

Affairs of State

Running Out the Clock on the Final Deadline of the Oslo Accord Negotiations

By Eugene Bird

Hanging on my wall, sort of a trophy from the December 1998 visit to Bethlehem with President Bill Clinton and Hillary and Chelsea and eight congressmen and three or four senators (Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter attended Israeli but few Palestinian events), is a large poster (see WRMEA March issue, p. 19) showing the still-to-be impeached Clinton holding a thumbs-up alongside an amazingly photogenic President Arafat signaling a V for victory. The poster is headlined, “We Have a Dream....An Independent Palestine.”

The poster adorned all sides of the Municipal Conference room in Bethlehem where Arafat met with the senators and representatives and called for an independent Palestinian state in addition to entertaining the presidential party at a ceremonial lighting of the Christmas tree in Manger Square.

Will Clinton Ignore It?

Will the president ignore the Arafat appeal? Or does he, too, have a dream that he will end his final 650 or so remaining days in office with a New Middle East that will include an Israel finally at peace with its neighbors, and a new general in place in Baghdad?

Well, Bill Clinton continues to amaze with his zigzag Middle East policies that seem guaranteed to confuse his friends as well as his enemies. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in her first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sat through the usual speech by Senator Jesse Helms listing all of his pet peeves. When it came to the Middle East, they were almost totally focused on Iraq, a safe subject since everyone agrees Saddam is at least a second-rate demon. Helms barely mentioned the Middle East peace process, which had been effectively killed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and did not bring up the subject of independence for Palestine at all.

But when Secretary Albright was asked a few days earlier on national television about independence for the Palestinians, she replied that this was a matter that must be left up to the parties.

No Evidence Against Palestinians

What projects a tiny ray of hope for ultimate peace is the continued support for truth, if not for the Palestinians per se, by the White House and the Department of State in refuting Israeli disinformation about the alleged release of Palestinian “terrorists” by the Palestinian Authority. “No evidence,” says the Department, loud and clear.

Correspondents covering the Department and the White House also say that the warning by Arafat that in the absence of a final settlement he will reaffirm on May 4 the existence of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders is also causing the Department of State’s peace process team to start planning damage control.

May 4 Looms! Or Does It?

Saeb Erekat, now the designated chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, was heated in his reply to a question about postponing the date for a while to keep it from being an issue in the Israeli elections. “That May 4 is not our date,” he said. “And we have not been asked by anyone to postpone anything. The date was set in agreements signed by America and Europe [sic]. We have not heard from them and they have not asked us to postpone.”

Would Wye River have happened if President Arafat had not more than hinted that he would declare independence (for the second time) on May 4? Several correspondents think not.

And if Wye River had not happened, then President Clinton would not have hinted in his address to the notables in Gaza that Palestinians just might have the same rights as others do to an independent nation.

Recognition, Inch by Inch

Inching toward recognition, the United States is caught between an Israeli rock and a congressional hard place. Even though polls indicate that almost half of Israelis still believe a Palestinian state is inevitable, perhaps even desirable given the situation on the ground, the Congress of the United States shows no inclination to call hearings to investigate what happened to cripple the peace process.

Critical American interests in the Gulf, in Turkey and in the eastern Mediterranean are now entangled in the failure to find closure on the Arab-Israeli dispute over Palestine. The New Middle East once publicly embraced by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and President Clinton is fading. In its place is a vision of the next 50 years that looks increasingly like the last 50 years: a paranoid Israel unable to accept any role that excludes domination of U.S. Middle East policy, if not the entire Middle East itself; a series of friendly relationships with the United States under continuing attack by nationalist movements that can neither win a clear victory over traditional forces nor disappear entirely; and a Palestinian population that is today five times the size it was in 1948, yet compressed into less than 2 percent of the original Mandate of Palestine.

Everyone is aware that this is an untenable situation for all parties, especially the United States. It is not the first time the U.S. has lost control of the situation. In 1958, the Baghdad Pact (and the Baghdad government) collapsed as a result of exactly the kind of strategic thinking that has led up to the present impasse with Iraq. Americans had created an alliance based on their Western concepts of security against the threat of Communism. The U.S. ignored both Arab concerns and the humiliation of the Arabs that resulted from the forceful creation of the state of Israel.

