ENOUGH ALREADY: STOP INTERFERING IN INTERNAL ISRAELI POLITICS — KEEP U.S. TROOPS OFF THE GOLAN HEIGHTS

(Washington, D.C.): At last, an article in the
27 January 1995 edition of the Washington Post has
confirmed the Center for Security Policy’s long-standing
suspicion: The Clinton Administration is actively
injecting itself in Israel’s domestic politics. According
to the Post, “the…Administration is trying
to shore up the domestic political fortunes of Yitzhak
Rabin, the battered Israeli prime minister, in the hope
of helping to revive Israel’s stalled peace talks
with…Syria.”

The Post article went on to note:

“Given Israel’s unsettled political
climate…the chances Rabin would agree to withdraw
from the Golan Heights, won by Israel from Syria in
the 1967 Middle East war, have eroded. Full
withdrawal is Syria’s condition for signing a peace
accord.

“In the longer term, the [Clinton]
administration worries Rabin will lose re-election in
1996. A victory by the rightist Likud party, which
strongly opposes the talks, could abort the peace
process. Moreover, signs of Rabin’s weakness could
deter Assad from further talks, even well before the
elections.

“‘It’s too early to make definitive
statements on Rabin’s political future, but his
central task is to address the security issue,’ a
senior U.S. official said. ‘We’re willing to help him
on that.’

“‘This is a difficult period and one of our
principal roles is to insulate the process from
inevitable shocks,’ another senior [U.S.] official
said.”

Deploying U.S. Troops on the Golan — Another
Way to ‘Help’ Rabin?

It is against this backdrop that the Clinton
Administration’s plan to deploy U.S. forces on the Golan
Heights as part of an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement must
be considered. The Israeli government evidently believes
that such a peace agreement is important to its prospects
for re-election. It also seems persuaded that the
appearance of a security guarantee to Israel implied by
an American deployment on the Heights would be valuable
in making a withdrawal from the Golan acceptable to its
public. Since the Clinton team is openly
“helping” the Israeli prime minister, the
Administration has made clear its willingness to deliver
on the commitment to deploy American troops on the Golan.

This is, of course, not the first time that the U.S.
government has interfered in Israel’s domestic politics
in recent years. Notably, in 1992 the Bush Administration
manufactured a crisis in bilateral relations over Israeli
settlements policy and American loan guarantees for
Israel. As they intended, this contributed to the defeat
of Likud’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his
replacment by a Labor-led coalition under Rabin.

Now, the Clinton Administration is reportedly
weighing whether to grant the Israeli opposition leader,
Benjamin Netanyahu, an audience with the President.
Fearful that such a meeting would displease Prime
Minister Rabin, senior Middle East policy-makers are said
to be recommending against it. Should the advisors who
want to play Israeli domestic politics prevail,
Washington would be adding insult to injury — with
undesirable repercussions for U.S.-Israeli relations,
especially if the opposition returns to power as current
polls suggest is likely.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes it is
inappropriate for the United States government to be
playing favorites or otherwise meddling in the internal
political affairs of a sovereign democratic state —
especially one as important for U.S. interests in the
Middle East as is Israel. The Center has consistently
called on the American executive and legislative branches
to make policy determinations about the deployment of
U.S. forces on the Golan Heights on the basis of American
national security and foreign policy interests, not on
the grounds that such a deployment will help one foreign
party or another.

The Center for Security Policy believes that the
obvious political difficulties being experienced by the
current Israeli government simply reinforce the
principled argument that the Clinton Administration
should: refrain from trying to influence Israeli domestic
politics, take steps to maintain warm relations with the
leaders of both Israel’s government and its opposition,
and facilitate the earliest possible congressional
examination of the prospective benefits and potential
serious costs associated with a U.S. deployment on the
Golan.