December/January 1992/93, Page 7-8

As Middle East Hopes Fade… 

Will Bill Clinton or Yitzhak Rabin Revive Foundering Peace Talks?

By Richard H. Curtiss

"A confidential letter from Lawrence Eagleburger to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin urging no delays in the Mideast peace talks despite the presidential transition suggests that Bill Clinton will keep the talks moving in the Bush channel regardless of political pressures and regardless of his own advisers. "

—Syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Dec. 2, 1992

Even before round eight of the Middle East peace talks opened, they were going under for the third time. Only U.S. President-elect William Clinton or Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin can revive them. Logic says one or the other will. Their personal records argue otherwise.

The benefits to both leaders of such an action by either one would be enormous. It's not just the sure-fire Nobel Peace Prize, which they would share with the Arab leaders involved. A comprehensive Middle East peace settlement within the next four years would be of incalculable benefit to the United States.

There will continue to be "Middle East turmoil," as Islamic countries reconcile their "fundamentalist" and fatalistic religion with the demands of a pragmatic and technological world. But, by disengaging itself from the role of partisan in the most emotion-laden of the many disputes that hinder development of stable political institutions in the Middle East, the United States will be perceived as innocent bystander rather than prime mover in disturbances that reverberate through the region.

For Israel, a peaceful settlement with its neighbors is by now an existential question. For the sake of getting on with their lives and enjoying the fruits of the energy abundance bestowed on the Middle East as a whole, the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors are willing to settle with Israel on terms that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. These include a demilitarized Palestinian state in only 22 percent of the original Mandate of Palestine, and an equal three-way sharing of Jerusalem among two religious communities numbering one billion adherents each, and a third religious community numbering only 16 million adherents, and shrinking.

For the Israelis to delay any longer in hopes of cutting a "better deal" is to ensure that there will be no deal at all—and eventually no Israel at all. Time is on the side of the Arabs. If current Israeli plans succeed in extending Jewish settlements to the point where it becomes impossible to divide Palestine, the result will not be a secure Jewish state. Instead it will be, eventually, the "democratic, secular state" long sought by the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Islamic world will settle for nothing less.

Nor can that Islamic world be ignored any longer by Israel or the U.S. The world's Muslim population is growing exponentially. If it increased by only a conservative two percent per year, the annual increase would be greater than the total Jewish population in the world.

In an increasingly "modern" world, where all parties to the dispute do or soon will have access to weapons of mass destruction, Israel can no longer continue its half-century war with the Islamic one-fifth of humanity. Israel's five million people, and the United States to the extent that it backs Israel, are isolated on this issue in a world increasingly impatient for an end to Israel's defiance of U.N. resolutions and denial of human rights to Palestinians under its control.

Given the stakes, it is imperative that either Clinton or Rabin restore momentum to the talks launched in Madrid with fanfare and high hopes in October 1991. To do so, Clinton need only make it clear that he supports continuity in U.S. policy by linking future U.S. aid to Israel to Israeli performance at the peace table.

When George Bush initiated that policy in September 1991, it first brought down Israel's intransigent Likud government, headed by Yitzhak Shamir. Then it was the catalyst for Rabin's election victory. Israelis can argue over the strength of Rabin's "mandate" to trade land for peace. What is incontestable, however, is that Rabin, who was Israeli ambassador to the U.S. for five years from 1968 to 1973, received a mandate from Israeli voters to repair Israel's financial lifeline to the U.S.

Israel can't exist in its present form without America's ever-increasing annual subsidy. Every Israeli knows it and so, despite the unwillingness of Israel's U.S. media supporters to tell them so, do most Americans. As president, Clinton need only indicate clearly that maintenance of the lifeline no longer depends upon Israel's U.S. Iobby, but rather upon Israel's implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which specifies Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands occupied in 1967 in return for Arab acknowledgement of Israel's "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

The moment Rabin, the Israeli electorate, and hawkish American Jewish leaders are sure that Clinton means it, the peace talks will be back on track.

