Soccer Dad

The View from the Inauguration that Wasn’t

The Timeline of what could have been (via memeorandum ) is a ficitional history of what might have been.

I already critiqued that alternate history, but a while ago, I wrote my own fictional history of Al Gore's inauguration; not what the result would be, but the false hopes that hypothetically landed Al Gore in the White House on January 20, 2001. If President Clinton had been right about the Middle East Peace process, I have little doubt that we'd now be in the middle of Al Gore's second terms as president. But some of the players didn't quite play the same game that President Clinton was playing.

There was no toughness to President Clinton's foreign policy. Wishful thinking was substituted for policy. If Gore had been elected president we would have been treated to even more wishful thinking and the terror threat would have spread unchecked. (I don't doubt that a President Gore would have invaded Afghanistan; I wonder if he'd have attacked Iraq for breaching the terms of the 1991 ceasefire.) But I don't believe there'd have been a global war on terror. There's be a lot more appeasement than what we see (disappointingly) from President Bush.

The View from the Inauguration that Wasn’t

The cold dreary day contrasted with the behavior of the four men sitting next to each other. Their demeanor was warm and sunny; not wet and cold. They were Emile Lahoud, president of Lebanon; Bashar Assad, president of Syria; Yasser Arafat president of Palestine; and Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel. In a scene that was inconceivable just a year before, all four men seemed to enjoy each other’s company. This unexpected display of unity was a tribute to the clear eyed diplomacy of President Bill Clinton.

The men had gotten together to honor President Clinton’s successor, President Al Gore. Ignoring the brickbats of conservative critics and pro-Israel activists, President Clinton pressed forward to fulfill his vision of peace in the Middle East and brought that vision to fruition before the end of his term. The American public, grateful to its President, showed its approval by granting his Vice-President an overwhelming mandate. Governor George W. Bush of Texas, despite his fundraising acumen, was unable to compete with the Clinton administration’s unparalleled foreign policy success.

Before President Clinton was able to achieve his successes in solving the central issues Arab-Israeli conflict there was a need for Israelis to elect a leader who was amenable to the peace overtures from the Arab world. Toward this end President Clinton kept Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at arm’s length. While President Clinton didn’t interfere in the 1999 campaign between Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, he didn’t hide his distaste for ideological hardliner, Netanyahu. No doubt Clinton’s opposition to Netanyahu, contributed to the perception by the Israeli electorate that Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace that led to his eventual electoral defeat.

With Ehud Barak’s election as Prime Minister of Israel, Clinton set out to work with the moderate former general. The president coordinated moves with the Israeli prime minister to bring peace to the Middle East.

Encouraged by the movement made earlier in 2000 in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in talks between Israel and Syria, President Clinton put his prestige on the line and brought a peace proposal from Israel to Syrian President Hafez Assad in March, 2000. Partly impressed by President Clinton’s determination and partly because he feared being remembered as an obstructionist, the previously reluctant Assad accepted the terms that the president brought with him.1

A month later, with much fanfare, Israel and Syria signed a treaty on the White House lawn. President Assad was accompanied by his son, and designated successor, Bashar. Father and son returned to Syria wildly popular for their courageous peacemaking.

A month later Israel formally withdrew from virtually all of the Golan Heights. It wasn’t easy because many of the Jewish settlers in the Golan were reluctant to leave the occupied territory. But with a combination of financial incentives and the occasional use of force, Israel was able to achieve a quick and orderly withdrawal from the Golan.

Encouraged by his newfound popularity, President Assad arranged for the inauguration of his son in his lifetime. The elder Assad went to his grave peacefully, proud that he had recovered the Golan for the Syrian people and that he had assured an orderly transition to his son.

Once peace with Syria, Israel’s northeastern neighbor, was achieved, Prime Minister Barak methodically turned his attention to Israel’s northern neighbor.

Already with the signing of the Israeli-Syrian treaty, the elder Assad warned Hezbollah that attacks against Israel would no longer be tolerated. Hezbollah, as much a pawn of Iran as of Syria did not listen at first and continued sporadic mortar attacks against Israel.

When a mysterious car bomb killed Sheikh Nasrallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, the rest of the organization paid heed. The source of the blast was never definitively established, but it was widely suspected that Syria was behind it.

With Hezbollah defanged and irrelevant, Prime Minister Barak was able to conclude a deal with Lebanon where Hezbollah was disarmed and the Lebanese Army moved into southern Lebanon to ensure stability.2

Now that Israel’s two northern neighbors were officially at peace with the Jewish state, Prime Minister Barak had one final challenge: to conclude the long delayed final peace deal with the Palestinians.

Eager to lend American credibility to the prospective deal, President Clinton invited both Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Barak in late July to Camp David. After a week of intensive negotiations, Arafat, Barak and Clinton proudly announced to the world an agreement that gave the Palestinian Authority 97 percent of the occupied territories as well as some territories from within Israel’s 1948 borders to ensure the Palestinians that they would be able to form their state on the full amount of land they lost in 1967.

Other arrangements made allowed a limited number of Palestinian refugees from 1948 to rejoin their families inside Israel under the framework of “family reunification”, Israel agreed to pay reparations to those who could not return to their homes and sovereignty over Jerusalem would be split between the two countries.

