May 1990, Page 57

Publishers' Page

One Crucial Decision Is the Key to Middle East Peace

"Grant me the courage to change what I cannot accept, and the wisdom to accept what I cannot change."

So goes the prayer that should be on the lips of President George Bush's Middle East policy makers this year as they contemplate the beginning of Lebanon's 16th year of civil war, Iraqi saber-rattling, and the political polarization and disarray that, again, enable Israel to delay the land-for-peace settlement that would alleviate so many problems in the Middle East.

At the urging of Israel's American lobby, Ronald Reagan and George Shultz set out in vain to solve the Lebanon problem first, although it is just a spinoff of the underlying, unsolved Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Now Israel's American establishment in Congress, the media, and the State Department itself is urging George Bush and James Baker to deal in isolation with Iraq's defiant stance, another direct symptom of the underlying Israel-Palestine illness. This would be equally fruitless.

Even The Washington Post finally got it almost right in this statement in an April 4 editorial:

The Iran-Iraq truce keeps both countries on full military guard, peacekeepers circle warily. But the Arab-Israeli dispute is only one Israeli political decision away from being submitted to a peace procedure managed by the United States.

Where the Post has it wrong is that the peace procedure must be started by one American, not Israeli, decision. The US must, finally, tie its economic assistance to Israel to eventual Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territories. Until the US uses such "leverage," it will be politically impossible for any Israeli government to take the step that will ease tensions throughout the Middle East.

The Lebanese Civil War

The war that broke out in Lebanon early in 1975 was, at first, a continuation by armed private militias of the battles fought for years by subsidized newspapers in the Middle East's "marketplace of ideas." Contenders, then and now, were local sectarian leaders, and their foreign patrons. The catalyst was the presence in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East of Palestinian refugees who, then and now, could not return home. The irritant that kept the Lebanese war going was the use an misuse of the refugees and their cause by contending parties and powers for their own purposes.

Now the civil war has reached what could become its final, determinative stage. It no longer pits Maronite Christians against Muslims, Druze and Palestinians. In Christian-controlled areas, Maronites prepared to accept the Arab League's Taif formula for peace are contending with Maronites following General Michel Aoun, who are not. In West Beirut and South Lebanon, Shi'i Amal militiamen loyal to Syrian-allied Nabih Berri, who will accept the Taif formula, contend with Shi'i Hezbollah militiamen subsidized by Iranian mullahs, who will not.

By providing what political support it can to Lebanese willing to accept that compromise formula, and otherwise staying out of the way, the Bush-Baker administration is doing exactly the right thing.

Saber-Rattling in Iraq

Americans who see Saddam Hussein as a fearsome modern-day Saladin, seeking to unite the Arab world to drive into the sea the Israelis, and anyone who backs them, are buying the Iraqi strongman's own carefully cultivated public image. In fact, he's dealing from weakness to buy time to rebuild an economy ruined by war and outmoded socialistic theories.

Also, like Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, he lives in constant anticipation of an American backed Israeli attack. Both the Libyan and Iraqi leaders believe they have just warded off potential Israeli attacks against their chemical weapons-producing capabilities.

When Menachem Begin's uncompromising policies had destroyed Israel's economy and brought down his Likud government in 1981, Begin forestalled what had seemed certain defeat at the polls by launching a devastating aerial attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. Since then, in times of domestic crises, Israeli war planes and hit squads have twice violated Tunisian sovereignty to strike the PLO.

With Yitzhak Shamir in desperate political trouble, and the Israeli electorate more polarized than ever, Qaddafi concluded his poison gas facilities at Rabta were about to be hit. A fire, or fake fire, removed the potential target.

Realizing that Shamir might next try to restore his political fortunes by repeating the Israeli attack on advanced Iraqi weaponry, Saddam Hussein took a different tack. He conspicuously placed in the desert west of Baghdad, within easy range of Israel, rocket launchers capable of delivering a poison gas filled warhead, and warned that Israel will never again raid Iraq with impunity.

For the moment, he does look like Saladin to many Arabs, humiliated by years of chest pounding by tiny Israel, secure in the protection of Uncle Sam. At the same time, however, Arab leaders know that a reversion to threats and the use of force is to turn back the clock to the sixties. in an Arab world that then had little to lose. Now modem cities and high tech economies provide a way of life that citizens of 18 "moderate" Arab states would prefer to enjoy in peace. They can, if the US keeps its head.

The first step is to look at the world as Saddam Hussein sees it. His military victory was in just not losing his war with Iran. Its causes—control of Iraq's Shatt al Arab outlet to the sea, and the Khomeini regime's meddling with Iraqi Kurds in the North and the Shi'i Arab population in the south—remain unresolved. Between 60,000 and 70,000 Iraqi prisoners remain in Iran, and half as many Iranian prisoners languish in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein fears to demobilize his million-man army before the Iraqi economy. still regimented along socialist lines, can provide enough jobs. He is trying, with help from Western European and American investors, to "privatize" the economy to develop labor-intensive industries based upon Iraq's oil reserves, which are second only to those of Saudi Arabia in the Mideast.

Meanwhile, he has to keep the Israelis from attacking the rocket and poison gas facilities with which he won the war with Iran, and in the absence of which Iran might be tempted to resume the fighting. An American in the same fix would say aim the rockets at Israel but make it clear they will not be used to attack, but only for retaliation. That's exactly what Saddam Hussein has done.

What the US can do is start laying the groundwork for an area-wide arms limitation treaty, along the lines now being negotiated within Europe, and between the US and the USSR.

An Israeli-Palestinian Settlement

An area-wide treaty regulating or eliminating nuclear and chemical weapons is possible only after settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Until UN Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula is put into effect, Israel will justify its nuclear and chemical weapons as a necessary defense against its more populous Arab and Islamic neighbors. Those neighbors, in turn, will maintain similar stockpiles as deterrence against Israeli attack.