Will Clinton do it? Probably not. American "friends of Bill" at Oxford relate how, at the height of their Vietnam War resistance, when they gathered in the evening to discuss actions they could take, Clinton usually was the last to arrive. This was because, at the end of each day, he would enter the names of new acquaintances and contacts into lists that would help him associate every name with every face later when, as a politician embarked on the long road to the U.S. presidency, he might need them.

Having attained his life's ambition at age 46, with a huge assist from the Israel lobby and its powerful friends in the media, will this reflexive politician seek to set the world right in his first term? Or will he defer controversial good works while compiling new lists of special interest supporters who can help him win re-election?

If Clinton Won't, Will Rabin?

If Clinton sticks to form and limits his role in a Middle East settlement to lip service rather than financial pressure, where does this leave Yitzhak Rabin? Probably in great peril. Although, as prime minister of Israel, he has the power to negotiate peace with the Arabs with or without U.S. pressure, he probably won't.

Introverted, shy, brusque to the point of rudeness and, prior to his current term, as indecisive on political matters as he is daring in military affairs, he is one of the most unlikely leaders ever to come to power through democratic elections. It could happen only in a country like Israel—consumed with resentment of the European "Christians" who so wronged the Jews two generations ago, burdened with anger and unacknowledged guilt toward the Palestinians Israel itself has so wronged, obsessed with security, knowing intellectually that it has to compromise for peace, yet incapable emotionally of reaching consensus on even the slightest concession.

As a pragmatic military man with a record of success and a reputation for toughness, and a cautious politician with no discernible long-range plan or ideology, Rabin is a fitting leader for such a torn, fractured and haunted electorate.

He could seize the opportunity presented by the peace talks to save his country from otherwise inevitable extinction. In the absence of a visible push from the U.S., however, he almost certainly won't.

When he loses the next Israeli election, scheduled at the latest for 1996, he may not understand or even care why. He will have the satisfaction, however, of taking Foreign Minister and party rival Shimon Peres, who snatched the Labor Party leadership away from him 15 years ago, with him into political oblivion.

Keeping the devious, artful and energetic Eastern European-born Peres who "outhawked" him in 1977 and "out-doves" him now, from ever again being Israel's prime minister may be what the roughhewn Rabin, his country's first native-born prime minister, cares most about this late in his career.

Rabin was born March 1, 1922 in the Mandate of Palestine. His father was an immigrant from the United States, his mother from Russia. Both were active in Labor-Zionist affairs. Rabin graduated from the Kaddoori School of Agriculture in 1940. At age 18, he entered the underground Palmach militia, military arm of the Labor movement and forerunner of the future Israel Defense Forces.

In 1946, only one year after the end of World War II, he was arrested for his military activities against British rule, and spent six months in a Gaza detention camp. In the fighting that preceded and followed the May 15, 1948 proclamation of the state of Israel, he distinguished himself as a 26-year-old brigade commander.

After the 1949 cease-fire, Rabin remained in the army. In 1963 he was named to Israel's highest uniformed position, chief of staff, which he occupied when the 1967 crisis with Egypt and Syria began.

Although colorful and hawkish Gen. Moshe Dayan was brought out of retirement to become defense minister in a "national unity government" shortly before Israel's "pre-emptive" June 5, 1967 surprise attack on Egypt and Syria, the Israeli public realized that credit for the meticulous planning and bold strategy that defeated all of Israel's Arab neighbors in only six days belonged to Rabin.

Six months later, he retired from the army and went to Washington as Israel's ambassador. This had become a crucial Israeli government post after President Charles de Gaulle of France—which had been Israel's principal military supplier for a decade—severed the French-Israeli tie because of Israel's refusal to relinquish the Egyptian, Syrian and Palestinian lands obtained through its 1967 aggression.

In Washington, Rabin helped Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan substitute the U.S. for France as Israel's principal source of arms and increase U.S. taxpayer aid to Israel far beyond the pre-war total of U.S. aid, contributions from American and other Jewish communities abroad, and German reparations to Israel.

The October 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria to liberate the portions of their lands occupied by Israel in 1967 was as much a surprise to Israel as its 1967 attack had been to the Arabs. Israel survived only with the help of a massive American airlift of military supplies from Europe, the Far East and the United States.

