Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 23-24

Affairs of State

Albright Peace Team Out-Spun and Out-Maneuvered By Netanyahu and Under-Supported by Clinton

By Eugene Bird

The Albright-Ross-Berger team at the State Department and the National Security Council remains hard pressed to find a new gimmick to promote as a substitute for confronting Binyamin Netanyahu over his assassination of the peace process. Members of the American foreign affairs team clearly have been out-spun and out-maneuvered by the Israeli prime minister, and under-supported by their president, who still is calculating the odds of remaining unwounded enough to take initiatives not approved by the Israel lobby during his last two years in office.

Their options are few and the American team’s policy seems lost in a jungle of absurdities: They are tacitly agreeing to a 10-year formal commitment to give Israel another $30 billion in largely military aid at the same time they are trying to stop settlement building with a meaningless “time-out” and an even more meaningless withdrawal. They seem unable to accomplish anything of substance with the present government of Israel, but also unable to halt the massive flow of U.S. aid that makes that government’s intransigence possible.

Britain’s Robin Cook: The Black Hat

The number of diplomatic visitors to Jerusalem trying to cajole the prime minister of Israel into giving up just another four percent of undefined territory on the West Bank continues to grow. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook dropped in with a sensible approach that so threatened the whole Netanyahu government that Netanyahu cancelled a dinner for him. Then British prime minister and Bill Clinton buddy Tony Blair came by and invited everyone to London, while indicating that of course he was not preempting the U.S. role.

That brought a sudden decision by Madeleine Albright to go to London herself and meet, separately but equally, with Netanyahu and Arafat on May 4. Her spokes person, James Rubin, under heavy grilling by correspondents, made clear that the Europeans, represented by Tony Blair, would have only a “technical issues” role to play in any negotiations. Only on the subject of the airport and seaport in Gaza (which the Europeans were paying for in any case) would the Americans allow the Europeans room to run. When Rubin was asked if that was not “sidelining” the entire European community in Middle East peace, he disagreed, but could not point to any substantial role for the Europeans, who are becoming nervous about the dead end into which U.S. policy is taking the whole area, so vital to Europe.

Gore at the 50th Celebration

Another and perhaps more important player behind the scenes is the vice president. Al Gore and his team of Election 2000 strategists are highly sensitive to the Israeli government’s U.S. Lobby, with its American Jewish storm troopers ready to invade every congressional district and leave no canard undelivered in order to subordinate U.S. policy to whatever Israeli government is in power.

Not quite fair. The spectacle of important Jewish leaders publicly disagreeing with Netanyahu has become routine in the news columns of the Jewish community weekly news papers. But U.S. Jewish opponents to Netanyahu are fragmented and ineffective and clearly have no input in nominating and electing the next president. That is the only criterion for the Gore team. Contrary to the contents of his stump speech, it is not the 21st century that is important for Gore, but the last few months of this century, focused on the second Tuesday in November of 2000.

The chaotic explanations of what Washington expects of Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat approach the theater of the absurd: It seems that everything’s up to them. “If the Middle Eastern leaders do not want to make the tough decisions, then there may be nothing the U.S. can do,” Madeleine Albright insists. In fact, of course, there is a great deal the U.S. could do.

Why is Netanyahu Allowed to Block peace?

So the important question remains: Why has Netanyahu been allowed to block all rational peace efforts for two years, facing down the most powerful nations with the unyielding Israeli Sabra posture of confrontation and cleverness?

No Credibility on Double Standard

Following the more or less satisfactory conclusion of the latest Iraq crisis, even some in the administration are willing to admit that there is a double standard when it comes to Iraq versus Israel.

A senior U.S. ambassador, Alfred (Roy) Atherton, now retired, told a Capitol Hill seminar sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council of Washington, DC that a recent extended trip to the Middle East had convinced him that the U.S. was in danger of losing all credibility because of its double standards. “It is worse than I can remember in the past 25 years,” he warned.

At an off-the-record briefing elsewhere, a key administration official admitted to a small audience of experts that the U.S. does have a “special standard” when it comes to Iraq, because Iraq had attacked its neighbors and because the resolutions on Iraq came under a different article of the U.N. Charter than those which related to Israel. Therefore, there were different standards, and besides, Iraq remained a threat to its neighbors.

Could this very same profile be attached to Israel? It has both nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and since it is stubbornly squatting on territory it has seized by force from its neighbors, the threat seems considerably more advanced than any offered by Iraq, which no longer occupies Kuwaiti or Iranian territory.

The official did have the decency to admit that these facts could provide an understandable basis for the conclusion by the Arab countries, including America’s Gulf war allies, that the U.S. has a double standard which they cannot accept.

The U.S. and Iraq

The official U.S. assessment of the results of the latest crisis in Iraq is that some real gains were made: Iraq agreed to open “sensitive sites,” and to no longer require “notification” or advance notice of where the U.N. teams were going to inspect. Helicopter overflights were now also possible for the U.N.

But, officials warn, there was a price. The negotiations with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave Iraq another level of “appeal,” and there was a danger that its “cooperation” with the U.N. would garner Iraq more support by powers other than the U.S. as Iraq seeks a loosening of the sanctions.

