Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 14, 53

Special Report

As Netanyahu Dismantles Peace Process, Israelis Wait in Vain for Clinton Intervention

By Richard H. Curtiss

As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues dismantling the six-year-old American-initiated "peace process," and blaming the Palestinians for its destruction, even his Israeli detractors seem awed by how easy it has been so far. Nevertheless, as he completes each step, he covers his own tracks.

The Israeli prime minister wants the world to believe that the Israeli pledges made to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in the presence of a beaming U.S. President Bill Clinton four years ago are being broken not by Netanyahu, but by his political opponents. Although in his election campaign in May 1996 he made it clear to Israeli voters that he would halt the land-for-peace exchanges upon which the Oslo accords were premised, his strategy in dealing with anticipated American opposition is to cover up what actually is taking place.

In doing so it's not as if he is deceiving his own people. He told them more than a year ago that Israel could draw the line on further withdrawals without worrying about security, losing U.S. military and economic aid, or an end to "normalization" with the Arab nations. His electoral victory was the Israeli public's invitation to prove it.

What seems to disconcert the Israeli public now is not the obvious fact that their prime minister is lying openly to the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history, but that Clinton, and both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress, are letting him get away with it. Netanyahu is like an underage driver who, after hours of nagging his parents to let him go joyriding, suddenly is handed the keys to the car. "They don't care whether I get arrested or even if I kill myself," he complains to his friends, as he careens away.

And, in truth, Clinton has demonstrated no serious interest either in Israel or in doing what's necessary to save the peace process. Nor does he seem to have any concept of the damage Netanyahu's de facto renunciation of the treaty commitments solemnly entered into by both of his predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, will do in the long run to Middle East stability.

Examples of Netanyahu's extraordinary chutzpah are multiplying. On July 23 his right-wing supporters introduced for its first reading in the Knesset a bill that would make it nearly impossible to return even part of the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty with Syria. The bill requires the approval of a two-thirds majority in the Knesset for any Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu and his cabinet voted for it, but implied they were counting on their Labor opposition and smaller leftist parties to defeat it. Then when it passed 43 to 40, Netanyahu said through spokespersons that it wasn't important because it could be defeated on subsequent votes.

Israelis knew better. "This means the government of Israel cannot conduct negotiations with Syria," said Labor Knesset member Haim Ramon. "This will lead to a greater break with Syria; I think to greater deterioration."

Equally eloquent double talk was contained in a cable leaked to the mass circulation Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. It was a report to Netanyahu from his Israeli ambassador in Washington, Eliahu Ben- Elissar, of a June 10 conversation Ben-Elissar had just had with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He had assured her, he wrote, that "We're not erecting settlements at all and aren't even expanding them." Noting that Albright had seemed skeptical, the Israeli envoy then complained to Netanyahu, "In fact I don't know how much we're really building and expanding."

All Israelis seem baffled at how easy it has been for Netanyahu to break Israeli treaty obligations. He has not even waited for a justification such as a massive Palestinian upheaval in response to such Israeli provocations as the opening in Jerusalem of the Hasmonean tunnel; in Hebron with murderous daily harassment of Palestinian residents by Jewish settlers and now by Israeli soldiers as well; his refusal to withdraw on schedule from a significant portion of the West Bank earlier this year; and his announcement that he would begin work on the construction of 6,500 housing units for Jews only at Jabal Abu Ghneim, the former West Bank area newly annexed to East Jerusalem which the Israelis call Har Homa.

Familiar Lies

In the Har Homa case Netanyahu offered one of his by now familiar lies, not to be taken seriously by the Israeli public but to save face for the U.S. president when he failed to take action. Israel would also build housing for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, a Netanyahu cabinet minister said.

This was nonsense. The Israeli government has never built housing for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, nor does it grant permits for Palestinians themselves to build houses on land they already own there, or even to expand or repair existing housing. Aside from Jews-only settlements, the only housing activity that takes place in East Jerusalem is demolition of Palestinian houses to widen roads or to make new freeways connecting segregated Jewish housing developments to Israel, and other demolitions of houses built "without a permit" in a city where building permits are almost never issued to Palestinians.

The most recent Israeli provocation followed the familiar pattern of announce, obfuscate and then proceed. On July 24 Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert of Netanyahu's Likud party informed the prime minister that he had granted permission to begin immediate construction on another Jews-only housing project at Ras al Amoud in the heart of East Jerusalem just outside the walled Old City.

Construction will be financed by American bingo parlor operator Irving Moskowitz, who had financed the opening of the Hasmonean tunnel connecting the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City to its Christian and Muslim quarters in 1996. Netanyahu's aides at first implied that he was unhappy because he realized that another such unilateral change in Jerusalem's demographics would be deeply provocative at this time and that he intended to block it.

"Obviously [Netanyahu] feels it is not a fortuitous moment but I do want to stress that he said 'at this time,'" said his director of communications, David Bar-Ilhan. "We believe we have a right to build everywhere in Jerusalem and we believe Moskowitz has done everything on the up-and-up legally." Israelis interpret that as a green light, after a decent interval.