Ignoring Arab Nationalism

Today the U.S. again is ignoring the Arab street and the current wave of Arab nationalism. In a false sense of protecting Israel against its neighbors, the U.S. has allowed Israel to create a highly unstable relationship with its immediate neighbors and has encouraged it to become a regional power through an alliance with Turkey. It is the Baghdad Pact all over again.

The American peace team has apparently settled on a series of visits by Arafat to Washington, combined with reviving the joint U.S.-Palestine Commission, as a stop-gap to maintain the appearance of progress toward peace if not toward actual withdrawal of Israeli forces as agreed by all parties to the Wye memorandum. By giving the Palestinians a stage on which to play, the Clinton administration apparently hopes to postpone a direct confrontation with Israel until after the Israeli elections in May and June, by which time a more flexible Israeli government may appear.

President Clinton’s budget asked for $750 million for the Palestinians over the next five years, $1.2 billion immediately for Israel and $300 million in emergency supplemental money for Jordan.

Only Jordan is expected to receive its money, and probably not all of it, right away. The administration has not pressed Republican Congressman Sonny Callahan’s subcommittee for action on either the Israeli or Palestinian reward for the Wye River agreement.

The search for an interim series of steps innocuous enough not to arouse right-wing Israeli refuseniks goes on, but so does the Israeli building of Jews-only settlements and roads that will doom any real Palestinian independence. Unless the peacemakers go back to the drawing board, “We have a Dream” is going to happen and there will be a state of Palestine, but it will look nothing like the dream of Arafat. Instead every time a young Palestinian has to pass through Israeli checkpoints or seek a permit from the alien master of his homeland, the arrogant Israeli government, will be one more step along the road to renewed violence.

New USAID Palestine Policies!

The stop-gap creation of a new USAID program for the Palestinian areas that have been allowed to drift into deep depression, will put only a temporary stop to the collapse of the comprehensive peace process. The new U.S.-Palestine Commission, with its five committees, appears to be nothing but another aspect of a “Baghdad Pact” which met for decades and did nothing.

The dream of a real peace in Bill Clinton’s time is fading fast. Only a reversal in the Israeli elections and the coming to power of another leader in Israel dedicated to an honest exchange of real land for real peace, as stipulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, upon which the Oslo accords were premised, will make the dream on the Bill and Yasser poster come true.

The Fifty Years War

The six-hour American version of a BBC/Israeli Television program called the “Fifty Years War” has reportedly sold more than a quarter-million copies which, if true, would certainly be a record.

The Israeli version was 22 hours long and highly controversial when it aired almost two years ago. The BBC version aired in May of 1998 and WGBH scheduled it for a June 1998 showing, then backed away, supposedly to give time to make a more American-tailored version.

Harvard’s Outreach Center urged PBS to re-schedule the U.S. showing, and it was finally shown nationwide in January 1999 on PBS stations in two three-hour segments.

Since then, BBC producers have expressed concern over WGBH editing of their version. Perhaps the BBC concern was partly because the American station had a longer and more historically accurate preface about the British Mandate context for the creation of the State of Israel and the break-up of Palestine.

However, unfortunately, the American version had serious omissions and distortions of its own. For example, it omitted the Lavon Affair, in which a U.S. government library and a U.S. diplomatic establishment in Egypt were fire-bombed by Israeli agents to disrupt a developing new relationship between Cairo and Washington. The U.S. version also failed to make clear who was responsible for starting the 1967 hostilities, although even the Israeli government has admitted it launched what it called a “pre-emptive” attack.

A comparison of the BBC version with the American version is underway in Washington, but it now appears that there are some real flaws in both versions.

At some $79 for each six-hour version sold, it appears that PBS may have one of its richest harvests. Nevertheless, Palestinian and other documentary critics are right.The U.S. version should not be used as a reference. Worse than merely flawed, it is highly misleading.

