Give peace a chance: No more blank checks for Arafat

The House of Representatives is expected today to consider a singularly important amendment to the Fiscal Year 1998 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill: An amendment offered by Representatives Jim Saxton (R-NJ) and Michael Forbes (R-NY) designed to tie the PLO’s access to U.S. aid to its compliance with the letter of the Oslo Accords and the shared commitment to peaceful co-existence upon which those accords are supposed to be predicated.

Litmus Tests

The Saxton-Forbes amendment requires the President to report to Congress concerning the status of Palestinian conduct in several areas deemed indicative of the PLO’s true intentions. These include the following:

• Actions taken to "eradicate and prevent" the use of maps of "Palestine" that include the entire territory of pre-1967 Israel. Such maps symbolize and serve further to incite Palestinian Arab ambitions for the complete destruction of the Jewish State. This crude but unmistakable expression of an abiding commitment to the PLO’s 1974 Plan of Phases must not be condoned by the United States, to say nothing of effectively rewarded by its foreign assistance.(1)
• Measures by the PLO to "apprehend, prosecute and extradite to the United States" certain Palestinian Arabs wanted in connection with the murder of American citizens. It seems self-evident that the U.S. taxpayers should not be underwriting the operations of an entity that harbors — or otherwise sponsors — individuals believed to have engaged in murderous acts of terror against their countrymen.
• Revisions to the Palestinian National Charter (also known as the PLO Covenant) reflecting rescission of specific articles as promised in the highly publicized decision by the PLO Executive Committee of 24 April 1996. Changes to a text replete with references to the destruction of Israel and violence against its population are not only required under the Oslo Accord. They are also needed to fulfill the confident assurances of those like President Clinton, Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, the Israeli government of Shimon Peres and many in the media who declared at the time that the Executive Committee had, in fact, changed the Covenant.(2)

In addition, the Saxton-Forbes legislation requires a presidential certification with respect to certain actions, including an affirmation that "the Palestinian Authority has taken all measures to rescind the death penalty for the sale of land [by Palestinians] to Jews." Such a practice is clearly calculated to enforce a regime of relentless hostility to Israel that is totally incompatible with coexistence and a durable peace in the region. It is abhorrent to think of American tax dollars being used to prop up a PLO leadership that embraces the use of violence against its own citizens for engaging in free enterprise with their partners in the peace process.

The Bottom Line

Reps. Saxton and Forbes are to be commended for their leadership in holding the Palestinian Arabs accountable for behavior that is contrary to solemn international commitments and to the interests of the United States. In the past, such initiatives have met with unjustified, but nonetheless adamant, opposition from the Clinton Administration and some in the American Jewish community.

The Center for Security Policy is encouraged by the recent statement by Melvyn Dow, president of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In remarks to his organization’s annual policy conference last April, Mr. Dow declared:

"It is the responsibility of [the Palestinian Authority’s] leaders to encourage and nurture a desire among their people for peaceful co-existence. This means there should be no incitement to violence by speeches given in Arabic. It means that terrorist murderers like Yahya Ayyash — the late Hamas operative who designed and built terrorist bombs, must not be honored as ‘martyrs.’ Fulfillment of these obligations means that maps on PLO stationery and police uniforms must not show a proposed ‘Palestine’ absorbing and eliminating Israel."

The Center urges all Americans — and most especially their representatives in Congress — who want the Middle East peace process to produce a genuine and lasting peace between Israel and the Arabs to support initiatives like that offered by Congressmen Jim Saxton and Michael Forbes. Only by so doing can the United States demonstrate that its support extends exclusively to those committed to and steadily pursuing peaceful co-existence in the region. There must be no further blank checks for those who are not.

1. For more on the nature and significance of these maps, see the Center’s Decision BriefThe Map is on the Wall: Arafat Wants No Part of ‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ with Israel, Must Get No More U.S. Aid Until He Does, (No. 97-D 93, 8 July 1997). entitled

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Besmirching the Oval Office: Clinton-Arafat Meeting Propounds the ‘Big Lie’, (No. 96-D 43, 3 May 1996).