December/January 1991/92, Page 9

Special Report

A War on Four Fronts: The Bush Baker Battle for Middle East Peace

By Richard H. Curtiss

''To get Israel's Likud government to make any kind of meaningful concession in regard to the West Bank and Gaza, the Bush administration eventually is going to have to go to the mat with Shamir. The president and the secretary of state wouldn't dream of admitting this, but they know it very well. A few months or even a few weeks ago, when the president was still riding high in the polls, a tussle with Israel's American backers must not have seemed such a daunting prospect. . . But with a weak US economy threatening to send his popularity plummeting, things are different."

—David Kornformer State Department director for Israel and Arab-Israeli affairs, in The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 14, 1991

President George Bush's decision last August not to wait for a second term to begin applying economic pressure on Israel to secure a Middle East land-for-peace settlement put him on a collision course with four parties. These include Israel's intransigent Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir; Syria's almost equally difficult President Hafez AlAssad; leftist and Islamist rejectionists within a Palestinian national movement of uncertain stability; and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's powerful US lobby. The latter, while operating visibly within Congress and invisibly within previous administrations, has always enjoyed remarkably effective and widespread media support.

Administration allies were a faltering Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose overriding interest was to bolster the disintegrating USSR by cooperating with the West; the European Community, which is fed up with Israel and strongly pro-Palestinian; American public opinion, which is moving more slowly but in the same direction as Europe on Middle East matters; the Israeli peace movement, whose strength is in the caliber of its leadership rather than a stable mass base; and the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the three GCC members (Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain) that closely follow the Saudi lead on foreign affairs.

An uncertain element was the American Jewish community, made up of individuals who, according to polls, are almost as fed up with Shamir's intransigence as is much of the Israeli electorate, but who time and again have come down publicly on the side of Israel's American lobbyists when they have confronted any US president and his congressional supporters.

This was the starting lineup when Bush threw down the gauntlet in early September by asking Israel to defer its request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, payable in annual $2 billion installments, in addition to Israel's annual $3 billion to $5.6 billion in US foreign aid grants. Israel said it needed the extra funding to absorb Soviet Jews. In fact it already had inserted the anticipated extra $2 billion in a budget that included further rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and increased military power to intimidate its Arab neighbors.

Shamir correctly concluded that this was the Bush administration's first step in linking US economic aid to Israel's performance in the peace process. Shamir declined to defer Israel's request and ordered its lobby into action to support the request in Congress. Bush, meanwhile, asked congressional leaders to defer consideration of the request for 120 days. When AIPAC brought Jewish activists from all over the United States for a two-day Washington lobbying blitzkrieg, Bush went public. In a televised news conference he complained that as "one little guy" trying to postpone consideration of Israel's financial demands, he was up against ''a thousand lobbyists" on Capitol Hill.

Consideration of the loan guarantees was deferred for 120 days. Needing the money, a reluctant Yitzhak Shamir had no choice but to come to the Madrid peace conference. There, his unwillingness, in his own words, to trade "one inch of territory for peace'' was put on public view. Under even heavier pressure, his government accepted an invitation to participate in bilateral Washington talks with the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors, which promised only more erosion of public opinion support for Israel.

Meanwhile, the seemingly fractured Palestinians pulled together an uneasy alliance between Yasser Arafat's mainstream Al Fatah movement within the PLO, and the attractive and realistic Palestinian leaders who have arisen in the occupied territories. Together they produced a stunning public relations triumph.

The only thing that kept the Israelis from being totally isolated was a series of public relations gaffes by the Syrians who, in playing to public opinion in their own closed society, convinced the rest of the world that Yitzhak Shamir wasn't the only intransigent leader represented in Madrid.

As the world watched the Washington beginnings of round three, however, it was clear that Shamir was at his wit's end, while the Syrians were beginning to show some sensitivity to world opinion and the will to learn from their own mistakes.

Observers might have concluded that nothing could stop the Bush administration timetable. Defined at Madrid by Baker, it called for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement within one year on the transitional stage that the Israelis call "autonomy" and the Palestinians call "stages of implementation." The transition itself would last five years, with the final form of Palestinian self-determination to be agreed by the end of the first three years.

