UNFINISHED BUSINESS WITH ARAFAT: GIULIANI REMEMBERS, CONFERENCE COMMITTEE FORGETS PLO CRIMES AGAINST U.S.

Precis: New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has
sent a timely and needed signal to Washington: Yasser Arafat and
his fellow PLO terrorists have American blood on their hands. In
light of that fact and Arafat’s continuing involvement in
Palestinian terrorism, it is scandalous that a House-Senate
conference committee this week agreed to give him hundreds of
millions of additional U.S. tax-dollars. The full House of
Representatives should reject this action and instruct the
conferees to require that further aid to the Palestinian Arabs is
conditioned on genuine PLO compliance with its treaty obligations
and on disciplined, transparent distribution arrangements
independent of Arafat’s organizations.

(Washington, D.C.): The Mayor of New York brought great
credit to his City — and helped to illuminate and advance
the cause of justice — by refusing to entertain Yasser Arafat in
the course of ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the
founding of the U.N. He did so on the grounds that the United
States has unfinished business with Arafat and other PLO
terrorists: Accountability for the murder of a U.S. Ambassador
and other officials, as well as numerous American citizens, one
of whom died while in Palestinian police custody as recently as
last month.

Thanks to his previous incarnation as a federal prosecutor,
Mr. Giuliani has first-hand knowledge of the degree to which
Yasser Arafat bears personal, as well as corporate,
responsibility for such heinous crimes. The Mayor said:
“[Arafat] has never been held to answer for the murders that
he was implicated in.” Mr. Giuliani noted that there is no
statute of limitations for murder.

Who Ought to Determine U.S. Policy Toward the PLO?

The Mayor’s public remembrance of Arafat’s culpability, which
led to the PLO chairman’s highly publicized expulsion from a
Lincoln Center concert to which he had showed up uninvited,
highlights a critical fact: The Clinton Administration has no
right to subordinate the totality of U.S.-PLO relations to
Israel’s decisions to dignify Arafat as a man of peace (despite
the vast evidence to the contrary) and its willingness to ignore
his ongoing involvement in terrorism against Israelis, Americans
and others.

Unfortunately, the full extent of such subordination was made
manifest by actions taken in a House-Senate conference committee
shortly after Mayor Giuliani’s principled act. Under intense
pressure from the Administration, the Israeli government and the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), conferees
preparing the Fiscal Year 1996 foreign operations appropriations
bill gave the PLO access to hundreds of millions of U.S.
tax-dollars on top of the roughly $150 million Arafat and his
minions have received over the past two years.

In so doing, the conferees — led by Sen. Mitch McConnell
(R-KY) and Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-AL) — chose to ignore not only
the PLO’s historical role in killing American citizens and
otherwise harming U.S. interests in the Middle East. They also
disregarded the following relevant facts:

• Arafat is ripping off international assistance to
  put money in his own pocket (and those of his cronies)
  and to advance purposes inimical to a lasting peace in
  the Middle East (e.g., fomenting support among Israeli
  Arabs for a PLO state with Jerusalem as its capital,
  buying up land in Jerusalem, etc.) This practice has been
  well-documented in a 17 October study by Peace Watch, an
  independent group monitoring the peace process.
• The PLO is believed to be in no need of funds.
  According to British intelligence, the organization has
  somewhere between $8-10 billion in assets and an annual
  revenue stream of approximately $1.5-2 billion. A
  closely-held GAO study (incredibly, the reason for its
  being classified is itself a secret) appears to confirm
  the finding that the miserable quality of life
  experienced by many Palestinian Arabs is not a
  function of PLO insolvency.
• Arafat continues to promote terrorism and the
  destruction of the State of Israel. One would think
  the government of Israel would be alarmed at repeated,
  documented instances of Arafat: calling for jihad
  against Israel, endorsing the work of “martyrs and
  heroes” — his euphemisms for terrorists who have
  killed Israelis, and affirming that his peace initiatives
  with the Jewish State are consistent with the “plan
  of phases of 1974.” (As noted in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_82at”>attached column
  published by the Center for Security Policy’s director,
  Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. in last Tuesday’s Washington
  Times, this plan contemplates the serial
  dismemberment and ultimate destruction of Israel, an
  outcome that the PLO charter still explicitly endorses.)
  But whether the Israeli government is troubled by such
  behavior or not, it should be a matter of grave concern
  to U.S. legislators, whose current largesse may
  reasonably be interpreted by Arafat as a green light for
  more of the same.
• The PLO is cooperating with neither Israeli nor
  American efforts to bring suspected Palestinian
  terrorists to justice. As a result, there is little
  likelihood that Mayor Giuliani’s successors in the U.S.
  Justice Department will be able to ensure punishment at
  least for those PLO operatives who killed American
  citizens.

An Appalling Performance

It is a travesty that conferees on the Foreign Operations
bill refused to insist upon strict PLO compliance with its
obligations to Israel as a precondition for further U.S.
financial assistance to the Palestinian Arabs. An amendment to
this effect offered by freshman Representative Michael Forbes
(R-NY) was given short shrift. Conferees who had signaled support
for such a principled, disciplined stance on aid to the PLO —
for example, Sens. Arlen Specter, Richard Shelby and Connie Mack
— were not heard from. Non-conferees who had sought an
opportunity to address the conference on this point (notably,
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Rep. Jim Saxton) were not
permitted to do so and, in fact, were discouraged from attending.

In the end, the conferees adopted after just five minutes of
discussion language dictated by the Clinton Administration and
AIPAC. In keeping with the undemocratic manner in which aid to
the PLO was managed on the Senate side earlier this year, the
final language was reportedly not made available to members prior
to their voting on it. Especially odious was the extension
without warning and at the last minute of waivers of existing
laws that restrict U.S. relations with the PLO from twelve months
to eighteen months. By so doing, the conferees virtually ensured
that the taxpayers will be dunned the full $500 million promised
by President Clinton to Yasser Arafat before the latter’s pattern
of non-compliance became a matter of record.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy finds it ironic that a
conference committee consumed with applying tests of compliance
in determining whether various proposed recipients of U.S.
foreign aid were worthy of American financial support — with the
result that many, including arguably one of the Nation’s most
strategically important allies, Turkey, were not — would
refuse to subject Yasser Arafat to the same scrutiny. This
amounts to an astounding double standard, not to mention a
serious dereliction of duty.

The Center applauds Mayor Giuliani for courageously providing
what should be a powerful reminder to Members of Congress who
care about combating international terrorism and its
perpetrators, who feel a sense of fiduciary responsibility for
the taxpayers’ funds and who believe that American interests —
not those of a foreign government — should determine U.S. policy
and spending priorities: Just as Yasser Arafat was unworthy of
the hospitality of New York City, he is unworthy of essentially
unconditional American financial assistance.

Accordingly, the conference report on the Fiscal Year 1996
Foreign Operations Appropriations bill should be rejected by the
full House on the grounds that the current version abysmally
mishandled the PLO aid issue, among other reasons. The
conferees should be instructed to incorporate the
Forbes-DeLay-Saxton amendments which would ensure that future
U.S. humanitarian aid flows to the Palestinian Arabs go directly
to those purposes and not to the PLO or other Arafat
organizations — and do so only if he and his minions fully
comply with their commitments to Israel and the United States.