TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/093091/0930100.000

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                                                                                NATION, Page 22

DIPLOMACY

Thou Shalt Not Build


Putting muscle behind the U.S. policy against Israeli settlements,
Bush for the first time uses money as a weapon against Jerusalem

By PRISCILLA PAINTON -- Reported by Lisa Beyer/Jerusalem, Michael
Duffy/Washington and Christopher Ogden with Baker


    During the Persian Gulf war, George Bush asked more of
Israel than any other President ever had -- to do nothing while
Iraqi Scuds screamed down on its cities. That is why it is
riveting to watch Bush now in the role of Israel's angry
disciplinarian. But just as it took a fierce anticommunist like
Richard Nixon to open the door to China, it was Bush, the
Commander in Chief of the armed forces that seven months ago
routed Israel's enemy from Kuwait, who had to deliver the
message no other President has ever delivered so publicly
before: Israel can no longer expect to exercise a veto over U.S.
policy in the Middle East.

    Bush's predecessors have wagged their fingers at Israel
over the issue of building settlements in the occupied
territories. But the Bush Administration went much further last
week, not by using stronger language but by breaking one of the
oldest taboos in Washington's patron relationship with
Jerusalem; it used money as a cudgel. After two fruitless days
in Jerusalem, Secretary of State James Baker made clear that
Washington did not intend to grant Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
the full $10 billion in loan guarantees he has requested to help
accommodate an expected 1 million Soviet Jewish emigres. More
important, Baker implied that the U.S. would not grant the
Israelis any loan guarantees unless Jerusalem agreed to freeze
settlement in the occupied West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza
Strip.

    On the surface, U.S. policy had not changed. Two weeks
ago, referring to the guarantees, Bush promised only that he
was "committed to seeing that they get considered." Last week,
instead of subtly pointing at its wallet, the White House made
clear that it was ready to pull it away. What had been an
admonition came close to sounding like coercion, at least for
some Israelis. Said Yossi Olmert, the Israeli government
spokesman: "Bush has crossed that Rubicon."

    If he means what he says, Bush has initiated a fundamental
change in America's "special relationship" with Israel. For two
decades that relationship has meant unconditional subsidies to
Israel, which put the U.S. in the awkward position of indirectly
financing the illegal settlements. "This," said a White House
official, "is very high stakes." But higher still are the stakes
involved in a peace conference that the Bush Administration
hopes to co-sponsor in October and sees as the culmination of
its post-gulf war strategy. Like any good mediator, the Bush
Administration is determined to get both Arabs and Israelis to
the bargaining table without appearing to favor either side. "If
we're willing to underwrite an economic program to settle the
occupied territories, we don't exactly look like a neutral
party," said a senior Administration official.

    As if to underline his evenhandedness, Bush last week
briefly resumed his role as the leader who crushed the Arab
world's largest army. He interrupted a scenic walk through the
Grand Canyon to tell reporters that the U.S. had alerted
warplanes that they might have to return to Saudi Arabia to
pressure Saddam Hussein into complying with the gulf war
cease-fire.

    The move comes after six months of frustrated efforts by
United Nations inspectors to uncover Iraq's leftover arsenal.
According to U.N. resolutions passed after Baghdad surrendered
in February, Iraq must allow the U.N. to inspect and destroy its
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but recently Saddam
has refused even to let the teams use their own helicopters.
Although U.S. fighter planes are still awaiting orders to escort
inspectors, Bush made clear that his patience with Saddam was
running out. "I'm plenty fed up," Bush said. "He's not going to
question our resolve on this. He knows better than to take on
the United States of America."

    Lately the bulk of Bush's impatience has been directed at
Jerusalem rather than Baghdad, as the Administration pursues its
goal not just of drawing Arabs and Israelis into negotiations
but of keeping them there. The U.S. is gambling that it is
better to confront Israel now, rather than later, with the
inevitability of trading part or all of its occupied territories
for peace. "We are trying to shake them up, make them talk about
it at home, and face that reality," said a senior Administration
official.

    While there may be a diplomatic logic to the upheaval in
U.S.-Israeli relations, the White House did not expect the
exchange to be so acrimonious. Bush wrote to a major Jewish
organization in the U.S. last week saying that he was
"concerned" that some of his public suggestions the week before
about the power of the Jewish lobby may have "caused
apprehension" and that he "never meant to be pejorative in any
sense." But by the time the letter went out on Tuesday, personal
insults and cries of betrayal were in the air. Bush picked up
Monday's newspapers to read that he had been called an
anti-Semite by a member of the Israeli Cabinet. And when Baker
arrived in Jerusalem, his motorcade was pelted with tomatoes.

    Within days, Israel's Foreign Minister, David Levy, was
lamenting the "Kafkaesque situation" in U.S.-Israeli relations,
while Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai said Israel had engaged in
"unprecedented folly" by stepping up the pace of construction
in the settlements and thereby "provoking" Washington.
Nonetheless, there were few signs that Shamir planned to appease
Bush on the issue. Shamir's mood was perhaps best captured by
the comments of Israeli Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan, who
heads the right-wing Tzomet Party. Said Eitan: "We should make
do without these guarantees and should stop being humiliated."

