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It
is, of course, an unshakable axiom of U.S. policy toward
Israel that none of the standards normal for every other
state apply to it. Night after night people see on their
tv screens Israeli soldiers shooting at people throwing
stones. Yet, during last week’s presidential debate,
Al Gore announced: "Israel should feel absolutely secure
about one thing: Our bonds with Israel are larger than agreements
or disagreements on some details of diplomatic initiatives.
They are historic, they are strong, and they are enduring."
George W. Bush echoed him: "I want everybody to know,
should I be the president, Israel’s going to be our
friend. I’m going to stand by Israel." No criticism,
not even the mildest reproof, for Israel. Neither man was
in any doubt about whom to blame for the violence. "We
need to insist that Arafat send out instructions to halt
some of the provocative acts of violence that have been
going on," Gore warned. Bush again echoed him: "Like
the Vice President, I call on Chairman Arafat to have his
people pull back to make the peace."
Israeli
violence is invariably taken to be a response to "provocative
acts." Israel’s reasonableness and readiness to
compromise are beyond question. In that same debate, Bush
and Gore both defended last year’s bombing of Yugoslavia,
carried out, allegedly, to halt the excessive use of force
by Serbs in Kosovo. Yet Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. Israel,
on the other hand, uses guns, helicopter gunships and missiles
on lands it conquered in the 1967 war and occupied ever
since in defiance of innumerable UN Security Council resolutions
demanding that they be surrendered. The Israelis are an
occupying army suppressing a rebellion by an indigenous
population that does not want them there. Yet the U.S. could
not even bring itself to support the Oct. 7 UN Security
Council Resolution 1322, which imposes no sanctions and
exacts no penalties on Israel. It merely "condemns
acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force
against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human
life." And – horror! – the resolution stresses
the importance of "establishing a mechanism for a speedy
and objective inquiry into the tragic events of the last
few days."
Israel
recalled its ambassador to Austria when its voters had the
temerity to vote in large numbers for the party of Jorg
Haider. But it is outrageous that Israel should have to
endure the indignity of anyone other than its noisy American
champions having any say in how it conducts itself in occupied
lands. America’s refusal to veto the UN’s extremely
mild rebuke, needless to say, provoked fulminations in all
the predictable quarters. The "one-side condemnation
of Israel is shameful and ignores the reality of what’s
happening in the Mideast," Hillary Clinton fraudulently
fumed. Clinton, according to Marty Peretz, "wouldn’t
shoulder the burden of a truthful veto. Clinton’s much-vaunted
love for Israel, it turns out, was just another piece of
theater, and in this real-life drama he now declares himself
neutral. Well, shalom, chaver… Ours, then, is the most
spineless of great powers."
Israel
has made it a policy to ignore United Nations resolutions.
The most famous one, UN Security Council Resolution 242,
passed just after the Six Day War, talked of the "inadmissibility
of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work
for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the
area can live in security." It demanded the "withdrawal
of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the
recent conflict." Israel had to withdraw from the West
Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Thirty-three years have passed
and Israel has yet to comply. Subsequent UN resolutions
urged Israel to cease building Jewish settlements on conquered
lands. Israel consistently ignored them, without suffering
any adverse consequences in the United States. It was easy
to pull this off during the Cold War. The UN could be dismissed
as a hotbed of totalitarians. That 242 had been sponsored
by that notorious Soviet client-state, Great Britain, was
safely ignored.
Nearly
100 Palestinian and Israeli Arabs are dead as I write. Clearly,
they are to blame for their sorry plight. The Israelis had
gone the extra mile for the sake of peace, while the Palestinians
refused to compromise. At Camp David in July, Ehud Barak
was hailed for his courage. He offered "peace terms
of breathtaking generosity," in the words of Charles
Krauthammer. This "generosity" amounted to allowing
the Palestinians to run 90 percent of their own land on
the West Bank. In addition, he offered to transfer some
of Jerusalem’s Arab residential areas to Palestinian
control. He rejected Palestinian sovereignty over the Old
City and its religious sites. Israel would continue to exercise
sovereignty over Temple Mount, and hence over the al-Aqsa
mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. The illegal Jewish
settlements on Arab lands would stay. There would be no
return of refugees. And Jewish expansion into Arab East
Jerusalem would continue. And in return for these concessions,
what would the Palestinians get? Israeli recognition of
a Palestinian "state" – one that would in fact
be nothing more than an Israeli protectorate and a source
of cheap labor.
This
was the staggeringly generous offer that Arafat has been
widely attacked in the U.S. media for rejecting. Yet it
is Arafat whose stance is in accordance with international
law. The strength of Palestinian feeling would suggest that
Arafat could not accept the miserable deal on offer at Camp
David even if he had wanted to. The absurdity of the U.S.
pretense of being the "honest broker" became apparent
after the breakdown of Camp David. Clinton blamed the failure
on Arafat and threatened to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
The bombing of the USS Cole is the inevitable consequence
of Clinton’s recklessness.
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