With Congressional Attention Diverted, Some Members Cannot Resist Taking Irresponsible Actions

By Shirl McArthur

Congressional attention was focused on other issues during the spring, and responsible members of Congress concerned with the Middle East preferred to await the outcome of the Israeli elections and the formation of the new government by Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud Barak before taking any steps that might jeopardize any flicker of life that remains in the moribund Middle East peace process.

In the meantime, however, several unhelpful bills and amendments were stealthily making their way through Congress. If the high point of the spring was the visit to Washington, DC and New York of Jordan’s new king, Abdullah bin Hussein (see separate article, p. 29), the low point was clearly the effort by some senators to revive the perennial election-year pressure to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

A Few Senators Try to Kill Remnants of the Peace Process

Many members of Congress and even some responsible Jewish organizations acknowledge that it would be a catastrophically bad idea to take the one obvious action sure to further destabilize the Middle East peace process (and get a lot of American foreign service officers and U.S. Marines killed in flaming U.S. embassies throughout the 45 countries of the Islamic world) while the new Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority are taking tentative steps toward restarting negotiations. But some of Israel’s most dependable senatorial provocateurs tried to do just that. In particular, Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) seem determined to demonstrate that they are earning their pro-Israel political action committee (PAC) donations which are $38,000 in Brownback’s case and $32,000 in Kyl’s. Even if that is their principal motivation, their actions in May show either that they are not very intelligent or that they have been completely co-opted by the Israeli extremists who are actively working to kill the peace process.

On May 5, the 16 churches and religious groups that are members of the Washington-based Churches for Middle East Peace signed a letter to President Clinton urging him to invoke the waiver provision of the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995 (mandating that the U.S. Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem by June 1, 1999) that allows him to postpone the move in the interest of “national security.” At about the same time, Kyl, with the help of Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) ($140,502) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) ($21,635), began circulating for signatures in the Senate a draft letter to Clinton expressing “dismay” that he is considering invoking the waiver provision and threatening to enact legislation eliminating the provision if he exercises it.

On May 12, Clinton notified Congress that he would wait until after Israel’s May 17 elections to decide whether to invoke the waiver. In a letter to Sen. Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said that “both the steps we take and their timing need to be carefully weighed, so as not to damage the peace process.”

Nevertheless Israel’s three senatorial musketeers, Kyl, Lieberman, and Schumer, persisted, and the letter was sent May 28, signed also by Sens. Brownback, Paul Coverdell (R-GA) ($23,800), Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL), Jesse Helms (R-NC) ($19,500), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) ($28,139), Trent Lott (R-MS) ($62,700), and Don Nickles (R-OK) ($46,800).

Then, on May 14, Brownback took to the floor of the Senate to “strongly urge” Clinton not to invoke the waiver and to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Departing from international or any other known code of law, Brownback argued that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war somehow amounted to “a de facto rendering of the [1947 U.N.] Partition Resolution null and void,” ignoring the fact that U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 of 1967, which were co-sponsored by the United States, also call for Israel to withdraw from that part of Jerusalem occupied in 1967 (see also the last item under “New Legislation,” below).

However, at about the same time some small movement toward sanity began to stir. Last March, Sen. Moynihan, who has impeccable credentials as a friend of Israel but is also known as a strong supporter of the peace process, tried to head off the oncoming disaster by suggesting in a letter to Berger that Clinton might throw a bone to the Israel lobby while avoiding inciting the rage of more than a billion Muslims by designating an “ambassadorial residence” in Jerusalem. Since the U.S. Embassy has long maintained a suite of rooms in Jerusalem for the use of embassy officers and official visitors, this would be a mutually acceptable cosmetic change. On May 14, an embassy official confirmed that the ambassador had designated his “secondary residence” in Jerusalem.

Clinton issued the waiver on May 31. However, this is unlikely to silence Israel’s senators and representatives, who can be expected to continue expressing their defiance of international law and contempt for the Islamic tradition that Jerusalem is Islam’s third holiest site in the world.

Money Bills Hold Few Mideast Surprises

On May 21 President Clinton signed the $15 billion “emergency aid” bill, which incorporated funding for the war in Kosovo with the earlier disaster relief bill intended primarily to aid hurricane victims and farmers hurt by drought. Predictably, the bill included many other non-emergency provisions, leading to criticisms from both liberals and conservatives.

The provisions included in the earlier disaster relief bill giving cash-strapped Jordan an additional $50 million in economic aid and $50 million in military assistance in return for its cooperation in the peace process were retained in the final bill. (These amounts represent Jordan’s portion of the 1999 part of the $1.9 billion Wye supplemental financing request submitted to Congress on Feb. 1. The remainder of the package is on hold pending progress in implementing the Wye River agreement.) In addition, the bill includes $3 million to fund the Commission on International Religious Freedom, which sponsor Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) complained long and loudly was omitted from the administration’s original budget request. The bill also includes $2 million for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC “to address security needs.” (This is in addition to the Holocaust Museum’s regular allocation of U.S. government funds, which was $32 million for FY 1999.)

The only other money bill affecting the Middle East that made any progress was the State Department Authorization bill, which was reported out of committees in both the House and the Senate. However, the two versions are strikingly different, so a lot of modifications will no doubt be made to them on the House and Senate floors and in the conference committee. As they stand, both versions include provisions condemning U.N. General Assembly resolution ES-10/6 of Feb. 9, 1999, which would convene the parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention in order to consider Israeli violations in the West Bank and Gaza, and urging the State Department to continue its efforts against convening the conference.

