Denial Is No Basis For Securing A Durable Mideast Peace

(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton
Administration’s manic reaction to the
latest international crisis is,
unfortunately, all too typical. Its
effort to demonstrate U.S. engagement and
leadership in resuscitating the so-called
Middle East “peace process” is
predicated on active denial of certain
realities. This cognitive dissonance
assures the futility of cosmetic
“solutions” that it seeks to
negotiate.

In the wake of the synchronized double
suicide bombing last month in Jerusalem’s
crowded Mahane Yehuda market, the Clinton
team has indulged in what former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas
Feith — one of the most brilliant
analysts of Mideast affairs of our time
— has likened to the “battered wife
syndrome”:

“[Many] supporters [of the
Oslo peace process] — like so
many distraught battered wives —
simply cannot be persuaded that
there is no romance, there is no
peace process. And despite
Arafat’s cynicism, contempt and
hostility they cannot be
persuaded that their man Arafat
— their ‘peace partner’ — is a
gangster and a liar who is just
no darn good. The whole
situation is both sad and
dangerous. This kind of
irrationality is bad enough in a
relationship between two private
people. It can be
disastrous if it dominates the
national security policy-making
of a state.”

Consider the following recent
manifestations of this syndrome:

Item:
Denying that Arafat Is Part of the
Problem

In his first appearance last week as
State Department Press Spokesman, James
Rubin haughtily disputed Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entirely
accurate depiction of the Palestinian
Authority as “a regime facilitating
terror, like Iran or Iraq or Libya.”
Reflecting the Clinton see-no-evil line
on Arafat’s ongoing cooperation with,
support for and protection of Hamas and
other terrorist operatives, Rubin
declared: “It is hard to fathom how
one could compare Chairman Arafat to
Colonel [Muammar] Gaddafi. Chairman
Arafat was on the White House lawn with
the President. He signed a peace
agreement with the Israelis. We regard
him as a partner in our effort to
find peace in the Middle East.
Colonel Gaddafi is an international
outlaw.”

Rubin’s predecessor, Nicholas Burns,
went even further a few months ago,
averring: “We have not seen
any evidence that Chairman Arafat has
given the green light to anyone to incite
violence in Jerusalem or the West Bank or
the Gaza Strip.” At the
time, there was abundant evidence that
Arafat was doing just that — including
electronic intercepts provided by Israel
to the U.S. government, as well as
numerous public speeches extolling
suicide bombers as “martyrs”
and calling for jihad against
Israel. Today, in the wake of
Arafat’s menacing and repeated call for
his people to “confront Israel, in
every sense of the word,” such a
position is completely untenable.

Item: Denying
that the ‘Peace Process’ is Exacerbating
Israeli Insecurity

Although the Clinton Administration
has decided at least to pay lip service
to Israeli “security” concerns
in the current round of diplomatic
activity, it cannot bring itself to go
beyond saying Arafat appears to be making
less than “a 100 percent
effort” in combating terrorism.
While a genuine U.S. appreciation that
the peace process is exposing Israel to
serious risks would be welcome, to do so
it must acknowledge, and come to grips
with, reality.

For starters, as internationally
renowned terrorist expert Steven
Emerson wrote in the Wall
Street Journal on 4 August 1997,
more Israelis have been killed by
terrorism since the Oslo accords were
signed in 1993 “than in any
comparable period since the state was
created 50 years ago.” He notes that
one of the reasons this is so is that “Israel’s
once-vaunted intelligence network, which
had prevented suicide bombings prior to
the Oslo accords, has been systematically
destroyed by Mr. Arafat’s forces”
who have “killed, tortured, kidnaped
or threatened hundreds of Palestinians
who once formed the core of Israel’s
early warning system in the Palestinian
territories.” This ominous
by-product of the “peace
process” is arguably far more
menacing to Israel than anything done to
date by an “international
outlaw” like Gaddafi.

The peace process has also taken its
toll on Israel’s security in other ways.
On 6 August, Israeli television reported
on a briefing given to the government’s
Inner Cabinet that day concerning the
deteriorating condition of Israel’s
defense forces (IDF). The gloomy
assessment detailed shortfalls in
readiness accounts and emergency
stockpiles that will translate into an
inability to mount sustained combat
operations in a future conflict. The
broadcast quoted unnamed IDF sources as
saying, “We have already
crossed the red line. We have not just
reached it, but it is already behind us.
Given the budget currently at its
disposal, the defense establishment is in
a serious crisis.”