    Like many showdowns, this one was brewing for months, blew
up quickly and was, at some level, personal from the outset.
Bush, who rests much of his geopolitical calculations on his
relationships with world leaders, felt Shamir had twice misled
him about the settlements, first in 1990 and again last
February. On both occasions, the White House claims, the Prime
Minister assured the President that Israel contemplated no new
ones and then permitted fresh construction to go forward only
a few months later.

    On Aug. 31, the Bush Administration asked Israel privately
to postpone for 120 days its request for the loan guarantees.
When Israel refused, Bush tried to persuade the pro-Israeli
lobby and its friends in Congress to go along with the delay.
But while they continued to listen, they cranked up their
counteroffensive. Says a senior Administration official: "We
knew there would be opposition, but we had no idea they would
launch a full-blown lobbying campaign against us."

    Within a few days, the lobby expanded plans already in
place for a Sept. 12 "fly-in" of about 1,200 supporters of
Israel from 40 states to make their case to their lawmakers. One
of their whispered arguments was that Bush and Baker, a pair of
Waspy Texans who did oil business with the Arabs before they
went into politics, had demonstrated dangerous anti-Israeli
inclinations and needed to be shown that they could not push
Israel or the Jews around. Lobbyists also threatened to turn
Jewish financial contributors and voters against recalcitrant
Congressmen. Bush, already aware of the arguments of the
campaign, was made even more furious by wire reports of
statements by Israel's Housing Minister, Ariel Sharon, that
Bush, in pursuing peace, had fallen into "an Arab trap."

    On Sept. 11, Bush and his advisers met with Republican
congressional leaders and phoned other lawmakers of both parties
to assess the situation. "They were afraid to oppose Israel's
request unless the President showed that he would go all the
way, take the debate out of the backrooms, where the lobby
almost always wins, and take it to the American public," a White
House official said.

    Before going that far, a team that included National
Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and chief of staff John Sununu
waged a last-minute telephone campaign out of Scowcroft's
offices that went on into the evening of Sept. 11. They were
trying both to seek a compromise and to take the measure of the
Israel lobby's pre-emptive strike. The next morning Bush made
a final pitch in the Oval Office to Mayer Mitchell, a leader of
the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the
largest pro-Israeli lobby. When Mitchell proved to be
noncommittal, Bush decided to move.

    The speech he gave later that day was meant to strike the
tone of a leader courageously breaking with the past. But
domestically, it carried few political risks and even played to
Bush's advantage. As a Republican, Bush has little to lose by
having the Jewish vote remain solidly in the Democratic camp --
less than 1 percentage point of the total vote, by one White
House measure. And he has much to gain by betting that few
images rankle voters more today than that of their government
being held hostage to special interests. A poll conducted last
week for TIME and the Cable News Network seems to prove his
point: 37% favored providing Israel with the guarantees; 56%
were opposed.

    That is why Bush has carefully cast his fight over the
loan guarantees in terms that average Americans can appreciate.
In the speech he pointed out that the U.S. spends nearly $1,000
for every man, woman and child in Israel each year. Then he
suggested that the aid was not so much charity as it was
extortion at the hands of AIPAC. "I'm up against some powerful
forces," he said. "They've got something like 1,000 lobbyists
on the Hill working the other side of the question. We've got
one lonely little guy here doing it." The Bush strategy left
Israel with nothing but the prospect of a Pyrrhic victory. Said
a Bush adviser: "If he wins, he wins big, because he beats the
Israeli lobby. If Shamir wins, he has to put up with Bush's
longevity and hard feelings."

    The Democrats, for their part, lose in two ways. They have
been forced to the sidelines as Bush keeps the focus on foreign
policy, reminding voters that the mastermind of Desert Storm is
again at the helm. And Bush has taken a step toward defusing the
one issue they have put forward on the eve of the 1992
campaign: he would rather spend money solving foreign problems
than domestic ones.

    Last week both the Democrats and the Israeli lobby fell
silent, tacitly acknowledging they were outgunned. The lobbyists
were almost nowhere in sight, with some confessing to friends
like Wisconsin's Democratic Congressman David Obey, "The
President has all the cards." Said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles: "The campaign is
gone. No one is going to take on the President of the United
States."

    Wisconsin Republican Robert W. Kasten, who with Democrat
Daniel Inouye of Hawaii has sponsored a Senate proposal to
approve the guarantees without a 120-day delay, agreed to wait
for Baker to return from the Middle East before taking the bill
any further. Meanwhile Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy,
who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, said
he would hold off pushing for the $10 billion loan program and
planned to toughen restrictions on any future aid, so that
Israel would, in effect, be punished for every dollar it spends
on the settlements.

    "We may not be able to pass a law to stop the Israelis
from building in the occupied territories, but we can see that
they don't use our taxpayers' money in a way that is contrary
to American policy," Leahy said. Even House majority leader
Richard Gephardt, a frequent critic of the Administration who
had been pushing for quick approval of the loan guarantees,
rushed to the floor to denounce the "polarizing comments" coming
from Israel's leaders.

    If Bush's sense of resolve has become a bit infectious, it
is because on foreign policy he does what he often will not do
at home: he stands for principle, explains himself and takes
risks. But in the delicate strategy game of securing Israel's
presence at the negotiating table, Bush may find himself on the
losing side. The Israelis have said emphatically they will not
allow the tempest over loan guarantees to keep them from taking
part in the peace talks. But they have also suggested that
without the U.S. in their corner, they cannot engage their Arab
neighbors with confidence and goodwill. That would make, in the
end, for a brief and barren conference.