There are other obstacles Bush and Secretary of State James Baker must overcome, however, and the biggest by far is in the United States. That obstacle is barely concealed support for any government of Israel, even Shamir's, in the US media. Much harder to define than AIPAC's clout in Congress, it also has much greater potential to upset the Bush administration's plans. A demonstration of its power seemingly already is underway.

Recession, Polls and "Media Conspiracy"

"I'm scared. And it's not because my business is bad. I've had a good year. Excellent in fact. . . But my apprehension about the future of my business and my inhibition about personal spending spring not so much from hard facts as from the mood of fear that has begun to escalate, in just the last few weeks, across the country. . . Fear, in short, is clearly beginning to have its own separate and tangible impact on the worsening economy."

—Communications company owner Karl Fleming, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 24, 1991

"Pro-Israel bias'' in the US media is as formless as an amoeba, as pervasive as bacteria, as difficult to combat as a virus and as dangerous to its victims as all three combined. The difference between the reality of current American economic problems and their handling by the media provides an instructive example of the media's power to set the public opinion agenda.

The United States is in a very serious recession, right? Wrong. Most economists would agree that the US has been suffering from long-term structural problems since the 1970s, and that starting about last April the United States has been pulling very slowly out of a recession that began in mid-1990. The economists have not just President Bush's word for all this, but the evidence of the "leading economic indicators."

Well then, it's a "double dip recession" where the country starts to pull out and then plunges back in even more deeply, right? Wrong again, most economists would agree—unless what Americans are reading in their newspapers and hearing from network newscasts literally talks the United States into another recession before it finishes pulling out of the last one.

What about all those charts on the financial pages? Few have anything to do with economic statistics. They're charts of consumer confidence as measured by media polls. They tell readers that Americans expect bad times. They also proclaim that President Bush's overall approval ratings have dropped from the 70 or 80 percent range he achieved at the end of the Gulf war to a 50 percent level (in the three months since he challenged the Israel lobby).

What about the commentaries on how frightened Americans feel? Read them again. Most of the commentators, and we're talking not about glib little editorials in the daily newspapers but articles by serious economists, are saying what we've just said above.

There are many serious problems left over from the Reagan years and before, including the hollowing out of American corporations, cleaning up the savings and loan catastrophe, and the $3 trillion national debt. There also are layoffs coming as the US closes down assembly lines in weapons factories.

The US faced similar challenges after World War II. It met them successfully with an upsurge in highway and home building and a nationwide program of education and vocational training (the GI bill) at US government expense.

The US already has lowered interest rates enough to stimulate the home building, it has just passed a highway bill providing $151 billion for use over the next six years, and Bush is calling for, but Congress has not yet given him, an education bill.

So is everything okay, even though virtually everyone who reads this article knows someone who is looking for a job, and others in defense or manufacturing industries who are in acute fear of being laid off? Obviously unemployment is never okay, but it's never absent either. During the 1982 recession, two years into Ronald Reagan's first term, unemployment was more than 10 percent. In October of this year, it was 6.8 percent, and declining. Does that square with the impression generated by newspapers and television newscasts? If not, why not?

Anatomy of a "Media Conspiracy"

Before trying to answer that, it's appropriate to define the provocative reference above to "media conspiracy. " Probably no American who follows Middle East events closely needs convincing that there is media hanky-panky when it comes to coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Among readers of this article, probably 90 percent would agree with the writer that the "conspiracy'' consists of media self-censorship that results in prominent placement of stories that make Israel look good. Some might also insist that stories that make the Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims look bad are more likely to be printed than those that reflect favorably upon any of these people.

Even the remaining 10 percent of readers probably would agree that there is a media tendency to slant Middle East stories. They might contend, however, that the slanting is against rather than for Israel. US journalists, they charge, ''hold Israel to a higher standard'' than they do Arab countries.

For purposes of discussion, therefore, most Americans would agree that there is media slanting when it comes to Israel and the Arabs. They might also agree that it can be influenced by advertising. Advertising even casts its shadow over non-Middle East reporting. In November, National Geographic magazine president Robert Sims reported that Japanese firms pulled $1.8 million in advertisements from the magazine's November and December issues because of stories commemorating the 50th anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report also lost Japanese advertising.

The slanting, via treatment or selection, in US Middle East reporting is what is referred to in this article as "media conspiracy. " The "conspiracy" is that although virtually everyone does it, no one discusses it.

