10/11/00 3:25 p.m.
Reject Moral Equivalence
A tip for W. on handling the Mideast.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department.

erhaps the most important test George W. Bush faces in tonight's debate, and indeed, in the remaining days of this presidential campaign is to persuade the American voter that he has the acumen and commitment to serve as a competent commander-in-chief.  He will doubtless have an opportunity to put these qualities on display when he is asked this evening what he would do about the crisis now engulfing the Middle East.

Gov.  Bush has, to this point, followed the politically defensive course.  He has supported the President's work "around the clock" to end the violence.  He has endorsed the administration's abstention on a U.N. resolution that implicitly condemned Israel for the excessive use of force against rampaging Palestinians.  And he has signaled that, if elected, he would pursue unchanged the Clinton-Gore policy of serving as the "honest broker" — favoring neither side in the Arab-Israeli dispute so that both will continue to accept our mediation.

While this stance may spare the GOP nominee some criticism in the short-run, it is not the stuff of which successful presidencies — or candidacies based on claims of leadership ability — are made.  After all, it has become increasingly apparent in recent days that this approach is inconsistent with U.S. interests, Israeli security, and the prospects for a genuine, durable peace in the Middle East.

Set aside for a moment the fact that it is morally repugnant to equate Israel, the victim of Palestinian attacks, with those perpetrating them.  The far more serious problem is that allowing such moral equivalency to continue to govern American policy will subject Israel to peril, perhaps even to the point where its very existence is put in jeopardy.

As a practical matter, the only hope for peace with security for Israel is if the Jewish State is strong enough to deny potential adversaries the "war option."  That option has been effectively foreclosed to the Arabs since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.  The danger is that, under intense pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration, Israel has made agreements — and has on offer still further territorial and other concessions — that threaten to resurrect it.

This is particularly worrisome insofar as the past two weeks' events have underscored the three-fold peril now facing Israel:

First, the mayhem lately unleashed by Palestinians at Yasser Arafat's urging is symptomatic of the true character and intentions of Israel's putative "partners for peace."  In fact, Arafat and his followers remain committed, not to peaceful coexistence with Israel, but to the realization of the "Strategy of Phases" that was adopted by the PLO's National Council during a meeting held in Cairo from June 1-8, 1974.

Reduced to its essence, this strategy replaced the previous policy of seeking nothing less than the immediate destruction of Israel with one that called for the realization of that outcome in stages.  The first phase was to be the creation of a small Palestinian state on territory secured from Israel via negotiation.  This territory would then be used to launch attacks on Israel that would "complete the liberation of the entire Palestinian soil."

It is indisputable that, in the years since the Oslo accords were signed, Arafat and his lieutenants have repeatedly affirmed to the Palestinian people in Arabic that this goal remains unchanged and is being advanced by the "peace process."  That has also been the message conveyed by the use by the Palestinian Authority (PA) of official maps which show "Palestine" to of not only all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the entirety of pre-1967 Israel, as well.

These incitements appear, among other places, in textbooks used by the young people now being sent out to fight the Israelis and, if at all possible, to get themselves wounded or killed in the process.  (According to the Jerusalem Post, "The Israel Defense Forces' Hebron area commander, Col. Noam Tivon, suggested [on October 5] that the Palestinian Authority is encouraging children to participate in clashes with the IDF by offering their families $300 per injury and $2,000 for anyone killed.")  These children are not martyrs.  They are the functional equivalent of barbaric human sacrifices.

Second, Israel's Arab nations are sniffing the wind, sensing the opportunity has finally arrived to complete the job of eliminating what many still call in their official propaganda "the Zionist entity." Unfortunately, this is not only true of Iraq, whose dictator Saddam Hussein has once again been talking up the idea of "ending Zionism."  Iran has been brandishing its weapon of mass destruction-capable Shahab 3 missile with sufficient range to reach Israel and encouraging its client organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad operating in PA controlled territory to resume terrorist attacks against Israel.

Syria has reportedly been mobilizing its own military; it is certainly behind attacks by Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas against Israeli territory and forces that resulted in the hostage-taking of three Israeli soldiers.  Even Egypt, the first Arab nation to make peace with the Jewish state, has been increasingly seen as poised to resume hostilities — thanks in no small measure to the infusion of advanced American arms provided Cairo in the name of lubricating the "peace process."

The third and perhaps most unsettling recent development, however, has been the violent embrace by many of Israel's Arab citizens of the Palestinian cause.  The fact that they apparently see themselves as only Arabs, not as Israelis, gives rise to a present danger of a Fifth Column in Israel's midst — with profound implications for the nature, if not actually the survival, of the Jewish State.

Even before the Arab Israelis' insurrection last week, the ticking time-bomb nature of the threat they pose was beginning to become evident. For example, in an op-ed published last June in the New York Times, Yoram Hazony, one of the most brilliant students of Zionism and strategic developments in the Mideast, warned:

A [worrisome] factor is the shift in the political mood of Israeli Arabs themselves, who make up roughly half of the Galilee's population. Over the past year, the Arab bloc in the Knesset has embarked on a course that appears intended to demonstrate hostility toward continued political coexistence with Jewish Israel. With leaders like Ahmed Tibi, a longtime Arafat adviser, Arab parliamentarians have called for establishing a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, ceding rights in part of the Sea of Galilee to Syria and demanding the "dejudaization" of the Israeli state, including changes in the Israeli flag and national anthem, the abolition of the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency (which promotes Jewish immigration and settlement) and the repeal of the Law of Return [which grants Jews automatic refuge and citizenship in Israel].

It is very much in the interest of these various actual or potential enemies of Israel that the latter's only powerful ally, the United States, be rendered unable or unwilling to come to the aid of the Jewish State.  The Arabs do not need the American government to align itself with them in order to effect a major change in what the Soviets used to call the "correlation of forces," perhaps, clearing the way for a renewed war option.  It is enough that the U.S. be rendered incapacitated — whether by fear of retaliatory Arab oil cut-offs or price-gouging, terrorist attacks on American citizens, embassies or other facilities or simply the prospect of being displaced as the main interlocutor in the "peace process."

For all these reasons, it will not be enough for George W. Bush to "me-too" Bill Clinton and Al Gore's moral equivalence on the Arab-Israel conflict.  The governor must stake out his own territory:  He should underscore the unique relationship the United States has with the Middle East's only democracy, Israel.  He should affirm America's commitment to support Israel in the face of growing dangers to the Jewish State from enemies at home and abroad.  And he should pledge that, if elected, he will eschew actions — at the negotiating table or elsewhere — that would have the effect of weakening Israel's ability to provide for its own defense.

Whether there is a lull in the fighting over the next few days or not, for the foregoing reasons, there is a high probability that the next president will be confronted with another Mideast war during his four-year term.  That threat will be minimized — and, if it nonetheless eventuates, its consequences for vital U.S. interests are likely to be best contained — if Israel is perceived as able and willing to protect its people and territory without our help.

For if the Jewish State is obliged to depend upon an "honest broker" to bail it out in an hour of need, it is very likely that Golda Meir's famous quip will come to pass: "By the time you get here, we won't be here."