Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, Pages 9 -10, 111

Special Report

Congressional, Media Support for Netanyahu Undercuts U.S. Middle East Policy Objectives

By Rachelle Marshall

"At some point the United States has to decide whether it wants to serve only Israeli interests or whether it wants to serve the interests of peace in the region."

—Hanan Ashrawi, minister of higher education for the Palestinian Authority, speaking in Ramallah on Sept. 10.

Reversing Teddy Roosevelt's advice, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talked loudly on her recent trip to the Middle East but carried a limp noodle. To no one's surprise, she failed to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to stop building settlements and release all of the $70 million in taxes and fees owed to the Palestinians. Nor did she convince Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to dismantle Hamas and throw its supporters in jail. Like a nanny who has lost patience with squabbling children, she vowed not to come back to the region until the leaders on both sides agreed to "work together."

Secretary Albright's failure to come up with a formula for peace could not have seriously disappointed Washington policymakers since she made no serious effort to do so. Her demand that Arafat "restrain Palestinians from further terrorist attacks," as The New York Times phrased it, showed little grasp of reality.

Given his weak bargaining position, Arafat needs good relations with Israel and international support in order to achieve even minimal concessions. Therefore he has far more to lose from terrorist attacks than Netanyahu, who uses them as an excuse to inflict ever harsher punishment on the Palestinians.

But there is no way the Palestinian leader can stop individuals bent on suicide from infiltrating into Israel and doing their murderous work. Israel's powerful security forces are unable to do so even though they control 96 percent of the West Bank and all of the roads and border crossings. When the Israelis finally identified four of the men responsible for the recent bombings, they turned out to be from Assira, a town under Israeli control. Israel put Assira's 12,000 inhabitants under tight curfew, in what Palestinians referred to as a "siege."

If Arafat attempted to destroy Hamas, as Netanyahu and the U.S. are demanding, he could bring on civil war. Because Israel's blockade of the West Bank and Gaza has crippled the Palestinian economy and forced the Palestinian Authority to cut back sharply on such services as schools and hospitals, Hamas is now the only source of aid for many Palestinians. With support from abroad, Hamas runs health clinics, schools, community centers and youth programs, and provides much of the charity.

Palestinian polls show that support for the organization in the West Bank and Gaza grew over the past year from 10 percent to 25 to 35 percent. Arafat was condemned in the U.S. and Israel for embracing Hamas political leader Abd el-Aziz Rantisi last August, but his failure to produce tangible benefits for the Palestinians has made him vulnerable to internal attack and forced him to seek unity with his opposition.

According to Professor Abdel-Satter Qassem of An Najah University in the West Bank, Arafat could not close down the groups responsible for violence even if he tried. "He can arrest a lot of people," Qassem commented to a reporter, "but he will arrest the wrong people—the political activists and not the military ones." According to Qassem, who is an expert on militant Islamic groups, those who plan suicide bombings are either buried too deep in Palestinian territory or are based abroad.

An Israeli reporter for Yediot Ahronot, Roni Shaked, has pointed out that even if Arafat dared to take on Hamas, he could expect nothing from Netanyahu in return. Netanyahu's stated goal of "peace for peace" means only that Palestinians would serve as a surrogate police force for Israel in the West Bank and Gaza while Israel retained ultimate control. He has rejected the formula of land- for-peace, which is the basis of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338.

On her return from the Middle East, Albright said her main theme to both Israelis and Palestinians had been their "mutual responsibility for the peace process," as if there could be symmetry in a situation where one side has its foot on the other side's neck and is backed by a superpower. In a speech to Israeli high school students she made a show of neutrality by criticizing Israel for demolishing Palestinian homes and seizing Palestinian land for Jewish settlements. But instead of condemning Israel's actions as unjust, she said only that Palestinians "perceive" them to be "provocative." She urged the Israelis to take a "time out" from expanding settlements, a phrase that suggests Israel might resume what international law regards as an illegal activity when the time is right.

