NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9657

Text File | 1992-12-29 | 11.4 KB | 232 lines

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Letter to Clinton re: Israel
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{From: THE WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, December 1992}
A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT-ELECT FROM AN AMERICAN JEWISH SUPPORTER
OF U.S. PRESSURE FOR LAND FOR PEACE.

Dear President Clinton:

   Last November more than 80 percent of Jewish voters cast their
ballots for you. I happily contributed to that lopsided figure
but urge you not to be misled by it. Your unqualified support for
Israel was not a deciding factor. Contrary to what some pro-
Israel lobbyists would have you believe, Jews are not single-
issue voters. We worry about jobs, health care, the environment,
and personal and religious freedom. Like most other Americans we
supported you for a variety of reasons.

   Many of us are traditional liberals, who were drawn by your
pledge to bring Americans together and end the divisiveness of
the Reagan and Bush administrations. We feared the Republican
Party platform's promise of intrusion into our personal and
religious lives and its narrow interpretation of "family values."
We believed you and Mrs. Clinton would bring humanity back to the
White house with your concern for the millions of Americans who
suffer from inadequate health care, housing and education.

   We wanted an end to the kind of government that wages covert
war in defiance of Congress and the Constitution, and that
secretly arms dictators. We hoped that you would no longer regard
the Mideast simply as a geopolitical arena and a lucrative market
for U.S. arms. We hoped that your administration would make human
rights a cornerstone of American foreign policy.

   In addition to sharing these concerns virtually all Jewish
Americans want to see Israel survive as a secure and independent
state, at peace with its neighbors. But here our unanimity ends.
Our support for the state of Israel should not be interpreted as
support for the policies of its government.

   Despite the claims of leading Jewish organiations, Jewish
Americans are by no means united in their views on the Israeli
government's continued occupation of neighboring territory and
its treatment of the Palestinians. Too often the organizations
that purport to speak for all Jews on these issues are less
concerned with finding a just solution to the Middle East
conflict than with security unconditional U.S. aid for whatever
Israeli government happens to be in office. They represent only
one segment of the Jewish community. I hope that as president you
will listen to other voices as well.

   Last spring, for instance, while the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was lobbying strenuously for $10
billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel without the requirement
of a settlement freeze called for by President Bush, polls showed
that more than 60 percent of Jewish Americans (and 57 percent of
Israeli Jews) favored such a freeeze as a condition for the
guarantees and nearly 70 percent approved the statement, "Israel
should trade some land in the territories" in exchange for peace.
Meanwhile, many of us were working through such organizations as
the Jewish Peace Lobby, New Jewish Agenda, Friends of Yes Gvul,
and the International Jewish Peace Union in support of moderate
Israelis and Palestinians who believe that Israel's survival as a
democracy depends on its withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.

   Their fundamental premise, which I hope you will adopt as your
own, is that ending the Middle East conflict is not a zero-sum
game. There cannot be a winner and a loser, only winners or
losers. Palestinians and Israelis must find a mutually acceptable
way to live together in peace or they both may eventually perish.
Moderates on both sides have long agreed that a peaceful future
for Israelis and Palestinians requires a settlement that
recognizes the Palestinians' right to an independent state and
guarantees secure borders for both peoples.

   As president of the United States, you can play a crucial role
in bringing about such a peace. The peace talks that began with
such fanfare in Madrid a year and a half ago are at a standstill
and will remain so without your intervention. The huge disparity
in strength between the two sides makes it almost inevitable that
Israel will refuse to grant concession to the Palestinians unless
it is pressured to do so. Meanwhile, as negotiations produce no
results and the hardships under occupation remain severe, more
and more Palestinians are becoming disillusioned with the peace
process. If the moderates fail and are supplanted by extremists
there may soon be no one for Israel to negotiate with.

   The cruel irony of this situation is that the longer their
hopes are deferred, the more difficult it becomes for the
Palestinians to maintain unity. Hard-liners in Israel and the
U.S. then point to the resulting dissension as evidence that the
Palestinians are incapable of self-government.

