September 1990, Page 30, 31

Should the U.S. Just Wait for Shamir's Call or Make Israel an Offer It Can't Refuse? -Four Views

Stop Aid to Israel

By George Thompson

Stopping a dialogue with the PLO won't bring peace to the Middle East. But stopping aid to Israel will, and the time to do it has never been more right than now.

Remember Secretary of State James Baker's televised plea to Israel to "call 202-456-1414" when it was ready to talk peace? The White House never got that call, and it never will.

That's because Israel has everything to gain by simply letting the clock tick, while building new settlements as fast as it can.

Israel is using the massive influx of Soviet emigres to hasten its horrific solution to "The Palestinian Problem," and using the U.S.-induced halt in the search for peace to bulldoze more homes while continuing to jail, shoot and kill more Palestinians than ever before.

It is genocide. There is no other word for it. However horrible their history, Israelis learned their lessons well:

Psychologists know that those who abuse were themselves abused, that if conditions are "right," history will repeat itself. That is happening now in Israel.

This writer was hated by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir as "one of those U.S. Foreign Service Arabists." As area specialists, we studied the history, geography and culture of the area and its people-Semites all.

Two decades' service in the region and subsequent retirement put this writer and family in an Israeli harbor where we lived for a year aboard our oceangoing ketch. It was there that we engraved forever in our memories Israel's genocide against the Palestinians-bought and paid for with U.S. tax dollars.

Is it any wonder that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens was reported ready to meet only with Defense Secretary Cheney in Washington, as well as Jewish leaders in New York, during his scheduled three-day visit to the U.S.? Or that he refused to meet with State Department officials?

Baker should have known. Instead of waiting for Israel's call, he should be making a few of his own-to Congress.

Faced with a budget crisis and an S&L scandal that looms larger with each passing day, that misbegotten bunch has never before in history been so besieged by constituents fed up with what's happening in the capitals of state and nation.

Feeling itself threatened more now than ever before, Congress has never been less susceptible to cries of lobbyists clamoring for money-especially for governments like Israel, which tops the list with $3 billion plus of our money year after year after year.

Even the U.S. media is aware of the gathering storm of indignation. Like some of the more courageous members of Congress, the media also is beginning to shake off the ties that bind us to Israel.

Many of the more enlightened are finally beginning to resent the fact that more than $10 million in tax dollars is being given to Israel each and every day-FREE-with no strings.

If that troubles readers as much as it troubles this writer, dial 202-456-1414 or State at 202-647-4000 or, better still, your representatives in Congress.

Your name may not be Shamir, but if enough of you call, somebody in Washington should get the message.

George Thompson, a retired foreign service officer, is a nationally syndicated columnist and television talk show host.

Israel Can Be Made to Listen

By Muhammad Hallaj

Finally, an American administration has an idea of what the Arabs are up against. The frustration with Israel's evasion of peace, expressed on numerous occasions in the past few months by both President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, is just a taste of what Israel has been dishing out to the Arabs for a long time.

U.S. policy, however, is not just a victim of Israeli evasion; it is also one of its causes. The way to persuade both the Israelis and the Palestinians to reach for that phone is to give them incentives to do so. U.S. policy so far has been sending the wrong message to both parties. The message to the Israelis has been that they have ntohing to lose by not responding, and to the Palestinians that they have nothing to gain by responding, to Washington. So why bother reaching out to touch someone who cannot be touched anyway? Why should the Israeli government listen to Washington when it has more support in the U.S. Congress than it has in the Israeli Knesset?

If Washington can make the phones ring in Moscow, it can make them ring in Tel Aviv, in Tunis, in Damascus and anywhere it wants to in the Middle East. The idea that the alternative to making peace between Palestinians and Israelis is for the Bush administration to sit in a corner and sulk is a cop-out, not a policy.

Israel's disdain of U.S. policy is not an obstacle but a result of that policy. As long as Israel believes, and has good reasons to believe, that it is immune to any sort of sanctions-by the U.S. government, which will not impose them, or the international community, which will not be permitted by the U.S. veto to impose them-why should it alter its course?

Washington's repeated threats to pull out of the Middle East peace process are morally wrong because it is U.S. partisanship which makes Israel the unrepentant colonial power and the savage state it has become. They are politically unwise because, with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of their delivery, future Arab-Israeli wars can have more than local implications.

What can the U.S. government do to make Israel listen? Plenty.

1. Washington needs to remember that, as the dominant world power, U.S. obligations to promote peace and its interests in the Middle East have priority over Israel's ambitions and whims.

2. Washington needs to remember that, given Israel's near total dependence on its support, the absurd notion that the U.S. cannot pressure Israel is AIPAC mythology, not a political assessment.

3. Washington should deal with the Palestinians as a party to the conflict and as a necessary partner in peacemaking. Circumventing the PLO may promote Israeli interests, but dealing with it is required by the U.S. interest to promote peace in the Middle East.

4. Washington should make Israel understand that it needs America much more than America needs Israel.

5. Washington should stop dealing with Israel as if it were above the law and apply to it the same yardstick it applies to other states.

Israel believes that America is a giant with the will of the dwarf. Only when it is proven wrong will it listen.

