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undermined its national security. All this, for no discernable political gain or tangible progress towards a lasting peace. Today, it is Arafat who is regularly invited for summits at the White House while Israel is sniped at from a distance by State Department spokesmen for its failure to make even more territorial concessions.Only in recent months has the Prime Minister's office begun to mount a serious campaign to publicize Palestinian transgressions. Lamentably, these have been feeble efforts too little and too late.
As early as 1994, Israel could muster little enthusiasm for the Peace Accord Monitoring (PAM) Group, established by pro-Israel members in Congress to promote effective compliance and fiscal transparency. The effort was effectively ignored. The PAM Group is now moribund.
Later, the Labor Government of Shimon Peres strongly opposed the "Middle East Peace Compliance Act of 1995," which would have denied any U.S. funding to the Palestinians until the PA fulfilled all of its commitments under Oslo. Also included in the legislation was a prohibition on funds to known PLO terrorists and a requirement that the PA make available for prosecution in the U.S. members suspected of having killed or injured Americans.
Both Israel and the U.S. made it clear it wished no disruption of Palestinian assistance and accused those Members who backed the legislation of undermining the peace effort. Astonishingly, it was a position taken by Israel's Labor government even as the PLO and Hamas were mounting a vicious terrorist bombing campaign on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The momentum of the Oslo process, coupled with increasingly heavy-handed pressure from the U.S., has rendered the compliance debate effectively moot. Through its own actions, Israel has ceded the moral high ground it once held in the Middle East debate. With few exceptions, Israel has withdrawn from the public relations game. The contradictions in its own policies make it difficult for many of its own supporters to understand where the country sees its own interests lying.
* Israel pledges to crack down on Palestinian terrorism, but then agrees to the release of jailed terrorists under pressure from Arafat and the Clinton Administration;
* Israel condemns the build-up of a Palestinian administrative infrastructure outside of the areas designated by the Oslo Accords, but then does nothing to close Palestinian offices in Jerusalem or restrict the encroachment of Palestinian buildings along the bypass roads in Judea and Samaria;
* Israel rails against Palestinian arms smuggling and the build-up of a PA militia, but then provides weapons to the Palestinian police;
* Israel condemns the Palestinian misuse of U.S. funding and corruption within the PA, but then encourages its friends in the U.S. to lobby for increases in that funding; and
* Israel rebukes the Palestinians for not amending provisions in the PLO Charter that call for Israel's destruction, but then watches as its President shakes the hand of Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a principal architect of some of the most savage terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
Today, American and world public opinion see moral and political equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian movement. Polls show that approximately 64% of American Jews believe that the Palestinians should have their own country, even if that means on land historically part of the Jewish patrimony.
One need look no further than President Clinton's statement in December, 1998, while visiting PA officials in Gaza. There, he equated the anguish of Palestinian children for parents who had been killed in attacks on Israeli citizens with the death of innocent Israeli children who were the victims of these attacks.
Israeli complaints about Palestinian compliance are now viewed with the same disdain in Washington as were the "legalisms" of Menachem Begin during the Camp David negotiations. To the Administration, now cynical and jaded toward Israel and its Government, any concern is seen as merely an effort to avoid coming to terms with the endgame, which in this instance is Palestinian statehood.
The truth behind the U.S. claim to being an "honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians was exposed in November, 1997, when Hillary Clinton declared in a meeting of the Seeds of Peace Mideast Youth Summit, "It would be in the long-term interest of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine...a functioning modern state that is on the same footing as other states."
It is clear that Israel's enemies, and even many of its friends in the organized Jewish community, view compliance issues as an annoyance, a distraction, a tool used by Israel to avoid confronting the difficult questions brought on by the negotiation process. Yet, it is the issue of compliance that goes to the very heart of the problem.
Of course it is perfectly appropriate for the U.S. to insist upon compliance in its dealings with other nations such as:
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Outpost - 4 - May 1999