Wall Street Journal
July 12, 2000
What Price for Clinton's Legacy?
By Seth Lipsky, a Journal contributing editor.
In August 1992 President Bush, about to go into a general
election against Bill Clinton, invited Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin of Israel for a visit at Kennebunkport. When it was over
Mr. Bush rushed back to Washington and called in the editors of
some American Jewish newspapers, of which I was one. Mr. Bush
was asked whether he had given any thought to making free-market
economic reform in Israel a higher priority than the peace
process. "I'd have to cop out on that," he replied.
He was then asked: "Do you see any irony in the fact that the
administration you seem to be most comfortable with in Israel is,
in effect, a center-left, Clinton-type administration, and the
one you've rejected" -- this was a reference to the government of
Yitzhak Shamir -- "is, in effect, a center-right administration
in Israel?"
Reckless Meddling
Mr. Bush sort of chuckled and then insisted he hadn't rejected
any administration in Israel.
He went on, of course, to lose to Mr. Clinton.
President Clinton has, much more recklessly than any of his
predecessors, taken to meddling directly in Israel's elections.
After Rabin was assassinated, Mr. Clinton threw his
administration openly into the campaign of his successor, Shimon
Peres. Israel's voters spurned the effort, elevating a
conservative, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Clinton and Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright proceeded to badger and undercut Mr.
Netanyahu throughout his term in an effort to force him to
compromise more than he felt was prudent.
When Ehud Barak made his own run for prime minister, Mr. Clinton
shed all but formal pretense of evenhandedness. Mr. Barak's
campaign was crafted by Mr. Clinton's own operatives, Stanley
Greenberg, Robert Shrum and James Carville.
Now there is a view in the Jewish community that what Camp David
II is really about is payback. The concern grows from the fact
that Israelis are deeply divided over the wisdom of the Oslo
peace process. The Palestinian Arab leadership is openly viewing
the negotiations as but one stage in a long war to annihilate the
Jewish state, and those most in need of a deal at Camp David are
Mr. Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and Senate candidate Hillary
Clinton.
This view was articulated most pointedly in a posting on the
National Review Web site by Seth Gitell, one of my former
colleagues on the Jewish Forward newspaper. It is disputed by
those who point out that Mr. Barak himself was the principal
advocate of the summit. But Mr. Gitell likens Mr. Barak to a
long list of those "who thought they could get something out of
the president and ended up getting used by him instead."
One got a bit of a taste of this at the last big meeting to take
place between the Israelis and the Palestinian Arabs under the
hospitality of Mr. Clinton, namely the summit at the Wye River
Plantation in the fall of 1998. Mr. Netanyahu was still Israel's
prime minister. Mr. Clinton helped clinch a deal there by
promising to review the case of Jonathan Pollard, who is serving
a life sentence for spying against America, and by promising $1.9
billion in new foreign aid to underwrite the concessions the
Israelis were asked to make.
No sooner had the deal been struck than it emerged that Mr.
Clinton had neglected to nail down a Pollard deal with the
director of central intelligence, George Tenet (who reportedly
threatened to quit over the matter), or a funding deal with a key
congressman, Rep. Sonny Callahan, the Alabama Republican who
chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that deals with
foreign aid.
When Congress balked at the Wye River aid package, Israel's most
famous politician, Natan Sharansky, went up to Capitol Hill to
pay a call on Mr. Callahan. When the former prisoner of Zion
began to tell Mr. Callahan that it was important for America to
keep the commitments it had made at Wye, as Mr. Sharansky later
related somewhat ruefully to Ira Stoll of the Jewish Forward, Mr.
Callahan hit the roof. "What commitments?" Mr. Callahan asked.
"No one ever picked up the phone and asked me."
Yesterday the New York Times waited until the last paragraph of
an 1,800-word dispatch to drop on its readers the fact that Mr.
Arafat's chief economic adviser, Mohammed Rachid, was saying the
Palestinian Arabs would ask the Americans for $40 billion, much
of it for refugee assistance.
When I read the $40 billion figure, I called Mr. Callahan and
asked him what he made of it. He said he'd heard all kinds of
dollar amounts, starting at $15 billion and going all the way to
$150 billion, depending on whether one threw in a possible deal
between the Israelis and the Syrians.
He demurred on the question of whether anyone ought to be
preclearing these amounts with the Republican leadership in the
House. But he warned against any illusion that there's going to
be an endless pot of dollars available to underwrite Camp David
II. He stressed that any aid would have to be tied to specific
needs, like identifiable defense costs and refugee resettlement
requirements. And he warned the president against issuing
promises of aid without reference to specifics costs, as he had
done at Wye. A deal at Camp David may well be, Mr. Callahan
said, "crucial to the president's historical account of his
term." But "I don't view this as an obligation of America, even
though the president does."
A Legitimate Leader
Lest all this sounds too cynical, it needs to be said that Mr.
Barak is a legitimate leader. He won his mandate in a real
election, freely debated. He has vowed to put any deal to a
referendum and to the Knesset, Israel's parliament. But there is
still the sense that the political pressure for a deal has the
tendency to make people say and do foolish things.
Speaking to two reporters yesterday, Mr. Barak's minister for
diaspora affairs, Michael Melchior, was asked specifically about
the problem that Mr. Arafat is functioning without a democratic
mandate crafted in free elections. "I don't think we will ever
have a more representative Palestinian leader," Mr. Melchior
replied.
He was asked whether he really wanted to say that about a leader
whose regime jails its opposition or worse and does not allow a
free press. He stuck to the point, underscoring the reason why a
lot of us would feel a lot better about what is happening at Camp
David had the American administration kept its hands off the
Israeli election in the first place.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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