The Senate bill includes a provision continuing the presidential waiver authority to allow the PLO to maintain an official presence in Washington, but the provision was toughened by Israel’s ever-vigilant Brownback to condition the waiver on the Palestinians not having made a declaration of statehood outside the framework of negotiations with Israel. Finally, the Senate version also includes the four provisions relating to Jerusalem (that effectively give U.S. recognition to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel), which were in last year’s bill but dropped in the final version sent to the president.

New Legislation, Some Good, But Mostly Bad

Although none of them have passed, or even been reported out of committee, some truly terrible bills were introduced prior to the Congress’s Memorial Day recess. However, there were also some bright spots. The most positive was the “Secret Evidence Repeal Act,” introduced on May 27 and co-authored by Reps. David Bonior (D-MI) and Tom Campbell (R-CA), joined as original co-sponsors by Reps. Bob Barr (R-GA) and John Conyers (D-MI). The Repeal bill, which is strongly supported by a broad coalition of civil rights and immigrant rights organizations, including all Arab-American and all Muslim-American organizations, would repeal that portion of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 that allows the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to arrest, detain, and deport non-citizens on the basis of “secret evidence, whose source and substance is not revealed to the potential deportees or their counsel.” About 25 (the exact number varies according to the source) people currently are being held under the secret evidence provision, and of those either all or all but one or two (again, the number varies with the source) are Muslims.

At a meeting in Detroit hosted by the Arab American Institute on May 1, Attorney General Janet Reno promised to review the process of using secret evidence. Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI) thanked her for agreeing “to review the changes I proposed well over three years ago to hopefully ensure that no one’s civil rights are violated as a result of the INS’s use of secret evidence.” Bonior called Reno’s promise “a step in the right direction,” but added, “However, the use of secret evidence is wrong. It is not amendable.”

The second positive bill to be introduced was the “Sanctions Rationalization Act,” introduced on April 29 by Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE). As Hagel said when introducing the bill, this completes the package of three sanctions reform bills introduced in the 106th Congress.

The first two, the Sanctions Policy Reform Act and the Food and Medicine Sanctions Relief Act, were described in previous issues of the Washington Report. This latest bill would allow the president to “delay, suspend or terminate” any unilateral economic sanction if he determines that it does not serve the U.S. national interest. The president’s action under this act would not go into effect for 30 days, giving the Congress time to consider the action.

As Dodd pointed out, since President Woodrow Wilson adopted unilateral economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy 80 years ago, they have been imposed more than 110 times, of which 70 were within the past six years. Dodd said that in 1998 the U.S. had sanctions in place against 26 countries, comprising more than half the world’s population.

The last bit of positive legislation was introduced on May 18 by Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL), joined by Reps. John Dingell (D-MI), Barney Frank (D-MA), Martin Frost (D-TX), Dale Kildee (D-MI), Steve LaTourette (R-OH), and John Sununu (R-NH). The law would allow for the adjustment of status for certain people who have been granted temporary protected status because of conditions in Lebanon.

Of the four negative bills and resolutions introduced, only one does not relate to Israel. But that one, introduced by Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) on May 11, as opposed to the Campbell/Bonior bill described above, could make the INS’s treatment of Muslim immigrants even worse than it is now.

The bill, H.R. 1745, would add a new subparagraph to the anti-terrorist portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that would provide for the deportation of any alien who “associates with an individual who the alien knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe, is designated as a terrorist.”

However, there is reason to believe that this bill will not go far. At a hearing of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Justice Committee, INS Acting General Counsel Bo Cooper criticized the bill, mostly on technical grounds but also because it “would raise serious First Amendment concerns in light of the Supreme Court’s long-standing First Amendment decisions.”

Further, he said that the Justice Department is preparing legislation to clarify the anti-terrorist portion of the INA and to deal with the First Amendment concerns that have been raised about it.

The first of the three pro-Israel bills was introduced on April 29 by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) ($8,500 from pro-Israel PACs), with Sens. Brownback and Craig Thomas (R-WY) as original co-sponsors. It is similar to bills and amendments proposed in previous Congresses that would seek to have Israel included in the Western European Group at the U.N.

The second pro-Israel piece of legislation, a concurrent resolution introduced by Rep. Steven Rothman (D-NJ) ($15,503), on May 25, is basically identical to the provision in the current versions of the State Department Authorization bill, described above, condemning the Feb. 9, 1999 U.N. General Assembly resolution to convene the parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention in order to expose Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza, and urging the State Department to continue its efforts against convening the conference.

Finally, and by far the worst, was the concurrent resolution initiated by Sens. Brownback (again), Schumer, Moynihan ($57,600), and Connie Mack (R-FL) ($105,422) “condemning Palestinian efforts to revive the original Palestine partition plan of Nov. 29, 1947, and condemning the U.N. Commission on Human Rights for its April 27, 1999, resolution endorsing Palestinian self-determination on the basis of the original Palestine partition plan.”

The resolution says that any attempt by the Palestinians to revive U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (the partition plan) places the entire peace process at risk and that the peace process must be based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338. The concurrent resolution calls upon the president to declare that it is the policy of the U.S. that Resolution 181 of 1947 is null and void and that all negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on Resolutions 242 and 338. (On May 24, at AIPAC’s conference—which provided the annual opportunity for Israel’s congressional sycophants to fall all over themselves to show their undying support for Israel—Special Middle East Coordinator Ambassador Dennis Ross did indeed declare that the U.S. no longer considers resolution 181 to be a basis for negotiations.

One wonders whether the sponsors of this concurrent resolution even know that U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israeli withdrawal from lands seized in the 1967 war in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, are inconsistent with their strident insistance that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel.

Shirl McArthur, a retired foreign service officer, is a senior consultant with Bruce Morgan Associates, an international research and consulting firm in the Washington, DC area.