He Can and He Will

By George Thompson

"Don't! "

That's the briefest bit of advice I can offer you and others, Nate, who may be losing faith in Bill Clinton or any hope for an evenhanded approach from him in settling the Arab-Israeli dispute.

It comes at a time crucial to the budding peace negotiations between the PLO's mercurial president, Yasser Arafat, and Israel's enigmatic prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

Take heart from this recent headline:

"Loan Guarantees for Israel are Cut" —New York Times.

The press was quick to jump on the story—and rightly so. In case you missed the details, The New York Times' Clyde Haberman wrote: "The Clinton administration has slashed the loan guarantees that it will give Israel next year because of Israel's continued settlement in the occupied territories and its disputed construction in East Jerusalem . . .

" Instead of receiving guarantees on $2 billion, Israel will have to settle for assurances on [$437 million] less . . . a dollar for-dollar penalty because of Israeli spending on settlements in the territories."

It's been a long time coming, Nate, but you should feel better about Clinton's apparent refusal to let the American taxpayer be taken to the cleaners—again.

The Israelis, we're told, expected the cut, but didn't expect it to be so large.

Haberman: "No issue has created greater tensions between Israel and the United States in recent years than the $10 billion worth of guarantees, spread over five years in annual installments of $2 billion.

"Some Israeli economists question whether the assistance is even needed, but the government insists that it is, and it used the guarantees to borrow the full $2 billion in 1993, the first year of the program."

I appreciate your concern, Nate, especially knowing, as do we all, that these guarantees are separate from the $4 billion in U.S. military and economic aid we send to Israel every year.

But you—and many other readers equally dubious about President Clinton's seeming love affair with Israel—also should be aware that there is at least one bright side to this otherwise sordid tale of turning hard-earned U.S. dollars into easily-acquired Israeli shekels for settlements:

That is the fact that Congress was quite specific in requiring that each of the $2 billion annual installments be reduced one dollar for every dollar Israel spent during the previous year to settle Jews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—territories captured during the '67 war.

Now, that's not so bad, is it?

Not when you consider that—with Bill Clinton's blessing—Secretary of State Warren Christopher currently is exploring ways of getting the Syrians on the bandwagon for peace.

Syria's President Hafez AlAssad has said he wants Israel to withdraw completely from the Golan Heights before coming aboard. Rabin has indicated his willingness to agree to some withdrawal, but he wants Assad to say precisely what kind of "peace" he wants.

Now it's up to Clinton to get answers to at least four of the journalist's time-honored "five W's and an H. "

Questions like, ''What kind of peace? And when, where, why and how will it come about?"

Now, Nathan, that should be something we all can root for—even you.

George Thompson is a nationally syndicated columnist and television talk show host.

Not With AIPAC Babies on Board!

By Nathan Jones

I lost faith in Bill Clinton from the moment he began announcing his foreign affairs appointments, George.

So did the Palestinians, when they saw the Clinton team trying to push a keystone Israeli-Palestinian agreement aside in favor of separate Israeli treaties with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

So, not surprisingly, did Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when he saw Martin Indyk, a former adviser to Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, installed in the White House as Clinton's Middle East adviser.

Rabin apparently didn't share Likud's vision of a "Greater Israel" permanently suppressing two million Palestinian second-class or non-citizens within its borders and permanently at war with the 21 Arab states outside them.

Reaching into the U.S. taxpayer's pocket year after year for the funding to sustain that war has provided American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists, like Indyk between his service to Shamir and his service to Clinton, with a good living in Washington. It also has given national Jewish organizations a challenging cause around which to round up new members.

But it has eroded popular American support for Israel, no longer perceived as a nation of refugees seeking a toe-hold in the land of their ancestors but as a nation of military occupiers relentlessly driving the Palestinians out of the land of their ancestors.

Worse, from Rabin's point of view, is the fact that the endless war so eagerly pursued by Likud and its U.S. Jewish supporters has cost Israel its last reservoir of potential immigrants.

In the 1980s, conventional wisdom had it that of 15 million Jews in the world, four million already were in Israel, and the five million in the U.S. and one million in Western Europe and Latin America really weren't interested in joining them. Only the five million Jews of the former Soviet Union were left to fill all those apartments Israel was building inside and outside the "Green Line."

By the time opportunity knocked for the ex-Soviet Jews, during and after the Soviet breakup, Likud was in power and the intifada was raging. They had a choice of leaving immediately for Israel, where their sons and daughters would be drafted and they might be stabbed while buying groceries or incinerated by a Scud missile; waiting for a visa for the U.S.; or hanging around to see how things turn out in Russia.

So far, Israel remains their last choice. So, Rabin has gone right around the Clinton administration to make the peace that both he and Yasser Arafat believe their peoples desperately need. They knew it was of supreme indifference to Bill Clinton and the AIPAC-Likudnik cabal that has taken over U.S. Middle East policy-making jobs.

Will Israel get its immigrants? Will the Palestinians get their country? Will the U.S. taxpayer get any relief?

Bill Clinton doesn't know. He's turned Mideast policy over to the people he thinks will get him re-elected in 1996.

Some leadership! And if you're expecting more enlightened leadership in the Balkans or the Arabian/Persian Gulf, where American interests also are at stake, George. . .

Don't!

Nathan Jones is a frequent contributor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.