JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Pages 18, 45

Affairs of State

Helms Backs Off From Cutting Israel Aid

By Eugene Bird

The GOP earthquake in Washington has left all three sides in the Middle East peace process (Israel, the Arabs and the administration of Bill Clinton) puzzled. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), the likely chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, initially called for a review of all aid, including that given Israel. His staff even published a document called by State Department officers "Senator Jesse Helms' Ten Commandments," in which point nine stated that the "Camp David Agreement has cost from $80 billion to $100 billion dollars." But then it went on to attack Syria and never mentioned that most of that aid had gone to Israel.

In the end, Helms backed away entirely from mentioning Israel and the aid-word in the same document, setting up only two criteria for aid to be given to any country: Whether or not they voted with the U.S. at the United Nations and whether or not they had free market economies and could use aid in the private sector.

Then Helms proclaimed that Israel meets both criteria, in his opinion. Aid would flow at the $3 billion level promised in Camp David and no questions would be asked on what is being done with it in the settlements and what impact these disbursements will have on the final status of the territories.

Indyk Ambassadorial Appointment To Israel Out?

From a source close to the senator, there does seem to be one other Middle East agenda item on his calendar: Helms will adamantly refuse to approve the appointment of Dr. Martin Indyk as ambassador to Israel if the Clinton White House should finally surface this long-rumored nomination. Israeli sources have said that this would not be a cause for any problem with Tel Aviv, and the mercurial senator could change his mind, but the source did not think so.

On the issue of cutting U.S. aid, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Israeli press had a field day after the U.S. elections with reports of how worried they were about maintaining the American commitment for aid to Israel with the new GOP agenda on cutting all aid. Senator Helms was conveniently unavailable to meet with Prime Minister Rabin, but Senators Bob Dole (R-KS), Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), and Bob Packwood (R-OR) all reassured the prime minister: Not to worry, Israeli aid would be provided by the new team in charge of Congress.

Fight Pending Over U.S. Troops for Golan

The president also gave reassurances, along with a peculiar message about how maybe, perhaps, but most likely, he would ask Congress for U.S. troops to patrol the Golan Heights as part of any Israeli disengagement agreement with Syria. Clinton said it was premature to do so, however, until there was an agreement. This issue will almost certainly surface as the number one crusade to stop any commitment of U.S. troops by Likud-oriented hard-liners in the American Jewish community who continue to dominate the Israel lobby. The cause of Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu is their cause.

And New York Times columnist William Safire gave a remarkable insight into right-wing Jewish-American thinking about both aid and troops on the Golan in describing a dinner he attended during the Israeli prime minister's post-election visit to the United States. At the dinner, in the presence of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Rabin argued that he both needed and wanted U.S. troops on the Golan. Safire wrote in his Nov. 24 column, "Some reasons [we should not send troops] are: (1) The U.S. would then become 'neutral' in the struggles between Israel and Syria, in lieu of continuing as Israel's ally—a State Department Arabist's evenhanded dream; (2) the U.S. troops would become targets of terrorist attempts to upset the peace process; (3) Israel's freedom of action would be compromised without pre-emptive action possible without U.S. permission; (4) America's admiration for Israelis as militarily self-reliant would be replaced by resentment about risking U.S. lives patrolling their borders."

Safire ended his column with the statement that "We are not against risks for peace; we're against imperiling the alliance between Israel and the U.S." It was a clear statement from a leading Jewish-American commentator of what at least the right wing in Israel wants: freedom for Israel to attack Syria without the inconvenience of dealing with the presence of international forces—with a component of 1,000 U.S. troops among them.

Making sure that the U.S. is not in a position to restrain Israel is a formula for disaster, according to Israel Shahak. The grand old man of the Israeli peace movement, who is also a survivor of the Holocaust, just visited the United States to promote his shocking new book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. In a private conversation Shahak said, "Israel is not a Jewish state and can never be one, but American Jews think it is and define themselves by identifying with something that does not exist." He went on, "Read the Hebrew press if you want to know the truth about Israel." On that basis, I have arranged for William Safire to be given a subscription to Shahak's Translations from the Hebrew Press, a monthly publication that reveals not what Israelis are writing for foreign consumption, but what they are discussing at home.