Muhammad Hallaj is director of the Palestine Research and Education Center in Fairfax, VA and editor of its magazine, Palestine Perspectives.

Continue a Proven Policy?

By Sol Schindler

One of the coolest men in Washington, where it is fatal to be anything but cool, lost his cool when testifying before Congress some time back. Why did Secretary of State Baker make that much publicized statement about the Israelis knowing his telephone number?

There are three theories: he was annoyed with the Israelis, who finally formed a government after an unconscionable period of time, but with the wrong party in power; he was annoyed with Yasser Arafat, who refused to condemn one of the most stupid raids the bumbling Abul Abbas had ever engineered, and, being thoroughly fed up with the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, took it out on the nearest and most vulnerable Middle East figure; and both of the above. I believe in all three theories.

The leading figures in the latest Israeli cabinet, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Foreign Minister David Levy, and Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, are known to be rather difficult people to deal with. Any one of them might have said a little too frequently, "I told you so. How can you negotiate with someone who not only tells the world he wants to kill you, but keeps trying to do so?"

On the other side of the ledger, there is a theory that the raid was organized precisely as a challenge to Arafat's leadership: to put him in the position of either condoning the raid, thereby breaking his dialogue with the United States and interrupting the peace process, or condemning the raid and incurring the wrath of a good portion of the PLO membership. If he had been courageous enough to condemn the raid, to say that sending small boatloads of green youths to machine-gun sunbathers was no way to achieve either peace or a Palestinian state, that the act was so stupid that it could have been nothing but an attempt to interrupt the peace process, and therefore was a direct challenge to his leadership, he would have moved that process along immeasurably and shot down the arguments of the most intransigent Israelis. Instead, he mumbled.

At one time a large number of Israelis felt that Israel could get along with the Arabs, that peace and a civil co-existence could be achieved. Because of the events of the past two years, those Israelis are fewer in number. At one time there were also a significant number of Palestinians who felt that co-existence with Israel was possible. That number has also dropped dramatically. And although the intifada has declined in intensity, passions still simmer. Amazingly, the status quo continues with no sign of change.

Is the situation then hopeless? Should we simply say a pox on both houses and bow out, as Secretary Baker must be tempted to do? I would hope not. There is still a vital role for American diplomacy, regardless of the lackluster leadership on both sides. Peace and co-existence are not only possible, they are essential. Both sides realize this subconsciously, and we should persevere in saying so. We have been successful in the past in moving both arabs and Israelis from positions once thought as having been fixed in stone. We should not let statements made in pique deter us from continuing a policy that has been proven sound.

Sol Schindler is a retired foreign service officer who writes on international affairs.

Put Strings on U.S. Aid to Israel

By Allan C. Brownfield

The U.S. should move swiftly and firmly in promoting a peace plan for the Middle East which would, in the long run, serve the best interests of all the peoples of that region and our own interests as well.

U.S.-Israel relations are now approaching their lowest point since Menachem Begin's premiership in the early 1980s, with sharp divisions on such issues as Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the status of Jerusalem and the PLO's role in the peace process.

Bush administration officials believe Yitzhak Shamir has misled them by putting forth a peace proposal he never intended to implement. At the same time, there appears to be little justification for continuing the massive U.S. aid received by Israel.

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign assistance, receiving $1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military aid each year.

This massive aid was once justified as a means of ensuring Israel as a Western bastion in the face of the Soviet Union's efforts to expand its influence in the Middle East. Such an argument was always a weak one, since it was Arab opposition to massive U.S. support for Israel which permitted Soviet entry into the region in the first place. Now, however, if the Cold War is indeed over, even this weak rationale has been eliminated.

Such aid is harmful to Israel and to the peace process. Israeli journalist Leon Hadar, now a professor of political science at American University, argues that less dependence upon the U.S. would be a good thing for Israel:

"Jerusalem's realization that the U.S. is planning to lessen its involvement. . . may encourage that country to make the difficult decisions necessary for its continued survival-withdrawing from the occupied territories and reforming its economy along free-market lines."

Secretary of State Baker should now make it clear that the U.S. will now make it clear that the U.S. will no longer finance an Israeli regime which refuses to take positive steps toward peace. There is widespread support for a strong U.S. policy of opposition to any increase in West Bank settlements. This support can be found within the American Jewish community as well as in other sectors of American society. John Ruskay, vice chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, states: "There is a growing sadness toward Israel shared by growing numbers of American Jews. The sadness is that after 40 years and a Holocaust we end up occupying thousands of Palestinians against their will."

The U.S. should actively promote a plan which seeks peace with the Palestinians on the basis of accomodating their national rights with those of Israel. No peace is possible unless the Israeli occupation of the West Bank comes to an end. Negotiations between the parties are essential to work out the details. Compromise will be necessary on all sides.

U.S. aid to Israel should be tied to a resolution of the problems before us. If we continue to provide aid without strings while waiting for Mr. Shamir to come forward with a peace plan, the U.S. will become part of the problem, not the solution. Any U.S. aid to the region should promote compromise and not encourage intransigence.

Allan C. Brownfield is a nationally syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review and America's Future.