WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY Mike McCurry told reporters on April 7 that President Clinton and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu get along ” almost in a brotherly way.” Strange. Clinton, after all, did everything he could last year to keep Netanyahu from being elected. And as often as not, the Clinton administration is at odds with Netanyahu on Middle East questions. Yet McCurry had a point. The president regards Netanyahu as a contemporary. ” Clinton talks to Netanyahu just like he talks to Trent Lott,” says McCurry — directly, informally, familiarly. When Netanyahu visited the White House in February, he brought his wife and kids. When they conferred in April, Netanyahu asked about Clinton’s knee and got a long explanation about the injury.
The bonhomie doesn’t do Netanyahu (or Lott) any good. The president is hardly reluctant to criticize Netanyahu’s actions publicly. But Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, with whom Clinton is not chummy, is another matter. Clinton never upbraids him in public or brings up his unfulfilled commitments. On the contrary, when the president appeared with Arafat at the White House on March 3, he joined Arafat in zinging Netanyahu’s government for building the Hat Homa apartment complex in East Jerusalem. It destroys confidence in Israel’s intentions and “builds mistrust,” Clinton said. He had no critical words for Arafat. A week later, at a press conference with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Clinton took exception once more to Har Homa. Again, no unkind words about Palestinian misbehavior.
Meanwhile, after a bombing in Tel Aviv killed four Israelis on March 21, the State Department disputed Netanyahu’s contention that Arafat had given a ” green light” to terrorists. And while administration officials (not Clinton) said Arafat must do more to impede terrorism, they also noted approvingly his umpteenth promise to encourage followers to renounce violence. “This is a very strong and important message from Arafat,” said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. Now, however, a White House official concedes Arafat had at least “flashed an amber light,” and an unnamed official says Arafat shouldn’t have released a Hamas terrorist just prior to the bombing. Clinton’s line is: “We ought to have zero tolerance for terrorism.” He doesn’t get specific about who doesn’t have zero tolerance now. When Arafat visited the White House in March, neither Clinton nor administration aides made any public comment about Arafat’s shortcomings in complying with the Oslo accords.
The unequal treatment of Netanyahu and Arafat matters because it sets the moral terms of the ArabIsraeli struggle on an unfavorable basis for Israel and Netanyahu. It suggests that Israel is the chief roadblock to peace and puts the Jewish state on the defensive. It prompts reporters to ask questions like this one directed at Clinton in March: Given Netanyahu’s decision to build at Har Homa, “can you then blame the Palestinians if they should sort of revolt?” (Clinton responded that “it would be a terrible mistake for Palestinians to resort to violence.”) And it creates pressure for Netanyahu, not Arafat, to make concessions. The Clinton administration did just that last week when it asked Netanyahu to make confidence-building gestures toward Arafat (approve the Gaza airport, allow safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank, etc.). Netanyahu said he would consider these, but not immediately, since that would reward Palestinian terrorism. (Clinton, by the way, did not ask Netanyahu to stop construction at Har Homa.)
What makes Clinton so wary of criticizing Arafat? There are many explanations, none entirely believable. One is that criticizing Arafat would strengthen the hand of more militant Palestinian groups like Hamas. Private pressure, we are told, works better with Arafat. But if that is true, why does Arafat get testy when told privately he must strip the Palestinian charter of its pledge to destroy Israel, as Oslo requires? The truth is that if the administration were to criticize Arafat and acknowledge in public that he is at least partly responsible for the breakdown in peace talks, it would lose leverage — with Netanyahu.
One American leader is willing to attack Arafat. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said all the things Clinton won’t in a speech last week before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “It is clear that Arafat has been unwilling to control terror,” Gingrich said. “And frankly, when the Clinton- Gore administration treats with moral equivalence Palestinian violence and Israeli housing, they undermine Israel’s security. It is extraordinarily dangerous to always impose the burden on those who are your friends because you’re too timid to tell the truth to those who are your enemies.”
The Clinton administration is so far from Gingrich’s position that it is now pushing privately for Netanyahu to form a “unity” government with the dovish Labor party. In this way, Clinton and his team of Middle East negotiators could reunite with their favorite Israeli politicians despite the decision of the Israeli electorate to deny Labor a working majority.
Of course, Clinton can’t push the unity government idea publicly. “If we did, it’s dead,” says a White House official. The administration would be dismissed as “a shill for the Labor guys.” If the shoe fits . . .
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
