Rewarding Arafat
Bush should have kept his campaign promise.

By Seth Gitell, political writer of the Boston Phoenix
June 13, 2001 8:05 a.m.

n pushing for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and rejecting the option of moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the Bush administration accepted a band-aid when it could have vied for a more comprehensive peace.

The conventional wisdom explaining the Bush administration’s actions this week is that they will help create a temporary calming period during which the Middle East peace process can be restored. The result will most likely be the opposite. Everyone hopes, of course, that this time, unlike the earlier lulls in violence, the stoppage will be permanent. But a simple equation demonstrates that it probably won’t. The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, rebuffed Ehud Barak’s offer of control of most of the West Bank and Gaza and shared control of Jerusalem, opting for war instead last fall. Now, after seven months of waging war, Arafat is finally getting Israel to stop growth in settlements. The Bush administration has, in effect, awarded Arafat for choosing violence. You don’t need to be a Wall Street lawyer to see the negotiating tactic here: When boxed in, unleash the street gangs to get what you need.

And what did Israel get for its commitment regarding the settlements? Arafat has once again committed himself to put a lid on Palestinian violence. This is the same commitment Arafat made at the original signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993, again at the signing of the Hebron Agreement, the Wye River Agreement, and numerous others. Yet when Arafat found that he could go no further, he allowed terrorism, sniping, and mortar fire to rain down upon Israel from within his midst — all the while continuing to train his children in a culture of violence.

A better approach for the Bush administration would have been to do is exactly what Bush promised to do when he took office — move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bush’s approach to Jerusalem feeds Arab hopes of once again control the Dome of the Rock, al-Aqsa, and the rest of the Holy City. Of course, no American embassy in Jerusalem is going to be located in part of Jerusalem that is under dispute. The embassy would most likely go in the section of Jerusalem that has been under Israel’s control since it became a country in 1948. This is where the seat of Israel’s government is as well as its parliament or Knesset. America’s failure to recognize this part of the city as Israel’s capital serves only to embolden Arafat and his cronies who hope to retake all of Jerusalem and those who wish to eliminate all of Israel altogether. With Arafat aware that he prompted America to pressure Israel into acquiescing to a settlement freeze, now he can turn his attention to Jerusalem.

Bush’s exercise of the so-called national-security waiver flies in the face both of American law and his own campaign vow. While the smarty-pants gang over at Foggy Bottom is convinced that Bush did the right thing, they’re doing so despite American law. In 1995, the House and Senate passed the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act with two-thirds majorities. That law states that America recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that construction on an embassy should have begun by May 31, 1999.

Bush’s instincts demonstrated that he was unwilling to follow that law. In July 1999 — while then working for the Forward — I reported that Bush had told a supporter of Israel at a fundraiser that he had no intention of moving the embassy. “I’m afraid that might screw up the peace process. I don’t want to screw up the peace process,” Bush said. The next week the Bush team corrected the then-governor’s statement, with the statement that Bush would “set the process in motion as soon as he becomes president.” Bush echoed that statement in a May 2000 speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, saying “as soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the U.S. ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital.”

With such concern for damaging the peace process in Washington, one would think someone would have considered what message rewarding Arafat for violence would send in the long run. That no one did bodes ill for the future.