The next freshman revolt?

Today the 1995 winner of the coveted "Horatius at the Bridge" award will go head-to-head with the combined forces of the U.S. State Department, the Israeli government, the American Jewish lobby and the barons of Congress determined to ensure that half-a-billion tax-dollars continues to flow to Yasser Arafat. As a general rule, such a powerful political coalition is able to work its will in the smoke-filled room of a House-Senate conference committee on the foreign operations appropriations bill. This time, though, it could just be that Horatius Forbes – also known as New York Republican freshman Rep. Michael Forbes and a junior member of the House Appropriations Committee – will prevail.

There are several reasons for such an astonishing prediction:

First, Mike Forbes seems to be made of the right stuff. Like the legendary ancient Roman hero, Publius Horatius Cocles (Horatius to his friends) – who legend has it saved his city and made possible its future glory by singlehandedly holding off an army of Etruscan warriors at a bridge over the Tiber River – he has not been dissuaded from fighting for what he believes in by long odds or intense political pressure. In this case, he believes that a man like Yasser Arafat who is guilty of systematically violating solemn international agreements, fomenting terrorism and ripping off international donors should not receive American foreign aid.

Second, the merits of the case are clearly on Mr. Forbes’ side. For example, Mr. Arafat and his minions have failed to: honor commitments to halt terrorism against Israel; turn over to Israel suspected terrorists; or rewrite the 30 out of 33 provisions of the PLO Charter that call for the destruction of the State of Israel or violence against Israelis. In speeches given in Arabic to Palestinian audiences, Mr. Arafat consistently calls for jihad or holy war against Israel, and in interviews with Arab press outlets he affirms that his peace agreements with Israel are really part of the PLO’s "phased plan of 1974." This odious plan envisions inducing Israel voluntarily to give up territory as part of a first phase, then using such territory to launch the final, mortal assault against the Jewish State.

What is more, there is the evidence Mr. Arafat is diverting international aid to his own, devious purposes. Two top-secret August 1994 letters written by Muhammad Zahadi Nashashibi, the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister, and that have now come to light, are illustrative of the problem. These letters convey to the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR) – the ostensibly independent agency charged with the scrupulously apolitical distribution of humanitarian assistance – astounding directives from Mr. Arafat (under the nom de guerre Abu Amar).

One letter orders $15 million to be siphoned off for such purposes as creating a front company covertly to buy up land in East Jerusalem and the Old City in order "to stabilize our foothold there." The other calls for spending $10 million to expand "the activity of the Palestinian National Authority … into Israel" and to "concentrate in the ‘Palestinian Arabs within,’" including specifically Arab members of the Knesset upon whom Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin depends for his parliamentary majority! The purpose of such activity is to support "the establishment of a Palestinian state including the city of Jerusalem."

Third, Mr. Forbes has some friends in high places. Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Rep. Jim Saxton, an influential member of the House National Security Committee, have joined him in sponsoring the Middle East Peace Compliance Act. This bill – which they hope largely to substitute in the today’s conference committee for language adopted by the Senate that would provide essentially unconditional assistance – would tie future American foreign aid to the Palestinian Arabs to adherence by Mr. Arafat and his organizations to their obligations. The Forbes-DeLay-Saxton bill would, moreover, ensure that such funds as were provided would flow through monitorable U.S. government agencies and U.S.-registered non-governmental charities.

Among the Senate conferees, Sens. Richard Shelby and Arlen Specter have also made known their strong opposition to further assistance to the PLO. For his part, Sen. Specter actually wrote to Jewish supporters last month seeking their financial help to enable him to resist aid to Mr. Arafat, complaining of "the obvious lack of compliance of the PLO with its commitments" and saying "’peace’ with the PLO has been the peace of the dead." (Since fully 63 percent of American Jews oppose further U.S. "economic aid to the Palestinians" according to a recent poll by the American Jewish Committee while only 30 percent support it, Sen. Specter should have many takers).

There is one further, potentially critical factor at work in the PLO aid equation: Horatius Forbes is a member of an activist freshman congressional class – a group that has, in recent weeks, shown itself increasingly willing to defy its leadership and, if necessary, to defeat legislation contrary to core Republican beliefs. Ending undisciplined, wasteful foreign aid is pre-eminent among those beliefs. The evidence that such aid may actually wind up abetting, underwriting and perhaps even rewarding terrorism and other malevolence against Israel will inflame more than just the deficit hawks in Congress.

None of this in any way detracts from the courage and tenacity that Rep. Mike Forbes has displayed to date. It does, however, make the odds against his successful defense of American interests a bit less like those faced by Horatius at the bridge, if not yet the "sure thing" the merits of the case ought to dictate.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.