It is not the kind of conspiracy whereby leading publishers and network executives sit in a corporate boardroom or someone's family room twice a year and decide how they are going to help Israel, support AIPAC, and scare off any politician who gets in their way. Nor do the nation's leading advertisers and advertising agency executives get together on someone's yacht to decide how to throw their advertising to the media that go along, and how to push into bankruptcy those that don't.

The truth is that people don't have to get together to produce the results described. A candid but private expression of disapproval from a major advertiser to a publisher or radio station owner can have an effect. If you don't believe it, ask someone in that business who knows you will respect the confidentiality of a frank answer.

The reason that partisans of Israel don't have to get together formally is because people who follow Middle East news closely know what to do to help their side. They know where network managers stand on Middle East issues. They also know where individual journalists stand. For those who don't have the time to follow things that closely, the Jewish weekly press obligingly denigrates Peter Jennings or John Chancellor, for example, and praises Dan Rather. Then they leave it to their readers to write in and suggest boycotts of products advertised on the programs of journalists insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Media Slanting at Work

Media slanting may result from publisher or network executive bias, managing editor bias, or reporter or copy-reader bias. If there's only one leading person with such a bias on a medium-size daily newspaper, it's probably enough, except in unlikely cases where there is also someone on the same paper with a strong bias the other way—or in favor of fair application of the First Amendment.

Although, obviously, most journalists with a bias in favor of Israel's extremist Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir are Jewish, it's not always that simple. Columnists George Will and Jeane Kirkpatrick are not Jewish, yet they are knee-jerk pro-Likud all the way. By contrast, syndicated columnists Anthony Lewis, Robert Novak, Alan Brownfeld, and Richard Cohen all are of Jewish heritage. The first three are unremittingly critical and the latter selectively critical of Shamir's expansionist policies, however. They all explain that what Israel's present prime minister represents is far more dangerous to Israel in the long run that any combination of its Arab neighbors.

All that's just background to the harder-to-explain fact that a Middle East-related "media conspiracy" can be quite spontaneous, is not a clear-cut matter of "Jews against gentiles," and, in many cases, is hard to detect in time to take countermeasures.

That's because many such campaigns seem not to be Middle East-related at all. One of the first examples was the campaign against Sen. J. William Fulbright, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the 1960s he ignored warnings from pro-Israel colleagues like Sen. Hubert Humphrey, and pursued hearings on the funding of lobbyists seeking to influence American foreign policy. His original target was the US sugar industry's connection to press and congressional campaigns against Cuba's Fidel Castro, and perhaps ties of the "China lobby" to prominent Republicans. What he turned up instead were shady transactions between Israel's nascent lobby and American politicians, many from his own party.

Although Senator Fulbright's deepening disapproval of the Vietnam War shifted his attention to the Far East, his unfriendly attention to Israel's US lobby had made him a marked man. The New York Times began to cover Arkansas politics intensively and reported, inaccurately, that Fulbright sounded like a "segregationist" when he campaigned in Arkansas. The Arkansas press meanwhile proclaimed that the rest of the country considered Fulbright more of an "internationalist" than a representative of his own state.

This paved the way for a sudden decision by a younger Democratic colleague, Gov. Dale Bumpers, to run an extraordinarily well-funded and ultimately successful primary campaign against Sen. Fulbright. The engineered downfall of Sen. Fulbright was the direct result of a pro-Israel "media conspiracy" in which the Middle East was never mentioned.

Sen. Charles Percy was a Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was targeted successfully in the 1984 elections by AIPAC because he voted in 1981 to support President Ronald Reagan's decision to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia, and publicly expressed support for " Palestinian rights. " The articles that began to appear in the Illinois press, however, didn't touch on the Middle East. After all, how could a Republican senator be criticized for being in favor of human rights and of multi-billion-dollar cash sales of American defensive aircraft to an American ally?

A former AIPAC board member, Michael Goland, was convicted in federal court for election law violations for secretly channeling $1,200,000 of his own money into 1984 television "attack-ads" against Percy. They did not criticize the senator for anything related to the Middle East, but for alleged insensitivity to economic and employment issues of concern to Illinois voters.

Such "media conspiracies" of selective reporting, with no visible connection to the Middle East, can in fact be generated by journalists concerned by their target's actions vis-a-vis Israel.

So is current media fixation on the economic problems the US is presently experiencing inspired by President Bush's decision last September to go to the mat with Israel and its US lobby? Statistics and comments gleaned from the press during November may help readers judge for themselves.

