Arab Americans React Cautiously to Barak Victory But Jewish-American Peace Activists More Optimistic

By Richard H. Curtiss

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders reacted with caution to Israeli General Ehud Barak’s 56 to 44 percent defeat of incumbent Binyamin Netanyahu in the May 17 election for prime minister of Israel. By contrast, emotions from Jewish American supporters of Israel’s peace movement ranged from skepticism to euphoria.

Within the Arab-American camp, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, a founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest Arab American membership group, was the most optimistic. Commenting on Netanyahu’s defeat, Abourezk borrowed a humorous quote from liberal political essayist E. Haldeman-Julius that “time wounds all heels.” Turning to Barak, Israel’s most decorated military hero, Abourezk, now an attorney in South Dakota, ventured that “Barak looks good and may actually make peace over there.”

Less optimistic and more typical was current ADC spokesman Hussein Ibish, who expressed relief “that we’ll not have to endure another four or five years of Binyamin Netanyahu and his attempts to preclude Palestinian statehood by changing geographic and demographic realities on the West Bank.” However, Ibish added,“We are skeptical that Prime Minister Barak will be willing or able to take the bold steps necessary to move beyond the stagnant cycle of the Oslo process. In fact, it is the U.S. and President Clinton who should take the lead by finally recognizing the human rights of the Palestinian people and stating that the end result of any further negotiations must include a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital and a settlement of the status of the Palestinian refugees.”

The most ebullient reaction to Barak’s election came from Israeli-Canadian artist and writer Victor Ostrovsky, a former case officer in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, whose two books, By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception, exposed to public scrutiny for the first time some of the Mossad’s assassinations and most controversial operations. Many of Ostrovsky’s revelations have subsequently been confirmed by other sources. Although Ostrovsky’s house was burned down after his return to his native Canada, and an Israeli political leader called for his assassination, the former Mossad operative follows political developments in Israel closely and remains in touch with friends there.

Speaking of the defeated Netanyahu, Ostrovsky said: “He came, he destroyed, and he is gone. I think Israel woke up from a three-year nightmare. Common sense seems to have come back with the elections. People voted on domestic needs, but at the same time they sent a message on the international level. Netanyahu decided to jump off the plane before he was pushed, hoping that one day he could come back.”

“These elections are good news for the United States as well.”

Ostrovsky’s contempt for Netanyahu was matched by his enthusiasm for Barak. “Barak is a man who’s always kept his word,” Ostrovsky said. “He’s said he is going to get out of Lebanon and strengthen the peace with Egypt and Jordan and he will make a deal with the Syrians, picking up where the late Yitzhak Rabin left off. We’re looking now at a brand new process. He can count on support from 73 seats in the [120-seat] Knesset. That will allow him to move to a decision-making stance. We’re in for a very, very interesting period, and the Palestinians are in for a pleasant surprise.”

Elaborating on this, Ostrovsky reminded the Washington Report that in the course of the election campaign Barak, who was the former commander-in-chief of the Israel Defense Forces and who also has served as Israel’s defense minister and foreign minister, told voters, “If I’d been born a Palestinian, I would have been a terrorist.”

Describing Barak’s reputation for bravery, Ostrovsky said, “There is not an incident in the recent military history of Israel in which Barak did not play a role. In addition to his role as supreme commander he was head of the special reconnaissance unit. He is a strategist, a planner, and all of the other generals in Israel have served under him.”

Ellen Siegel, who heads the International Jewish Peace Union’s Washington, DC chapter and who was serving as a nurse in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon at the time of the 1982 Israeli invasion, drew different conclusions from Barak’s military record. Noting that Barak, dressed as a woman, participated in the 1973 Israeli assassinations of three Palestinian leaders in Beirut, including writer-poet Ghassan Kanafani, Siegel said that Barak now will be negotiating with Yasser Arafat, one of whose advisers is Marwan Kanafani, whose brother Barak’s team assassinated. Pointing out that Netanyahu’s defeat may mark the ousting from Israeli politics of his controversial defense minister and former Likud Party rival, Gen. Ariel Sharon, Siegel said: “Somewhere, sometime, Sharon has to be defined as a war criminal.”

