The Middle East peace process: America should keep hands off.

AuthorHadar, Leon

NOTHING symbolized the U.S.'s role in the diplomatic efforts leading to the Sept. 13, 1993, signing of the accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization more than a cartoon that appeared in the Times of London. A photo-like drawing showed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with the PLO's Yasser Arafat, as Pres. Clinton--fixing his tie, combing his hair, smiling to the camera--forced himself in front of the pair, trying to upstage them. Washington's role in the drama that brought about the Israeli-PLO detente was marginal, confined to stage-managing the signing ceremony. A skillful White House team helped prepare the script for the show and choreographed its several acts--climaxing in the historical Rabin-Arafat handshake--with Clinton serving as a well-rehearsed and quite effective master of ceremonies.

Washington had been a spectator to the Middle Eastern diplomatic drama while low-key Norwegian diplomats played the key supporting roles. In fact, the Clinton Administration maintained major skepticism all along about the attempts by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to move toward direct PLO-Israeli negotiations. Only after it was faced with the fait accompli of the accord did the Administration give its blessing. Following the break-through in Oslo, which had caught Clinton and his advisers totally off-guard, self-serving leaks by Administration officials suggested that Washington was the driving force behind the secret negotiations. Similarly, the main goal of the Sept. 13 media event in the White House was to signal to the world that the Clinton Administration remained "in control" of the Middle Eastern peace process, that the handshake was indeed an integral part of American influence in that region.

To accentuate further its supposedly dominant role in the process, the Administration followed up the White House ceremony by leading the effort to mobilize international support for a financial aid package of approximately $2,000,000,000 to build up the economic infrastructure of the Palestinian entity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. The U.S. has pledged $500,000,000 over five years to the Palestinians, three-quarters in grants and one-quarter in loans and loan guarantees from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. In addition, the Administration has offered to serve as mediator between Israel and Syria and has indicated that the U.S. is willing to contribute troops to a UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights as part of an agreement between Jerusalem and Damascus.

The Administration's risky position has developed without public or Congressional debate. Responding to a question about whether the U.S. would send troops to the Golan to help implement an accord between Jerusalem and Damascus, Secretary of State Warren Christopher responded, "Absolutely."

Similarly, after the Hebron massacre--in which a radical Israeli settler killed more than 30 Muslims--Clinton urged the Israelis and the Palestinians to resume the peace talks in Washington and promised vigorous U.S. leadership of the negotiations. The heavy media coverage of the massacre and the ensuing statements by the Administration created the impression that the tragic event had a major impact on American interests and therefore required that Washington "do something." All of those proposals and moves, as well as highly publicized efforts by Christopher to mediate an Israeli-Syrian peace, could trigger high-level U.S. involvement in the Middle East, marking a return to the type of actions that characterized American policy in the region during the 1970s and 1980s.

The enthusiasm for Middle Eastern activism that has swept Washington in the wake of the Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement is based on erroneous lessons derived from the historic accord. Most important, it fails to consider the major changes that have occurred in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War and the way they have affected U.S. interests there. A statement by a Palestinian negotiator after the Hebron incident highlighted Washington's marginal position in the peace process. Referring to U.S. envoy Dennis Ross' effect on the negotiations, a PLO official stated, "He contributed nothing new," and went on to say that the American delegation that met with PLO officials in Tunis after the massacre "seemed mostly interested in getting in on what was happening."

The Oslo agreement reflected the emerging post-Cold War Middle East. Put simply, the Arab-Israeli conflict has ceased to be at the center of Middle Eastern, much less world, politics. With the end of the superpower rivalry, the continuing disintegration of the international oil cartel, and the severely reduced importance of Israel and the Arab world as strategic global players, the conflict has been "relocalized." It now is confined to the more limited dimensions of a Palestinian-Israeli struggle over territory, with minimal danger of escalation into a repetition of the 1973 war and the resulting confrontation between great powers. The Palestinian-Israeli situation is turning, therefore, into another of the many "tribal" conflicts of the post-Cold War era, not unlike the struggles between Azeris and Armenians or Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, the consequences of which have very little direct impact on American vital interests. U.S. policy should adapt to the changing reality of the new Middle East and encourage the localization of the Arab-Israeli conflict (more frequently known now as the "Arab-Israeli peace process") rather than provide incentives for its "re-internationalization."

As it has in other areas of foreign policy, the Clinton Administration's...

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