"We have support in Congress and in the White House. The problem is the American people."

Some 140 million Americans, according to a September poll done by the Wirthlin Group for the Council for the National Interest, want to phase out aid to Israel now (see page 19 of the Nov.-Dec. 1994 issue of the Washington Report). However, the Israeli aid dance by politicians of both parties continues and, during his mid-November visit to Washington, Rabin was assured by both Clinton and congressional leaders that cutting aid to Israel as a first step in normalizing relations and stopping the settlement building will not even be discussed as a means of cutting the budget.

But the third leg of the triangle of decision makers, along with the president and Congress, is the people themselves. Will they mobilize around this issue or is the Israeli lobby too overwhelming in its ability to punish those who dare to suggest that assistance to Israel that shortly will total $100 billion should be terminated?

In the Nov. 23 Christian Science Monitor, correspondent John Battersby reported that Uri Dromi, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, said, "I think we're pretty safe. We have support in Congress and in the White House. The problem is the American people who are definitely against foreign aid for economic reasons. But with two out of three major decision making components, I think we're safe."

Nevertheless, as Battersby points out, there is a growing gulf between Israel's claimed 4.5 million Jews and the self-selected spokesmen for some 5.5 million Jewish Americans. Some thoughtful Israelis think it's time to normalize relations with the U.S., perhaps in the context of asking the U.S. to forgive outstanding Israeli debts in return for normal investment and long-term loans. An anonymous senior Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post that "There are immense political advantages in voluntarily saying to the U.S., 'Thanks for years of assistance, but we are now financially stable and wealthy enough to get along without it.'"

Senator Helms who once topped the "hate list" of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, only became Israel's staunch defender after AIPAC-directed political action committees spent an enormous amount of money in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat him in the 1984 election. Helms and other congressional leaders follow the polls, and remarks like those of Uri Dromi, closely. If the U.S. legislators become convinced that the American people are waking up to the vast sums of U.S. taxpayer money misspent in the Middle East to fuel continued occupation of Arab lands by Israel, Israel's lien on the U.S. treasury could disappear just as suddenly as did Democratic control of Congress.

State Department Picks Building Site in Jerusalem

Almost as confusing as Jesse Helms' pronouncements on foreign aid are U.S. government policies on its diplomatic establishments in Israel. The State Department, like foreign ministries of all other major countries in the world, has declined to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem until after the final status of Jerusalem has been determined in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

When the State Department asked for authority in 1986 to construct a new building to replace its present rundown and extremely unsafe embassy in Tel Aviv, Congress refused the request under pressure from the Israel lobby. Two years later a compromise was worked out: The Department could build "faceless" new diplomatic facilities on sites in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem simultaneously, providing it did not designate which site would be an embassy and which a consulate until after their completion.

Then a 1989 agreement between the U.S. and Israel called for simultaneously locating sites for the two new facilities. However, a new 99-year lease now has been signed on a site in Jerusalem, while no real progress has been reported on finding a site in Tel Aviv.

The Jerusalem land under lease from the Israelis was the site during the Mandatory period of the British Army's Allenby Barracks in Talpiot in West Jerusalem. The land was owned by the Islamic Waqf (Charitable Trust), and is now registered primarily to the Palestinian Arab Nashashibi family. The Department of State does not have any doubts about the new lease, but others do, and there may be a legal case against using this land without compensating the Arab owners.

Israeli newspapers immediately claimed that the U.S. intended to complete the new embassy by about 1998. The department denied this and said that there was no immediate plan to build on the site and that negotiations on a new site for a "Diplomatic Facility" in Tel Aviv would continue. Washington Report attempts to find out the status of those negotiations ran into a dead end.

There may be a legal case against using this land.

The new agreement to seek zoning approval from the city of Jerusalem for the Allenby site while continuing to negotiate a site in Tel Aviv appears to get around without really violating the agreement for simultaneous selection and construction. This is viewed by observers as the start of efforts to get funds from a GOP Congress for starting actual construction in Jerusalem of a new diplomatic building, waiting until the end to designate it as an embassy. While the Department may have no intention to carry out such a program, Congress does. The new GOP Congress is expected to move on this in 1995. It usually takes from three to five years to build an embassy.

Eugene Bird, a retired foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest in Washington, DC and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.