The problem is exacerbated because neither the U.S. nor Israel
will talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the only
organization that can legitimately claim to speak for the
Palestinians). (In an election at Bir Zeit University last fall
that was seen as an indication of popular sentiment on the West
Bank, PLO supporters overwhelmingly defeated Islamic
fundamentalist.) By re-establishing contact with the PLO you
would not only help speed up the negotiating process but send a
signal that the U.S. intendes to act, at long last, as an
evenhanded arbiter in that process.

   U.S. recognition of the PLO would also help to end Israel's
interference in the choice of Palestinian negotiators--a
privilege that is unprecedented in the history of internaitonal
peace negotiations and has caused unnecessary delays and
disruption. Last fall, for instance, the Israeli delgation walked
out of international talks on refugees because they objected to
the Palestinian representative, Dr. Muhammad Hallaj. He is a
distinguished political scientist who has lectured and taught at
major American universities since receiving his Ph.D at the
University of Florida in 1956. The Israelis objected to him
because, like Dr. Edward Said, who holds an endowed chair at
Columbia, Hallaj was a member of the Palestine National Council.
The episode cast serious doubt on Israel's sincerity in
negotiating the refugee issue.

   As an impartial facilitator of peace talks, you will be in a
position not only to discourage such delaying tactics but also to
help end the violence that continues to plague the occupied
territories. You can help persuade Palestinian and Lebanese
militants that peace talsk will bring an eventual end to the
occupation, but only if Israel can be assured of secure borders.
At the same time you can pressure Israel to stop torturing
Palestinian prisoners, disband the roving death squads, end the
bombing of southern Lebanaon, and release the thousands of
political prisoners now being held in preventive detention. These
abuses serve only to increase bitterness and make reconciliation
harder to achieve.

   Amnesty Internatinal and other human rights groups have fully
documented Israeli human rights violations. Yet the U.S.
continues to send Israel nearly $6 billion a year in aid. There
seems little reason why American taxpayers should be asked to
subsidize a government that sactions torture, whether it is in
Israel or any other country. I count on your administration to
give more than just lip service to human rights.

   In becoming president of the world's one remaining superpower
you have taken on what seem to be unsolvable problems, both at
home and abroad. Settling the Middle East conflict is not one of
them. If you will ignore the chorus of negative voices and
consider the basic issue--the need to achieve a just compromise
between two peoples who claim the same land--there is a solution.
The Palestinians, through the PLO, have agreed to give up their
claim to all the land that was once Palestine and in which, until
1947, they were the majority population. They are now willing to
settle for a state of their own in 22 percent of that land, East
Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

   Palestinian aspirations for a nation of their own are not hard
fo rme, as an American and as a Jews, to understand. The Jewish
refugees who fled to Palestine to escape the Holocaust had the
same aspirations. So did Americans in 1776.

   Last Nov. 2, the day before your elections, the Palestinian
delegation's spokeswomen, Hanan Ashrawi, began a talk at Stanford
University by jokingly apologizing to the audience for diverting
it from the campaign. She then paused and added wistfully: "I
envy you. What you take for granted every four years is all we
are struggling for--the right to hold free elctions, to choose
our government."

   She make it clear that although the Palestinians did not
insist on a particular timetable, they would never settle for
anything less. If peaceful negotiations fail, she warned,
extremist voilence will become uncontrollable.

   Exactly a year earlier, in November 1991, an Israeli reserve
officer expressed a similar message in a letter to THE NEW YORK
TIMES. AFter referring to the "devastating effect" on Israeli
democracy of the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
Shalom Lappin warned that "By incorporating a disenfranchised and
hostile population into our country we are creating a basis for
permanent and insoluble communal conflict." He concluded that
"only a solution that will end our contorl of the territories
will achieve the genuine peace that is our best hope for
security."

   It seems clear, Mr. Clinton, that the Palestinians' desire for
self-determination and the Israelis' concern for peace and
security are not incompatible. With the courage to be evenhanded,
your administration can reconcile these goals and help to achieve
them. Millions of Jewish Americans will support your efforts.

              Sincerely,
              Rachelle Marshall
              Standord, Ca

          ---------------------------------------------
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[All typos are mine--HR]