If the current problem is high taxes, it's relevant to know that 32.6 percent of America's gross national product went to governments in 1990, compared to 31.3 percent in 1980 and 30 percent in 1975, according to The New York Times of Nov. 17.

If the problem is approval ratings, George Bush had 60 percent overall approval throughout the first six months of 1989 and dropped to 51 percent in October 1990. After soaring to the 70s and 80s with the successful conclusion of the Gulf war, he dropped back to 51 percent in November 1991, according to a New York Times CBS poll.

A "Free Fall" or a Predictable Return?

Is that a "free fall" as described by many commentators, or just a predictable return to where Bush has been through much of the first three years of his presidency? President Ronald Reagan was at 53 percent in a Gallup poll at exactly the same stage of his presidency. Richard Nixon was at 48 percent 18 months before his re-election. Harry Truman was at 36 percent less than 6 months before his re-election in 1948.

In comparable November polls for three prominent governors, New York Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo got a 37 percent approval rating, Connecticut Republican Gov. Lowell Weicker got 23 percent, and New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jim Florio received a 26 percent approval rating.

What's alarming is the measurable drop in "consumer confidence," and what American journalists are saying about it, because the one feeds on the other. The index of consumer confidence compiled by the Conference Board, a business research group, had dropped to 50.6 in November. Its 1990 low was 60. In the 1982 recession it dropped to 54.3 and in 1980 its low was 50.1.

But in a Nov. 27 New York Times article presenting those statistics, journalist Roger Cohen's lead proclaimed: "American consumer confidence in the economy has fallen beneath the lowest level recorded during the 1982 recession. " Among experts he quoted was Conference Board executive director Fabian Linden, who said: "We're about as low as historically we've ever been . . . This is rock bottom in terms of the malaise of the consumer." In the same article, Manufacturers Hanover economist Irwin L. Kellner was quoted as saying, "We're not as depressed statistically as in the 1930s, but we're as depressed mentally, and you need pump priming to break that vicious cycle.''

All that is quite a contrast to the remark by Sam Donaldson, a journalist frequently criticized in the weekly Jewish press, on ABC's David Brinkley program Dec. 1: "You can find any set of statistics that show the economy is not in such bad shape.'' Or the comment of Britt Hume on the same program that "there is a case to be made that says the best thing to do right now is to do nothing."

Most economists agree. "The fundamentals are okay, " Bear Stearns chief economist Lawrence Kudlow told Sylvia Nasar of The New York Times. "Low inflation and low interest rates provide the foundations for economic recovery."

Journalist Nasar quotes Roger grinner of DRI/McGraw Hill, Geoffrey H. Moor of the Center for International Business Research at Columbia University, and Blue Chip Economic Indicators of Sedona, AZ as all supporting "the president's conviction that an anemic recovery has been underway since April or May and will continue at least through the end of next year."

As for the political implications of the present polls, on Nov.29 Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz quoted Republican pollster Bill McInturff as saying:

"Despite a rough couple of weeks, when you pit Bush against Cuomo or any other Democrat, he's up 20 points. When you make people choose between candidates, George Bush still looks fairly strong."

With 1992 elections still 11 months away, none of this will affect results if, as the statistics indicate, a slow recovery really is underway. The problem is that irresponsible or biased journalists actually can talk the United States back into a recession, or a real depression, by convincing entrepreneurs and the public to withhold investments and purchases just when they are needed.

In trying to talk the United States out of full-scale depression in the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans that "all we have to fear is fear itself." Fortunately for him, at that time there were no media pundits willing to subject the country to whatever hardships they could create in order to get rid of its president.

Shamir's Tactics: Get the Money From Congress Without Concessions on Settlements to Bush

"Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, associates say, hopes to avoid any major discussions on substance with the Arabs before February, when the US administration and Congress are expected to take up Israel's request for $10 billion in US loan guarantees to finance the absorption of immigrants. A debate on substance, Shamir fears, might invite linkage between US support for the guarantees and concessions by Israel."

—Journalist Jackson Dichl, The Washington Post, Nov. 29, 1991

In seeking to avoid substantive discussions in Madrid, Washington or anywhere else that would spotlight his unwillingness to trade land for peace, Shamir hopes to avoid giving George Bush and James Baker an opportunity to link US loan guarantees publicly to a freeze on Jewish settlement activity in Israeli-occupied territories.

