THE BOMBING IN JERUSALEM’S open-air Mahane Yehuda market, which killed 13 Israelis and wounded 150 others, had the inadvertent effect of revealing just how confused the Clinton administration’s policy on the Middle East peace process really is. A week before the bombing, a foreign-policy adviser to a Senate Democrat active in Mideast affairs told me that the White House had given up on the Middle East and wanted to cut its political losses. American Jews who support the peace process begun in Oslo in 1993 had been urging the Clinton administration to commit itself anew to the issue, but the State Department had a readymade answer for them: Washington cannot want peace more than the parties themselves. Meanwhile, American Jews opposed to the peace process found their arguments about Yasser Arafat’s irresponsibility and criminality earning an increasingly sympathetic hearing among the GOP majority in both houses of Congress.
The administration has not known what to make of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose election in 1996 it actively sought to prevent, and so it has made efforts to establish relations with others in Netanyahu’s government — foreign minister David Levy and defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai. The latest object of U.S. affection is Israel’s president, Ezer Weizman, the quintessential man of the Israeli middle. Weizman pointedly attacked the Labor governments that preceded Netanyahu’s for moving too quickly and the Netanyahu government for moving haphazardly. Now Clinton wants Weizman to visit the White House, even though the presidency of Israel is a largely ceremonial post and it is increasingly clear that Netanyahu was, is, and will be the chief negotiator on these matters, no matter what the State Department wants.
The administration has had such a difficult time adapting to the new reality of Netanyahu that it didn’t really know what to do or say in the aftermath of the bombing. Despite the administration’s reputation for being the best friend Israel has ever had in Washington, and despite the unambiguously evil nature of the event itself, there was an almost mad rush to find something to accuse Israel of, even as spokesmen and officials condemned the terrorism. In her first major speech on the Middle East, delivered August 6 at the National Press Club, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did say forthrightly that Arafat would have to stop the terrorists, but offered some criticism of Netanyahu and his government as well: Israel is not sustaining “a credible environment for negotiation,” Albright said, when ” actions are being taken that seem to predetermine the outcome.”
And yet Albright announced a shift in American policy in the speech — a shift toward Netanyahu’s position. The Israeli prime minister has long advocated moving to so-called final status talks with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. That means putting everything on the table, including Palestinian statehood and the political future of Jerusalem, at once, with no preconditions save those already agreed to in the two treaties signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu’s support for moving directly to finalstatus talks shows the degree to which differences between him and the more moderate voices in the opposition Labor party have narrowed. It’s not only that the first Israeli official to propose the idea was Yossi Beilin, a leftist Labor official and a politician Israeli right-wingers love to hate. The fact is that before his election as prime minister, Netanyahu seemed dead set against the Oslo accords, but since assuming office he has moved steadily to the center. Netanyahu agreed to redeploy from most of Hebron, and he recently told his cabinet that he envisioned handing over 40 percent of the West Bank to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. The differences between the Netanyahu government and Labor under its new leader, Ehud Barak, are down to percentages of the West Bank, definitions of Palestinian sovereignty, and timing — which represents a remarkable degree of commonality in the overheated world of Israeli polltics. (Not that Netanyahu has gotten any credit here for shifting away from the right. When he announced his 40 percent plan, Thomas Friedman dismissed it in the New York Times, while the Washington Post pooh-poohed it as a sop to the Right!)
This convergence of views is not reflected in American Jewish public opinion, which has made it difficult for American politicians, who can’t figure out what being “pro-Israel” really means these days. Before Oslo, a pro-Israel politician was implacably opposed to Arafat and the PLO and supportive of Israeli military action to promote security and quash terrorism. But matters are no longer so simple after the Labor government decided to make Arafat a partner in its peace efforts.
Consider the case of Jim Saxton, a Republican from New Jersey who has led the fight to impose tighter restrictions on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. A hero to the Jews? Not exactly; the Jewish community in his district is divided between hawks and doves, and the doves believe financial support for the Palestinians is necessary for peace.
On the other hand, Saxton’s former House colleague and fellow New Jerseyan, Sen. Robert Torricelli, found himself in big trouble among the Jews of his state following a peace jaunt to Israel, Egypt, and Syria. Torricelli called for continuing U.S. aid to the Palestinians after eliciting a commitment from Arafat to “commute” the death sentence imposed on Arabs convicted of selling land to Jews. Some commitment: Most of the “accused” were summarily executed gangland style during a month-long spree without ever being indicted, let alone receiving a trial and having a sentence passed.
Clinton, his supporters note, won colossal majorities of the Jewish vote in both 1992 and 1996. But the officials in his government responsible for Middle East policy are growing increasingly controversial. Matters may come to a head with the nomination of Martin Indyk, currently U.S. ambassador to Israel, to be the new assistant secretary of state in charge of the Middle East. The Zionist Organization of America is actively opposing Indyk’s confirmation. The Jewish War Veterans wrote an anti-Indyk letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, who said he would keep their points in mind during Indyk’s hearings. Even the New Republic weighed in with what amounted to a call to Helms to reject the Indyk nomination. The administration may have wanted to cut its losses in the Middle East, but with Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians back on the front pages, it looks like there will be no escape.
David Twersky is editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News.
