RECKLESS ABANDON (II): THE CYNICAL MUTATION OF ‘LAND-FOR-PEACE’ INTO ISRAEL’S UNILATERAL WITHDRAWAL

(Washington, D.C.): Over the past
month, it has become evident that the
government of Israel is determined to
compound the damage already done to
Israeli long-term security and interests
by last September’s agreement with the
PLO. As discussed in a 25 April 1994 Decision
Brief by the Center for Security
Policy entitled, Reckless
Abandon: Can Either Israel or the U.S.
Afford Rabin’s Bid to ‘Bet the (Golan)
Farm’? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_42″>No. 94-D 42), Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres are now intent on
relinquishing the Golan Heights to
Syria’s despot, Hafez Assad.

While the dangerous implications of
these deals — present and prospective —
are beginning to be understood by both
Israelis and thoughtful Americans, the
underlying intellectual concept has still
not been widely recognized. Notably,
these agreements continue to be generally
described as “land for peace”
exchanges.

The truth of the matter, however, is
that they represent retreats
by Israel — unilateral,
headlong surrenders of strategically
vital real estate in the face of
demonstrated Arab bad faith, breaches of
contract and ample warning that the
Jewish state’s Arab interlocutors remain
committed to its destruction.⁽¹⁾

Krauthammer Breaks the Code

This reality has, mercifully, been
brought into sharper focus within the
past week, however. Last Friday, Charles
Krauthammer — one of the most
brilliant commentators of our time —
published a scathing column in the Washington
Post under the headline
“Arafat’s Call for ‘Holy War.'”
His article (a copy of which is attached)
“breaks the code” on this
so-called “peace process”:

“…What is happening
in the [disputed] territories now is
not a peace process. It is a retreat.
The letters and documents, the
signings and ceremonies, the
handshakes and benedictions are there
mainly to give retreat the
appearance of orderliness and
mutuality.” (Emphasis
added.)

Feith: ‘Unilateral
Withdrawal’

The same day, a momentous article by Douglas
J. Feith — a former NSC Middle
East specialist, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense and distinguished
member of the Center’s Board of Advisors
— appeared in the edition of Commentary
Magazine currently on the newsstands.
Entitled “Land for No Peace,”
this article establishes indisputably
that unilateral withdrawal, not land-for-peace,
is the order of the day:

“In the so-called Madrid
Process, the Rabin government, unlike
its predecessor, made clear that it
was willing to relinquish territory
in return for peace. But after a
year, the talks had produced no peace
agreements. There was stalemate on
all fronts. Mutual recriminations
were rife….

“If the Israeli government
continued to insist upon a credible
and authoritative pledge of peace as
a precondition of withdrawal, the
prospect loomed that it would not be
able, within its four-year term of
office, to deliver to its citizens a
new peace agreement or deliver them
from the travails of the occupation. So
the traditional idea of Land for
Peace was set aside, and
Israel concluded the deal embodied in
the Declaration of Principles [with
Arafat]….

“[This agreement] treats
Israeli withdrawals not as the
reward, after the fact, for a
clear-cut, credible, duly formalized,
pacific change of heart on the part
of an Arab interlocutor, as was the
case with Anwar Sadat. Rather, Israel
is to withdraw in the hope that this
will encourage such a change of heart
and, if no such change occurs, then
so be it.” (Emphasis
added.)

‘The Triumph of Hope over
Experience’

The full extent and inanity
of this hope was laid bare last night on
the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour by Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres.⁽²⁾
In response to questions about the
advertisements PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
took out in the last couple of days in
Palestinian newspapers — which called
upon the courts in Jericho and Gaza no
longer to enforce laws enacted since 1967
but only to enforce those adopted before
the Israeli occupation began — Peres
said:

“I regret it. But papers are
papers and realities are realities. We
cannot judge the PLO and its leader
just by what he is saying. Would
we do so, we would be completely
wrong and we would be in
troubles [sic].

“But the fact is that on the
ground in real terms the agreement is
becoming a reality and the
Palestinian people for the first time
in their history will taste a piece
of reality, a territorial address, a
real responsibility and a real
authority and this is the real
meaning of the agreement….

“[Arafat’s ad] has meaning
but it doesn’t change the overall
picture.”

When his interviewer observed that
“You seem very unconcerned,”
Peres responded:

“No, I am concerned. I don’t
believe it changes the basic
situation. And I think we are now
having the participation of the third
party to the negotiations and that is
the people who reside in the Gaza
Strip and in Jericho. And they are
really concerned about the real
meaning of the change — among them
many young people, many able people
— it is their dream, it is their
need, and they do believe that they
have the capacity to really take it
and make it into a new situation.

