Yesterday, the U.S. cast the lone veto against an Arab-backed resolution “demanding Israel halt its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.” Associated Press Writer Nick Wadhams also writes, “the U.S. has periodically used its veto to block resolutions critical of Israel.”
In fact, the U.S. has regularly shielded Israel from criticism and/or investigation of unquestionably reprehensible actions and violations of UN resolutions, 39 times between 1972 and 2004. The only years the U.S. did not perform this service for Israel, according to Donald Neff, former Time Magazine Bureau Chief, Israel, were 1990-92, when then-president George H.W. Bush bargained away U.S. veto power to gain international alliances concerning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The abrupt reversal of U.S. policy occurring when Bush Sr. was in the White House was particularly ironic, Neff writes, as “the initial 1972 veto to protect Israel was cast by George Bush [Sr.] in his capacity as U.S. ambassador to the world body.”
When Neff’s article was originally published in Washington Report, September/October 1993, he calculated that the “all-time abuser of the veto” was the Reagan administration. Nine of its eighteen vetoes related to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, one against condemning Israel’s skyjacking of a Libyan passenger airplane on 4 February 1986. Reagan and George Shultz, referred to by Neff as, “the most pro-Israel secretary of state since Kissinger, ” also vetoed “the April 20, 1982 condemnation of an Israeli soldier who shot 11 Muslim worshippers at the Haram Al-Sharif in the Old City of Jerusalem,” and several resolutions concerning the rights and security of Palestinians, including one that called for a peace settlement “under U.N. auspices.”
According to Neff’s updated version, first published in his book, Fifty Years of Israel, the unofficial agreement brokered by Bush Sr. held until March 1995, when the Clinton administration reverted to business as usual, and went on to veto two more resolutions. All three vetoes related to illegal settlement construction and expropriation of land in the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem, despite official U.S. policy that condemns this illegal expansion as a barrier to the peace process and a threat to the security of Palestinians.
Prior to yesterday’s veto, the current U.S. administration had exercised its power seven times, in March 2001, against the deployment of U.N. observers to the West Bank and Gaza; in December 2001, against condemning “all acts of terror, the use of excessive force and destruction of properties,” and encouraging “establishment of a monitoring apparatus.”; in December 2002, against expressing “deep concern over Israel’s killing of U.N. employees and Israel’s destruction of the U.N. World Food Program warehouse in Beit Lahiya,” and demanding “that Israel refrain from the excessive and disproportionate use of force in the occupied territories.”
In September 2003, the U.S. refused to “reaffirm the illegality of deportation of any Palestinian” or express “concern about the possible deportation of Yasser Arafat.”; in October 2003, refused to raise concerns “about Israel’s building of a security fence through the occupied West Bank.”; in March 2004, refused to condemn “Israel for killing Palestinian spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a missile attack in Gaza.”; in October 2004, refused to condemn “Israel’s military incursion in Gaza, causing many civilian deaths and extensive damage to property.” Blocking of the Arab-backed resolution yesterday brings the current total to eight.
The U.S. does not “periodically” use its veto to “block resolutions critical of Israel.” It consistently aids and abets in the crimes that Israel engages in by refusing to reign the state in even when it acts against official U.S. policy.
There were lessons to be learned from the resolutions that Israel ignored, Neff also wrote in 1993, and he warned that U.S. policy lacked context regarding Israel’s ongoing settlement construction and expulsion of Palestinians, a history that not only revealed Israel’s intention to retain the stolen land, but “Israel’s successful record of resisting American and other peace initiatives over the years.”
These include defeating such imaginative initiatives and tireless mediators as the U.N.’s Gunnar Jarring in the late 1960s, Secretary of State William Rogers’ major peace proposals of 1969, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy of the mid-1970s, the lackadaisical journeys of Secretary of State George Shultz in the 1980s, and the intense Bush and Baker efforts of 1991 and 1992. The one success was Jimmy Carter’s Camp David process.
However, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was unique. It came at the expense of the Palestinians, which was by Israeli design, and in exchange for Sinai, to which Israel never laid claim. Moreover, Israel received in return for signing the peace treaty with Egypt commitments from the U. S. that have now reached a level of economic and military aid unsurpassed in our history.
The result is that Israel has managed to retain what it has wanted most: East Jerusalem and the West Bank. After so many diplomatic initiatives, it seems fair to conclude Israel does not want peace on any terms but its own.
Daniel Levy, described as “an adviser in the Israeli prime minister’s office, a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo B and Taba talks, and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative,” writes in, “Is It Good for the Jews?“, “The current constellation of circumstances and executive branch timidity are, in key ways, the exception and not the rule.” He reminds readers that “Jimmy Carter pushed hard to realize Israeli-Egyptian peace,” but fails to explain how that benefitted the Palestinians. As Neff explained, it came at their expense, in exchange for land that Israel never claimed, but the deal was extraordinarily beneficial to Israel financially and militarily. It also augured the yearly U.S. financial commitment to an authoritarian regime in Egypt that crushes dissent and democratic reform.
