BESMIRCHING THE OVAL OFFICE: CLINTON-ARAFAT MEETING PROPOUNDS THE ‘BIG LIE’

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton this week bestowed upon
PLO leader Yasser Arafat the United States’ ultimate sign of
respect and acceptance — the opportunity for Arafat to meet with
the President of the United States in the Oval Office. Such a
gesture is usually reserved for visiting heads of state or other
individuals who have earned such an honor. Yasser Arafat by no
means deserves such treatment.

The ‘Big Lie’

The ostensible reason for according Arafat important trappings
of a state visit was to lend the full weight of the office of the
American presidency to the contention that Arafat’s Palestinian
National Council (PNC) actually agreed to “revoke”
articles in the Palestinian Covenant calling for the destruction
of the State of Israel. Mr. Clinton actually said: “When we
met at Sharm el-Sheikh, [Arafat] said that there would be a
revision in the Palestinian Covenant by the first of May. Under
difficult circumstances, he kept that commitment.”

As the attached column by the Center
for Security Policy’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., makes
clear, such a statement amounts to a “Big Lie.” After
all:

“On April 27th, Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi, a prominent
member of the Council who formerly headed the PLO delegation
at the Madrid talks, confirmed that the PNC ‘did not formally
change the Covenant.’ Instead, it merely authorized a legal
committee to consider unspecified changes which will, in
turn, have to secure the approval of yet another group at
some still-to-be-determined time. Even at that, according to
Shafi, the PNC ‘had just two of the [Covenant’s] articles in
mind’ — two out of thirty articles in the document that call
for Israel’s destruction or urge violent action against
Israel and its people.”⁽¹⁾

In fact, the PNC merely approved a statement that assigns to
another group responsibility for changing the Covenant in
unspecified ways without any clear schedule. At some undetermined
point, these recommendations will go to yet another group which
will, in turn, act upon it — again without any defined schedule.
As of Wednesday’s Clinton-Arafat meeting in the Oval
Office, the PLO has not even identified the specific articles
of the Covenant to be changed; it certainly had not changed them.

‘What, Me Worry?‘

Unfortunately, these facts have not had a sobering effect on
the Israeli government of Shimon Peres. To the contrary, within
hours, Prime Minister Peres lent further credibility to the
proposition that the PLO had fulfilled a key condition of the
Oslo accords: He induced his Labor Party to drop the traditional
plank opposing a Palestinian state from its platform for next
month’s elections.

This orchestrated action is particularly worrisome because the
state the PLO has in mind will be comprised of all the
territory now “occupied” by the Israelis, including
Israel proper. Indeed, according to the Associated Press,
when Arafat was asked on Wednesday whether the PLO had
given up its dream of reclaiming all of Palestine — a
dream reflected not only in its as-yet-unchanged charter but also
its letterhead, which shows a Palestine comprised of not only the
West Bank and Gaza but also the entirety of Israel, “[he]
suddenly angry, retorted: ‘This is an unfair question.’
He refused to reply.” The ominous insight provided
by this exchange was, of course, completely overshadowed by
President Clinton’s fawning and undeserved praise for Arafat.

The effect, in short, of the Big Lie about the PNC’s decision
will probably be to encourage the Jewish State to make further
territorial concessions — perhaps even to the point of risking
national suicide — by proceeding as though Yasser Arafat were
genuinely committed to peace and worthy of Israel’s trust. It is
sad that the office of the President of the United States would
become a vehicle for such odious purposes.

Politics, As Usual

If a presidential meeting in the White House for Arafat were
not bad enough, the apparent impetus for this event makes matters
even worse. National Public Radio repeated Israeli press accounts
to the effect that Arafat was given the red-carpet Oval Office
treatment at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres. The reason? Peres is trying to protect his
re-election campaign against charges that Arafat remains
committed to jihad aimed at destroying Israel in
furtherance of the so-called PLO “Phased Plan of 1974.”
These charges have particular salience since videotapes of Arafat
making such statements to his people in Arabic are in widespread
circulation. Getting President Clinton personally to embrace
Arafat and affirm his peaceable intentions helps shore up Peres’
mythology about the PLO leader’s conversion from terrorist to
statesman.

The use of the White House for this purpose has two portentous
implications beyond intensifying the danger to Israel:

• In granting Mr. Peres’ request, President Clinton is subordinating
  U.S. foreign policy to the domestic political interests
  of a foreign politician. The United States must,
  of necessity, define for itself its relations with
  individuals and organizations that have murdered American
  citizens, aided and abetted U.S. enemies like Saddam
  Hussein and abused U.S. financial resources.
• President Clinton is plunging recklessly into the
  internal political affairs of a friendly and democratic
  nation. Unfortunately, this is not the only
  instance in which Mr. Clinton has disregarded one of the
  most basic principles of a responsible U.S. diplomacy.
  Joint Clinton-Peres photo opportunities — which are,
  whether conducted abroad or at home, arranged so as to
  appear prominently on Israeli television; sudden,
  multi-million dollar infusions of cash from the U.S.
  Treasury; and high-profile initiatives on security
  against terrorism, intelligence-sharing and cooperation
  on missile defense; all have been cynically manipulated
  for maximum political benefit to both men. Unfortunately,
  an all too similar syndrome has been at work with respect
  to Boris Yeltsin’s re-election bid.

The Bottom Line

Neither the long-term security of Israel nor the robustness of
the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship will be advanced by this
sort of behavior. It is incumbent upon the Loyal Opposition in
the United States to follow the lead of its Israeli counterpart
in challenging the assertions that Arafat has satisfactorily
demonstrated the necessary commitment to genuine and lasting
peace with Israel.

It should go without saying that the Republican Congress
should also oppose the granting of millions of additional dollars
now being provided to the PLO from the American taxpayer via
international financial institutions (most recently, the World
Bank) that are increasingly being treated by the Clinton
Administration as foreign policy slush-funds. Finally, Congress
must call an immediate halt to the President’s practice of
subordinating fundamental and long-lasting interests — notably,
the United States’ stake in the integrity and health of Israeli
democracy — to what are, at best, superficial and short-term
interests.

1. Shafi’s statement served to confirm an
initial assessment of the true nature of the
“revocation” decision issued on 24 April 1996 by the
Center for Security Policy in a Decision Brief
entitled, The Dumbing-Down of U.S. Foreign Policy:
What Will Be Left in the Wake of the Clinton-Christopher
Debacles? (No. 96-D 39)