These deficiencies will only be
compounded if the Palestinian Legislative
Council succeeds in implementing a motion
it adopted on 9 August calling for universal
conscription. Such a step would
greatly increase the 45,000-plus armed
forces available to Arafat today
(according to Emerson, “some 27,000
more than allowed under the Oslo
accords). Such forces could presumably be
armed by the vast quantities of arms
being acquired by Arafat, again in
violation of his international
commitments. Emerson reports that
semi-automatic weapons, anti-tank and
anti-aircraft weapons are being
systematically smuggled into
Palestinian-controlled territory from
Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon — including
via Arafat’s diplomatically protected
personal limousines and helicopters.
Much-publicized PLO seizures of an
occasional arms cache are as convincing
— and effective — as wink-and-nod
round-ups of the “usual
suspects” in Casablanca.

Item: Denying that
Arafat’s Vision of the ‘Final Status’ is
a Palestine Without Israel

In her much ballyhooed address to the
National Press Club last week, Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright announced
that, in principle, she was prepared to
travel to the Middle East at the end of
the month to “restore momentum”
to the “peace process.” To do
this, she declared:

“We have to increase
confidence on both sides about
where the negotiating process is
leading and what the outcome of
permanent status talks might be.
If the parties have a clear,
mutual and favorable sense of the
ultimate direction of
negotiation, it will be easier
for them to overcome setbacks and
avoid distractions along the way.
This will require accelerating
permanent status
negotiations.”

While this initiative — like the
Administration’s new mantra about
“security” — are portrayed as
movement by the Clinton team toward Mr.
Netanyahu’s position, the fact is that this
maneuver will likely become simply a new
vehicle for pressing Israel to make new
and ever more dangerous concessions as
long as it is predicated on
misconceptions that Yasser Arafat is a
“partner for peace”
who shares, in Mrs. Albright’s words, an
“understanding of peace as not one
option among many, but as the only option
that will provide for the security and
well-being of [the Israeli and
Palestinian] people.”

Only by ignoring the true character of
Arafat’s agenda can one believe that the
parties can obtain a “clear,
favorable and mutual sense of the
ultimate direction of the
negotiations.” After all, Arafat
persists in signaling to his people
outcomes that are utterly unacceptable to
Israel. For example, in an interview in
the Israeli daily newspaper Yedi’ot
Aharonot, the PLO chairman
pronounced: “Netanyahu should know
that there is no power on earth that can
prevent us from setting up our
independent state in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its
capital. No matter how long it takes, we
will achieve our goal.”

Even more telling is the message
conveyed by the maps of
“Palestine” now prominently
featured on the uniforms of Arafat’s
police forces, offices, television
programs, cultural events, memorials,
etc. They show a state that incorporates
not only the West Bank, Gaza and East
Jerusalem but all of pre-1967 Israel as
well. Such a “final status” is
entirely consistent with the “Plan
of Phases of 1974″ to which Arafat
and the PLO remain formally committed,
but obviously are not compatible with the
sort of peaceful co-existence on which
the whole “peace process” is
supposedly predicated.

The Bottom Line

In a startling front-page article
yesterday, the Washington Post
reported that President Clinton has begun
to engage in routine, Hamletesque public
ruminations about Bosnia. According to
the Post:

“‘[Mr. Clinton] has been
seized with Bosnia since early in
the year,’ said a senior
administration official who asked
not to be named. The speech
references, he said, are ‘a
reflection of what’s preoccupying
him right now. With the Middle
East going down the tubes, Bosnia
is really his creation, a U.S.
creation, and still has a chance.
But something is needed to get it
out of the stall it’s in, and
that’s what he’s thinking
about.'”

The truth is that the Clinton
Administration’s artificial constructs in
both the Middle East and Bosnia are
“going down the tubes” — and
largely for the same reason: They are
triumphs of hope over experience in which
the real, odious character of individuals
like Arafat and Slobodan Milosevic are
“made over” in the interest of
getting signing ceremonies and
agreements, regardless of their ephemeral
or unjust (and therefore unsustainable)
character.

It is far
from clear that peace can be obtained
with such people under any
circumstances. Clearly, it
cannot be when the basis for negotiation
is cognitive dissonance and public
dissembling about their true character,
modus operandi and ultimate objectives.
Useful advice on how the Clinton
Administration should recalibrate its
views of Yasser Arafat & Co. and its
policies towards the “peace
process” is provided in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_110at”>attached editorial
from Friday’s Jerusalem Post.