[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 37 (Friday, March 27, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2701-S2703]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ``SNUB DIPLOMACY''

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I rise today to object to the Clinton 
administration's continual, I would say, anti-Israel position, but 
certainly the anti-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu position. 
President Clinton, during the 1996 Israeli election, was very involved, 
and he was very involved in favor of the Labor candidate.
  U.S. News & World Report quoted an aide in the White House saying:

       If he could get away with it, Clinton would wear a ``Peres 
     for Prime Minister'' button.

  He was very involved in the election. His candidate didn't win. Since 
then, we have seen more anti-Netanyahu, or anti-Israel, statements from 
the administration that bothers this Senator.
  Yesterday there was a report in the paper that the United States was 
pressuring Israel to give up more of the West Bank. And I am wondering 
where my colleagues were. I remember when they thought that the Bush 
administration--and particularly Jim Baker--was putting pressure on 
Israel. They objected very strongly. They spoke out very strongly 
against that coercion.
  This administration has repeatedly tried to put pressure on Mr. 
Netanyahu, or repeatedly snubbed the Prime Minister of Israel, our best 
ally in the region, the only democracy in the region, and they have 
almost resorted to a philosophy of, Well, we are going to use snub 
diplomacy. As a matter of fact, an administration official was quoted 
in the Washington Post as calling the Clinton Administration's actions 
towards Mr. Netanyahu as snub diplomacy.
  There was an incident in November of last year where both planes--the 
President's plane and Netanyahu's plane--were adjacent to each other, 
and yet President Clinton couldn't find time to meet with him. This 
year, in January, Mr. Netanyahu was scheduled to be here in 
Washington--I will read something that was in the January 20 edition of 
the Washington Post:

       Having declined to find time for Netanyahu in November, 
     even as the aircraft parked nose to tail at Los Angeles 
     International Airport, Clinton is continuing what one 
     administration official described as a deniable but obvious 
     pattern of ``snub diplomacy.'' Today's schedule includes no 
     breaking of bread, no visit to the Blair House, no joint 
     public appearance, no touch at all of the usual warmth that 
     greets Israeli leaders on visits of state.

  The Washington Post article includes this telling quote from an 
administration official:

       We are treating him like the President of Bulgaria, who is 
     arriving to a modest reception on February 10. Actually, I 
     think Clinton will go jogging with the President of Bulgaria. 
     So that is not fair.

  I am embarrassed by this.
  Then there was a snub by the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, 
when she returned to Israel in February and expressed publicly that she 
was ``sick and tired'' of the positions taken by both sides in the 
peace process. I can understand why she might be upset at the 
Palestinians, after they continued to embrace violence and refused to 
change their national charter--which they have agreed to do on at least 
three previous occasions--that calls for the destruction of Israel, 
when the Palestinians have yet to reduce the size of their police 
force, as again they have agreed to do. And when the Palestinians 
walked away from the bargaining table when Israel was more than willing 
to work out problems encountered by the first phase of the troop 
redeployment. But to criticize Israel--for what? They have complied. 
The Palestinians didn't comply, but yet our Secretary of State treats 
them as equals.

  In the meetings that I alluded to before, the administration went to 
great lengths in January to give the same amount of attention--which is 
very little--to Mr. Netanyahu as it did to Mr. Arafat.
  I might mention that Mr. Arafat, not long before, was embracing one 
of the leaders of Hamas who was directly responsible for terrorism and 
violence and death on innocent women and children in the Middle East--
embracing him. Yet they were treating Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Arafat as 
equals.
  Then the administration remained silent when Mr. Arafat on February 
13 was quoted as saying the ``peace negotiators achieved nothing, 
nothing, nothing.'' And then he goes on a little bit further. I will 
read this. It says:

       Reuters reported the same day that Mr. Arafat stated, ``We 
     declared the Palestinian state in Algiers in 1988, and we 
     will declare it again in 1999 over our Palestinian land, 
     despite those who wish it wouldn't happen, and whoever 
     doesn't like it may drink from the Gaza Sea or the Dead Sea. 
     We have made the greatest intifada. We can erase those years 
     and start all over again.''

