Unlucky 13: Clinton Initiative Threatens Both U.S.-Israeli Relations and Israel’s Security
(Washington, D.C.): As Clinton Middle East envoy Dennis Ross heads to Israel today,
speculation is rife that a long-threatened U.S. initiative aimed at “jump-starting” the so-called
“peace process” will shortly be unveiled. According to press accounts, this initiative would
require Israel to surrender to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA) roughly 13% more of the West
Bank territory it currently controls.
In exchange for still further territorial concessions, the United States holds out the prospect of
getting the Palestinians to make good on promises they have repeatedly broken in the past. Like
other by-products of the “peace process,” however, this one has no chance of actually
advancing
the cause of real peace. To the contrary, it is likely to exacerbate deteriorating American
ties
with its most important — and only democratic — regional ally. It will certainly
undermine
Israel’s negotiating posture. Taken together, these actions may do real harm to the security
of the Jewish State.
Respect, Don’t Undermine, a Fellow Democracy
Successive U.S. governments have insisted that Washington’s role in the Arab-Israeli dialogue
would be limited to that of a facilitator of negotiations between the two parties — not
a party in its
own right. Yet, the Clinton Administration is threatening formally to introduce the proposal it has
already leaked. Presumably, it is doing so in the hopes of coercing Israel into making moves that
the latter’s democratically elected government considers to be ill-advised.
Just how strongly the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu opposes this initiative is
evident
in the Prime Minister’s remarks quoted yesterday in the Washington Post:
- “Israel, and Israel alone, will be the one that determines its security needs and the
extent of withdrawal. I think it would be wise to remember, and I think many people in
Washington [should] remember, that ultimately the decisions about the security of
Israel must be made by Israel, because we have to live with the
consequences.
“What we need to protect ourselves against terrorist outrages, what we need to
do to protect ourselves so the planes that land in Tel Aviv are not shot down, so
that the aquifers that carry Israel’s water are not interfered with … these kinds of
determinations can only be made here.
“Understand that Israel is a tiny country, and every piece of territory here is tied
to security, every piece. Every [1] percent of the Israeli-occupied territory
is
the size of Tel Aviv. And this territory that abuts our major cities
determines whether we can effectively guarantee that additional territory is
not turned into a Hamas base, a terrorist base.” (Emphasis added.)
Other Down-Side Risks
Such comments make clear that the threatened Clinton initiative violates one of the most
fundamental of diplomatic principles of Western democracies: sovereign, freely elected
governments should not interfere in the internal affairs of their counterparts.
circumstances (i.e., those in which Israel is confronting a Palestinian leadership that demonstrates
on practically a daily basis the fact that it does not share Israel’s commitment to peaceful
coexistence(2)) though, the Clinton-Ross 13% proposal
would also translate into a tangible and
unacceptable diminution of the security of the Jewish State.
Should the Clinton Administration take the next step and formally introduce its 13% proposal,
moreover, it would be radically departing from its own established position. These were spelled
out in a letter by former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the Note for the Record
that accompanied the January 1997 Hebron Protocol — the last time Israel bought a pig-in-a-poke
by accepting U.S. assurances of Palestinian compliance in exchange for Israel’s relinquishing of
territory. A subsequent U.S. State Department statement re-confirmed this commitment:
“Further redeployment phases are issues for implementation by Israel rather than issues
for negotiation with the Palestinians.”
The threatened Clinton-Ross initiative will have one other negative effect on the search for a
genuine and durable peace: As the Center put it on 2 December 1997:
- “[T]here is little chance of ‘progress’ towards a real peace as long as the
Palestinian
Arabs believe that the Americans will apply further pressure on Israel if the Arabs
declare its offerings to be unsatisfactory. To the contrary, such a dynamic simply
encourages Israel’s Arab interlocutors to hold out for more concessions.”
The Bottom Line
Douglas J. Feith, one of the Nation’s foremost Middle East experts who formerly served as a
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and who is a valued member of the Center for Security
Policy’s Board of Advisors, has made an important observation: The United States has only
recently been confronted with the adverse security implications of “contracting out” sovereign
foreign policy decisions to others. As the Center noted in the wake of Kofi Annan’s mission to
Baghdad: “Practically everyone with any common sense — from left to right on the political
spectrum — understands that the ‘business’ the Secretary General takes such pride in
having
done with Saddam Hussein is at our expense and a prime example of the dangers of
mindless multilateralism practiced by Messrs. Clinton and Annan and by Mrs.
Albright.“(4)
Now the Clinton Administration is trying to euchre Israel into doing essentially the same thing
by
turning over the Jewish State’s security decision-making process to the U.S. government. It can
only be hoped that the Netanyahu government will remain firm in its rejection of such a dubious
enterprise, that the Clinton team will take no for an answer and that rifts between the United
States and Israel will not be permitted to develop that can — and assuredly will — be exploited by
enemies of both nations.
An alternative approach that is far more likely to serve both U.S. and Israeli interests has been
mapped out by another distinguished member of the Center’s Board of Advisors, Sen.
Jon Kyl
(R-AZ), in testimony he gave on 11 March during a hearing of the Near Eastern and South Asian
Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A copy of
testimony, as delivered, is attached.
– 30 –
1. As the Center has noted in the past, this interference in Israel’s
internal affairs has frequently
taken on a crassly partisan tenor. See, for example the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled
Washington Institute’s Satloff Correctly Assails Mideast Policy Being Forged By
Its Alumni,
Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk (No. 97-D
185, 2 December 1997):
- “[T]he Clinton Administration missed no opportunity to promote the political fortunes
of the ruling coalitions led by the Labor Party’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, just
as it went beyond the bounds of diplomacy — and respect for a fellow democracy — to
impede the Likud Party’s bid for power, and subsequent exercise of it, under Benjamin
Netanyahu. When the people of Israel exercised their prerogative to reject the Labor
program by electing a government committed to a different one, however, President
Clinton showed himself to be, in effect, pro-Labor, not pro-Israel. This practice is
not
only quintessentially Clintonian in its crudeness and contravening of convention. It is
also palpably inconsistent with U.S. interests in a strong and secure Israel.”
2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
The Map is on the Wall: Arafat Wants No Part of
‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ With Israel, Must Get No More U.S. Aid Until He Does
(No. 97-D
93, 8 July 1997).
3. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Washington Institute’s Satloff Correctly Assails
Mideast Policy Being Forged By Its Alumni, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk (
December 1997).
4. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
This Is the Time to ‘Bash’ — Or at Least Repudiate
the U.N.; Bipartisan, Bicameral Consensus Emerges that Saddam Must Go (
February 1998).
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