“…What [Arafat] said and I
took it as a serious commitment, was
he repeated three points: [First],
that he remains true to the
declaration of principles as the only
guiding line in his relations with
us. Second, that he continues to
denounce terrorism and violence
between the Palestinians and us. And
thirdly, for the future, he undertook
that every dispute or disagreement
will be solved peacefully and
diplomatically.

The magnitude of Peres’ fatuity was
perhaps best revealed in his egregiously ahistorical
assessment of what he calls “the
stream of history”:

“I trust the stream of
history. I believe neither him
[Arafat] nor us have another choice
or a better choice. And I don’t think
that a person or a speech of a person
can turn the world around in the
wrong direction again. I believe that
what we are doing is a must, that nobody
can win anything any more by war,
that whatever is important in life
cannot be achieved by armies and
whatever armies can achieve lost a
great deal of their importance.
So I rely upon realities and also
upon our own strengths. We are not a
weak country, we are not a lost
country. We didn’t lose neither our
minds nor our strength.”

The Bottom Line

It is debatable whether Shimon Peres’s
wishful thinking and doublespeak
constitute prima facia evidence
that he, at least, has lost his
mind.sup>(3)
What is indisputable, however, is that the
policies of unilateral withdrawal and
retreat that he is promoting are
weakening Israel — if only because its
residual military strength will be
grievously diminished by eliminating the
strategic depth the Jewish state has
enjoyed since 1967.

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the United States
should not be a party to such a perilous
agenda. It renews its objections
to the idea of introducing American
troops as “peacekeepers” on the
Golan Heights in order to facilitate the
completion and acceptance within Israel
of an agreement surrendering that real
estate to Hafez Assad. Under no
circumstances should a commitment be made
by the Clinton Administration to such a
deployment — either as a unilateral step
or a multilateral one — without a
rigorous and publicly available
official assessment of the risks, stakes
and implications and without obtaining
congressional assent.⁽⁴⁾

– 30 –

1. For example,
the official Syrian mouthpiece, Radio
Damascus, opined in an 8 April 1994
broadcast lauding a terrorist attack in
Afula (a town within Israel’s pre-1967
borders): “Our Palestinian Arab
people will not surrender as long as
occupation exists in the land of
Palestine, and they will chase the
Zionists in every spot in occupied
Palestine.” On 14 April, it added,
“The only situation under which the
Zionist invaders may have security and
peace is the departure of Zionist
colonialism and its weapons and
institutions from the last inch of our
sacred Palestinian Arab land.”

2. Peres was in
town for the purpose of receiving,
together with his Palestinian negotiating
partner, Ahmad Suleiman (whose nom de
guerre is Abu Ala), a “Pax
World Peace award” from a gaggle of
left-wing American, Israeli and Arab
organizations and individuals. The
sponsors included George McGovern,
Michael Lehrner, Mubarak Awad and Bella
Abzug. Groups represented were, among
others: the American Near East Refugee
Aid, the Arab Women’s Council,
Arab-American Institute, the Council for
the National Interest, Evangelicals for
Middle East Peace, Friends Committee on
National Legislation, the Institute for
Policy Studies, Inter-Religious Committee
for Middle East Peace, U.S.-Arab Chamber
of Commerce and Peace Links.

3. If Americans
needed any further evidence of this
diagnosis, they might consider Peres’
statement at the United Nations during
the 23 May 1994 ceremony marking the 40th
anniversary of the dedication of the
“Peace Bell,” which was
designed by Israeli and Japanese artists.
On that occasion, he suggested that there
were two Holocausts in World War
II — one perpetrated by the Nazis
against the Jews and the other
perpetrated by the United States against
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. As the Nation prepares
to observe Memorial Day and the
sacrifices made on, and subsequent to,
D-Day by Americans fighting the murderous
totalitarians of Germany and Japan, such
a comment warrants persona non grata
status for Mr. Peres unless he promptly
retracts it.

4. See in this
regard draft legislation sponsored by Richard
Hellman, director of the
Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign
and referred to in the Center’s recent Decision
Brief entitled, Deliverance:
Will Jerusalem Avoid a U.S.-Israeli
Crisis by Declining U.S. Deployments on
the Golan? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_52″>No. 94-D 52,
17 May 1994).