Clinton, Stay Home! President’s Ill-Advised Trip to Mideast Will Contribute to Conflict — Not a Durable Peace

In Commentary Magazine, Center’s Feith Says Policy is Leading to
War

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of President Clinton’s departure this weekend on a visit to
Palestinian-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and to Israel, the arguments
against his going have become compelling. Even though the trip was formally called for in the
Wye River agreement — in the interest of shaming the Palestinian National Council into doing
what it has refused to do to date⁽¹⁾ (i.e., formally, legally and
with specificity removing from the
1964 Palestinian Charter the thirty out of thirty-three provisions that call for the destruction of
Israel, violence against Jews, etc.) — it is a strategic, as well as a tactical mistake.
Like the
agreement that spawned it, this trip will exacerbate, not attenuate, the factors that are
leading, as Douglas J. Feith puts it in the January 1999 edition of Commentary
Magazine,
to “further misery for the Palestinians and, for Israel, war.”

Why The President Should Stay Home

There are at least four compelling reasons why Mr. Clinton should decline to go to the Middle
East this weekend:

Mr. Clinton’s Personal Safety Cannot Be Assured

The Washington Times reported yesterday that an official of Hamas, Ismail
Abu Shanab,
declared that “President Clinton will be safe in Gaza, just as [the reporter is] safe because you are
our guest.” He went on to say, however, that “I cannot assure the safety of the CIA people who
come here to implement Wye. They are not welcome here….The CIA is the ugly face of U.S.
intelligence in the world.”

The truth is that one man’s guest is another man’s unwelcome visitor. There are few
places in
the world less safe than the Gaza Strip for any American — whether the
President or an
intelligence officer who has deplorably been put by the Clinton Administration in the position of
performing diplomatic missions.⁽²⁾ Even if Arafat’s police
state apparatus is operating at its
highest state of repression; even if the notoriously anti-American Hamas organization chooses to
take a pass on its most inviting target of all time; there are lots of other terrorist organizations
(sponsored by states like Iran, Iraq,⁽³⁾ Libya, and Syria) and
individuals who may seize upon the
opportunity to assassinate the American president.⁽⁴⁾

Running such a risk is especially unjustifiable in light of the fact that no good can come of the
mission, for the reasons cited below and in the attached excerpts
of Mr. Feith’s article in the
forthcoming issue of Commentary.

Bearing Witness to a PLO Fraud Will Help to Legitimate It

The idea born at Wye Plantation of having the President be present when the Palestinian
Charter was formally revoked was ostensibly intended to maximize U.S. leverage on the PLO
actually to fulfill its commitment to take such a step, one that had been part of the original Oslo
accords. This sort of close supervision was made necessary by Yasser Arafat’s 1996 gambit —
shamefully abetted by both the Israeli government of Shimon Peres and the Clinton
Administration⁽⁵⁾ — whereby he claimed to have revoked the
offending sections of the Charter
without identifying which had been changed or offering new language in their place.

Unfortunately, it seems very unlikely to work that way. Yesterday, the PLO Central Council
voted to reaffirm a letter Arafat sent to President Clinton in January, which in turn, “reaffirmed”
the earlier Palestinian National Council action. As the Washington Post reports
today, the Central
Council’s action is seen as “fulfilling a commitment Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
made to the
United States and Israel.” (Emphasis added.)

It actually does no such thing, of course. By the Charter’s own terms (i.e., its Article 33),
unless
and until two-thirds of the Palestine National Council formally votes to amend or revoke the
Charter, it must be considered unchanged. And for that action to have any meaning, there must
be: a recorded vote of members of the PNC (the Monday meeting in Gaza will have any number
of non-members present and Arafat has balked at having a roll call vote), specificity about what
has been altered and clarity about what new text is adopted in its stead. At the moment, it seems
unlikely that these measures will be taken.