  As a matter of fact, Mr. Arafat said he was going to cross out the 
peace agreements and unleash a new uprising against Israel.
  Mr. President, to me those hardly seem to be the words of a man, who 
is really interested in peace.
  Did the administration criticize him for those kind of remarks? Not 
to my knowledge. As a matter of fact, we searched to see if there was 
any response from the State Department for

[[Page S2702]]

any criticism for such unacceptable comments. There was nothing.
  Did they condemn him for those kinds of outlandish statements? No. 
Did they criticize him for not complying with the peace accord that he 
agreed to? No.
  Now we find the administration dragging its feet to fulfill the 
commitment that Congress has made--by a bipartisan, overwhelming vote 
in Congress--to move our Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. What has 
the administration done? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Have 
they spent any money for site selection? Or have they done anything to 
make it happen that we would move our Embassy, as Congress called for, 
which we are supposed to be doing next year? The answer is no. This 
administration has done nothing in that regard.
  Now, what has the administration done? In yesterday's paper, the 
Washington Post, it is reported that President Clinton decided in 
principle to unveil an American peacemaking package that the Israeli 
Government categorically rejects. The article reports that the Clinton 
plan will require Israel to withdraw its troops from about 13 percent 
of the West Bank, calls for a time-out on Jewish settlements and 
includes unspecified steps by the Palestinians to address Israeli 
security concerns. In other words, the administration is trying to 
dictate to Israel, that yes, you have to give up more land. Our policy, 
ever since the recreation and recognition of the state of Israel in 
1948, has always been to say that Israel has the right--not the United 
States--to guarantee the security of its land and its people. Yet, this 
administration is trying to put pressure on Israel.
  Are they putting pressure on the Palestinians for not living up to 
their commitments? For the third time, Mr. Arafat signs a document and 
says they will eliminate in their charter the section calling for the 
destruction of Israel. They have not done it yet. Why aren't they 
calling on the Palestinians to comply? Instead they put more pressure 
on Israel to give up more land.
  I think it is unconscionable that the United States would use our 
force, our leadership, our power, and our prestige to try to dictate to 
Israel that they must give up land that might jeopardize its security. 
I think that is a mistake. This administration has been doing it, 
certainly, ever since Mr. Netanyahu's election. They have not treated 
him with the respect that I think he should be accorded as the elected 
leader of Israel. Instead, this administration seems to think, we 
weren't happy with the election, so we are going to undermine Mr. 
Netanyahu. I resent that.
  I don't think this President of the United States, or any President 
of the United States, should be getting involved in Israeli politics 
and trying to influence elections, as this President did in 1996. Now 
he is putting continued pressure on the Netanyahu administration and 
Israel as a country to try to compel or force it to give up additional 
lands, which might jeopardize its security. Who should make the 
decision whether it jeopardizes Israel's security, the United States or 
Israel? Frankly, I think it should be Israel. They are a sovereign 
nation, and they have the right to defend themselves and to protect 
themselves. They are willing to engage in the peace process, and that 
takes two sides to comply. Yes, we can cajole people or encourage 
participation and compliance. We have encouraged participation, but we 
haven't encouraged compliance. The Palestinians have not complied with 
the peace process. They have not done what they said they were going to 
do on several occasions. So the administration should direct their 
pressure, their leverage, their leadership on the Palestinians, and 
particularly Mr. Arafat, to comply and stop this snub diplomacy, and 
diplomacy by dictating, on a plan that is going to be released, what we 
think is best, regardless of Israel's security needs.
  Mr. President, I hope this administration will have a change in 
policy, in its attitude, and towards the way it has treated Israel over 
the last 3 years.
  I ask unanimous consent that a March 26, 1998, Washington Post 
article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, March 26, 1998]

 U.S. to Push Peace Plan Israel Rejects--Split With Jerusalem Grows On 
                          West Bank Withdrawal

                          (By Barton Gellman)

