Bibi's pen pals
GERTZ, BILL
Bibi's Pen Pals by Bill Gertz When three one-time secretaries of state and three one-time national security advisers who served under different presidents in different parties act in concert, it...
...It appeared to be a Palestinian effort to drum up feelings against Netanyahu," says a former State Department official Shultz consulted on the letter...
...I didn't feel comfortable...
...Fairbanks, who could not be reached for an interview, is now associated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, but CSIS's official biography of him omits his role as a registered lobbyist for the government of Iraq between 1986 and 1990—right up to the time when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and precipitated the Gulf War...
...Copies were sent simultaneously to news organizations, including the wire services and the New York Times...
...Fairbanks and his law firm received over $300,000 from Hussein's government...
...When you see an obscure name among more recognizable ones, it's certain there's a story somewhere...
...It was not the right time...
...The letter was an unprecedented event, and its purpose was evident: to signal elite American displeasure with the Netanyahu government...
...For the Israeli government, of course, the letter could not have come at a worse time...
...Maybe the whole thing was intended for the press," Ben-Elissar says...
...What may be most striking about the Fairbanks letter is the way its intention to isolate and criticize Netanyahu personally was echoed in a secret meeting held on the margins of the Arab League summit held in Cairo in September...
...Shultz (who declined comment) refused to sign the letter...
...It turns out that he was the chief instigator of the letter, which caused a ruckus upon its release...
...Indeed, rioting broke out on December 23, shortly after Arafat distanced himself from the Hebron negotiations...
...Furthermore, the letter was released as Israel was burying a mother and child killed by Arab gunmen in a drive-by shooting...
...The role of former statesmen should be to guide American policy and to offer advice to those leading the government...
...Alexander Haig also declined to sign, as did Henry Kissinger, who said in a television interview that an open letter to the Israeli prime minister was the wrong way to handle such an issue...
...My experience is that I've seen this two or three times in the past, where Palestinians pick up an issue with the idea of stirring up feelings against Israel, and that leads to violence...
...It was never actually delivered—only faxed to Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem and the embassy in Washington, with no signatures and no indication of who had actually sent it...
...He and Strauss were both State Department negotiators on the Middle East, Fairbanks during the early Reagan years...
...Not to mention Robert Strauss and Richard Fairbanks...
...Netanyahu and Arafat were locked in tense talks over the timetable for Israel's redeployment from Hebron...
...I resent it," says Ben-Elissar...
...The letter expressed "concern" that unilateral actions by Israel, "such as the expansion of settlements," would scuttle the original Hebron agreement and "halt progress...
...Maybe he was lying low...
...So just who is he...
...The letter was surely the most influential act of Fairbanks's public career...
...It was a very strange way to address a prime minister by such personalities on such an issue...
...Netanyahu promised when he announced the policy that there would be no new settlements until the status of the West Bank was negotiated with the Palestinians...
...He drafted it and rounded up the other signers after a discussion with Baker, who as George Bush's secretary of state was noted for his deep antipathy toward the Israeli government then headed by Netanyahu's Likud-party predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir...
...Ben-Elissar says the eight were besieging Israel at a crucial time in the peace talks, and he also suspects the letter was a publicity stunt...
...Syria, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Tunisia supported this approach," the report notes...
...The fact that it was still sent may indicate Ross's support for this extracurricular effort to pressure Netanyahu...
...This smelled like that kind of thing...
...According to Eliahu Ben-Elissar, Israel's ambassador to the United States, the eight Americans were jumping on board an anti-Israel "coalition" that includes French president Jacques Chirac and Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov...
...Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan observes that the letter-signers "were known as not the most friendly to Israel, to say the least...
...The letter-organizing effort raised suspicion in the breast of at least one former secretary of state: George Shultz...
...Fairbanks hadn't been heard of in years on Middle East issues," says the official...
...One hopes that the letter will end up merely as an unpleasant footnote in the history of the talks between Israel and the PLO...
...It concludes: "Though Arab ministers probably realize they have little chance of bringing down Netanyahu, their discussions are a sign that they have all but written him off as a peace partner...
...It should not be to fire off warnings to allies who are in the middle of extraordinarily difficult, highly consequential negotiations...
...A week before the letter was released, the Israeli government restored financial incentives for Jewish settlers on the West Bank...
...How exactly is it that someone linked so closely to what is now seen as one of the world's vilest states could serve as an honest broker in sensitive Middle East diplomacy...
...On December 14, Benjamin Netanyahu was sent a letter warning that Israel's policy on Jewish settlements was endangering two decades of "progress" in the Arab-Israeli peace talks...
...There were eight signatories, including former secretaries of state Vance, Baker, and Eagleburger, as well as former national security advisers Scow-croft, Brzezinski, and Carlucci...
...Bill Gertz is defense and national-security correspondent for the Washington Times...
...After the letter appeared, President Clinton labeled Israel's settlements policy an obstacle to peace, and in so doing reversed his administration's practice of offering only muted criticism—the State Department had been limiting itself to calling the settlements "unhelpful...
...Bibi's Pen Pals by Bill Gertz When three one-time secretaries of state and three one-time national security advisers who served under different presidents in different parties act in concert, it makes news—especially when they do something right in the middle of one of the few newsworthy foreign-policy events in the last year...
...According to a U.S...
...Instead of spurring Israel, the letter emboldened Israel's opponents and encouraged Arafat to back off from the talks and hold out for more concessions...
...The ministers discussed measures to freeze relations initially and then roll back normalization...
...he disagreed both with its timing and its view of the settlements...
...Dennis Ross, who has been Middle East envoy both for this administration and for the Bush administration and is very close to Baker, did see the letter before it was sent...
...intelligence report labeled "Top Secret" that was circulated to senior policymakers last year, Arab government ministers at the meeting "considered ways to bring down the Netanyahu government by reaching out to Israel's 'peace majority' and isolating" Netanyahu...
...And the story here is about Richard Fairbanks...
...He said that he dropped Baghdad as a client because "I didn't like the direction [in which] I saw [Iraq's] policy going...
Vol. 2 • February 1997 • No. 20
