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May
24, 2003
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May
27, 2003
AIPAC Hijacks the Roadmap
How
Israel's US Lobby is Stacking the Deck
By JEFFREY BLANKFORT
It would be a mistake to view the Israeli cabinet's
narrow approval of the Bush administration's "road map"
on Sunday, (or Sharon's use of the word "occupation")
as steps towards resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict or as
a victory for President Bush. If there is any gloating to be
done, it will be by Israel's domestic US lobby and it will largely
be done in private.
Had the administration not surrendered
on Friday to Ariel Sharon's demands for significant revisions
in the "road map," the Israeli cabinet might not even
have taken the vote. Moreover, the president would not have been
forced to make those concessions had not the Israeli prime minister
been backed solidly by the pro-Israel lobby and by the majority
of both houses of Congress. And thus, the supposedly immutable
"peace plan" has foundered at the starting gate.
As his part of the deal, and before the
cabinet vote, Sharon publicly accepted the plan's broad outlines,
but not the phased steps contained in the original which carried
the stamp and presumably the input of the "Quartet,"
(Britain, the European Union and the Russians plus the US).
During the debate, Sharon told his cabinet
that the 14 reservations about the plan that Israel presented
to Washington were not negotiable. (BBC, May 25) One that has
been prominently mentioned is Israel's refusal to recognize the
right to return of Palestinians who were expelled or who left
in 1948, an issue that was not to be raised until the "road
map's" final phase.
Its prospects can best be understood
by a metaphor that arose from a press conference with Secretary
of State Colin Powell who up to Friday had been insisting that
"no changes" would be made in the "road map."
Faced with yet another humiliation at
the hands of the Israeli prime minister, Powell downplayed criticism
that the US was simply kicking the can down the road by agreeing
to address Israel's concerns "fully and seriously."
"At least we have a can in the road,"
Powell told reporters. "We have to get started. And so the
can is in the road now. We will start moving it down the road
with perhaps little kicks as opposed to a 54-yarder."
"It's easy to say, why don't you
solve this up front - because you couldn't. You have to get started,"
Powell said, adding that issues like dismantling some Israeli
settlement outposts may be "very, very difficult" to
resolve. (Ha'aretz May 24). And if those are hard for Powell
to contemplate, one can imagine the problems the administration
will face if it attempts to deal seriously with those that can
no longer be euphemistically described as settlements and have
become well-established and well-populated towns that the US
no longer considers to be illegal.
This raises a key question. Quite apart
from the failings inherent in the document, itself, weighted
as it is in Israel's favor, it is difficult, at this point, to
discern how much the effort of the Bush administration to pursue
the "road map" is one of substance as opposed to appearances.
Every American president, beginning with
Richard Nixon and the Rogers Plan, has attempted to get Israel
out of the territories it seized in 1967, and every president
since Jimmy Carter, has attempted to get Israel to halt the building
of Jewish settlements. Some of these efforts have been more serious
than others but all have failed. Given the events of the past
few days, the prospects of the current office holder do not seem
any better.
"What happened to all those nice
plans?" asked Israeli journalist and peace activist, Uri
Avnery, back during the first Bush's administration. (Ha'aretz,
March 6, 1991).
"Israel's governments have mobilized
the collective power of US Jewry - which dominates Congress and
the media to a large degree - against them. Faced by this vigorous
opposition, all the presidents, great and small, football players
and movie stars - folded one after another." And so it appears
to have happened once again.
By its efforts to be "more Bush
than Bush," Israel's officially registered lobby, the American-Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), appears to have gotten its
way. It wanted to appear to be supportive of the "road map,"
while working to derail it . It managed this trick by drawing
on a speech that Dubya gave last June 24, in which he expressed
such strong and unqualified support for Israel that some observers,
like Robert Fisk, jokingly suggested that it might have been
written by Sharon.
Unlike, the "road map," it
had no timetable and placed the onus on the Palestinians to institute
a new, democratic government and end all "terrorist acts"
before Israel was required to take a single step.
Rather than openly criticizing the "road
map," and be seen as in opposition both to a popular president
and to "peace," AIPAC decided to get the members of
both houses to sign a letter supporting the "road map"
as well as statements that Bush made in the June 24 speech.
Columnist Leonard Fein, apprised his
readers of this the May 2 Forward:
"For many weeks," he wrote,
"there's been a campaign to subvert the road map meaning,
in context, to subvert the prospect of resuming the peace process.
