It's Lift-off or Abort as Bush-Baker Initiative Nears Point of No Return

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Israel's objections on technical issues ... only seem to mask a reluctance to attend any peace conference where it will be asked to return territory captured from Jordan and Syria in 1967 and to find a solution to the Palestinian question." Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, June 8, 1991

President George Bush must decide whether or not to defy conventional first term political wisdom and move the Israeli Palestinian problem to the top of his foreign policy agenda now, or tread water in the Middle East until after he is re-elected in 1992. It appears that Secretary of State James Baker is recommending that he go ahead, because it is a problem that won't wait.

It is equally likely that National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft is pointing out that the Israelis have many ways to stall. Bringing down their own government and holding new elections is just one of them, but that alone would be enough to keep things on hold until 1992, when Bush will be busy running for re-election. The conventional wisdom says that a president who takes on Israel's powerful lobby, with its overt support in Congress and its covert support in US media boardrooms and newsrooms, had better be able to devote full time to the effort.

Both lines of advice are correct, which is why only the president can make the final decision. Nevertheless, Israel is more vulnerable to US pressure right now than ever before in its history. It needs a lot of American money quickly to cope with its welcome flood of immigrants from the Soviet Union. If it can hold them by providing housing and jobs, it's in the Middle East to stay. If it loses them, it is likely that there will be no Jewish state in the Middle East 50 years from now.

That is why only Yitzhak Shamir seems able to understand why he is risking everything by hanging on to the occupied territories while asking the US government for an almost inconceivable $10 billion in housing loan guarantees over the next five years. That is in addition to regular US aid to Israel, which in 1991 already has climbed to $5.6 billion.

Shamir's reasoning was expressed on June 13, when the Israeli prime minister said flatly: "Settlement in every part of the country continues and will continue ... They try to link the two things, but no one said aid will end. I don't think it will happen ... It is inconceivable that our great friend the United States will change its ways. "

Shamir's words make it impossible for President Bush to postpone any longer deciding whether or not he's prepared to push seriously for peace in the Middle East by going eyeball to eyeball with Israel's American Jewish supporters.

If President Bush doesn't give a negative signal, Israel will very likely get a first installment this year on the housing guarantees it needs. Thus assured of US support, come what may, Israel will almost certainly embark, or continue; on a brutally reckless course of action against Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

It will set off turmoil in the Arab world and possibly set in motion the fall of one or more of America's closest Middle East allies. It will vastly strengthen Arab "fundamentalists" and "radicals," who are the two sides of the same anti-Western coin. It also will result in an open split with American allies in Europe, who will move to pursue their own economic sanctions against Israel in hopes of turning any anti-Western tide engulfing the Middle East into a purely anti-American one.

As observers consider these potential consequences, their first question is whether or not President Bush is aware of the importance of the decision he has to make late this summer. That is when congressional moves to increase aid for Israel for the remainder of fiscal year 1991, and for all of fiscal year 1992, will be made.

There are indications that the president does understand, and therefore of what he probably believes he must do. Though presidents change their minds, and then say the public misunderstood what was signaled earlier, one of Bush's own mid-June signals on this question was unambiguous.

He told a delegation from the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (OU) at the White House that he will link US loan guarantees both to the question of settlements and to Israeli flexibility in the peace process.

"Bush candidly admitted that the issues raised with respect to the settlements must be resolved before he would make any commitment" on the loan guarantees, OU President Sheldon Rudoff said in a memorandum to his board of directors. "The president was looking to Israel to live up to its prior agreement to be totally cooperative in not settling immigrants beyond the Green Line and in not permitting the construction of any new settlements in that area. He made specific reference to the differences between the United States and Housing Minister Sharon."

According to Rudoff, the same group also heard from the principal White House Middle East adviser, Richard Haass, who is Jewish, that "If the politics of persuasion will not work, we will not walk away." Rudoff reported that Haass "indicated that in that event the United States might be driven to other options, which could include a more public diplomacy."

One of the most frequently cited options for President Bush is to invite interested parties to a peace conference. The penalty for non-attendance, presumably, would be a freeze in US aid to Israel and also to any Arab country that was invited but didn't attend. Since the country besides Israel most likely not to attend is Syria, such a US option presumably would entail a promise by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to freeze their considerable aid to Syria.

A second variation on this theme would be a similar conference under similar understandings, but co-hosted by the Soviet Union.

A third option, implicit in a comment made by Secretary Baker, is for the US to take one step backward and let the UN Security Council deal with the matter. In May, an Israeli newspaper reported that at the end of his third shuttle, having reached an impasse with Shamir, Baker began to gather up his papers, remarking that there was nothing he could do but leave the matter to the United Nations. When Shamir protested that Israel had a right to more discussion of a matter so vital to its existence, Baker sat down again. Ten minutes later, an aide interrupted the discussion to tell Baker his mother had died, and Baker flew home.

