Soccer Dad

Israel's best friend in the white house

What do I make of a comment like this?

Nil? Oh right, I forgot. You don't value the efforts of people like Bill CLinton. Sure, he nearly sabatoged his career in pursuit of a lasting peace in the Middle East, but his wife (who also supports Israel at least as much as Laura the Librarian) once swapped some spit with Suhu Arafat so Fie on all that.

Clinton nearly sabotaged his career by dallying with Monica Lewinsky.

Exactly what political risk did Clinton take? Polls consistently showed that peacemaking was popular. Newspapers like the NY Times and Washington Post always consider American intervention essential to the peace process. For Clinton being involved with Mid-East peace was a no lose proposition.

Back in January 1997 the Israeli cabinet was voting on whether to withdraw Israeli troops from Chevron. There were problems with the deal. (Newly minted moderate Ariel Sharon, btw, voted against this deal.) The major question was who would get to determine the degree of further pullouts, Israel unilaterally or through negotiations.

While the cabinet was debating the issue they got a call from Dennis Ross (?) confirming the United States agreed that Israel should be allowed to decide the scope of further redeployments unilaterally. A few months later, after Netanyahu decided that Israel should re-deploy from 3-4% of Judea and Samaria; Arafat claimed that it wasn't enough. Whose side did Clinton take?

Why that of the most popular visitor to the White House from 1993-2001, unrepentant terrorist, Yasser Arafat. Instead of backing up a guarantee he made to obtain a favorable vote in an ally's government, Bill Clinton listened to Israel's enemy.

This argment of further re-deployments continued until the Wye Accords, when Netanyahu was finally forced to accept the American view. In the meantime (January 1998, to be precise) the Washington Post reported:

Having declined to find time for Netanyahu in November, even as their aircraft parked nose to tail at Los Angeles International Airport, Clinton is continuing what one administration official described as a deniable but obvious pattern of "snub diplomacy." Today's schedule includes no breaking of bread, no visit to Blair House, no joint public appearance -- no touch at all of the usual warmth that greets Israeli leaders on visits of state.

"We're treating him like the president of Bulgaria," who is arriving to a modest reception on Feb. 10, the official said. "Actually, I think {Clinton will go} jogging with the president of Bulgaria, so that's not fair."

Oh,yes the leaks against an Israeli leader, so common when Netanyahu was PM, have stopped since Bush became President. (To be fair to Clinton the leaks embarrassing an Israel leader was one of the hallmarks of the anti-Israel and probably antisemitic administration of Bush and Baker. It was a favored tool of Sec Baker and his stooge Thomas Friedman.)

In some ways, President Bush, of late, hasn't been much better. But he has yet to do anything that descends to the level of the Hebron betrayal.

And I know that the charge has been made that anti-Israel terror was worse under Bush than it ever was under Clinton. But terror doesn't appear out of nowhere. When Netanyahu (and Rabin to some degree, for that matter, IIRC) was warning that the PA wasn't keeping its end of the bargain and stockpiling arms, allowing terrorist groups to organize, Clinton was rejecting Israeli complaints. The means and opportunities for the violence starting in 2000 were allowed to go on when Clinton was President, he never challenged Arafat until it was too late.

One other point that should not be ignored is that Clinton ensured the second "intifada. In 1996 after Netanyahu opened up the Hashmonean tunnel Arafat organized violence against Israel. Who did Clinton blame? Netanyahu. That taught Arafat an important lesson: he could betray his signed commitments with impunity. He knew that he could get away with using violence in 2000, because he did in 1996. Don't believe me?

Then read "In a ruined country" by David Samuels from the September 2005 issue of the Atlantic. But read the whole thing, not just the parts that allow you to score points against those you disagree with.

Remember the famous phone call between Clinton and Arafat:

Just before Clinton left office, Arafat thanked him for all his efforts and told the president he was a great man. "'Mr Chairman,' I replied, 'I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.'"

Clinton wasn't doing it for Israel. He was doing it for a Nobel Prize. A lasting legacy. For Clinton there was no price he wasn't asking Israel to pay in order to achieve his legacy. The problem was, as he discovered, peace wasn't possible unless Israel had a partner for peace. And Israel didn't have one.

So please give examples. Show how Bush's record on Israel is worse. This isn't about Hillary and Suha - though the episode is telling. This is about Clinton's abysmal record on Israel. (And let's not let Clinton paint himself as such a wonder friend of Yitzchak Rabin, exerpt from Israeli Seizures of Arab-Owned Land Set Off Storm, CLYDE HABERMAN May 6, 1995):

While there is nothing new about Israel's seizure of Arab-owned land, usually to build houses for Jews, these latest expropriations touched off a political storm that has put more than a few large dents in the already-battered peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Perhaps more important, it has propelled Jerusalem's future to the top of the agenda, even though the issue is supposed to be among the last to be tackled by peace negotiators because it is so laden with religious, historical, political and emotional baggage.

Palestinian political leaders expressed outrage at the Israeli action, and some demanded that negotiations be broken off immediately. On Saturday the Arab League is scheduled to meet in Cairo, no doubt to condemn Israel.

France, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, is also upset, and has asked the United Nations Security Council to debate the matter. It has run into resistance from the Clinton Administration, but a State Department spokesman said this week that it is hard to see how Israel's action "can be helpful at this time in the negotiations."

A later article tells of how Israel used up a lot of political capital to get the U.S. to veto the subsequent Security Council condemnation.)

Technorati Tags: Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton,Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.