By opening a new settlement on the Golan Heights, he sought to provoke Syria into not attending the Washington talks. By alleging that he had received "insulting" treatment in connection with the Washington conference, he sought to justify a time-consuming delay in the arrival of his delegates. In fact, Baker had warned in a Nov. 21 face-to-face meeting with Shamir that the US would invite participants to meet Dec. 4 in Washington. This was before the US transmitted invitations to the Arabs later on the same day. Shamir's "surprise,'' when he was informed the following day that his government had received its invitation, was typical dissembling from the man who promised Bush personally in February 1991 that there would be no more settlements. Given that promise, the opening of a new settlement for each subsequent Baker arrival in Israel throughout 1991 was more than an insult to Baker, as portrayed in the US media at the time. It was a challenge to Bush as well.

As a last resort, the Israeli prime minister may adopt the time-honored "good cop-bad cop" routine. He may seek to convince American leaders that a formal freeze on settlements is politically impossible for him to accept. He may suggest, instead, that the US give him the loan guarantees next February in return for his solemn promise to see that Housing Minister Ariel Sharon gets no more funding to continue his frenetic settlement activity.

In that case, all Americans would be well advised to recall the traditional admonition from victim to swindler: ''Once fooled, shame on you. Twice fooled, shame on me."

Public Opinion: Will Israelis Support Shamir? Will US Jews Support Bush?

On Oct. 26, 40,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to support participation by their government in the Madrid conference. At about the same time, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported that a poll it had conducted showed 91 percent of Israelis supported Israeli participation in the conference, although 57 percent believed it would not yield "real results.'' In the same poll, 42 percent said Israel should give up most or all of the occupied territories in exchange for peace, and 39 percent said the Palestinians should be granted self-government.

The figures, unfortunately, are not as significant as they sound. Sentiment changes with blinding speed in Israel. Successful initiatives pick up public opinion support as rapidly as defeats dissipate it. The best indication that Israelis are impatient with the status quo is the October decision by opportunistic Labor Coalition leader and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres to call for an Israeli halt to settlement activity and for creation of a demilitarized West Bank, with Israel retaining unspecified areas for security purposes but yielding the rest to a "Jordanian-Palestinian confederation" that would also include the Gaza Strip. The significance of this position taken by the leader of Israel's second-largest political party is diluted, however, by the continuing split within the Labor coalition between dovish Peres and hawkish Yitzhak Rabin.

The picture is equally ambiguous among American Jews. Peace Now co-founder Peter Edelman complains that American Jewish leaders who privately deplore the settlements "worry that if they break ranks and speak out, they could hurt Israel." By not speaking out, however, they strengthen Shamir against peace activists at home.

This perhaps explains the paradox of Yitzhak Shamir's reception at the annual meeting of the Council of Jewish Federations (representing 153 local federations) in Baltimore in November. Of 205 of 300 Council officers and board members who responded to a survey, a large majority endorsed a freeze on settlements in exchange for US loan guarantees, most disagreed with Shamir's unwillingness to give up "even one inch" of Israeli-occupied territory for peace, and a substantial majority differed with Shamir's refusal to negotiate with the PLO and to allow an eventual Palestinian state. Yet, the very same Council officials gave Shamir an enthusiastic reception and roundly applauded his intransigent statements in Baltimore.

Based upon the history of two generations of US-Israeli relations, it would be prudent for Bush to assume that American Jewish leaders want to avoid a clash between any US president and any Israeli prime minister, will support Shamir publicly if such a clash occurs, but also will breathe a sigh of relief when it's over—even if Bush wins and Israel agrees to a land-for-peace settlement in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel and US and UN security guarantees.

Saudi Arabia: Bush's Visible Asset

"A reduction in world oil prices of $5 per barrel in 1992 would have the lubricating effect of an immediate $300 billion tax cut. This option would, of course, require the assistance of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, the emir of Kuwait and other Persian Gulf producers, but all of these have been obliging in the past to White House entreaties and are in a good position to oblige Bush now."