“Cooperation” With UNSCOM is NOT “Compliance”

“Cooperation” with UNSCOM, according to this U.S. view, does not meet the requirements for “compliance” with the sanctions, which call for full disclosure of Iraq’s entire program to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Inspection is only part of the requirement: it is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and this means that Iraq itself will have to reveal what programs of chemical and biological weapons it had been working on. Full confession!

Since this U.S. viewpoint also assumes that it will be another six months before any further decisions on sanctions will have to be made, while Iraq expects a loosening of sanctions now, look for more trouble.

Turkey at the Straits: Arm-In-Arm With Israel

The new Turkish-Israeli defense alliance is causing some complications for the Turkish military. Originally promoted as a simple cooperative training project linked to some Israeli defense up-grades of aging Turkish fighter planes, and permission for Israeli military aircraft to use Turkish airspace for training exercises, the alliance has grown into a number of defense industry and even economic deals that may ignite or inflate resentment among Turkey’s rural masses over Israeli actions with regard to Jerusalem and other Muslim concerns.

The alliance is also having an impact on the close Iran-Turkish relations. (There are now a million Iranians in Turkey and citizens of the two countries do not require visas to enter each other’s territory.) Iran is concerned not only because of traditional animosity to Israel but because the Turkish-Israeli alliance has an impact on the Kurdish problem. The extent that Israel and the United States work against Saddam Hussain by encouraging a degree of Kurdish autonomy in Iraq also worries Tehran, according to Iran specialists.

U.S. Aid to Israel and Egypt: Another Nine Years, Another $50 billion

In his first speech to the U.S. Congress in 1996, Prime Minister Netanyahu promised to “reduce” Israel’s dependence on U.S. aid. The reduction turns out to be largely a house of mirrors.

Instead of a true reduction, it is an iron-clad guarantee, short of a complete break-down in U.S. relations with Israel, of up to $35 billion in additional aid for Israel and what will surely become another $20 billion in aid for Egypt. Such inflated payoffs to Israel and Egypt began as a result of the Camp David agreement. But surely President Carter never expected the peace agreement he brokered between the two countries to result in such a continuing burden on the American taxpayer. Especially since Israel’s claimed per capita income of $17,000 today exceeds that of some U.S. states, not to mention such European countries as Spain and Ireland.

Debtor Nation: $40 Billion Owed Abroad

At this point the true figures of what Israel owes, both to foreign governments and to private investors, seems locked away from public scrutiny. Journalists from The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor both have tried and failed to assemble these figures.

In fact it appears that Israel, with a population of fewer than six million people, has become one of the great per capita debtor nations. It owes some $40 billion abroad, of which U.S. government direct loans and contingency obligations amount to some $15 billion, according to private sources monitoring the economy for congressional watchers.

The direct U.S. government loans are apparently down to less than $4 billion, and the contingency obligations to Washington are about $11 or $12 billion. These are Treasury figures from last year adjusted for this year’s additions, which are largely direct loan guarantees which will phase out in October.

U.S. Will Provide Nice Retirement Package For Israeli Military

The solution for the looming pay-backs, including the principal on the $10 billion loan guarantees, which kicks in starting in 2003, is probably the reason for the rush to gain the new long-term support from the U.S. The choice made by Netanyahu, al most without consultation with the Department of State, was to convert half of the economic aid of $1.2 billion yearly to direct military purchases in Israel, assuring the future of critical defense industries tied so closely to the future careers after retirement of the garrison state’s military elite. The generals and even the colonels will have new opportunities awaiting them as they retire in the next 10 years, some to enter politics and most to go into military export-oriented industries. Six hundred million a year in what is essentially new money will buy a lot of opportunities for the few hundred a year who retire.

The Department of State is only marginally involved in orchestrating the proposed new agreements with Israel and Egypt that are very likely to commit America to provide another $50 billion to both countries over the next nine years. A congressional aide admitted the Albright State Department gave only a “wink and a nod” to the Congress on the agreement. In fact, the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee and House Appropriations Committee chairmen are doing the negotiations with Netanyahu’s people, a heady experience for the two Southerners, Sonny Callahan of Alabama and Bob Livingston of Louisiana.

“Shell Game” Ends With Little Reduction

No serious effort is being made to stop what Arab Americans are describing as the great “Shell Game.”

No actual copies of the Israeli proposal have surfaced, although the general outlines of the agreement have been in the Israeli and U.S. press. But it is almost certain that the House Foreign Operations Committee will include a final agreement in the aid authorization bill for Fiscal Year 1999. Will it pass? You can bet on it. Will it be debated at all? Probably not.

As important as the tax money flowing to an already rich Israel is the question of what Israelis have done with the past aid. How will further aid given without even minimal strings attached affect American efforts to gain a peace in the Middle East? Clearly no-strings support to the most intransigent party will doom current peace efforts. It also will ensure the continued spread of the settlements which threaten to rule out any land-for-peace agreement, even long after spoiler Netanyahu’s term becomes just another chapter in the long history of missed opportunities to stabilize the Middle East.