Since the president is on record as endorsing it, the subversion
has taken ... the form of end runs rather than direct attacks.
"Encouraged by AIPAC many members
of Congress have signed onto letters opposing any role for the
quartet and insisting that the Palestinians must fulfill all
their obligations in the security realm before the Israelis are
called upon to act."
AIPAC's actions were not a secret, except
that the mainstream media wasn't looking. Its web site reported
that, in the run-up to the release of the "road map"
letters were circulated in both houses, urging Bush to "reaffirm
his unshakable commitment to his June 24 principles" and
to remain focused on Palestinian performance rather setting any
timetable.
When it comes to Israel, Washington plays
host to the strangest of bed mates. The Senate letter, which
was signed by 88 of the 100 senators, was sponsored by the liberals'
darling, Barbara Boxer and one of the liberals' anathemas, Mitch
McConnell, along with Senators Dick Durbin (D)
and John Ensign (R).
The House letter, initiated by Republicans
Roy Blunt and Henry Hyde and Democrats Stenny Hoyer and Tom Lantos,
attracted 321 signatures.
The message to Bush, as described by
Nathan Guttman in Ha'aretz (May 19) was "cautious but clear.
The congressmen say they support the road map and want American
intervention in the peace process on basis of a two-state solution,
but warn the administration not to make too many demands on Israel
before the Palestinians do their part.
"Many are urging you [Bush] to short
circuit this process and to focus on timelines in achieving the
road map benchmarks," they wrote. "We believe you will
not be dissuaded and will focus instead on real performance."
The letter, writes Guttman, "demands
that the Palestinians dismantle the terrorist infrastructure,
restructure its security apparatus, and provide more transparency
and responsibility" on the part of the Palestine Authority.
Guttman gave credit for this enormous
support to AIPAC. Although the letters have no formal status
or legislative meaning, Guttman points out, "the fact that
so many congressmen, from both parties, signed them should make
it clear to the administration that Capitol Hill firmly supports
Israel and demands that the Palestinians fight terror."
Israel's friends in Congress have not
relied simply on a letter. "Language codifying the president's
policy was included in the FY03 Foreign Operations Appropriations
bill, passed as part of the Omnibus Appropriations bill signed
into law by the president in February.
The Conference of Presidents of Major
Jewish American Organizations which generally lobbies the Executive
Branch while AIPAC takes care of Congress, came out against the
road map, but supposedly does not want to appear to be disagreeing
with the president. Yet its own chair, Mortimer Zuckerman, owner
of the NY Daily News and the US News & World Report, blasted
the road map in an editorial in the magazine on March 17, headlining
it as "The Road Map to nowhere."
Zuckerman, soon to step down from his
chairmanship, is keeping up the attack. In an editorial to be
published in the June 2 edition of US News, he writes that, "Washington...
having gone to war to eliminate a rogue terrorist regime, can
hardly now support the creation of a new Palestinian terrorist
state, with its history of contacts with terrorist networks from
all over the world."
The conference's executive director,
Malcolm Hoenlein has been more subtle, telling the Washington
Post (April 30), that ,"We want to see a process begin that
has a real chance to succeed. We think the principles enunciated
by the president in his June 24 speech would do that, and there
are elements in the road map that contradict that."
Illustrating the divisions that exist
within the organized Jewish community, the same article reported
that 14 major Jewish philanthropists had voiced strong support
for the "road map."
These big donors, who included Edgar
M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in
a letter, to congressional leaders that the plan "provides
Israel with a distinct opportunity to escape the bloody status
quo" of the past 2 1/2 years.
"The people who signed this letter
are disturbed that the message the administration is getting
from other parts of the Jewish community is opposition to the
president's plan, when it should be enthusiastic support,"
said Jonathan Jacoby, with Americans for Peace Now, who helped
organize the letter's signers.
These "peaceniks" should not
be confused with supporters of the Palestinian cause. What the
differences among the majority of the Jewish community reflect
is a struggle that escalated during the Clinton administration
between liberal Zionists, such as Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross
whom the president brought into the State Department and into
the Middle East negotiating process, and the right-wing Zionists
represented most noticeably by the Zionist Association of America's
bulldog of a chair, Morton Klein and the dozen or more Jewish
neo-cons who brought us the Gulf War and who now engaged in stoking
the fires against Iran and Syria in Israel's behalf.