       Convinced that flagging Israeli-Palestinian talks are near 
     collapse and already doing substantial harm to U.S. regional 
     interests, President Clinton has decided in principle to 
     unveil an American peacemaking package tha the Israeli 
     government categorically rejects, according to senior 
     policymakers.
       Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has yet to commit to the 
     proposal, but he has signaled growing approval as the depth 
     of disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem became plain 
     in recent weeks. Unless averted by a final round of diplomacy 
     in the region beginning today, senior Clinton administration 
     officials say, the initiative will step up pressure on Prime 
     Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by casting him as the lone 
     holdout against his country's strongest ally.
       Developed in White House meetings of Clinton's closest 
     advisers, the American package falls well short of a 
     comprehensive peace plan and is intended only to break an 
     impasse and restore productive talks. The initiative 
     nonetheless highlights the Clinton administration's alarm and 
     the extent to which it has interjected itself as a party to 
     Israeli-Palestinian talks begun without U.S. knowledge five 
     years ago.
       Though the main elements of the American package already 
     are well known, Netanyahu has strongly opposed its formal 
     announcement. In recent days, the Israeli premier has 
     intensified a campaign to raise the political price for 
     Clinton, dispatching cabinet ministers and friendly American 
     Jewish leaders to tell Washington it is on a collision 
     course. Israeli Communications Minister Limor Livnat, who 
     shared a Capitol Hilton stage Tuesday with Vice President 
     Gore, ambushed him before more than 1,000 Jewish fund-raisers 
     with the rhetorical question, ``Will the United States stand 
     by its commitment that Israel will be the one to decide her 
     own security needs?''
       Clinton and Netanyahu spoke at length by telephone on 
     Thursday and Saturday in conversations described as ``very 
     tough'' by U.S. policymakers, with Clinton declining to budge 
     from a proposal combining Israeli withdrawal from 13.1 
     percent of the West Bank, a precisely stated ``time out'' on 
     Jewish settlement building and a series of concrete 
     Palestinian steps to address Israeli security demands.
       Netanyahu, who sought unsuccessfully this month to arrange 
     a meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, 
     urged Clinton to dispatch special envoy Dennis B. Ross for 
     one more Middle East tour. According to accounts from both 
     governments, the premier said he had detailed new ideas in 
     which Israel would give up less land but make it more 
     attractive by choosing portions of the West Bank that would 
     connect scattered Palestinian enclaves.
       On Sunday, the morning after his last talk with Clinton, 
     Netanyahu orchestrated a cabinet statement affirming that his 
     ministers unanimously regarded the U.S.-supported 13 percent 
     withdrawal as out of the question. On Monday, he told a 
     parliamentary committee that it was ``unacceptable'' for 
     Americans to impose ``dictates from outside.''
       Clinton administration officials expressed skepticism about 
     Netanyahu's new proposals and said they had heard of nothing 
     like the offer of 11 or 12 percent of the West Bank that some 
     Netanyahu allies have been shopping privately to opinion-
     makers in the United States. Israel's offer to the 
     Palestinians for the present stage of interim withdrawal 
     remains at 9.5 percent.
       By temperament and philosophy, according to aides, Clinton 
     is not eager to break publicly with Netanyahu. But he 
     authorized Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for 
     Near Eastern affairs, to testify to Congress recently that 
     ``the role of facilitation is coming to its end point'' and 
     that ``the strategic window for peacemaking is now closing.''
       If the current round of diplomacy fails, according to 
     aides, Clinton intends to permit Albright to deliver a fully 
     drafted speech she has urged on the president for some time, 
     coupling a public recitation of the American package with a 
     blunt admission that the American efforts have not borne 
     fruit.
       ``The president is comfortable in his mind with the 
     proposals he put on the table in January, which haven't 
     changed substantially, and he recognizes that if he doesn't 
     get the support of the parties we will have to explain where 
     we came out,'' a senior administration official said 
     yesterday.
       The admission of failure is not intended as a hand-washing 
     exercise, officials said. Arafat, under this scenario, is 
     believed likely to come forward publicly and accept the 
     American plan. This would re-create roughly the dynamic that 
     forced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to accept the 
     U.S.-Soviet invitation to the Madrid peace conference in 1991 
     after Syrian President Hafez Assad agreed to attend.
       In recent days, U.S. Consul General John B. Herbst in 
     Jerusalem gave Arafat a detailed briefing on the American 
     package, which Palestinians disliked initially because it is 
     closer in substance to the Israeli position than to theirs. 
     But Arafat encouraged the United States to present the 
     initiative and spoke positively of its contents without 
     committing himself, according to diplomats familiar with the 
     exchange.

