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“Clinton’s Bias: Israel’s Viewpoint
Taken as ‘Starting Point’ in Negotiations,
Overview: 14 August 2000—Following the collapse of Camp David II, President Bill Clinton’s public condemnation of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat—coinciding with his support for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak—dramatically highlighted the inequitable way in which the United States has always approached the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although Clinton has demonstrated some understanding for Palestinian concerns in recent years, and has had a relatively close relationship with Arafat, his administration has always failed to give an equal hearing to the concerns of both parties. At Camp David, Clinton showed his fundamental inability to view the issues at stake from the Palestinian perspective. Clinton dropped any show of his administration’s neutrality in the peace process with his threats to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and cut aid to the Palestinian Authority due to Arafat’s stand at Camp David. This partiality was also evidenced by his criticism of Arafat for not matching Barak’s concessions on Jerusalem. Clinton is spurring a virulent public campaign to paint Arafat as intransigent and unreasonably bent not on advancing Palestinian interests, but simply on thwarting Israel’s aspirations. This approach is a marked departure from the traditional, if only nominal, U.S. position as an “honest broker.” Not only are administration spokespersons following Clinton’s line, but editorialists and commentators of all political inclinations have joined in the chorus of vitriol. Israel’s Claims Seen as Sacrosanct: There appear to be several motivating factors for Clinton’s bias. Most obviously, he seems to be using the delicate peace process to play electoral politics on behalf of the political campaigns of Vice President Al Gore and his own wife Hillary. It is also likely that by leveling accusations at Arafat, Clinton hopes to shift the onus for Camp David’s failure away from himself. If there is to be no legacy, he will ensure that there is no blame either. Clinton’s strident and one-sided reaction also points to a phenomenon of longer standing: the automatic and habitual tendency throughout the United States to accept the Israeli perspective, and to misunderstand or minimize the Palestinian viewpoint. Israel’s concerns are viewed on a different plane from those of the Palestinians. Even when sympathy for Israel is not an issue, the widespread tendency is to take Israel’s demands, rather than those of the Palestinians, as the starting point for negotiations. Thus, for instance, policymakers understand when Israel says that Jerusalem is of vital emotional and political importance to it, but they do not grasp that Palestinians have equally strong emotional and political ties to the city. This almost automatic support for Israel is embodied in the attitude of U.S. politicians and pundits who have always held that because Israel has declared Jerusalem its “eternal and undivided capital,” no other claims can be entertained. The mere suggestion that Israel might relinquish even the smallest portion of Jerusalem is treated with amazement. In a classic example of adverbial excess, a recent Washington Post article describing the U.S. proposals on Jerusalem characterized them in the space of just a few column inches as “stunningly far-reaching,” “breathtakingly ambitious,” and “extraordinarily far-reaching.” Post columnist Jim Hoagland echoed the prevalent attitude that Israel should set the agenda of negotiations when he castigated the Arab states for not pushing Arafat to make “the compromises with Israel that real peace would require.” This presumes it is incumbent upon Palestinians to make peace with Israel, rather than the other way around. This imbalanced approach is evident in the U.S. reaction to the actual calculus of the Jerusalem question as it was played out at Camp David. This is a contest between Israel’s claim to 100 percent of the entire city of Jerusalem, within its present municipal boundaries, versus the Palestinian claim to the half or two-thirds that constitutes East Jerusalem, with its nearly 200,000 Palestinians, its Muslim and Christian holy sites, and the large tracts of Arab land that Israel added to Jerusalem after the 1967 war. By the end of Camp David, Barak had moved slightly. He offered the Palestinians a mix of sovereignty, as well as autonomous control without sovereignty, over areas constituting perhaps five percent of the entire city. Judging Barak by the mere fact that he had moved at all from his maximum position, Clinton hailed him as “courageous and visionary.” In a striking condemnation of Arafat for not moving from the Palestinians’ maximum position, Clinton accused Arafat during an Israeli television interview of actually trying to “completely defeat” Israel’s interests in Jerusalem. But Clinton appears to have ignored the mathematics of the proposed division of the city. Barak still wants control over 95 percent of a city that is far less than 95 percent Jewish, while Arafat is being condemned for still wanting a fair share in the city. The Palestinian Starting Point: Similarly, Clinton and his aides do not truly fathom the importance Palestinians have always placed on United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 242 and the land-for-peace concept that it embodies. Policymakers seem to not attach significance to the fact that for Palestinians, the heart of negotiations is not Camp David or Oslo or even 1967, but 1948. Palestinians start from the reality that they lost three-quarters of Palestine in 1948, and the view that UNSCR 242 gives them a legitimate claim to the remaining one-quarter that Israel occupied in 1967. Since its adoption in 1967, UNSCR 242 has been the basis of all U.S. peacemaking efforts. The U.S. led the Palestinians to believe that they had a legitimate and recognized claim to the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—with the exception of only “minor border adjustments”—if they would accept and live in peace with Israel. The bargain the Palestinians made with the U.S. when they accepted UNSCR 242 in 1988, formally ceding any claim to territory inside Israel and promising Israel permanent peace, was that the U.S. would work to carry out the land-for-peace formula. When the White House signing ceremony sealed the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinians pledged again to live in peace with Israel and to forgo terrorism and violence. Israel and the United States, in turn, promised explicitly that negotiations on a final status agreement “will lead to the implementation” of UNSCR 242. The United States’ Abandoned Commitments: By repeatedly offering peace over the years and renouncing violence, the Palestinians have lived up to their end of the land-for-peace bargain made with the U.S. The Clinton administration, however, has pulled back from the United States’ side of the agreement. The U.S. has backtracked from the full support for UNSCR 242 that had for so long stood as a hallmark of U.S. policy. Now, Washington apparently regards the resolution as no longer necessarily applicable. Even before the Oslo Accords, Clinton policymakers began advancing the notion that the West Bank and Gaza were “disputed” rather than “occupied” territories. Whereas it had always previously been U.S. policy that Israel’s control was temporary, with this reinterpretation, the Clinton administration adopted the Israeli position that Israel had the right to negotiate the retention of some or all of the territories. Under the new U.S. interpretation, land-for-peace is now seen not as “full territory for full peace,” but instead, as “some territory for full peace.” The final confrontation between these two interpretations came at the Camp David summit, and the U.S. showed itself to be more clearly than ever leaning toward Israel. The effort of the United States to put the entire onus for the failure of Camp David on Arafat, because he did not move as far or as fast as Barak, is a grave indication of myopia for a supposedly neutral mediator. In fact, Arafat has nothing tangible to give. He can relinquish only intangible claims, and the U.S. expectation that he could so readily cede claims to sovereignty over most of Arab East Jerusalem clearly demonstrates the fundamental imbalance in the U.S. position.
Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst, is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (University of California Press, 1999). The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Palestine Center. This Information Brief does not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine or The Jerusalem Fund. This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 43, 14 August 2000. |
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