Klein, speaking in Berkeley in the first
week of May, repeated what has become his mantra on the issue.
"This road map is a disaster," he said. "It cannot
and will not work. It's further appeasing terrorism." (No.
California Jewish Bulletin, May 15)
The liberal wing of the Jewish community
is very willing to see the establishment of a truncated, demilitarized
Palestinian Bantustan under Israel's control and which would
be subservient to US interests as well, while the right-wing
backs Sharon's Likud and even further right parties and their
goal of a Greater Israel. At the moment, they are clearly in
the ascendancy in the US as they are in Israel.
The spate of suicide bombings that followed
the meeting of Sharon with Mohammed Abbas (Abu Mazen), led to
an escalation of warnings to Bush from both the Likudniks and
their Christian evangelical allies against pursuing the "road
map", including a group of Born Agains organized by former
White House aide Gary Bauer, president of American Values.
At the same time, supporters of the "road
map" were also upping their efforts, arguing that the latest
violence proved the urgency of steps to bring the two sides together.
Forty members of Congress submitted a letter to Bush last week
urging him to press forward with the "road map" while
separately, 100 major Democratic donors and activists, organized
by the Israel Policy Forum, signed a letter to the party's nine
presidential contenders urging them to back the president's plan.
The Forward's Ori Nir noted out (May
23) that "The flurry of pro- and anti-road map activity
pointed to a paradoxical dilemma facing the president as he plans
his next moves: His strongest opposition comes from political
allies whose enmity could cost him in 2004, while his strongest
support comes from liberal groups that are unlikely to reward
him politically for his efforts."
"These guys" - the pro-road
map liberals - "are not Bush's friends," said Dr. Mandell
Ganchrow, executive vice president of the hawkish Religious Zionists
of America, and head of his own pro-Israel political action committee..
He predicted that the White House would
pay more attention to the condemnations of the "road map"
that emerged from a gathering of right-wing Jewish and Christian
activists in Washington on May 18. Billed as the "Interfaith
Zionist Leadership Summit," the event drew about 400 participants
and was sponsored by Jewish and Christian groups that oppose
the creation of a Palestinian state.
And it matters not, that as Fein points
out, "the fact that the road map is plainly "frontloaded,"
demanding much more of the Palestinians than of the Israelis
in its early phases, [and that] the Palestinians have indicated
their acceptance of it while Prime Minister Sharon has interposed
14 specific objections."
And as Fein notes, "Sharon is hardly
alone: The Jewish gurus of this administration, Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, William Kristol and others along with Vice President
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who not long ago referred to the West
Bank as 'so-called occupied territories' oppose this and presumably
any reasonable alternative road map." Moreover, he adds,
"The heavies of AEI (American Enterprise Institute) [where
we find Perle again] oppose it."
In fact, by declaring that settlements
built illegally after March 2001 must be removed, the "road
map" implies that those built earlier are legitimate. By
calling for Israel to halt the killing of civilians, it affords
tacit approval for the continued assassination of whomever Israel
considers a "terrorist," while placing the Palestinian
Authority in charge of eliminating any armed resistance to the
continuing occupation.
Moreover, nothing is mentioned about
Israel's building of the massive wall that has already confiscated
yet more Palestinian land. That the questions of the right of
return of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem are
put off to the road map's last phase seems to indicate that the
"road map" was designed as a means to end the Intifada
and the notion of a Palestinian state of any dimensions emerging
at the end is little more than a
chimera.
This illusion has even been incorporated
into Congressional legislation. On May 16, the Forward, reported
that the House International Relations Committee had unanimously
approved an amendment to next year's State Department authorization
bill, promising direct American financial aid to a reformed,
peaceful Palestinian state once it is established.
The amendment, reportedly supported by
both AIPAC and Americans for Peace Now, ostensibly endorses Bush's
two-state approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and declares that "a stable and peaceful Palestinian state
is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for."
Declaring that "the United States
has an interest in a Middle East in which two states - Israel
and Palestine - will live side by side in peace and security,"
the bill, as reported by the Forward, calls on Israel to "take
concrete steps in support of the emergence of a viable, credible
Palestinian state."
It was introduced by Lantos and Gary
Ackerman of New York, two of the Sharon regime's strongest backers
in the House and Illinois's Henry Hyde, no slouch himself when
coddling Israeli interests.