Return to Israel

Rabin returned to Israel after the 1973 war to run on the Labor ticket for the Knesset. In April 1974 he was named minister of labor in the cabinet of Golda Meir, who was being blamed, along with Dayan, for not anticipating the costly Egyptian/Syrian attack. When Meir resigned two months later, Rabin became prime minister.

His popularity hit its high point when he ordered the successful Israeli rescue from Entebbe, Uganda, of the passengers of a hijacked French aircraft that had been carrying a large number of Israelis. Labor affiliated parties had run Israel since its 1948 founding, however, and during his three years as prime minister Rabin was unable to dispel the corruption permeating the public-sector institutions that controlled Israeli economic life.

In 1977 he traveled to the U.S. with his wife, Leah, whose parents had brought her to Israel from Germany in 1933, when she was five years old. Accompanied by reporters, she visited a bank to check on the account the couple had opened when they and their son and daughter were living in Washington during Rabin's ambassadorial assignment. Having a foreign bank account is a violation of Israeli law, however, and when its existence was revealed, Rabin complicated things by understating the amount of money in the account.

In the resulting "scandal," Rabin relinquished leadership of the Labor Party to Shimon Peres, then a more hawkish figure who challenged Rabin's professed willingness to trade land for peace. Not long afterward, however, the government was brought down by another "scandal."

When a flight of incoming U. S. military aircraft being turned over to Israel was delayed, Israel's Labor Party leaders remained for a Friday evening welcoming ceremony after the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. Religious parties withdrew from the government. In the ensuing election, Labor went down to ignominious defeat in 1977 at the hands of former Jewish underground terrorist Menachem Begin's hard-line Likud party, which was committed to holding all territories seized in 1967.

It was the beginning of seven years in the political wilderness for Rabin, which ended in 1984 when he was appointed defense minister in the Likud-Labor coalition that ruled Israel for six years. Rabin held the position under both Prime Ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir.

The Brutal "Iron Fist"

Rabin's brutal "iron fist" policy to discourage resistance as Israel withdrew its troops in stages from Beirut, followed by introduction of the "iron fist" into the occupied territories after the December 1987 outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, earned him increasing popularity. His stated policy of "might, power and beatings," issued in a slow and ponderous baritone, and his blurred image as a hawkish leader of a dovish party, mirrored the mood of Israel's increasingly confused electorate.

In the Jimmy Carter era, Israel's Likud leaders had become increasingly intransigent in their dealings with the U.S. Plucking the eagle's feathers was good politics with the Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews who formed the core of Likud support.

At the beginning of Ronald Reagan's eight years in the White House, and particularly after Israel's invasion of Lebanon, concerned American Jewish leaders rallied to defend the high levels of U.S. economic and military aid to an Israel whose political policies most rank-and-file American Jews personally deplored. They found, however, that instead of having to cajole the Reagan-era White House to push U.S. aid levels higher and higher, they were, in the words of pro-Israel editor Richard Strauss, "pushing against an open door."

With the election of George Bush, the atmosphere changed. Shamir was told not to come to Washington unless he brought a peace plan with him. Since he had none of his own, he borrowed Defense Minister Rabin's plan to ignore the PLO and hold local elections in the West Bank and Gaza strip to select Palestinians with whom Israel could negotiate.

Bush administration pressure on Israel went on hold for a full year following Saddam Hussain's invasion of Kuwait. Subsequently, but still during the 1991 fiscal year, the U.S. rewarded Israel with an unprecedented $5.7 billion in U.S. aid for not shattering the U.N. coalition that ousted Iraqi troops by taking military action against Iraq on its own.

Immediately afterward, however, Bush and Secretary of State James Baker resumed the pressure on Israel by making it clear that the price of continued U.S. aid to Israel would be Israeli compliance with UNSC Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula. They began by holding up congressional consideration of a scheme to maintain future U.S. aid to Israel close to the $6 billion level by advancing Israel $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for each of the next five consecutive years.

It was this action that brought down the Israeli government. The Labor Party then held the first popular vote in its history to choose candidates for its slate in the general election. Rabin won back from Peres the party chairmanship he had relinquished 15 years earlier.