Holy See Seeks to Enter Wholly American Peace Process

For the first time, the Vatican has committed itself to a new policy on Jerusalem: It wants to establish an international commission that would have powers over the Holy sites and presumably over what development takes place in the Old City of Jerusalem.

It is the opening move in negotiations on the final status of Jerusalem. In preparation, the Vatican’s foreign minister, The Most Reverend Monsignor Jean-Louis Tauran, whose formal title is Secretary for Relations with States of the Holy See, visited Washington in March and met with organizations and individuals interested in Jerusalem including Muslim and Arab Americans, leading Catholics from across the country, including Catholic members of Congress and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

No Publicity

Although the Department of State did not arrange even a photo opportunity for the Monsignor, the trial balloons he sent up while in Washington made clear that the Roman Catholic Church and its many (Uniate) divisions in the Middle East would have twin objectives under the guidance of Pope John Paul II: An international presence to have a say in what happens within the Old City walls as well as Holy sites throughout Israel and the West Bank; and, equally important, access for all faiths to those sites without restriction.

The Monsignor told a Catholic University audience that the Vatican would always follow a policy of cooperation, not confrontation, and seek to persuade all parties that it was in their interest to settle disputes by not using force. He made plain that the two main parties to Middle East peace, Israel and the Palestinians, would have to negotiate an agreement on Jerusalem. He also laid down a series of principles that the Vatican believes are essential to follow.

The Holy See could become the fourth man at the negotiating table. Whether it would be welcome is another story. Certainly the Israeli government would find an international commission on Jerusalem interference in what it undoubtedly will claim is an internal matter.

Yet the U.S. has a clear interest in an activist Vatican on the subject of Middle East peace, especially on Jerusalem, even if the pope does not have any divisions to lend to peacekeeping forces.

Dialogue in Morocco Continues

The visit to Washington by the Vatican official came after considerable activity in Morocco (Monsignor Tauran is French) and in the Middle East itself on the subject of Jerusalem. A Rabat Conference on Jerusalem was held in November and one in Casablanca in February. The king of Morocco is the designated coordinator for the Islamic Conference on the subject of Jerusalem.

Another conference on the subject, primarily sponsored by the Vatican, is planned for Beirut later this spring. The real importance of the Vatican’s quiet but public initiative is that, in its words, “the Old City of Jerusalem belongs to humanity” and that the “international community must be the guarantor of the sacredness and unity of Jerusalem.”

Corpus Separatum? Not Quite

Forty years ago, the French were the leaders in insisting on a “Corpus Separatum” for Jerusalem, an international enclave measuring 10 kilometers on each of the four sides. The international commission idea will almost certainly be seen by Israel as interference in its plan to become the sole successor to the British Mandate and the Ottoman Empire in the matter of sovereignty over an expanded Greater Jerusalem.

Still, the Vatican is not alone in surfacing with the Israeli government a call for Jerusalem to have an international presence. In fact, the European Commission cited the Corpus Separatum in a formal note to Israel in February. This caused Netanyahu to say Jerusalem is “not a separate body, but rather the heart and soul of the nation of Israel. Jerusalem will remain united and under Israeli sovereignty forever.”

And Ariel Sharon also reacted strongly, repeating the traditional Likud phrases that Jerusalem was the eternal capital of Israel for 3,000 years and refusing to recognize any other party’s rights in the sovereignty of the city. Clearly the Palestinians expect help from the Vatican, the European community and the Islamic Conference on the final status of Jerusalem. Unless the U.S. has lost sight of its own long-term interest in a solution acceptable to the world’s 2.5 billion Muslims and Christians, the State Department should be pleased.

Turkey and Israel: The Odd Couple’s Minuet

Israel is seeking a way around the peace process that will make the whole idea of giving up real land for real peace a mirage. And Turkey is a part of the plot. The New York Times suggested in a major article, complete with maps, a new effort by Israel to bypass the water problem in the Middle East and acquire, via an underwater pipeline running all the way from Turkey’s new dams on the upper Euphrates, the water needed to keep the Zionist dream of a greater Israel alive.

