Surprises Before and Benefits After the Signing Ceremony

By Eugene Bird

September this year was a month of pure surprises. One old-line Zionist supporter of the Likud party line, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), put it best when she asked the head of the National Association of Arab Americans, Khalil Jahshan: "Could you ever imagine me. . .the senator from Rockville [a heavily Jewish Maryland suburb of Washington, DC] meeting with Yasser Arafat?" Before the White House South Lawn signing ceremony for the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, it would indeed have been hard to visualize. Yet the chairman of the PLO seems to have charmed those he met throughout the U.S. national capital, including the staff of the National Security Council and Washington journalists during a National Press Club question-and answer session.

A "Friend" in the White House

Upon his return to Tunis, Chairman Arafat made the statement that he "had found a friend" in the American White House. Observers in many places wrote that this could and should have happened 20 years ago.

The September shocks continued right into October: President Bill Clinton actually decided to notify Congress that he was about to deduct $437 million from Israel's $2 billion in U.S. guaranteed loans for 1994 because the Israeli government had spent that amount on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, in the past year.

Israelis Ask for Congressional Nod

And some in a shocked Israel immediately suggested that Congress should pass new legislation overriding the president on this issue. There were very special terms granted Israel on loan guarantees giving Congress the opportunity to overrule the president if he should actually cut off the loan guarantees. These provisions do not apply to the deductions. So the presidential determination to deduct the full amount of the spending on West Bank settlements including Jerusalem will stand.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met with Chairman Arafat in Cairo to establish not only joint committees to discuss the take-over in Gaza Jericho, but also a committee to discuss access to Jerusalem. That part of the Cairo meeting was handled quietly, but still the Endgame is already on the table.

It was in 1974 that the United States joined Israel in refusing to deal with the PLO, and therefore with the Palestinians. The "peace that could have been" almost certainly was delayed for many years by that announcement 19 years ago by Henry Kissinger, at the suggestion of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, that the U.S. would not recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization until it renounced terror and its charter was changed.

The intervening two decades of unreality were forgotten in the truly historic South Lawn ceremony, which was remarkable also for its showmanship. Whereas the Camp David ceremonies took place in the cramped East Room of the White House, 3,000 guests were present for the signing on the South Lawn. The audience was assembled even more hastily than the White House explanation of how the massive U.S. intelligence net had utterly failed to detect that while Arabs and Israelis spun their wheels through 10 rounds of negotiations in Washington, a major peace initiative was being hammered out in 14 rounds of meetings in Norway.

White House Role Very Positive

What was not forgotten was that the White House rush to reality included twisting the arm of a reluctant Prime Minister Rabin to attend the ceremony. As we sat there witnessing history, Rabin shook hands like a reluctant prizefighter after a draw with a little guy he had often ridiculed, and whom he knew he soon would be facing in another bout. Meanwhile Arafat beamed throughout, like a man who believed he had achieved his most elusive goal, recognition, no matter how reluctant, by both Israel and its greatest patron, the United States.

One ceremony does not make a lasting peace. Yet this chaotic but successful event was marked by a free-swinging Clinton team diplomatic style successfully focused on just one goal: Do everything possible, take any risk necessary, to bring these two parties, the mainstream Fatah party of the PLO and Rabin's Labor-led coalition, to deal directly with each other.

Throughout October, astonishing events continued to unfold: Farouk Kaddoumi, the PLO's reluctant "foreign minister," who had refused to come to Washington to sign the agreement and had instead gone to Baghdad to confer and commiserate with Saddam Hussain, subsequently was invited to come to Washington from the U.N. General Assembly session he was attending in New York. After a session with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the Fatah hard-liner departed with gracious remarks about his hosts.

And what about the all-important peace with Syria? For the first time in 10 years a Syrian cabinet official, Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa, was invited to Washington, where he suggested that the Syrian track could move forward quickly if only Presidents Clinton and Hafez Al-Assad met each other face to face. The meeting, not yet scheduled but obviously a real possibility, could speed the day when Israel must address the question of withdrawing from the Golan, and Syria would be faced with a tourist invasion from Israel. That would solve the problem of the Damascus Jewish community, most of whom would elect to remain in Syria if a peace treaty and open borders enabled them to visit and be visited by relatives in Israel, Europe and the U.S.

Lebanon Full-Court Press Next?

The betting in Washington is that the Lebanese track is now the one to watch. Arab parties say there will be no further advance there until the Syrians and Israelis agree on a land-for-peace formula.

Will the euphoria last? The Palestinian flags flying in Gaza, the West Bank and even in Jerusalem, unchallenged by the Israeli occupiers, are matched by the fact that visitors to Washington wearing little crossed U.S. and Palestinian flag lapel pins are welcomed into the offices of the chief Zionist supporters on the Hill. Nor are they the only ones meeting with Senator Mikulski and her colleagues. Some of Chairman Arafat's chief lieutenants are planning to fan out over the U.S. to make their case from Los Angeles to Boston, and points between. That may yet be the greatest single dividend from the signing ceremony, toward U.S. diplomatic recognition of Palestine, and the injection of truth and justice into U.S. Middle East policy, at last.