For his part, Yasser Arafat conceded that he would produce a new covenant for his state that explicitly declared Israel’s right to exist, he would disarm the terror organizations under the PA’s jurisdiction, he would order the official Palestinian media to stop broadcasting calls for incitement against Israel and he’d reduce the size of the Palestinian police force to the limits set by previous agreements.

The negotiations were helped along by America’s moderate Arab allies, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia whose leaders urged Arafat to make the necessary concessions to assure that a peace deal would be completed at the summit.3

Two months after the successful conclusion of the Camp David talks, Yasser Arafat invited Israel’s opposition leader, Ariel Sharon for a walk across Haram Al-Sharif, the third holiest shrine in Islam, also known as the Temple Mount to Jews. When Sharon – Arafat’s implacable enemy and an opponent of peace – agreed to this historic walk, it deflated the right wing in Israel. The sight of the two former enemies walking together at perhaps the most contentious site in the Middle East without causing riots proved how strong the appeal of peace is.

With five weeks to go before the election and the Middle East its most peaceful in anyone’s memory there was little for the Republicans to do. President Clinton by his single minded pursuit of peace in the Middle East had permanently reshaped the American political landscape. Even many conservatives couldn’t deny his skill in solving some of the world’s most intractable problems and grudgingly voted for his Vice-President. Al Gore became the 43rd President of the United States with the greatest landslide in American history.

On January 20, 2001, the men whose countries benefited the most from President Clinton’s skillful diplomacy sat side by side and celebrated the inauguration of his successor.


1) Syrian presidential spokesman Joubran Kourieh said the two leaders had discussed "the obstacles which Israel put and is still putting in front of the resumption of talks".
US officials said that President Clinton was not disappointed with the outcome of the talks, and that he was glad to have had the opportunity to meet President Assad face-to-face. Source: “No breakthrough on Mid-East talks"; BBC, March 26, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/691534.stm

NASRALLAH: In the name of God, the Most Merciful. The concern of President Assad is the complete liberation of Syrian land. In Geneva, he did not get that natural demand, but there was an attempt to compromise, to give up only part of the land [which would be] to the advantage of the government of Israel because [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak's situation is difficult. Of course, this kind of thing was not on President Assad's mind. In Lebanon and Syria, I do not think that anyone accepts giving up an inch of Lebanese or Syrian land. Source: “Future Tense
Hizballah's secretary general Sheik Hassan Nasrallah discusses the prospects for peace in the Middle East” By SCOTT MACLEOD Beirut, Time Europe, April 3, 2000
http://www.time.com/time/europe/webonly/mideast/hizballah.html

But some wonder if Syria has really resigned itself to peace. Assad's refusal to return to the table after January's Israeli-Syrian peace talks in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, a subsequent wave of deadly violence in southern Lebanon, and a frosty March summit in Geneva with Clinton hardly seemed evidence of pacific intentions. Source: Being Hafiz al-Assad: Syria's Chilly but Consistent Peace Strategy; Henry Siegman, Foreign Affairs May/June 2000, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20000501facomment38/henry-siegman/being-hafiz-al-assad-syria-s-chilly-but-consistent-peace-strategy.html

2) The Government of Lebanon, in contrast, refrained from imposing its control on its sovereign territory by deploying its forces to the border with Israel. Instead, it left the border area under the control of Hizbullah.

Syria, which in effect controls Lebanon, supports Hizbullah, allows and facilitates the delivery of arms shipments from Iran to Hizbullah operatives through Syrian territory, allows Hizbullah to maintain training camps in the Beqa'a Valley, and allows (and encourages) this terrorist organization to operate against Israel. Source: The IDF attacked a Syrian target in Lebanon, The Embassy of Israel, April 16, 2001, http://www.embassyofisrael.org/articles/2001/April/2001041601.html

Chronological list of events along Israel's northern border in which Israeli civilians and/or soldiers were killed since the IDF pullout of Lebanon in May 2000.
In all, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed and 53 wounded; 6 civilians were killed and 14 wounded. Source: Incidents along Israel's northern border since May 2000, July 20, 2004, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Terrorism+from+Lebanon-+Hizbullah/Incidents%20along%20Israel-Lebanon%20border%20since%20May%202000

3) During the last few days, a number of Arab leaders like Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudia Arabia and President Mubarak have joined with Mr. Arafat's domestic opponents in Islamic militant movements to weigh in on the issue. They all but threatened Mr. Arafat with political excommunication if he accepted Prime Minister Ehud Barak's proposals for administrative control over parts of the city and access to -- but not sovereignty over -- the major Muslim sites. Source: “Arafat Keeps His Credibility Among Arabs, Experts Say,” by Susan Sachs, New York Times, July 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/072600mideast-cairo.html

My fictional history assumed that the conventional wisdom spouted in the media and accepted by the Clinton administration was valid. Of course it wasn't as the footnotes demonstrate.

Blogdigger tags: Alternate History, Middle East Peace Process, Election 2000.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 2, 2007 6:09 PM