After the fourth shuttle the US, in what State Department officials call Baker's "diplomacy by questionnaire, " posed a number of questions to Shamir. His response included refusals to yield on Syria's desires for a UN presence and for provision to reconvene an international conference after six months and periodically if bilateral talks bog down. Shamir also added the condition that Israel must have a veto on any Palestinian selected for negotiations, a matter on which Baker thought Shamir had previously yielded. That leaves things about where they were when Baker threatened to leave the matter for the UN.

This, presumably, would involve a series of Security Council meetings dealing with protection of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. If the US did not veto the resulting resolution, or the subsequent implementation resolutions which, presumably, would block further US aid until Israel complied with UN demands, it would have the effect of imposing a solution. Obviously the United States could live with a UN-imposed solution based upon UNSC Resolution 242, which has been the centerpiece of US Middle East policy under six successive presidents.

Whether any of these things happen obviously depends upon Bush. There's little doubt about what he's hearing from Secretary Baker, however. After his fourth Middle East shuttle, in testimony before both House (see page 15) and Senate (see page 10) committees, Baker didn't mince words when members sought to blame Syria and/or Saudi Arabia for the impasse.

"I don't think that there is any bigger obstacle to peace than the settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an enhanced pace," he told members of the House Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee on May 22. It was an uncharacteristic public clue to Baker's thinking. He has maintained extraordinarily tight security throughout the shuttles.

He generally is accompanied into meetings with heads of state only by Assistant Secretary for Policy Planning Dennis Ross. On occasion, Baker has gone into meetings without either Ross or a note taker present. As a result, both aides and newsmen accompanying him on his aircraft seem unable to fathom his state of mind.

A Determination to Master the Facts

There are, nevertheless, indications. US Embassy officials in the Middle East have been startled to get calls from him asking for a brief visit to a museum or suq (marketplace). Such unscheduled trips give Baker opportunities to talk to US officials on the spot, and to the ordinary people of the countries he is visiting. His decision, on one shuttle from Jordan to Israel, to travel by road, cross the Allenby Bridge linking the two sides of the Jordan River on foot, and drive through the occupied territories indicates a determination to master the facts of this problem for himself, and not exclusively through the eyes of advisers.

This is considered significant by many Middle East observers. Because Dennis Ross is one of the authors of a Middle East plan prepared by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he and some other State Department advisers are considered to be biased for Israel, even by some of their colleagues.

A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Father Elias Chacour, a Melkite (Roman Catholic) priest, reported wonderingly to an American clergyman, however, that Secretary Baker ordered several hundred copies of Chacour's book, We Belong to the Land. It is an eloquent statement of the Palestinian case. Asked what he planned to do with so many copies of the book, Baker said laconically. "I know a lot of people in Washington who ought to read it."

There are other encouraging straws in the wind. On June 8, the same day that Washington, DC was welcoming home troops who had participated in Desert Storm, a heretofore neglected association of surviving crewmen of the USS Liberty was having its annual reunion. It was the 24th anniversary of the attack by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats that nearly sank the American eavesdropping "ferret" (electronic spy) ship in the eastern Mediterranean on the fourth day of the Six-Day Arab-Israeli war in 1967.

The crewmen, along with former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, for years have called for an open congressional investigation of Israel's claim that the attack in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded was a case of mistaken identification. This year, for the first time, they and their families were invited to a White House reception, hosted by Chief of Staff John Sununu and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. At their banquet later in the day, the ship's commander was presented by a Pentagon official with a Presidential Citation for the ship and its entire crew. Incredibly, it was dated 1968 and signed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. It had been suppressed for 23 years and surfaced only now by the George Bush White House.

Arab reaction to the Baker shuttles is increasingly positive. Saudi officials consistently have expressed unwavering faith that President Bush would fulfill his pledge to King Fahd during the Desert Shield buildup that, after Iraq was defeated, he would turn his attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

In June, the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Al Saud, counseled editors of The Washington Times to be patient with measured Middle Eastern responses to Bush-Baker peace moves. He then predicted: "July is going to be a very important month. Either the parties will come to a consensus and meet each other halfway, or there will be a line drawn (by the US) and we'll say, 'We'll meet at such and such a time at such and such a place, see you then.' I cannot imagine any country that would like to be responsible for not being responsive if America would draw the line.

Similar optimism was voiced upon his arrival in Washington by Tunisian Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahya. "The Arabs, including the Palestinians, are ready" for peace, he said on June 12. "All depends on the character of the man who conducts the orchestra. " Ben Yahya, who has spent a total of 11 years in the United States in various capacities, said that he thought Baker "can probably give it the right push, " and added that "we are strongly impressed by the commitment of this administration since the Gulf war to find a way out."

Asked by the writer, after his meeting with Baker, if he still thought the administration would grasp the nettle of Middle East peace, he said he was more optimistic than ever. "I know the man, and I think he's the kind of person to see things through, " he explained.

The optimistic statements from Arab leaders in Washington were made against somber warnings from the Middle East. In a Cairo interview with London's Financial Times, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused Shamir of undermining US peace efforts.