To attempt to deal with these symptoms without addressing the underlying malady is a hazardous exercise in futility. It will turn the '90s into another decade of confrontation between the United States and the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The difference between the coming decade and those that have preceded it, however, is that Europe would no longer be at America's side. European Community economic sanctions against Israel, and measures to support the Palestinians under military occupation, presage the future. The US would be Israel's only ally. European intervention would be in the form of supplying military technology to the Arab states, and thus winning access to Middle Eastern commercial markets.

The Bush administration can avoid this nightmare scenario, however, simply by "staying the course." For starters it has indicated its unwillingness to guarantee loans to Israel to build housing for incoming Soviet Jews unless the Israeli government stops subsidizing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Now American Jewish leaders say they have received a wink and a nod from the administration indicating that it will require only an Israeli government assurance that none of the funds secured by US government guarantees will be expended in the occupied territories.

Because, as Secretary of State Baker has already told the Israelis, "money is fungible," there is a world of difference between a freeze on Israeli government subsidies to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, or just an assurance that no funds raised with US help will be spent there.

The former will signal an end to the Israel military occupation as a prelude to trading land for peace. The latter will signal continuation of the dangerous status quo, not just in the occupied territories, but thoughout the Middle East, including Lebanon and Iraq.

President Bush and Secretary of State Baker surely find that unacceptable. May Congress have the courage to let them change it.

Changing the World

What President Bush and Secretary of State Baker are doing in the Middle East will, literally, change the world. With public, media and congressional support it can lead directly to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and lay the groundwork for settlements of problems from the Western Sahara to Kashmir in which the US will be seen not as a protagonist or spoiler, but a disinterested underwriter and honest broker. Let us count the ways our readers can help our country get from here to there. and remind you that if you plan to deduct your expenses for any of these projects from your 1990 income tax, make your check to the AET Library Endowment, whose federal identification number is 52-146032.

Council for the National Interest Membership

You may wish to join the Council for the National Interest, headed by former Congressmen Paul Findley and Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey and described on page 35 of this issue. If you are a Washington Report subscriber, you can respond now and consider the $15 "regular membership" fee paid. You will be asked to renew your membership, however, when you renew your Washington Report subscription, since for our purposes it is simpler to synchronize subscriptions and membership renewals. New members who come to CNI from other directions will automatically receive a $15 Washington Report subscription at no extra cost on the same cycle as their membership. It means, if you become a CNI member, you receive a Washington Report subscription as a privilege of membership. If you are a Washington Report subscriber, you may, it' you wish, join CNI at no additional cost.

Washington Report Donation Subscriptions

In this issue is an insert inviting readers to sponsor, at $5 each, subscriptions to the Washington Report for libraries and opinion molders. This program proved extremely effective in 1989 in broadening the Washington Report's outreach, and in introducing potential full-rate subscribers to the magazine. Last year what we were saying was still considered "controversial." Now, our message will seem far less controversial, but just as important. The administration needs help to do what's right, and we think we are telling readers how to help, and why they must. If there was some individual or educational institution you didn't quite dare to include with your donations last year, give it a try this year. And if your library wasn't quite sure whether it had space for the magazine last year, we suspect this year they'll find they do. Please help before June 1.

Library Donation Packages

This month we've broken our library donation offerings into three separate packages. See the details on page 53. We think it's important that libraries all over the United States have some serious holdings on US Middle East policies, Middle East history, and Islam. If your librarian likes the Washington Report, chances are he or she will love the donation packages.

Stealth PAC Book Donations

The first edition of Stealth PACs: How Israel's American Lobby Took Control of US Middle East Policy, (see description on page 48) is almost gone, and the second edition is already on the presses. Ray McCann of Dothan, AL was first in with a donation to cover delivery of 100 copies to the office of every Senator, and 10 to the White House. The first two written responses were from Senators Paul Simon (D-IL) and Pete Wilson (R-CA), both of whom figure prominently in the book. We'll share some of the senatorial reactions with readers in the June Washington Report.

Meanwhile, we're looking for more donors to be sure that every member of the House of Representatives also has a copy. Send $5 each for copies to members of Congress, and $2.50 each for copies to media personnel anywhere in the United States, since we have a partial matching grant for up to 10,000 media donations from a Maryland publisher.

They Dare to Speak Out

The American Educational Trust has on hand at present 4,000 copies of Paul Findley's They Dare to Speak Out, and a partial matching grant to place them anywhere individual donors direct us to. Send $5 per name and we will mail them to any individual in the United States as a gift from another individual. This offer is available only to individuals, not corporations or institutions.

Newsstand Returns

We also have in the office 5,000 copies of 1989 and 1990 issues of the Washington Report returned by the post office or newsstands. It's clearly the second time around for them, but they're still in good shape. If you would like to distribute introductory copies at meetings, bazaars, classes or clubs, we can send them in lots of 25 or more at no charge.

Make a Difference—This Month

If ever your representatives in Congress needed to hear from you, it's right now. If you support administration efforts to tie aid to Israel to tangible signs that Israel is planning to withdraw from the occupied areas, now is the time to tell your two senators and your representative in the House. For that matter, why not tell every member of Congress from your state, and drop copies of the letter to the Department of State and the White House. This president and secretary of state, for a change, don't need to be told what to do in the Middle East. It may reassure them, however, to know how solidly the public is behind them.

When public opinion changes in the United States, traditionally Congress is the last to know. If, to borrow Ann Landers' favorite phrase, you can help Congress to "wake up and smell the coffee," you'll...

Make a Difference, This Month.

Peace.