Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 1989, Page 6, 27

Congress

A "Big One" That Could Change U.S.-Israel Relations

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that it is the sense of the Congress that Israel should take immediate steps to reopen schools in the West Bank."

(House Concurrent Resolution 124, introduced by Representative Howard Nielson

[R-UT] May 16, 1989)

When cups start to rattle, chandeliers swing, and waves slosh across the hot tub, startled Californians ask themselves, "Is this the big one?" That's the monster earthquake that occurs at least once a century and moves the Golden State a few feet north. Someday, Americans who live in less-favored climes fantasize, instead of just leaving the rest of the country behind, a "big one" might drop part of California into the Pacific.

In late May, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) thought it heard cups rattling when Howard Nielson, a genial Republican representative from Utah with a PhD from Stanford University, introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution "expressing the sense of the Congress that Israel should take immediate steps to reopen schools in the West Bank."

Nielson is a Mormon educator who participated in an economic reseach project in Jordan in 1965-66 and taught in Lebanon at the American University of Beirut during the 1969-70 academic year. He referred in his resolution to three Israeli government closure orders dated February and July 1988 and January 1989 which shut down West Bank public, private and UN schools from kindergartens to universities "until further notice." His motion seemed to noncontroversial that one freshman congressman asked an assistant, "Who could oppose it?"

"AIPAC, for one," said his aide.

"Oh, yes," said the congressman. "They oppose everything."

In fact, AIPAC lobbyists were all over the Hill in force to oppose the Nielson amendment. It had come on the heels of an angry comment by Chairman David Obey (D-WI) of the House of Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations that he was tired of hearing about Israeli soldiers shooting children in the back and didn't want to give Israel another dime until that stopped.

Worse, it had followed a Capitol hill luncheon in which Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir complained that US press coverage was depicting Israel's victims as "innocents" instead of "hardened terrorists." When Senator John Chafee (R-RI) tried to hand him a list of children aged 10 to 12 killed by Israeli bullets, the Israeli minister waved it away. The gesture infuriated Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, whose pro-Israel record up to then was 100 percent, Israel's failure to "get its act together," Dole warned Shamir at the luncheon, was leading to a crisis with the US.

After all that, AIPAC strategists reasoned, the Nielson resolution might indeed be the "big one" that could sever Israel from its comfortable dependence upon a complaisant Congress, which, whatever the private misgivings of its members, had continued to provide Israel the aid that made possible military occupation, West Bank settlements, and other ingredients of the "Greater Israel" dream the Bush administration has called upon Shamir to abandon.

Critics of Israel have long believed that Congress can shock Israeli hardliners back to reality only by such an astonishment or by putting strings on US aid. Spearheaded by the National Association of Arab Americans, educators, Protestant and Catholic clergy, representatives of Jewish peace groups, Washington representatives of education, religious and civic groups, and grassroots activists asked their representatives to support the resolution.

The number of co-sponsors grew to 27, 19 Democrats and 8 Republicans, well beyond the number of Black Caucus members who, because they come from "safe" districts, can defy AIPAC wishes.

More pointedly, sponsors offered the Nielson initiative as an amendment to the foreign aid bill, which provides Israel the annual $3 billion military and economic subsidy without which it could not continue the military occupation.

Arguing against the legislation, Israel's lobbyists called West Bank schools focal points of the intifada. Proponents of the resolution pointed that if this were the real concern, Israel would not have banned instruction in churches, mosques, office buildings and even private homes. Even Israeli or Palestinian teachers offering private instruction to Christian or Muslim students from the occupied territories are subject to arrest. This, they maintained, demonstrates that the real purpose of the school closures is to add to pressures upon Palestinians, in whose culture education is extremely important, to end the intifada.

As momentum for and against the resolution grew, developments within the Israeli government, and continued violence, made the outcome increasingly critical.

In a commencement address in June, former President Jimmy Carter threw out a challenge: "All of the participants in the Middle East dispute are ready to go to an international conference except the leaders of Israel... We need a persistent effort by President Bush and Secretary Baker toward world peace."

With Shamir's election plan gutted by his own Likud Party, and the ruling government coalition being gutted by its Labor Coalition members, the ball is back in the Bush-Baker court. It appears there will be no progress towards peace in the first Bush administration unless it abandons its opposition to an international Middle East peace conference. Bush might do so if he received an indication that a majority in Congress would back him, and put strings on US aid, if necessary, to get Israel to the peace table.

That indication could come via the Nielson resolution. Or the next one down the line. Anything that aligns a Democratic Congress with a Republican administration's peace initiative will certainly be "the big one."

LETTER FROM 95 SENATORS

In an action that even from a month's hindsight looks uniquely misdirected, 95 Senators signed a letter in mid-June to Secretary Baker calling upon him to "strongly and publicly endorse" Prime Minister Shamir's plan for elections in the occupied territories. The letter was cosponsored by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) (who received a staggering $200,050 from pro-Israel political action committees for his 1988 election campaign), and Senator Rudolph Boschwitz (D-MN) (who has received $32,300 from pro-Israel PAC's during and since his last election campaign in 1984).

A spokesman for Lautenberg said the letter was drafted because the senator was "disturbed by the Baker speech" to the AIPAC convention in May calling upon Shamir to "stop" West Bank settlements and abandon the dream of "Greater Israel."

In fact the letter was suggested by the Israeli Embassy in Washington and only lukewarmly supported by AIPAC lobbyists, who were probably aware of how quickly Israelis themselves would dimember any serious West Bank election plan.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Yossi Gal, however, said the letter by 95 senators provided "quite an answer" for those who say "the US Congress is not with us anymore."

Baker, no stranger to Orwellian "news-speak," let it be known through State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler that he was "very pleased and welcomed the letter" since it was asking "nothing more than what the secretary has done" in "urging all of us to give this election proposal serious consideration."

The five senators who didn't sign the Israeli-initiated letter were Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), John H. Chafee (R-RI), Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR), Ernest F. Hollings (R-SC) and Malcolm Wallop (R-WY).

INVISIBLE PLUMS FOR ISRAEL

Two congressmen from California's smog belt are receiving warm praise in the Jewish national press this month for working effectively in the shadows to extract more taxpayer benefits for Israel than those provided in the $3 billion Congress plans to give Israel for the 1990 fiscal year.

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), who has received $19,500 in pro-Israel PAC contributions during the past three elections, secured renewed funding for a 10-year US-Israeli-Eqyptian cooperation project. It can best be described as Waxman's personal project to reward Egypt with US funds for keeping the peace with Israel.

Representative Howard Berman (D-CA), whose district encompasses much of Southern California's film industry, secured more than $8 million for three pet programs. These included $5 million for the Cooperative Development Program, which funds Israeli projects in developing nations; $2.5 million for the US-Israeli Cooperative Development Program which uses US AID money to bring together Israeli and Third World scientists for agricultural and health programs; and $600,000 in US AID money for a program by the Center for Foreign Policy Options in Los Angeles to bring black South Africans to Israel for leadership training.

Thirty million years ago, during the Miocene era, the Los Angeles basin, which includes both Waxman's and Berman's congressional districts, was under water. If the "big one" again submerges their districts, savings to US taxpayers could be appreciable.