Levy writes that Ronald Reagan started the U.S.-PLO dialogue, implying that the 1988 announcement was a sincere effort towards achieving a peaceful settlement. In a letter dated 13 December 1988, Yitzhak Shamir expressed indignation about the change in policy. Reagan replied, “that nothing in this decision should be construed as weakening the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security, diminishing our fight against terrorism in all its forms, or indicating our acceptance of an independent Palestinian state.” A dialogue was never seriously begun with the PLO, even during the Madrid Conference in 1991, when the U.S. “acceded to Israel’s insistence that the PLO not be given official status as an attendant, and both the United States and Israel assumed the Palestinian negotiators from the occupied territories would be more pliable than PLO officials,” according to Clayton Swisher in, The Truth About Camp David. (pp. 134-135)
Does Levy forget how the Israelis scorned the 1982 Reagan Plan, a vapid attempt to retain some modicum of Arab support for U.S. interests in the region, even though it refused to recognise the Palestinians’ right to self-determination? Begin called it “national suicide for Israel” and began an angry letter to Reagan with the statement, “What some call the ‘West Bank,’ Mr. President, is Judea and Samaria, and this simple historic truth will never change.”
Stanley Keller remembers “Reagan’s support for the invasion of Lebanon, his betrayal of an American agreement to protect Palestinians in refugee camps and his indifference to the agony of the survivors.” Dennis Hans calls it the “Reagan Wink.”:
It’s as good as a nod. Go into the home of any member of the Lebanese Phalange militia and you’ll see a glossy photo of the handsome Gipper closing his right eye. In 1982, Reagan engineered the withdrawal of PLO soldiers from Beirut by guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian civilians left behind. As soon as the PLO pulled out, Reagan withdrew the U.S. peace-keeping force. The Israeli military then opened the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps to the Phalange militia, who were bitter enemies of the PLO and not inclined to treat kindly any real or imagined PLO sympathizers. Phalangists methodically combed the camps, killing perhaps a thousand defenseless women, children and old men in the process. Good thing Reagan’s wink nullified his guarantee.
Reagan not only failed to recognise the PLO, he engineered a war crime against their supporters.
Levy writes, “George H.W. Bush convened the Madrid Conference and linked American loan guarantees for Israel to settlement policy (remember Bush Senior’s famous remark on AIPAC opposition to linking loans and settlements: ‘I heard today there was something like a thousand lobbyists on the Hill working the other side of the question. We get one lonely little guy down here doing it.’)” What would he have said if there hadn’t been a need to negotiate for a UN resolution against Iraq?
Levy writes, “In addition to supporting Rabin’s efforts, Clinton pushed the 1998 Wye River Agreement in the face of Netanyahu’s obstructionism, presented the Clinton parameters in December 2000 and tried to broker Israeli-Syrian peace (twice!).”
Clinton was humiliated by Netanyahu: The Truth About Camp David (pp. 8-9)
Any attempts to negotiate substantive agreements between Israelis and Palestinians under Netanyahu were mired in delay, provocative actions, and trickery. In September 1996, against the advice of security advisers, Netanyahu opened a passageway along Jerusalem’s Western Wall without consulting the Waqf, the Muslim authourity for the city’s holy sites. This resulted in days of rioting and gun battles between the Israeli army and Palestinian security forces, in which fifteen Israeli soldiers and nearly eighty Palestinians were killed, with hundreds more wounded. Netanyahu delayed the scheduled turnover of Hebron, insisting on further revision of earlier agreements, and he continued the unabated expropriation of Palestinian land and settlement construction; especially controversial was that of Jabal Abu Ghneim, near Jerusalem, which was renamed Har Homa. After a Security Council resolution condemning the construction was vetoed by the United States, violent Palestinian demonstrations erupted. In 1998, the erratic Israeli leader tried the last-minute ploy of conditioning the Israeli government’s acceptance of the Wye River Agreement on Clinton’s release of convicted U.S. spy Jonathan Pollard. Clinton nearly succumbed to Netanyahu’s blackmail demands until George Tenet, the director of the CIA, threatened to resign. It was an embarrassing episode for Clinton. And getting Netanyahu’s signature on the Wye Agreement proved to matter little. Even as the ink was drying on Wye, Netanyahu put egg on Clinton’s face and on the entire U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” by continuing to renege on Israel’s commitments to withdraw from occupied Palestinian land.
Despite Clinton’s hopes that a Labor victory in 1999 would rejuvenate the peace process, Barak did nothing more to implement the Wye Agreement than his predecessor. Arafat’s continuing suppression of Palestinian organisations such as Hamas that were opposed to the Oslo accords, even as the Israelis broke one promise after another, was never seriously addressed by Clinton. Barak manipulated Clinton’s desire to fulfill Rabin’s pledge for a Syrian-Israel peace agreement but Clinton continued to pursue it, even when he could grasp the eventual failure, and against the advice of his negotiating team. Only Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross showed any enthusiasm for pursuing it. The Palestinians rightly saw it as a negative distraction from the negotiations they were promised. When it all turned to dust, Clinton joined Barak in deceptively placing all of the blame on Arafat.
Levy puts the Clinton parameters, a last ditch effort to add some luster to a departing president’s legacy, in the plus column. Where does he put the lies he tells about Arafat, and the start of the second intifada?
Most mind boggling of all is that Levy can write, “The current George W. Bush administration has not been immune to displaying vim — in endorsing the Mitchell Report, calling for a Palestinian state, and presenting the road map,” and allow it to go to print. But I suppose when death visits the “other” much more frequently than it does your own, one has time to play these macabre games that masquerade as diplomacy, or sometimes, doesn’t bother dressing up at all.