"Mr. Shamir will get very angry if I speak frankly," Mubarak said. "But I'm telling him that I cannot just sit here and applaud while he is saying no to exchanging land for peace, no for this, no for that. You cannot keep the land and have peace."

By contrast, the Egyptian president had nothing but praise for the Bush-Baker peace process. "President Bush is doing the maximum and his administration is one of the best administrations as far as I can remember, " Mubarak said.

Even the Palestinians, chronic pessimists after 43 years of disappointments, seemed to be suppressing early suspicions. PLO leaders in Tunis have quietly taken a step backward to let Palestinians in the occupied areas meet with Baker on his various shuttles. After each meeting such leaders as Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi have expressed increasing confidence in Baker's sincerity.

This has been complicated by false reports in right-wing Israeli newspapers, including the widely read English-language Jerusalem Post, listing "points" on which Baker supposedly has capitulated to Israeli demands. To date, although such reports have angered the volatile Palestinian community, its leaders have not broken off the talks.

Similarly, when King Hussein of Jordan told a Le Monde correspondent that he would meet anywhere to discuss peace with the Israelis, Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Sharon responded insultingly:

"Fine. We will invite him to Israel and offer him tea, but only to tell him that he is no longer King of Jordan. Jordan is Palestine."

Despite such provocations, on the Arab side, to date, only Syria has been consistently negative, despite entreaties by other Arab states to accede to US requests and thereby expose Israeli intransigence.

It is a position on which Shamir is counting. He has told followers that Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad has no more reason to want negotiations than does Israel. A lessening of tensions with Israel might lead to calls for democracy in Syria.

So long as he continues to refuse every American initiative, Shamir is not threatened either by extremists like Sharon to his right, or a fractured Labor Party opposition. However, the Israeli electorate is anything but monolithic. A clear majority of Israelis would keep the occupied territories (and probably expel their Palestinian occupants if they thought the US would let them get away with it). On the other hand, if Israelis feel that keeping the territories will jeopardize the US aid all realize they need to provide for the new immigrants, a majority would trade the land for a secure peace—and continued US financial support.

Left-wing Israeli commentator Israel Shahak states (on page 20) that only shocks, like war with the Arabs or US financial pressure, will ever motivate Israeli rulers of any party to compromise.

Beginning to Speak Out

In the United States, the Jewish community has long characterized Bush as "the most hostile president since Jimmy Carter." Some mainstream Jewish leaders are beginning to speak out, however, to avert just such shocks to Israel. In the June 13 Washington Jewish Week, Theodore Mann, liberal former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Hyman Bookbinder, former Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, write:

"We cannot believe that, ultimately, Israel will reject an opportunity to convene the face-to-face, unconditional, bilateral negotiations it has sought for 43 years ... Most Israeli analysts believe that the tinder is now being laid for the next West Bank and Gaza explosion and that the collapse of the peace process will signal the countdown for the next Arab-Israeli war."

In Congress, seemingly controlled by the Israel lobby, there may also be some pleasant surprises. Bush will enjoy the support of most members of his own party in any showdown. The question, however, is how many Democrats will cross the aisle to support a presidential veto of any congressional attempt to increase unconditional aid to a defiant Israel.

Two key Democrats, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-RI) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), already have indicated that they may do so, if the president takes a stand. Also, chairman Lee Hamilton (D-IN), of the House Foreign Affairs Europe and Middle East subcommittee, has asked the State Department to report within 60 days on Israeli expenditures on settlements in the occupied territories. If other Democratic members of Congress follow, it might be the most popular "intifada" in congressional history. Israel's lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is at present the most disliked, and feared, lobby in Washington.

Public opinion can be counted upon to support such a Bush move, so long as he makes what he is doing, and why he must do it, clear to the American public. Surveys show declining sympathy for Israel. Last February, before Israel's current rejectionist moves, a CNN/Time Magazine poll showed 63 percent of Americans believed the US should pressure Israel to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. Only 28 percent disagreed.

The greatest problem for any US president contemplating such a move remains the media. Without minimizing that problem, its seriousness will depend completely upon the reaction within the US Jewish community to Bush pressure on Israel. To predict that reaction, the president might well turn to the conclusion of the previously cited Mann-Bookbinder article in Washington Jewish Week:

"In this situation, only a shallow concept of solidarity would lead American Jews to reflexively 'circle the wagons' around an irrevocable 'no.' Thoughtful friends of Israel know that the future of the Jewish state ultimately depends on movement toward a political settlement and will urge their Israeli counterparts to seize what may be an historic opportunity to begin negotiations."

Will President Bush defy conventional wisdom? If he does, he may find support in unlikely places. These include some of the Islamic states previously most critical or skeptical of the United States. They also include the US Congress, large sectors of the Israeli public, and, perhaps, many heretofore silent US Jews and critical journalists.

While the mainstream press assures the public that the Bush-Baker peace initiative was naive and doomed to failure, Bush may therefore be poised to prove it wrong. The peace initiative is neither naive nor doomed if the president of the United States personally and irrevocably commits himself to it.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.