Why Bush's Israeli Policy Won't Work

"Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations with the placement of walls and fences," President Bush said in his otherwise defiant speech in Whitehall. With this sentence George W. Bush reassured his audience that American presidents may come and go but the competition to appease the Arabs with Israeli currency remains in tact. During the Cold War the main competitors were the US and the USSR. Today they are the US and the EU and a media which has come to view itself as the “second superpower.” This means that rather than improve her strategic position, Israeli concessions merely invite demands for additional concessions. The US tries to pacify the Arabs by blocking Israeli efforts to improve her strategic position and that leads her competitors to advocate steps which would worsen it. It was the failure to understand this dynamic which led Prime Minister Barak to try to improve Israeli world standing by exiting Lebanon and offering a generous settlement to the Palestinians. His gestures resulted in a bloody Intifada and a startling new wave of Arab and European anti-Semitism.

This was not the first time that Israeli attempts to achieve some peace and quite were rebuffed. A short examination of the Kennedy administration’s policy towards Israel is most instructive since in 1960 Israel had no settlements, territories, outpost or checkpoints. It was simply a small socialist state created by the UN whose neighbors had refused to accept that decision and openly threatened to annihilate her the moment they acquired the capacity to do so. They were led by the fiery Gammal Abd’l Nasser who was emboldened by the joint American-Soviet determination to save him from the strategic consequence of his mistakes during the 1956 Suez War. Suez not only undermined Washington’s relations with its principle allies but radicalized the Middle East. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown and Lebanon and Jordan teetered. Eisenhower ended up having to send troops to Lebanon in 1958. His Middle East policy was in shambles.

If Eisenhower’s bitter Middle Eastern experience did not suffice to get John Kennedy to alter the American Middle East policy, his party affiliation should have. Kennedy was a Democrat with a significant Jewish constituency. The Democratic Middle Eastern plank called for peace talks, an end to the (illegal) Arab economic boycott of Israel, “independence for all states” (including Israel), unrestricted use of the Suez Canal by all nations (the restrictions were illegal under international law and Israel was permitted to use them in the early fifties) and “resettlement of the Arab refugees in lands where there is room and opportunity for them (i.e., not in Israel).” It should be noted that millions of refugees in both Europe and Asia were settled in new lands after W.W. II. The Arab insistence of the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees in Israel proper (the West Bank was under Jordanian control and Gaza under Egyptian control) was extraordinary especially in light of the large number of refugees from Arab lands Israel was busy settling. Still, Israel was open to negotiation on that matter provided it is done in the context of peace negotiations which would necessarily include Arab recognition of its right to exist. The appeasers demanded that Israel repatriate the refugees simply as a gesture of good will.

Before he could make a credible run for president, Kennedy felt the need to reassure an important democratic constituency that was nervous about his father’s dubious pre-W.W.II. record of Nazi appeasement. So, he met with a group of Jewish leaders and upon hearing their concern about Israel’s wish for progress toward peace, he issued a statement promising “to waste no time” before using his authority “to call into conference the leaders of Israel and the Arab states to consider privately their common problems.” In a speech to the American Zionist Congress he even promised to convene a regional peace conference, and move toward mutually beneficial economic development. “The Middle East needs water, not war; tractors, not tanks – bread, not bombs”. Israel was cautiously delighted but, then as now, the Arab leadership considered any inclusion of Israel in the Middle East to be hate speech. Then, as now, economic development was the last priority of Arab tyrants.

“Time will judge between us and Mr. Kennedy,” wrote the Egyptian paper Al Jumhuriyya. But to Gammal Abd’l Nasser’s delight, soon after taking office, Kennedy immediately sent him a flattering personal letter. Nasser responded by asking the American president to set aside his campaign promises and put the Arab-Israeli conflict “in the refrigerator.” Nasser’s dream was to unite the Arab world under his leadership and having Israel as an enemy was useful for his purpose. In any case, despite the generous inflow of Soviet arms, his army was not yet ready. For Israel, this meant an unwanted, expensive arms race.

Kennedy immediately acquiesced. “Early in the Kennedy administration,” writes Dean Rusk, “the President and I decided we should not go into the region with some sort of an American ‘peace plan’ and try to sell it to both sides.” But Nasser wanted and got more. In December 1961 a group of African countries sponsored a UN resolution calling for direct peace talks between Arab states and Israel under UN auspices. It was called the Brazzaville resolution. The US not only failed to support the resolution but demanded that ISRAEL help undermine it. David Ben Gurion (whom Kennedy met in New York instead of Washington to spare Arab feelings) insisted that the UN should hear it. Myer Feldman succeeded in receiving from Golda Meir “a firm, secret commitment” not to push the resolution. Who was Myer Feldman? He was Kennedy’s Jewish liaison, the man Kennedy used to reassure American Jews that he was looking out for Israel while pressuring Israel do accede to American policy needs including cutting a deal to repatriate Arab refugees without Arab acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. Oh, yes. The United States was busy trying to sell an American plan to both sides; it was only the “peace plan” that was put “on ice.” What did Myer Feldman get for Israel? Defensive Hawk missiles. It was to be to be the beginning of a tradition. Israel could count on the US to provide her with the arms to defend herself if not to achieve peace.

What did Kennedy get for this betrayal of his promises and ideals? Not a thing. On July 10, 1961 Kennedy sent a note to Bundy demanding to know whose idea it was for him to send letters to the Middle Eastern Arab leaders. “The reaction was so sour I would like to know whose idea it was, what they hoped to accomplish and what they think we have now accomplished”. It prevented us from looking “hopelessly pro-Israel” was Dean Rusk’s answer. Perhaps so, but the result of the appeasement was increased Egyptian adventurism. Nasser sent troops to Yemen to help the revolutionary side and plotted to overthrow the Saudi monarchy. In 1963 it was Kennedy’s turn to send troops to the Middle East. This time it was called “operation Hard Surface” and its purpose was to protect the Saudi regime from Nasser. The mission was kept secret from the American people but not from the Arab people. The Egyptian media focused attention on the “entry of Jewish American soldiers” also known as the “enemies of God” into Islam’s holy land. This, like all other Egyptian anti-American vitriol, was ignored. Yes, Osama Bin Laden had a predecessor.

Aid to Egypt continued flowing and Kennedy never broke his promise to keep the Arab – Israeli conflict “in the refrigerator.”

The only difference between Bush’s demand that Israel not “prejudice” peace and Kennedy’s demand that it agree to keep the conflict “on ice” is in the word peace. The first president to use the word peace was Lyndon Johnson after the 1967 war. Kennedy told the Zionists of America that only “time will tell whether Israel will continue to exist.” But Johnson, too, insisted that Israel not “prejudice” the peace by creating a Palestinian entity in the West Bank and Gaza. During the 1973 war Israel was not permitted to “prejudice” the peace by withdrawing to the Sinai passes. Any Israeli attempt to change the status quo meets impeccable American opposition. The result is continued conflict and increased resentment of the people who suffer from the conflict. George W. Bush seems finally ready to end the American support for Middle Eastern tyrants. Isn’t it time he also end the failed freeze policy? After all, nothing will motivate the Palestinians to cut a peace deal with Israel more than the fear that the fence will end up representing the final borders between Israel and Palestine.