Don’t Go There
The U.S. has no business sending monitors to the Mideast.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently the president of the Center for Security Policy.
March 12, 2002 11:35 a.m.

f everything goes according to plan, retired general-turned-special emissary Anthony Zinni will arrive in Israel on Thursday with a dozen or so CIA agents in tow. The latter will have an assignment unprecedented in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: They will be charged with monitoring that conflict and whatever brief hiatus in or tempering of its violence that General Zinni is able to call a "ceasefire."

The reason such U.S. monitors (not to be confused with American peacekeeping forces that have been whiling away the past few decades far from any battle lines in the deserts of the Sinai, or the limited role previously played by CIA officials discussing joint Israeli-Palestinian security arrangements) have been spared heretofore insertion into the middle of the uprising (or Intifada) is simple: It is a seriously bad idea. Bad for the monitors themselves; bad for the United States's most important regional ally, Israel; and bad for American interests in the region.

Let's start with the monitors. The small number are too few to do much of anything but get the United States committed to putting in more. They are defenseless and likely to be high-value targets for those who wish to kill Americans out of blood lust (as with Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) or to inflame U.S. public opinion against Israel (who some will then blame for causing the monitors to be in harm's way in the first place).

Inevitably, there will be pressure to provide protection for the U.S. monitors. As their numbers increase when, not if, the violence escalates further around the West Bank, sizeable contingents of American military personnel will likely be assigned to assure the CIA folks' security.

Such a scenario would result in the realization of one of the Palestinians' longest-held goals — the "internationalization"of the conflict via the installation of foreign troops to run interference for them. If the experience in Lebanon — where multilateral forces were supposed to separate the Hezbollah guerrillas from the Israeli security zone and forces there — is any guide, the insertion of American troops will not prevent terrorist attacks from being launched against Israel. It will, however, create real impediments to Israel's ability to preempt and retaliate against the attackers, lest U.S. personnel get hurt in the crossfire.

In this fashion, Israel will be rendered less able to provide for her own security. As a de facto Palestinian state is carved out of areas behind American positions, the capacity for terror and even paramilitary operations against the Jews will grow. Lest there be any doubt about this trend, compare the levels of violence associated with the pre-Oslo "peace process" Intifada I (i.e., stones and the occasional suicide bomber) and that now being inflicted on Israel from territories under Palestinian Authority (PA) control in Intifada II (i.e., automatic weapons, deadly snipers, rockets, and virtually daily suicide bombings).

It is not in America's interests, either, to inflict such a fate on Israel. In 1934, Winston Churchill said "I cannot imagine a more dangerous policy" than one that deliberately weakens an ally to whom one's own security is tied. The United States' war on terrorism will suffer a serious reverse if, by our actions, we embolden or abet Palestinian ambitions to liberate not only the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the rest of the territory Yasser Arafat (to say nothing of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) considers "occupied": namely, all of pre-1967 Israel.

Arafat's intentions in this regards are in evidence wherever his official map of "Palestine" appears (e.g., in PA offices, on their "police" uniforms, at PA-sponsored cultural and social events and in the textbooks used to inculcate hatred for Israel in the next generation). On this map, there is no Israel. Should this ambition be realized — or even the conditions created which encourage the Arabs once again to believe they can wage war to achieve it — the United States would find its defense posture in the Middle East weakened and the security value of its alliances dangerously diminished.

It is not too late to pull back from the brink of this slippery slope. It is bad enough that the Bush administration has resumed its earlier effort — briefly suspended after the covert shipment to the PA of Iranian arms aboard the Karine A was discovered — to euchre Israel into making further political and, in due course, territorial concessions to Yasser Arafat. That mistake need not be further compounded by putting American monitors and, in due course, others into the line of fire, with all that portends. For the sake of the monitors themselves, Israel and the long-term U.S. interests in the region, the right answer should be "Hell no, they won't go."