WE’RE ‘SHOCKED, SHOCKED’: ARAFAT BITES THE HANDS TRYING TO FEED HIM $500 MILLION IN U.S. FOREIGN AID

(Washington, D.C.): In an extraordinary display
of ingratitude, not to say intemperateness, Yasser
Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA) recently repudiated
legislation aimed at ensuring its continued access to
hundreds of millions in U.S. tax-dollars. On 23 September
1995, the PA’s “Ministry of Information” issued
a press release excoriating a legislative initiative
sponsored by Sens. Jesse Helms and Claiborne Pell, the
chairman and ranking member respectively of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. The Helms-Pell legislation
was adopted last week by the United States Senate as an
amendment to the Fiscal Year 1996 Foreign Operations
appropriations bill.

Without mentioning the amendment by name, the
Palestinian Authority heaped vitriol on the preconditions
imposed by the Helms-Pell amendment on further
disbursement of the $500 million that President Clinton
pledged to Arafat two years ago. Its release declared, in
part:

“The American decision to extend financial
assistance to the Palestinian National Authority
contradicts any accepted practice. This decision that
was taken while handcuffed (sic) with heavy chains of
conditions. It is provocative and insulting to the
Palestinian national feelings. The decision is a
flagrant intrusion in internal Palestinian matters…The
American Congress has placed at the very heart of its
conditions the closing of Palestinian institutions in
Jerusalem and the cessation of support by the
Palestinian National Authority for these
institutions. This exposes the true face of
American policy towards the Holy City, a policy that
supports and assists further Jewish occupation of
Jerusalem, its annexation to Israel and it further
confirms Israel’s claims that Jerusalem is its
united, everlasting capital…

“…The American Congress has relinquished
the American role as a sponsor of the Declaration of
Principles and declared its absolute partiality in
the interest of the worst and most damaging of
Israeli interpretations, by rushing ahead more than
the Israelis themselves have done when they [members
of Congress] demanded the canceling of some
articles in the Palestinian National charter and
when they demanded Palestinian co- operation with
Israel in surrendering wanted Palestinian citizens to
it despite the fact that this demand violates the
signed agreements between the PLO and the government
of Israel…”

“The conditions that the American Congress
demanded will not find anyone to respond to them. The
members of Congress, who do not respect international
legitimacy, will not need to wait six long months
because the Palestinian people will not barter
their rights for all the money in the world.”
(Emphasis added.)

Arafat Never Promised You a Rose Garden

What makes such vitriolic attacks particularly
stunning is the fact that they are basically directed at
two senior Senators who have gone to great lengths to
protect the PLO/PA from the sort of real
conditions that many Americans believe are in order.
In light of Arafat’s continuing support for terrorism
against Israel, his failure to comply with other
commitments under the Declaration of Principles and his
diversion of international aid to personal and political
purposes inimical to real peace, a powerful case can be
made for denying any further distribution of the
roughly $350 million yet to be disbursed to the PA.

Congressional leaders, and Senator Helms in
particular, have come under enormous pressure from the
Clinton Administration, the Israeli government of Yitzhak
Rabin and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to
keep the aid flowing to Arafat, such problems
notwithstanding. In the end, Senator Helms was induced to
set aside his instinctive — and well-founded —
opposition to undisciplined foreign aid and to those who
support international terrorism. Instead, he lent his
name to a foreign aid bill for the PLO/PA whose
conditions were deliberately crafted with sufficient
ambiguity and/or loop-holes to meet with Arafat’s
approval and to allow hundreds of millions of additional
tax-dollars to go to his organizations.

The Bottom Line

The simple truth is that two years after the Oslo
I agreements were signed, efforts to moderate Yasser
Arafat’s behavior through financial, political (and, in
the case of Israel, territorial) concessions have not had
the desired effect. Instead, such concessions in the
face of continued Palestinian gangsterism appear only to
have encouraged more of the same. For example, last week,
even as the Congress was considering the Helms-Pell
legislation, Arafat used interviews with the Egyptian and
Jordanian press to affirm that the Oslo agreements are
implementing the notorious “plan of phases”
adopted by the PLO in 1974. Phase I involves obtaining
territory from Israel via negotiation; Phase II will use
that territory to launch a final campaign for the
destruction of Israel.

Fortunately, Congress has an alternative at hand to
such appeasement. Legislation has been introduced in both
the Senate and House that would mandate a complete
cut-off of funding for the PLO/PA. This bill, known as the
Middle East Peace Compliance Act and sponsored in the
Senate by Sens. Alfonse D’Amato, Richard Shelby and Larry
Craig and in the House by Reps. Michael Forbes, Jim
Saxton and Tom DeLay, would allow continued aid to go
toward legitimate, monitorable and private humanitarian
projects in Palestinian-controlled areas — provided
the PLO honors its commitments.

The Center for Security Policy urges Senator Helms
and others affronted by Yasser Arafat’s imperiousness to
substitute the real conditions called for by the
D’Amato-Forbes bill for the ersatz conditions of the
Helms-Pell legislation. As the attached
op.ed. by Center for Security Policy director Frank
J. Gaffney, Jr. published in today’s Newsday makes
clear, Israel is not the only nation with a stake in the
quality of such conditionality. America’s own
vital interests dictate that the United States must make
every effort to avoid rewarding PLO support for terrorism
and other non-compliance.