In yet another American Jewish reaction to the election, President Debra DeLee of Americans for Peace Now said: “The big story of this Israeli election is that Bibi’s ‘empire’ of messianic settlers, religious zealots, and political extremists didn’t strike back. Instead it struck out, while the forces of moderation scored a resounding victory. Rather than falling for candidates campaigning on division and conflict, Israeli voters have chosen new leaders who will finally live up to the public’s expectations for pursuing the peace process, creating more jobs, enforcing the rule of law, and restoring Israel’s prestige in the international community.”

DeLee, whose organization is the U.S. branch of Israel’s dovish Peace Now movement, added, “These elections are more than good news for Israel, they’re good news for the United States as well. In Ehud Barak, America once again has an Israeli partner who is sincere about fulfilling Israel’s commitments in the peace process and willing to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians over final status issues.”

Prior to the election, most Arab-American activists admitted to mixed feelings. While they wanted the burdens of the Israeli occupation lightened in Palestine, the U.S. activists noted that Netanyahu’s crude destruction of the U.S.-backed peace process, and his unwillingness to carry out the obligations he undertook at the Wye Plantation conference last October, had been very educational for Americans. During Netanyahu’s incumbency, polls have shown a steady shift in U.S. public opinion, with more than two-thirds of Americans now agreeing that the Palestinians are entitled to an independent state of their own. After the election, therefore, U.S. Muslim and Arab activists expressed concern that Barak may in fact continue Netanyahu’s hard-line policies, but in ways that are less obvious to American observers.

“There is a great deal to be done and there are some immediate markers with regard to land confiscations, settlement construction and treatment of Palestinians in the territories,” president James Zogby of the Arab American Institute (AAI) in Washington, DC told the Washington Report. “The administration must not only move forward with the negotiations, but must call for an immediate end to the unilateral actions that undercut the negotiating process.”

“The election result brings about a renewed lease on life for the comatose peace process,” said president Khalil Jahshan of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) on PBS’s nationally televised “Lehrer NewsHour.” “However…it’s not just a matter of personalities. I fear the U.S. might revert to its old modus operandi, which is getting ideas from the Israelis and shoving them down the throats of the Palestinians…The [Clinton] administration needs to work very hard, right now.”

Dr. Agha Saeed, national chairman of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council and of the Northern California-based American Muslim Alliance (AMA), said that “the U.S. government must be involved in ensuring that the negotiations are not only put back on track, but are fruitfully concluded.”

Director Aly Abuzakook of the American Muslim Council (AMC), headquartered in Washington, DC, expressed the hope that Ehud Barak “will be more reasonable in allowing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and will control establishment of settlements and not miss the opportunity to bring some justice to the Palestinians.”

Said president Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, DC, “The results of the Israeli elections are critical to bringing real peace to the area. In the past we have only seen two faces of the same coin. It’s about time for the U.S. administration to put more pressure on the Israeli government to make concessions to the Palestinians and to pressure Israel to live up to the commitments it already has made.”

Director Hesham Reda of the Washington office of the Southern California-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) said, “We have to be very cautious in our expectations because Israel’s Labor government has been behind many of the wars in the Middle East. What should happen is that we get moving in very short order. That would create a good atmosphere.”

Said executive director Randa Kayyali of the Washington office of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), “I am skeptical and I want to see action from Prime Minister Barak. I’m happy that he has learned that bombing the people of Lebanon is not the way to peace.”

Equally skeptical was executive director Khalid Turaani of the newly established American Muslims for Jerusalem in Washington who said of the Israeli election results: “No change. Both the Labor Party platform and Barak’s own words indicate complete inflexibility. They say Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel, and continue to ignore the feelings of Muslims and Christians.”

Said Virginia attorney Albert Mokhiber, a former ADC president, “I don’t join in the euphoria. If you look at Barak’s résumé, it’s as bloodstained as Netanyahu’s. What’s needed is someone who believes in human rights for everyone, regardless of religion. I don’t share at all the naïve expectations of the cheerleaders for the peace process. Hopefully, I’ll be wrong.”

Palestinian-American physician Dr. Laila Al Mariyati, former president of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Women’s League, who was in Washington, DC to accept a presidential appointment to a newly created advisory commission on religious freedom and religious persecution, told the Washington Report: “We have enough experience to view all of these so-called advances with a great deal of skepticism.We’ll wait and see. However, I also think that this is a message from the Israeli people, a signal of what’s going on among them.”

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