Congressional staffers cited by the Forward
described the bill, expected to "easily sail through"
both houses of Congress, as an attempt to "codify"
Bush's Middle East speech of June 24, 2002, which set out conditions
for creation of a Palestinian state.
The bill's conditions, however, notes
the Forward, are more explicit than those in the speech.
It says Washington should recognize the
Palestinian state only after a new Palestinian leadership is
elected, after the Palestinians cease terrorism and incitement,
take counter-terrorism measures in full cooperation with Israel,
and ensure democracy and rule of law.
The enactment of the strict conditions
appeared to be a victory for Israel, wrote the Forward, which
also viewed the president's speech as being tougher on the Palestinians
than the road map.
The Christian Science Monitor (May 19)
suggested that Bush could use economic leverage on Israel to
accede to the road map's schedule. It pointed out that "Congress
acted last month to help the Israeli economy with a $1 billion
grant in military assistance and $9 billion in loan guarantees.
That's on top of the usual $2.7 billion in annual aid to Israel."
"The $1 billion grant was automatically
made available to Israel. It even allows $263 million of that
money to be used to buy Israeli military goods. No leverage there.
"But the loan guarantees, available
over three years, depend on a presidential determination that
Israel is following proper economic policies to restrain its
budget, shrink the public sector, and encourage the private sector.
Bush can, if he chooses, withhold portions of the loan if Israel
continues to spend money on the heavily subsidized Jewish settlements.
"Israel needs the loan guarantees
to cover its sizable budget deficit and help repay older Israeli
bonds."
Such pressure, however, isn't likely.
In the May 2 Forward, Ori Nir writes that, "American assurances
to Israel under the road map are far more extensive than have
been publicly disclosed."
"In a letter expressing understandings
about the road map, the United States guarantees that it, not
Europe or the United Nations, will oversee the monitoring of
Palestinian compliance with the plan on security matters. Senior
administration officials also have made a point of assuring Israel
and its American supporters in recent weeks that any significant
progress toward Palestinian statehood will depend on a cessation
of Palestinian terrorism."
What the article didn't mention but what
apparently was its source was a less publicized visit to Israel,
before that of Colin Powell, by National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice and Elliot Abrams, who, thanks
to Rice's influence, had been appointed
by Bush to be the NSC's Director of Near East and North African
Affairs.
On May 18, before Sharon's visit had
been canceled, the New York Post reported that Rice and Abrams
were part of a White House delegation that secretly visited Israel
a fortnight earlier to get the prime minister's views on the
"road map."
He couldn't have had a more receptive
audience. Abrams, of Iran-Contra infamy, is a long-time Likud
supporter. And while there, Rice told Yediot Aharanot that the
"security of Israel is the key to security of the world."
As if more was necessary, she added, among other things, that
she feels "a deep bond to Israel."
The three-day tour by the Americans was
described by Sharon as "the most serious White House team
to visit Israel in many years," and was intended to set
the stage for what would have his eighth meeting with Bush, during
which Sharon told the Post, he has enjoyed "the friendliest
and most fruitful relations the White House ever had with an
Israeli government."
A statement from Israel's Gush Shalom,
on May 18, presumably with input from Uri Avnery, noted that,"
In his time as Prime Minister, Sharon had already neatly disposed
of numerous international diplomatic proposals: the Mitchell
Report, the Tenet Paper and the Zinni Paper, the Saudi Initiative
- to name only the best known.
"Still, the 'road map' initially
seemed to tax his considerable talents: a paper bearing the combined
imprimatur of the US, EU, Russia and the UN, which had been at
the top of the diplomatic agenda for nearly a year, which was
formally launched with the personal sponsorship of the US President
fresh from victory in Iraq and which was immediately accepted
in its entirety and without reservations by the Palestinian side.
"Yet none of this seemed to deter
Sharon from industriously - and, as seems at the moment, successfully
- subverting and overturning that initiative, too."
As if to underscore Gush Shalom's statement,
an unidentified administration official was quoted in the New
York Times (May 21) as asking, "How many special envoys
have gone out there and had their reputations ruined.
Where are we going to find somebody to
do it when the chances are so poor?"
Jeffrey Blankfort is the former editor of the Middle East Labor
Bulletin and currently hosts radio programs on KZYX in Mendocino,
CA and KPOO in San Francisco. He can be reached at: jab@tucradio.org
Yesterday's
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