Predictably, Israeli officials dismissed Albright's scolding as a minor nuisance, confident that the U.S. will continue to shower Israel with $4 billion to $6 billion a year in aid no matter what they do. Netanyahu's spokesman, David Bar-Ilan, immediately rejected her plea for a temporary halt in settlement construction, saying, "We cannot freeze settlements any more than we can freeze life." Another official said, "She asks that Israel stop anything the Palestinians regard as provocative. What will they think is provocative tomorrow?"

The next day he had his answer. As soon as Albright left Israel, three families of Orthodox Jews moved into two houses in the Arab neighborhood of Ras al-Amoud in East Jerusalem and put up signs saying "Jerusalem is ours!" The houses are owned by Miami multimillionaire Irving Moskowitz, who plans to build 70 apartment units for Jews in the heart of East Jerusalem, using money he funnels through a tax-exempt organization called Ateret Cohanim. He undoubtedly chose the site because Ras al-Amoud is one of the few remaining corridors linking East Jerusalem to the West Bank and to the village of Abu Dis, which might someday become the Palestinians' administrative capital.

The takeover posed a dilemma for Netanyahu because it was clearly aimed at undermining the Palestinians' claim to East Jerusalem and as such was a threat to the peace process. But right-wing members of Netanyahu's government vowed to resign if police tried to evict the settlers. On Sept. 18 he announced a "compromise." The families would be replaced by 10 Yeshiva students who would act as "caretakers."

No one, least of all the Palestinians, doubted that the arrangements would be the first step toward establishing a permanent Jewish settlement in the heart of Arab territory. The normally restrained Thomas Friedman of The New York Times called the deal "a moral and political fraud (embraced by the Clinton administration)."

Earlier in the week Netanyahu had announced that he would release about half of the tax funds Israel was withholding from the Palestinians and allow travel between West Bank towns, although the borders would remain closed. The concessions were consistent with Netanyahu's usual practice of imposing new restrictions on top of old ones and then slightly easing the second round of punishment in order to appear conciliatory. The net effect has been the steady ratcheting upward of the hardships Palestinians are forced to endure while the government increases the Jewish population of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in an effort to make Israel's sovereignty over these areas irreversible.

The Real Business

After leaving Israel the Secretary of State got down to the real business of her Middle East trip, which was to salvage the U.S.-sponsored regional economic conference scheduled to be held in Qatar in mid-November. Several Arab leaders, including Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia had threatened to boycott the meeting because of Israel's disruption of the peace process. Albright's mission was to persuade them to change their minds. Her criticism of Israel while she was in Jerusalem was an attempt to defuse growing resentment in the Arab world at Washington's continued support for Israel, especially in the U.N.

Albright was greeted with warm public statements by Egyptian and Saudi leaders, who praised what Saudi Prince Abdullah called "her brave and frank approach." But government-controlled Arab newspapers were sharply critical of her statements in Israel attacking Arafat, and they accused her of siding with the Netanyahu government against the Palestinians.

On Sept. 21, Arab League members voted unanimously to ease U.S.-backed sanctions against Libya, a vote that reflected their displeasure with Washington's pro-lsrael bias. Arab governments undoubtedly will have to see some progress toward reviving peace negotiations before they can agree to attend the conference at more than a token level.

The primary goal of Albright's Middle East trip was to bolster the alliance of major Arab nations that had successfully turned back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, in order to maintain a united front against Iran and Iraq. Containment of the two countries is a centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy.

Israel, which fears that either Iran or Iraq could someday challenge its nuclear monopoly in the region, played a major role in the creation of this "dual containment" policy, but does not determine how or how long it will be enforced. Like his predecessors, Clinton is committed to protecting existing regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states from the two "rogue states" in order to insure that oil continues to flow to the U.S. and its allies, and oil revenues continue to be spent on U.S. arms.

Achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the single most important means to this end, since continued U.S. support for Israel in the absence of a just peace settlement threatens to weaken U.S. relations with moderate Arab leaders, who must cope with anti-lsrael sentiments at home. The November summit was intended to strengthen these ties and promote economic relations between Israel and the Arabs. If Netanyahu's obstructionism prevents it from attracting key Arab leaders, or from taking place at all, he will not only be harming U.S. interests in the Middle East, but Israel's interests as well.

Netanyahu's supporters in Congress are being equally obstructive of U.S. diplomatic efforts. As Albright was trying to convince the Arab world that the Clinton administration was capable of acting as an honest broker in the Middle East peace process, lawmakers in both parties were competing to prove their loyalty to Israel, and especially to its present government. "The majority's role is to support Netanyahu and to support the protection of Israel from the violence and arrogance of Arafat," Republican Rep. Jon Fox of Pennsylvania told a reporter for the Jewish Telegraph Agency. After a trip to Israel, Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson said, "We will continue to apply pressure that will be helpful to the Israeli government and that the administration cannot ignore."

When two dozen pro-lsrael members of Congress visited Israel in September, Israeli officials who fear that Clinton may make demands on Israel said to them, "We're going to need you."

The Israelis have little to worry about. Several senators are insisting that Martin Indyk, a former AIPAC official and U.S. ambassador to Israel, go on record in favor of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem before they will vote to confirm him as assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. Two provisions of the new State Department authorization bill that recognize Jerusalem as Israel's undivided capital are almost certain to pass when they come up for a vote this fall. The measures are equally certain to anger Arabs who regard Jerusalem as their second holiest city and believe it should come under joint sovereignty.

After freezing U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority last August following the two suicide bombings, congressional leaders of both parties wrote to Arafat warning him that "American patience and understanding are at an end." In a letter to Albright before she left for the Middle East, they urged her "to focus on one clear message to the Palestinians: Fight terrorism and violence unceasingly."

They sent no such message to Israel, even though only two weeks earlier the South Lebanon Army that Israel trains, equips, and directs had shelled the city of Sidon, killing 6 civilians and wounding nearly 40 others. In the same week, Israeli warplanes heavily bombed southern Lebanon, wounding several civilians and destroying power lines that served thousands of citizens of Sidon. The upsurge of violence in Lebanon came after Israeli commandos set off bombs north of the Israeli-occupied zone, and Hezbollah retaliated with attacks on Israeli soldiers. At least 15 civilians were killed in late August as a result of what Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri called Israel's "state terrorism."

Not surprisingly, there was no official notice in Washington this fall of the 15th anniversary of one of the most atrocious acts of terrorism in recent memory. On Sept. 16, 1982, Israeli commanders allowed heavily armed right-wing Lebanese militiamen to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. Then, as Israeli soldiers fired illumination flares and turned back families trying to flee through the camp gates, the militiamen slaughtered nearly 900 Palestinian men, women, and children. Although then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and General Rafael Eitan shared blame for the massacre, both men today hold high posts in the Likud government.

In calling on Arafat to crack down on terrorism, Clinton and Secretary Albright claimed it was morally wrong to equate bombs with bulldozers. But an Israeli woman whose daughter was a victim of terrorism pointed out the close connection between the two.

"The government breeds the terrorists," Nurit Peled-Elhanan said after 14-year old Smadar Elhanan was killed in the Sept. 5 bombing on Ben Yehuda Street in West Jerusalem. "We are nurturing the Hamas by what we are doing. When you put people under border closure, when you humiliate, starve and suppress them, when you raze their villages and demolish their houses, when they grow up in garbage and holding pens, that's what happens."

Albright came back from the Middle East saying there was nothing more she could do, that it was up to the two sides to make the "hard decisions." But the decision that most needs to be made, the only one that could restore the peace process, is for the U.S. to withhold all aid to Israel until Netanyahu agrees to comply with the Oslo accords and with international law. Will it happen? Not as long as U.S. peacemaking efforts are based on the carrot and the stick—the carrot for Israel, the stick for the Palestinians.