Fantastic as it may seem, the age-old rights of both Syria and Iraq to shares of the water of both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are being ignored. Top Clinton administration Middle East policymakers, all of them political appointees and none of them career Middle Eastern area specialists, are keeping very quiet about the project, as they have about the military alliance between the two countries, while tacitly encouraging it.

The water would come from some of the 22 dams Turkey is building on the Tigris and Euphrates headwaters, without bothering to consult the downstream Arab users. Israel has tagged on to the effort, although there is little official indication that Turkey will sell the water, which in fact it could better exploit itself, and at considerably less cost.

The Times article made it sound like the project of either shipping by tanker or building an underwater offshore line between Turkey and Israel was quite far advanced.

Engineering such a project would take several years of effort, and it is unlikely that either the World Bank or the United States would fund such a controversial project, which would be hostage to every political tremor in Israeli-Arab and Turkish-Arab relations.

But the Times article is right in line with the effort by Israel to demonstrate that its new alliance with Turkey can pose a threat to the Arab states and their rights to the waters of the Euphrates, upon which both Iraq and Syria are heavily dependent. For its part, a popularly elected government, which Turkey has not had since the Turkish military resumed its self-imposed role of dissolving governments and parties of which it does not approve, might well have ideas of its own about where to use that water.

Eugene Bird, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.

SIDEBAR 1

Invitation to Media for Election Pilgrimage

The CNI Foundation has announced an Election Pilgrimage to the Middle East May 14-June 5 and is inviting 12 to 15 members of the print, radio and television media to join the tour. They will be able to cover the actual first-stage and expected second-stage elections in Israel and meet with key leaders in four other countries.

The cost has been set at $4,650 for the tour, led by author Milton Viorst, and announcements of it have been sent to some 600 editors across the country.

The Israeli elections are expected to be a critical event in determining the course or even the continuation of the Oslo peace process.

The tour will cover the first-stage elections in Israel May 17 with journalists able to file their stories directly from Israel. The party will travel to Beirut, Damascus and Amman for meetings with top leaders there and return to meet with the Palestine Authority leadership. If the expected second-stage election is held on June 1, the party will observe that process and then return to Washington for a National Press Club appearance on June 4 or 5. The CNI Foundation can be reached on 1-800-296-6958 or e-mail at count@igc.apc.org.

SIDEBAR 2

Yasser Arafat, Leah Rabin Speak at National Prayer Breakfast

Outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, a small group of protestors held signs, but not a single demonstrator made it inside, where some 5,000 participants in the annual National Prayer Breakfast gave standing ovations to U.S. President Bill Clinton, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Leah Rabin, widow of Israel’s assassinated prime minister.

It might lead one to question whether Israel is losing its well-financed hold on prominent members of America’s Christian fundamentalist community, although Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell still stubbornly provide blanket support to all Israeli extremist causes.

Republican Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma was the primary organizer of the annual event, whose chairmanship rotates among members of Congress. He scheduled Clinton, facing impeachment at the time, for a breakfast address and Arafat and Rabin as luncheon speakers. But the organizers were obviously somewhat nervous about having the Palestinian leader on the platform and banned all cameras from the luncheon event.

The all-day event included seminars on almost every aspect of Christianity and ended with a meeting to announce a major pilgrimage to the Holy Land in December.

Rep. Tony Hall (D-OH), together with his wife and the wife of former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, lent their names to the effort to have 2,000 pilgrims in the area from Dec. 18-25. While initially intending to stay in Jerusalem, the pilgrims will gather in Amman for two days, then proceed to the West Bank and Israel, where they will be hosted by Israeli tour guides. The pilgrims will visit Nazareth in Israel and on the morning of Dec. 25 will hold a prayer service in a field four kilometers southwest of Bethlehem.

The half-million dollar effort will mostly benefit the tourist industry of Israel. The largely Christian Palestinian Bethlehem area will receive only a minimal amount of tourist dollars as a result of the decision to use Israeli tour companies.

Still, after seeing the situation at first-hand, even the breakaway Christian Zionists may someday join mainline Christian churches in future efforts to reach out to the Palestinian Christian community, so long ignored by their American co-religionists, particularly those from the Christian fundamentalist churches. —E.B.