To Promote Peace, Move the Embassy

By Douglas J. Feith
The New York Times, May 29, 1995

Douglas J. Feith was a Middle East specialist on
the National Security Council staff and Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
Administrations.

WASHINGTON

There is something more than Presidential politics
behind the bills in Congress to relocate the United
States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It
is sensible policy.

If American support for Israel’s sovereignty in
Jerusalem remains an open question, will this help
promote peace? No. Alternatively, are Israel’s Arab
interlocutors likelier to make the philosophical
adjustments and political concessions necessary for peace
if they know that America’s support for Israel on
Jerusalem is a closed question?

This view — endorsed by the key Republican sponsors
of the bills, Senators Bob Dole and Jon Kyl and the
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich — has logic, though
not the Clinton Administration, on its side.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the
Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine has been a fight over
legitimacy. The Zionists have asserted that the Jews have
the right to a state in at least part of Palestine. Arab
anti-Zionists have argued that all of Palestine on both
sides of the Jordan River is Arab land and that the Jews
have no right to a state there.

In the conflict, periods of violence have alternated
with periods of quiet, though hostility has persisted
throughout. Quiet is a type of peace, but in recent years
diplomacy has aimed at a higher type — peace that is
formal and de jure.

But Israel’s experiences with Egypt and the Palestine
Liberation Organization demonstrate that formal accords
do not necessarily reflect or produce the highest form of
peace — that is, peace based on an absence of hostility.

True peace is possible only if Israel’s Arab
neighbors change their hearts and minds on the
fundamental issue of Israel’s legitimacy. What might
facilitate that change? When Israel appeared vulnerable,
it did not achieve peace, or even peace talks.

Only after being forced to acknowledge the strength
of Israel’s position — its military power, its enduring
ties to the United States, and, since the end of the cold
war, our unchallenged global predominance — did some
Arab powers abandon rejectionist positions and start
negotiating.

If Israel’s antagonists bow to unpleasant realities
and lower unrealistic expectations, the peace process may
produce not merely signing ceremonies but real peace.

Inasmuch as the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict
is legitimacy, the essence of the legitimacy issue is
Israel’s right to sovereignty in Jerusalem. If Israelis
do not have the right to sovereignty there, they can
hardly justify sovereignty anywhere.

Jerusalem has been central to Jewish nationhood for
3,000 years. The Jews’ national movement, after all, is
Zionism, Zion being Jerusalem. The Arabs understand this,
too, which is why the importance of Jerusalem in Arab
politics, diplomacy, philosophy and literature increased
as the struggle against Zionism intensified.

By relocating our embassy to Jerusalem, we would end
our anomalous policy of refusing to recognize Israel’s
sovereignty in its own capital. We would proclaim that
Israel’s legitimacy in Zion is not an open question for
us. This would signal that we expect all parties to the
conflict — not just Israel — to pursue peace on the
basis of realism.

In the ongoing Arab-Israeli negotiations, moving the
embassy would not prejudice any issue that is actually
open. This is why even dovish voices, like that of Deputy
Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, have categorically
endorsed the bill. The Government of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin says it will in time negotiate Jerusalem
issues, but not Israeli sovereignty. In this it deserves
our support.

Across the political spectrum in Israel and among
Jews worldwide, there is a profound commitment to
retaining Jerusalem forever as the undivided capital. The
cause of peace will be served by whatever helps persuade
Yasir Arafat that he will not get American support or
Israeli consent to divide Jerusalem and establish part of
it as the capital of a new Arab state.

The necessary adjustment in expectations on the Arab
side would be difficult and even painful. Passionate
cries — and worse — would ensue, but in the end the
process would be constructive.

Like all American pro-Israel initiatives, the bill to
move the embassy is being deprecated in certain quarters
as a cynical play for political points with American
Jews. Such criticism is itself deeply cynical.

Every Congressional initiative pleases some
constituencies and displeases others. Each is supported
by some politicians for substantive reasons, some for
political reasons and many for both types of reasons.

But support for Israel as a fellow democracy and
strategic ally has been sustained by a long line of
Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses.
It reflects the nation’s strong sympathy for Israel as
evinced in public opinion polls decade after decade since
1948.

The automatic assumption that a pro-Israel initiative
is nothing more than pandering is unfair and at odds with
America’s national interest as most Americans see it.