While White House "Nurtures" Peace Process, Netanyahu Buries It at AIPAC

by Eugene Bird

Despite a month of visitations which brought King Hussein of Jordan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz to Washington along with the latest visit by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the vital signs of the Middle East peace process seemed to be failing in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, according to U.S. spokesmen, it remained on life support provided by closely held "American ideas" supposedly being floated with the Israelis or the Palestinians every day. To all outward appearances, however, the Israelis remained consistently intransigent, frozen into their own political crises with no one, not even the ever-optimistic peace team at the Department of State, predicting when anything would actually happen.

The rule on the Oslo process is, the more activity visible in Washington, the less that is really happening on the ground. In fact, the sole discernible results of the visits were more arms and money for Israel, dire congressional threats of less of both for Egypt, and little but vague promises for Jordan and the Palestinians. Tepid announcements of these non-events were accompanied by muscular prose from the ever-inventive U.S. peace team describing seemingly Herculean efforts by State Department Middle East peace czar Dennis Ross, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the president himself to raise the Oslo agreement from the ditch into which it was swept by Binyamin Netanyahu's bulldozers.

A catchy new verbal substitute for action was tried out for the first time by newly assigned National Security Council Middle East adviser Bruce Riedel on a delegation from the American Muslim Council. "We must nurture the peace process," Riedel told a hundred Muslims invited to the White House for a briefing in late April. He explained that while the U.S. invokes this mysterious formula, which apparently is invisible to the uninitiated naked eye, there is no room for either the Europeans or diplomats at the United Nations to become involved in a peace process which either is or is not unfolding in their backyards.

Vice President Albert Gore did some more active "nurturing" of potential Jewish election support at the April convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Israeli government's principal lobby in Washington, DC, at the Washington Hilton Hotel. It was reported that Gore submitted his speech in advance to AIPAC for "suggested changes if needed." Certainly no changes were required in the final result, which marched in lockstep straight down Binyamin Netanyahu's Greater Israel, Likudist line. It was lengthy, pandering and, as one observer put it, "The beginning of Gore 2000."

Behind Gore while he made the speech was a huge diorama of Jerusalem, but showing America's national landmarks as a part of what the Israelis call their "eternal, undivided capital." Neat idea. A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty fits right in with a United Washington under AIPAC control.

Netanyahu: The Conquering Hero

Despite the best efforts of Gore and a breathtaking pandering contest between House majority and minority leaders Newt Gingrich and Richard Gephardt (see "Congress Watch," p. 14), the high point of the AIPAC meeting this year was the appearance of Binyamin Netanyahu. Supposedly "summoned" to Washington by the White House for a meeting with President Bill Clinton, in fact Netanyahu was in Washington as scheduled several months previously in order to make his triumphal first appearance before AIPAC officers and rank-and-file as their prime minister.

He did not disappoint them, nor they him. In contrast to the appearance of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin two years ago, which was followed by a floor fight over the peace process, Netanyahu swept the delegates to their feet repeatedly. Student Zionists in the audience seemed particularly ecstatic over Netanyahu's insistence that it is the Palestinian Authority which is violating the Oslo accords in Jerusalem, where it is not represented, and "not us." The fact that younger audience members seemed to find this easier to believe than did their elders may provide American educators cause for concern.

Ironically, the diorama behind the prime minister had to remind any members of the audience who follow current events of Netanyahu's weirdest, and most recent, faux pas. During the Christmas holidays, the Israeli prime minister sent a greeting card containing a similar if much smaller representation of the Old City to the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem. But in place of the Muslim Dome of the Rock, the most prominent feature on the Old City's skyline, the diorama artist had substituted a drawing of a Jewish temple, right where Israel's fanatic Guardians of the Temple Mount plan to put it after they burn down Islam's third holiest shrine. David Bar-Ilan, spokesperson for the prime minister, apologized for the error.

U.S. Institute of Peace Moves Up

While AIPAC was lionizing Sir Binyamin for rescuing the Greater Israel damsel from the peace process dragon, the U.S. Institute of Peace was holding a seminar on the subject of "Virtual Diplomacy," featuring, among others, John Wallach, former foreign affairs director of Hearst Newspapers, who with his wife heads the Middle East "Seeds of Peace" program. The significance for conflict resolution of keeping the parties apart and communicating on two-way television or through the Internet is unclear, but the idea of Arafat and Netanyahu and Bill Clinton holding an autopsy on the peace process in Cyberspace is intriguing.

The institute, which was headed by former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis for several years, has been heavily subsidized by Congress since some pro-Israel elements founded it in the 1980s. Sometime before the year 2000 it will move into new $50 million quarters across from the U.S. State Department, considerably enhancing its grandeur as yet another sounding board for pro-Israel initiatives and opinion in the U.S. national capital.

Journalistic Truth-Telling

In April veteran CBS Jerusalem correspondent Bob Simon, now assigned to the Balkans, was awarded the Weintal Prize for the best foreign affairs reporting of 1996. Simon spent a good part of his acceptance speech at Georgetown University castigating the Clinton administration for its slowness in reacting to egregious violations of international law around the world, ending with a vitriolic criticism of administration pandering to Israel.

Two days later, assistant editorial page editor Stephen Rosenfeld of The Washington Post wrote a similar stinging criticism of Clinton and Albright inaction on the peace process collapse in the Middle East, titling it "Drifting Toward a Mideast Disaster." With a wary eye on his employers, Rosenfeld diluted his column with statements that seemed to equate the role of stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers with Binyamin Netanyahu's deliberate treaty-smashing moves at Har Homa, but nevertheless sounded an honest and long overdue alarm at Clinton's seeming acquiescence in the assassination of Middle East peace.