Give Peace a What?

The Wall Street Journal, 09/11/91

In explaining the U.S.’s desire to postpone $10 billion in
loan guarantees to Israel, Secretary of State Baker and
President Bush said they didn’t want to jeopardize the
October Mideast peace conference they’ve worked hard to
arrange. Secretary Baker said the point of the delay was to
“give peace a chance,” which is the refrain John Lennon used
to sing.

Peace needs all the chances it can get in the Mideast. But
whether this gambit helps or hurts the prospects for peace is
debatable.

The question of whether Israel might in fact be better off
without the loan guarantees is another matter. It could be
argued that an aid cutoff would force Israel to deal more
effectively with the problems that derive from its
obsolescent political-economic system.

The U.S. in effect has been subsidizing Israeli socialism.
Government in that tiny country regulates everything,
tolerates petty monopolies and other anti-competitive
practices and hoards vast land areas that a free market would
put to good use. The Israelis want the loan guarantees to
help them build housing for Russian Jewish immigrants. But
because of red tape, it takes two years in Israel to build a
house that an American builder, under the pressure of market
competition, would put up in a month.

But a rational Israeli economy isn’t what’s on the State
Department’s mind. Mr. Baker said he wants to “give peace a
chance.” What was implied, whether intended or not, was that
Israel is the main impediment to peace in the Middle East and
that the way to obtain peace is to put Israel on a short
leash. The loan-postponement proposal hasn’t been a big hit,
other than with the Palestinians and Senator Patrick Leahy,
and on Monday Mr. Baker spoke of working out a compromise on
the guarantees.

How much of an impediment Israel might be depends on what
Mr. Baker and Mr. Bush have in mind for Israel to give up.
Forcing Israel to give up something seems to be the only
point of the maneuvers so far. All that Syria, Jordan and the
PLO are asked to surrender is their hostility toward Israel,
which is no doubt why they are eager to get to the conference
table. Syria is not being asked to give back Lebanon to the
Lebanese. Syria, Jordan, the PLO, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and the Gulf emirates aren’t being asked to surrender some of
the territory they control for a Palestinian homeland. The
point of this “peace process” seems to be to finally recover
for the Arabs what they lost when they mistakenly went to war
with Israel in 1967.

Given this kind of tilt at the outset, it isn’t surprising
that Israel has reservations about Mr. Baker’s peace talks.
There might be room for surrendering some land for a genuine
peace. But the Israelis have a better sense than American
diplomats that Hafez Assad and Yasser Arafat are not the kind
of men you trust to abide by words on paper.

Employing the rhetoric of realpolitik, the State
Department points out that Hafez Assad no longer has the
backing of a powerful Soviet Union and hence is forced to be
more accommodating. That argument would be more persuasive
had not State so willingly turned over Lebanon to the Syrian
dictator for his army’s token appearance in the war against
his old enemy Saddam Hussein.

Israel will survive Washington’s latest maneuver as it has
so many of the past. What’s hurt here is U.S. credibility as
it offers little substantive explanation for postponing loan
guarantees other than that it is “giving peace a chance.”