August/September 1991, Page 18a

Is Putting Immediate Strings on Aid to Israel The Best Hope for Peace?—Three Views

Yes, and Israel's Request for $10 Billion Is the Place to Start

By Hady Amr

An estimated 250,000 Israeli settlers currently live in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Excluding East Jerusalem, the figure is 108,000. There are at least 145 settlements. Three thousand of the 22,000 housing units being built in the West Bank are within commuting distance of Jerusalem, and 4,500 are within commuting distance of Tel Aviv.

According to documents which Peace Now has obtained from the Israeli Housing Ministry, the Israeli government has plans to increase the settler population in the Hebron area from 8,000 to 80,000 and the settler population of the Gaza Strip from 4,000 to 50,000.

The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem calculates that Israel has confiscated at least 70 percent of the West Bank. According to the Coordinating Committee for International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Jerusalem, Israel has confiscated more than 50 percent of the Gaza Strip.

During the Gulf war, Israel made it known that it would request $13 billion in US loan guarantees to house Soviet immigrants. It later reduced the figure to $10 billion and at the urging of the Bush administration agreed to postpone the request until September of this year.

Is Israel credit-worthy? Since 1949 Israel has received more than $46 billion in US assistance. According to USAID, Israelcurrently owes the US Treasury more than $4.5 billion in outstanding loans, while it owes US banks $148 million—staggering sums for a country of only a few million people. This debt-ridden history has prompted the Export Import Bank, the US agency which promotes foreign trade, to give Israel a next-to-lowest possible "D" credit rating on a scale of "A" through "F."

What allows pro-Israel members of Congress to assert that Israel always repays its debts is a 1984 US law which states that US economic assistance is not allowed to drop below the amount Israel owes the US in scheduled repayments of past debts for that year.

Israel also plans to borrow $7 billion from European banks. Given Israel's current credit rating, the enormity of the debt may prove more than Israel can handle. The US law that its economic assistance must at least cover past debts may prove Israel's only safety net. The "loan guarantees" may be suddenly transformed into grants.

What does $10 billion mean to the US budget? The federal government presently spends only $13.2 billion on its own public housing to alleviate the US housing crisis! It spends only $9.3 billion on all job training programs combined, and $5.3 billion on education.

Israel has confiscated at least 70 percent of the West Bank.

Now is the time to insist that Congress make Israel's impending request for $10 billion in US housing loan guarantees contingent upon a halt to Israel's settlement program and meaningful progress on the peace process. This is possible because there has been a major change in the political climate, and on June 11, President Bush told the leaders of the Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America at a White House meeting that future loan guarantees would be contingent on a halt to Israel's settlement program. He was backing up Secretary of State Baker, who on May 22 told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Foreign Operations: "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."

Yossi Ben-Aharon, director-general of Prime Minister Shamir's office, responded on Israeli radio: "We are sorry, Israel cannot accept any stipulation, or an assertion, that the absence of Jews in Judea, Samaria [the West Bank] and Gaza would promote peace."

On June 19, many members of Congress who had never voted against the interests of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) did so. The Bryant amendment conditioned some US aid to a halt in Israel's settlement program. Although it was defeated, the vote indicates the potential for a similar measure to pass in a certain political climate.

On June 9, Thomas A. Dine, the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), said the "paramount challenge this year" to Israel's supporters would be the fight for the loan guarantees, and that "linking absorption guarantees to settlements, or the peace process, is something we will fight with all of our being."

An article in the June 21, 1991 Forward stated: "AIPAC is gearing up to a level not seen since the 1981 fight over the AWACs sale [which it lost] ... The theme of the campaign is that the issue at stake is humanitarian, not political ... The groups will try to frame the loan guarantee issue as a 'Jewish' one ... as opposed to an 'Israeli' one."

There are many factors that congress members will take into account when they vote on this issue. The primary consideration is not based on what they think is right or wrong but on what elements of society will support them in the 1992 elections.

Americans who care about peace in the Mideast should therefore create a groundswell in public opinion which will embolden our elected representatives to take a stand against Israel's settlement expansion and request for $10 billion in loan guarantees. It's a battle that can and must be won.

Hady Amr is national coordinator for the Middle East Justice Network. This article is drawn from an 11 page briefing paper on "Israel's $10 Billion Request and Settlement Expansion. " It is available from MEIN, P.O. Box 558, Cambridge, MA 02238; (617) 666-8061.