The Nation's Pulse/Bush's Carter Problem
Gerard, Roberta
THE NATION'S PULSE BUSH'S CARTER PROBLEM LIke much else that is still wrong with the world, the current, deteriorating state of American-Israeli relations can be traced back to Jimmy Carter's...
...Or perhaps one should say "delayed" rather than "prevented...
...According to Dayan, "Whenever the President showed signs of calming down and holding an even-tempered dialogue, Vice President Mondale jumped in with fresh complaints which disrupted the talk...
...A few days later, Carter became the first President publicly to endorse a Palestinian homeland...
...But as Begin began to implement his settlements policy, Carter's friendly feelings evaporated...
...For its part, the Israeli government is coming to view George Bush with undisguised alarm, and sees his well-known obsession with the settlements as less a persona/ idiosyncrasy than a deeply rooted conviction that Israel must withdraw to the 1967 frontiers...
...And only by criss-crossing the entire West Bank with a network of settlements could they resist pressures to withdraw to the 1967 lines...
...But neither did they wish to return to the claustrophobic lines of pre-1967 Israel—lines most Israelis called the "Auschwitz frontiers...
...Security Council in calling on Israel "to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, continuation and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem...
...Likud believed that all the West Bank was Israel's by right, and that any territorial compromise was tantamount to treason...
...as, say, America's claim to Texas, until Carter came along they rejected Begin's ideological approach...
...But while most Israelis agreed with Begin that Israel's claim to the West Bank was at least as valid Roberta Gerard is a writer in the New York City area...
...In March 1980, the United States joined other members of the U.N...
...In his diary, Carter described Begin as "quite congenial, dedicated, sincere"—a welcome relief from the dour, chain-smoking Rabin...
...Reluctantly, Israelis concluded that Begin had been right all along: you can't trust the gentiles...
...Like Carter, Bush despises Israel's leadership, is surrounded by anti-Israeli advisors, is determined to bring about a comprehensive Arab-Israeli accord, and is almost sycophantically deferential to Saudi Arabia...
...In July 1977, Begin made his first visit to Washington as Israel's new prime minister...
...THE NATION'S PULSE BUSH'S CARTER PROBLEM LIke much else that is still wrong with the world, the current, deteriorating state of American-Israeli relations can be traced back to Jimmy Carter's Presidency...
...In March 1977, Israel's Labor prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, paid his first official visit to America's newly elected President...
...For it was Carter who was indirectly responsible for the victory of the Likud party in 1977, and it was Carter who made Likud's settlements policy acceptable to a majority of Israelis...
...Immediately after meeting with the embattled prime minister, the new President made it known that he expected Israel to withdraw to its 1967 frontiers, with only minor adjustments...
...On the contrary, if Israel is to enjoy defensible borders, such changes are both morally legitimate and strategically necessary...
...What makes the current impasse especially tragic is that, if he only knew it, Bush could easily bring Likud's settlements policy to an end—without undermining American-Israeli relations in the process...
...In short, all Bush has to do is endorse the Mon Plan...
...His petulance and rancor that day were fully worthy of Jimmy Carter...
...What better way to underscore the importance of that special relationship than for Rabin to visit Washington and confer with Carter...
...Fortunately, the American people, in their wisdom, prevented that nightmare...
...Unfortunately, Bush's formula for peace is Shamir's formula for national suicide...
...You are more stubborn than the Arabs," Carter told Dayan, "and you put obstacles on the path to peace...
...H ow Carter helped turn the West Bank into a battleground is well known...
...To square the circle, Labor adopted the Mon Plan...
...Indeed, the story goes that when Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister who presided over the Six-Day War, first visited East Jerusalem and saw its teeming Arab throngs, he turned to an aide and asked, "How do we get out of here...
...By the time Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan visited the White House, the atmosphere he found was "ugly...
...Israel's settlements policy now became Carter's personal obsession...
...For today, under George Bush's leadership, it is coming to pass...
...And the more settlements Shamir builds, the angrier Bush gets...
...It is not hard to envisage how American-Israeli relations would have fared under a second Carter Administration...
...There it was: with a few ill-chosen words, the President of the United States had undercut Labor's campaign strategy and virtually guaranteed a Likud victory...
...What mattered to them, then as now, was security, not ideology...
...Above all, like Carter, Bush is obsessed with the West Bank settlements, and considers them the principal obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace...
...As Rabin later wrote in his memoirs, "No President before Carter had ever publicly committed the United States to such a position...
...1=1 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991...
...That done, Israel could safely afford to trade two-thirds of the West Bank for peace...
...Thus, the more Bush denounces the settlements, the more settlements Shamir builds...
...For a decade after 1967, most Israelis shared Eshkol's views...
...They did not want to dominate the 1.3 million Arabs who came with the occupied territories...
...Even after the Camp David accords were concluded and Israel agreed to withdraw from the entire Sinai peninsula, Carter would not relent...
...by Roberta Gerard T he resemblance between Carter's 1 and Bush's policies is striking...
...This relationship, Labor argued, would be jeopardized if the Likud extremists ever took office...
...Labor's willingness to withdraw from the West Bank was anathema to Menachem Begin's (and Yitzhak Shamir's) Likud party...
...Labor's moderation, reasonableness, and willingness to compromise had availed Israel not at all...
...All he has to say is that, while the United States maintains its opposition to Israel's annexation of the West Bank, the "land for peace" formula does not preclude substantial territorial changes in Israel's favor...
...Labor was in the middle of a national election campaign, laying heavy stress on the special relationship it claimed to have established with the United States...
...Bush's anger finally came to the surface during his unfortunate press conference last September, in which he called on Congress to delay consideration of loan-guarantees to Israel...
...Until Carter's advent, Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza was in the hands of the Labor party, and Labor was bent on avoiding what Abba Eban called "superfluous domination" of the Arabs...
...Only by being strong, determined, and intransigent would the Jews of Israel survive...
...Likud's policy, which entailed indefinite Israeli control over the West Bank's restive Palestinians, seemed a recipe for endless turmoil and continued insecurity...
...Of the 2,100 square miles of West Bank territory, General Yigal Mon believed that, for security reasons, Israel needed to annex about 700 sparsely populated square miles...
...Israeli public opinion, never comfortable with Likud's settlements policy, will do the rest...
...But Rabin had failed to reckon with Carter's temperament...
...And then Jimmy Carter came along...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