Rabin changed his party's entry on the ballot from "Labor" to "Labor led by Rabin," and won 44 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. He cobbled together a coalition with the dovish Meretz Party, which had won 12 seats, and the Sephardic-based Shas religious party, with 6 seats. Because the coalition could count on the additional support of five representatives of two Arab-based parties, Rabin had the flexibility to make whatever promises were necessary to secure U.S. loan guarantees.

After forming a 17-member cabinet, leaving 3 seats vacant as an incentive for further parties to join it, Rabin left for the U.S. There, Bush offered him $2 billion in loan guarantees for a partial freeze of the Jewish settlement activities in Israeli occupied territories, or the entire $10 billion in loan guarantees over five years in return for a total freeze. Betting that Bush might lose the 1992 U.S. election and Israel might therefore get the remaining $8 billion without making further concessions, Rabin decreed only a partial freeze, limited to "political settlements" in the occupied territories.

He excluded settlements in East Jerusalem, and "security settlements" in the Golan Heights and the Jordan valley. These are distinctions the U.S. does not recognize, but Bush was eager to make a pre-election deal in the vain hope of attracting some Jewish votes in the upcoming national election.

The concession did Bush no good, since 85 percent of American Jews voted for Clinton. In the end, Rabin limited his gesture to cancellation of 6,681 housing units upon which work had not been started, and continued work already underway on 8,781 West Bank housing units, along with another 1,686 housing units under construction in the Jerusalem area.

Completion of these 10,467 housing units will keep construction workers busy for much of the time between now and the 1996 Israeli elections, and eventually will put another 50,000 Israelis into the West Bank and East Jerusalem areas the Arabs would insist be returned in exchange for a peace agreement.

During Rabin's campaign and his subsequent talks with Baker and Bush, he had assigned priority to reaching an autonomy agreement with the Palestinians that would lead, after three years, to negotiations on the final status of the occupied territories. When Rabin-appointed or re-appointed negotiators actually arrived in Washington, however, they offered no relaxation of the Israeli control of Palestinian land and water that makes Palestinian life in the occupied territories intolerable.

Instead, the Rabin negotiators talked of a land-for-peace agreement with Syria, to be reached independently of Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians, Jordanians or Lebanese. The Syrians made it clear, however, that they were not prepared to sign a separate peace until other Arab territorial claims were satisfied as well.

Bush's election defeat only confirmed that the Middle East peace negotiations were stalemated, with the Israelis clearly hoping that the Arabs would take the initiative, and bear the onus, for breaking them off. Wisely, despite increasing rejectionist pressures at home, the Palestinians have not done so. Nor, it seems, will the other Arabs unless they abandon any hope that Clinton will continue the Bush policy of linking aid to peace.

The Choice is Rabin's

Even in the absence of U.S. pressure, however, Rabin could keep peace negotiations on track if he chose to. His present coalition would support the concessions necessary for peace. Rabin is "the most right-wing member of his own government," says Labor Knesset member Avraham Burg. "When he has an agenda in his mind, it takes a lot to move him."

The problem is that no one is sure, in the absence of U.S. pressure, what agenda this very private man would pursue. Should he decide not to push the peace talks but to let them fail, he is perfectly capable of dumping his left-wing Meretz allies. In that case he would form a new coalition with the hard-line right-wing Tsomet Party, led by retired General Rafael Eitan, who covets the Education Ministry held by Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni.

Eitan was elected on promises of no concessions at all on land for peace, and permanent disenfranchisement not only of the 1.7 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, but also of the 900,000 Muslim and Christian Arab citizens of Israel.

U.S. economic and military support of such an Israeli regime, espousing the permanent withdrawal of civil rights from more than a third of the people living in Israel or under its control, would pose a new problem for a Clinton administration that has promised to support democracy and human rights in its foreign policy.

Although all such problems could be avoided from the beginning of the Clinton administration with a resolute policy decision by either Clinton or Rabin, it would be out of character for either. A politician to his fingertips, Clinton instinctively straddles controversial issues. As for Rabin, his strength is in coping with disasters, not anticipating them.

If both run true to form, therefore, Clinton soon will not lack for difficult Middle Eastern issues to straddle. Nor will Rabin suffer any shortage of disasters with which to cope.

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