[[Page S2703]]

       ``We would like to have in our pocket a 'yes' from 
     Arafat,'' said one U.S. official, describing that commitment 
     as a principal objective of the trip that Ross begins today. 
     Palestinians are tempted, the official said, using 
     Netanyahu's Israeli nickname, ``because they see Bibi making 
     a big fuss about it, and they wonder if it's in their 
     interest to say yes and watch us duke it out with the 
     Israelis.''
       Ross plans a side trip to Egypt to recruit President Hosni 
     Mubarak to press Arafat. Clinton asked for Mubarak's support 
     in a telephone call late last month, but the Egyptian leader 
     has thus far not acted. Jordan's King Hussein told Clinton 
     last week that he will work to persuade Arafat.
       In Miami yesterday, where he stopped en route to the Middle 
     East, Ross told Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai 
     that Clinton will make his final decision on the package 
     after returning from Africa on April 2. Mordechai, who is 
     Clinton's strongest ally in the Netanyahu cabinet, told Ross 
     that ``there is not any chance'' that Israel will accept the 
     American package as now formulated, according to an Israeli 
     with firsthand knowledge of the exchange. ``We are trying to 
     convey to the American decision-making process the 
     information that confrontation will not help,'' the Israeli 
     said. ``There are limits that Israel will not cross, whatever 
     will be the decision in Washington.''
       American Jewish leaders, meanwhile, have warned Clinton and 
     Gore of repercussions in the event of a public breach with 
     Israel. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the 
     Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish 
     Organizations, said in an interview that the Clinton 
     administration was on the verge of unveiling its package 
     earlier this month ``and I think we've staved it off.''
       But David Bar Illan, a top political adviser to Netanyahu, 
     said by telephone yesterday that ``obviously they still have 
     an intention to come out with something.''
       ``Since for us it's a pure question of security, and since 
     every administration since Ford has said over and over that 
     matters of security are up to Israel and only Israel to 
     decide, we feel this is a departure--let's say in diplomatic 
     language --from a policy that has been honored until now,'' 
     said Bar Illan.
       Trade Minister Natan Sharansky, whom Netanyahu dispatched 
     to meet Albright and Gore last week, said by telephone last 
     night that the cabinet is united as on few other subjects 
     against the American demands. ``If there is external 
     pressure, it can only strengthen the resistance,'' he said.
       Among the premises of the administration's plan, however, 
     is that Netanyahu has at least as much to lose from a public 
     conflict as Clinton, whose share of the U.S. Jewish vote was 
     high in 1992 and higher in 1996. Management of the crucial 
     U.S. alliance is seen as a central test of Israeli premiers, 
     and Clinton's approval ratings in Israel regularly exceed 
     Netanyahu's.
       ``If you did a survey either of the American Jewish 
     community or the Israeli people and asked who has been the 
     president who in the last 50 years has done the most to 
     enhance Israel's national security . . . the overwhelming 
     result would be Bill Clinton,'' said Steven Grossman, 
     national chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a 
     former chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs 
     Committee.
       Both leaders have suffered, by their own and U.S. 
     government accounts, from the 14-month stalemate in 
     peacemaking. ``Almost all our friends in the region are in a 
     worse position,'' said a senior Middle East policymaker, 
     citing also Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf 
     emirates, including Oman. ``They staked their positions on 
     pursuit of peace, and it is eroding.''

  Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, what is the current business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in legislative session.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, do I need to ask unanimous consent to 
speak as in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator should seek consent to speak in 
morning business.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. How much time does the Senator need?
  Mr. KERREY. About 10 minutes.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from our side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator from Nebraska 
is recognized for 10 minutes.

                          ____________________