Citizen Action energy policy director Edwin S. Rothschild, The Washington Post, Nov. 24, 1991

Although the Gulf war delayed the Israeli-Palestinian settlement that was on their agenda from the time Bush and Baker took office, it gave Bush an indispensable ally for all that has followed. Without the decisions by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to call in American forces to defend his kingdom, and to allow Coalition forces to mount the liberation of Kuwait from Saudi soil, there would have been no liberation. The US would still be trying to get Saddam Hussain out of Kuwait by economic means, and there would be photos of gaunt Kuwaiti and perhaps Saudi children along with those of Iraqi children in the world press.

When Bush resumed the path to Arab-Israeli peace, he expected close Saudi support. He hasn't been disappointed. The Saudis have made it clear to the PLO, Syria and Jordan that the Saudi financial subsidies they all have grown used to will be as closely tied to progress at the peace table as are US subsidies to Israel. If the US maintains the linkage, so will the Saudis.

Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US, visited Syria before the Madrid conference. He turned up in Madrid as well, although Abdullah Bishara, the Kuwaiti secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, was officially representing all six GCC members. In The Wall Street Journal of Nov. 11, reporter Gerald Seib described what happened in Madrid when Syria seemed recalcitrant about participating in the conference's second stage:

''At that crucial juncture, Saudi Arabia, working in concert with the US and Egypt, stepped into the breach. Even before the opening conference had ended, the Palestinians and Jordanians at the conference decided to risk Syria 's wrath and declare that they would start direct talks with Israel no matter what. At a social function at the Saudi embassy in Madrid, Saudi officials say, Palestinian negotiators asked whether Saudi Arabia would back them in their stand. The Saudis said they would.

''Later, all the Arab delegations in Madrid gathered for a meeting at the Ritz Hotel, and Prince Bandar urged the Syrians to stay in the process. He and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa then made the same plea privately to Farouk Al Charoa, the Syrian foreign minister. After making their case, Prince Bandar and Mr. Mousssa drove off to lunch together, having arranged for both King Fahd and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to call Mr. Assad and urge him to stay in the process. When Prince Bandar and his Egyptian friend returned from lunch, Mr. Charaa was still in Madrid—and the Syrians stayed in the game."

At present, King Fahd has a big problem of his own. The Gulf war cost Saudi Arabia some $60 billion. Prior to that, Saudi support for Saddam Hussain's war with Khomeini's Iran also had cost about the same.

With Iraq and Kuwait still on the oil producing sidelines, Saudi Arabia produces one-third of OPEC's oil. With Soviet oil production slipping from 12 million to 10 million barrels per day (b/d), and Saudi production now at nearly 9 million b/d and climbing, Saudi Arabia could become the world's largest producer early in 1992.

There are two reasons to bet that it will do just that, instead of resuming its role as "swing producer," raising or lowering its production to keep the price of oil at an OPEC-approved level. The first reason is to earn back the money Saudi Arabia spent on keeping all of the Gulf oil fields from falling under the control of either Iran or Iraq. At present levels of production, King Fahd will have that money back by the end of 1992.

The second reason is George Bush. During the Gulf war, Bush indicated to King Fahd that, when it was over, he would expend the same zeal on ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese lands as he was expending on ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Bush is keeping his promise, and US prestige throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds is soaring.

King Fahd has been heard to exclaim publicly that a president as good for the American people as is George Bush deserves to be re-elected by them. Continued rapid expansion of Saudi oil production would be worth far more in immediate economic benefits to the American people and their economy than all the tinkering the president and Congress together could devise between now and November 1992. By continuing all out production, King Fahd will help both Saudi Arabia and the United States .

Israeli stonewalling, AIPAC payoffs to congress members, and crippling stealth attacks by Israel's allies in the US media have intimidated every US president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. It's a totally different world today, however, and changes in both Israel and in some of its Arab neighbors are accurately reflected in profound changes in US public opinion.

Neither Yitzhak Shamir, his AIPAC lobbyists, nor most US politicians and journalists recognize it, but George Bush has embarked upon a Middle East peace timetable from which there is no turning back without bringing his other foreign and domestic accomplishments down in ruins. He has support in Europe and the Middle East that gives him a great deal of leverage with the US economy.

Yitzhak Shamir is betting on the dismal history of US presidents caving in to Israeli prime ministers, especially during election years. Israel's lobby is betting on its own hidden power in the American press to make that history repeat itself. If the American people and the rest of the world bet on George Bush defeating Shamir, however, that soon could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Richard Curtiss, a retired US foreign service officer, is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.