Clinton's Legacy: Middle East Fiasco

by Alexander Cockburn

It was nothing of the sort. As Israel's guardian, the United States shoved down Arafat's throat a deal that was bound to blow up in the end. What else could one expect of arrangements that saw Israeli settlements relentlessly expand, no right of return for hundreds of thousands of evicted Palestinians, Israeli-Arabs as second-class citizens, Palestinian colonies under Israeli army supervision, and no capital in Jerusalem? In the end, after years of groveling, even Arafat had to say "No."

Americans were largely secluded from these unpalatable truths, courtesy of a pervasive information blackout, amid which this nation's politicians and opinion-formers expended lung-power and ink extolling the sacrifices being made by Israel. The pattern is unvarying. Year after year the golden haze of proclamations about America's role as "honest broker" and Israel's generous courage are suddenly, lethally interrupted by grim reality, whether in the form of murderous provocation by Ariel Sharon and the settlers or by the violent mutiny of Palestinians against the betrayal of all their hopes for justice.

The self-serving mystifications pervading almost all debate in the U.S. has long been a source of amazed derision overseas. Here's how the London Observer put it in an editorial ("A True Palestinian State is Essential") Oct. 15, calling on Europe to break with U.S. patronage of Israel:

"If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered 'bantustans,' with 'whites' monopolizing the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs -- flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending -- would be recognized as scandalous, too ... "

Strong words, but entirely accurate. The Oslo accords froze in place a huge Israeli advantage on the West Bank. They also assigned Arafat the role of salesman of a surrender to his own people, shuttling between the imperious demands of the United States, acting as Israel's negotiator, and his own indignant people. Meanwhile, the Israelis continued, day after day, year after year, rushing up new settlements on the West Bank and encroaching steadily into east Jerusalem. There can never be anything approaching a just settlement so long as this process, condoned by the United States, continues.

The tragic farce of U.S. even-handedness is concisely resumed in the arc of Hillary Rodham Clinton's posture on Israel and Palestine. It's not so long since she made a surprisingly forthright expression of support for a Palestinian state. She met with Sula Arafat. But then she became embroiled in her race in New York. Now she's battling charges of being a terror-symp (from an opponent, Rick Lazio, who himself once had a cordial meeting with Arafat) and is making all the usual amends by parroting every demand of the Israeli lobby, starting with the U.S., to recognize Israel's capital as Jerusalem and release of the spy Jonathan Pollard.

After the recent carnage, there'll probably be another phony patch-up, amid calls for even-handedness and concessions "on both sides," amid much bellowing about Arafat's nefarious role. The actual balance in concessions is reflected rather more accurately in the death rate after Sharon's provocation, nearly a hundred Palestinians, many of them children, against two Israeli reservists.