The presence of President Clinton at the event, however, increases the chances that he will
once
again play the role of validator of a lie.⁽⁶⁾ Indeed, as Mr.
Feith’s article makes clear, the entire
Wye agreement was designed, under the President’s personal supervision, so as to
“protect…the
Oslo process from present and future disputes over compliance. In practice, this meant not
curing existing violations or preventing future ones but suppressing and precluding
complaints about them.”

The Dangerous Rift With Israel Will Be Exacerbated

Douglas Feith — one of our era’s most brilliant experts on the Middle East, who
formerly
served as a specialist on the region for the Reagan National Security Council and as a Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense — notes the lengths to which the Clinton Administration went in
the course of the Wye negotiations to align the U.S. government with the Palestinian position and
to threaten Israel if it did not make concessions to the PA. This fits a pattern of behavior that
threatens serious, if not irreparable, harm between the United States and the Jewish State. href=”#N_7_”>⁽⁷⁾ As
Mr. Feith observes, the Wye agreement threatens to institutionalize arrangements that will only
compound this danger:

“The new U.S. role — neutral monitor of an agreement between Israel and the PA — is
at odds with the existing relationship between the two democracies. American statutes
commonly designate Israel a ‘major non-NATO ally.’ It is an ally’s function to side
with its fellow ally against those who would attack and destroy it. The United States
can be neutral between Israel and the PA only if it assumes that the PA does not
intend to destroy the Jewish state.⁽⁸⁾ But such an
assumption would, in and of itself,
disqualify the United States as a neutral party.”

The fear is that Israel’s Arab neighbors — who may, heretofore, have concluded that the
“war option” against the Jewish State had been effectively foreclosed, thanks to Israeli military
might and the unwavering support of the United States — could perceive the sorts of bilateral rifts
being opened by the Clinton Administration as an opportunity for renewed aggression.
It would
be ironic, but hardly impossible, if the President reputed to be “the best friend Israel ever
had in the White House” were, in his heavy-handed pursuit of a flawed peace process, to
engender conditions that precipitate a new and devastating conflict in the Middle East.

Further Encouraging a Palestinian State

The prospect of a renewed conflict is made all the more likely insofar as the unavoidable
result of a visit by President Clinton — and by First Lady Hillary Clinton, who has publicly
endorsed the concept of a Palestinian state — will be further to intensify Palestinians’ expectations
and international perceptions that such a state is now an all-but-accomplished fact. As the Center
for Security Policy noted on 30 November 1998:

“…Such a state will inevitably give rise to a safe-haven for terrorism
(or worse). It
will be run by a government — whether under Arafat or Hamas — that makes no secret
of its intention to liberate what the Arabs consider to be the rest of ‘Palestine’
(namely, pre-1967 Israel). And this Palestinian state’s internationally recognized
borders will greatly increase the costs associated with any prophylactic Israeli action
against it.

“Add to the mix potentially millions of ‘refugees’ induced to exercise
their ‘right
of return’ to a land many have never known and the prospect of hugely intensified
competition for limited water resources (some 30% of Israel’s drinking water
comes from aquifers in the West Bank’s highlands), and the prospects for peace
diminish further.

“What is more, the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan — whose future is
already
clouded by the ruling monarch’s struggle with cancer — will be destabilized, if
not imperilled, by the aspirations of its majority Palestinian population to be
annexed to their own state.”

The Bottom Line

There is, fortunately, growing alarm on Capitol Hill about the Clinton Administration’s Middle
East policy and its likely repercussions. For example, Senator Jim Inhofe
(R-OK), a ranking
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and valued member of the Center’s Board of
Advisors, yesterday called on President Clinton not to go to the Middle East this weekend.
Legislators like Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) are correctly expressing
concerns about the
President’s policy of pledging billions in U.S. tax-dollars as a lubricant for a “peace process” that
is clearly ever-less-likely to produce a durable peace. And there are a growing number of
Representatives and Senators joining Rep. Salmon on his letter to President Clinton about the
extradition of Palestinian terrorists currently being protected by Yasser Arafat.

In short, even if the President were not facing the threat of impeachment by the House of
Representatives, there are good and compelling reasons for him to scrub the present trip and to
stay in Washington. His time would be far better spent revisiting his policies that threaten to
endanger, not promote, peace in the Middle East — and the security of America’s most important
friend there, the State of Israel.

– 30 –

1. See Center Decision Briefs entitled
Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians To Acquire A
Real — And Threatening — State Or Just A ‘State Of Mind’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_126″>No. 98-D 126, 9 July 1998);
‘There You Go Again’: Arafat Reneges on the PLO Covenant, Prepares For War
Against
Israel, Some ‘Partner For Peace’! (No. 97-D
15, 28 January 1997); and The Road To A
Palestinian State (No. 97-D 10, 20 January
1997).

2. See Mission Impossible: Wye Deal Poses Threat To
U.S. Intelligence — As Well As Israeli
Security, American Interests (No. 98-D 178, 30
October 1998).

3. N.B. Iraqi operatives tried in 1993 to kill former President George
Bush in the course of a visit
to Kuwait after he left office.

4. It is disturbing that, in the interest of enhancing the President’s
security in the Palestinian-controlled areas, the U.S. government has reportedly shared sensitive
bomb-detecting
technologies with the PA. Given the intimate connections between Arafat’s regime and the
terrorists of Hamas and other factions, it seems likely that a further negative result of this visit will
be to assist those bent on hiding bombs to understand — and counter — the measures being used
to find them.

5. See All We Are Saying Is ‘Peace Has No Chance’
(No. 96- D 22, 4 March 1996) and
Of
Delusions and ‘The Deluge’: The Genesis Of The ‘Summit With Terrorist,’ Roots Of A Failed
Foreign Policy (No. 96-D 25, 11 March
1996).

6. Adding insult to this injury is the prospect that among the terrorists
expected to be in
attendance with Mr. Clinton at the PNC meeting on Monday will be at least one of the murderers
of American citizens. Abul Abbas, a man credited with masterminding the heinous execution in
1985 of a wheelchair-bound American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, is scheduled to be among the
“dignitaries” present for the President’s address. A bipartisan group of U.S. legislators led by
Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) are appealing to President Clinton to “do everything
in [his] power to
secure the transfer to the United States of the Palestinian terrorists [like Abul Abbas] suspected of
murdering Americans.”

7. Among the most recent manifestations of this behavior was a
statement on Wednesday by
Secretary of Commerce William Daley that amounted to a call for the toppling
of the
Netanyahu government: “Generally, governments end up reflecting the views of the people. It
takes elections to do that. Hopefully the people of Israel will make their voices heard a little
loader, in their support of peace.” The Bush and Clinton Administrations have proven that such
blatant U.S. interference in the internal political affairs of a friendly, democratic country can, in
fact, translate into changes in the composition and policies of the government of Israel. It comes
at a serious cost to this critical bilateral relationship and the two nations’ mutual interest in Israeli
security.

8. There is, in fact, abundant evidence to the contrary. Not least, it
includes speeches by Arafat
and his lieutenants in Arabic that continue to call for jihad against Israel, sing the
praises of
terrorists and make clear the unchanging Palestinian ambition for a sovereign state with Jerusalem
as its capital. Particularly worrisome is the fact that the maps used by the PA on its official
letterhead, publications, television programs, social events, memorials to the “martyrs” of the
intefada and its children’s textbooks show a “Palestine” comprised of not only the
Gaza Strip and
all of the West Bank but also all of pre-1967 Israel. See Clinton Legacy Watch
#24: An Odious
Ultimate to Israel (No. 98-D 78, 6 May 1998); and
Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians To
Acquire A Real — And Threatening — State Or Just A ‘State Of Mind’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_126″>No. 98-D 126, 9 July
1998).