Clinton Promises Israel $100 Million to Fight Terrorism

President Clinton on Thursday pledged $100 million to help Israel combat terrorism and initiated an unprecedented intelligence-sharing arrangement.

The CIA and the Pentagon will begin work immediately on a program of technical and human intelligence-gathering that will make U.S. intelligence links with Israel deeper than those with any other nation, officials said.

The new counter-terrorism funds, to be spread over two years, are in addition to the $3 billion the United States already grants Israel annually in economic and military assistance. And they are separate from the $22 million in emergency aid for Israel that Clinton authorized 10 days ago in the immediate aftermath of four deadly terrorist bombings.

Clinton announced the new program at a joint news conference here with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Clinton said intensified surveillance activities and antiterror operations cannot guarantee that the recent suicide bombings will not be repeated. “But we can do more to identify the sources of support, to try to dry up money, to develop better technical and other means to prevent things from happening,” he said.

The president said the new plan offers no short-term solution to Israel’s anguish and insecurity, which derive from ancient cultural, historical and geographic realities, and that only a change of heart among Israel’s enemies will bring the Jewish state the peace it craves.

The “Summit of the Peacemakers” in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik a day earlier marked a milestone in Arab acceptance of Israel and recognition of its legitimate security needs, Clinton said. The answer to Israel’s current difficulties, however, lies not in the Palestinian territories or in Syria or Iran but in the unpredictable passions of men, the president said.

“I wish I had it in my power to reach into the hearts of those young men who have bought some apocalyptic version of Islam and politics that together causes them to strap their bodies with bombs and blow themselves to smithereens and kill innocent children,” Clinton said.

“I wish I could do that. I don’t pretend to be able to do that. But that’s not the question. The question is: Can we improve the capacity of Israel and of the Palestinian Authority to prevent these things from occurring? The answer to that question is yes,” the president continued.

Peres expressed his gratitude for the new American aid and for Clinton’s implicit endorsement of his difficult reelection bid in elections set for late May. “In my eyes, President Clinton is the first world leader that put on the agenda peace in our time as the major goal,” Peres said.

He added that Clinton “is really a great leader, but not less than that, a moving friend” who shares Israel’s current sorrow.

Throughout his two-day visit to the region, Clinton offered sympathies to a nation still in shock and grief after the latest wave of extremist violence. In an early afternoon drizzle, Clinton stood hand in hand with Leah Rabin at the grave of her husband, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was slain Nov. 4 by a right-wing Jewish law student.

Clinton, wearing a black skullcap and following Jewish custom, placed a stone upon the former prime minister’s grave as evidence of his visit. He brought the stone from the White House South Lawn, where Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shook hands 2 1/2 years ago on a pact to bring self-rule to Palestinian territories.

Clinton also visited 10 freshly dug graves of victims of the recent bus bombings. And he stopped by the grave site of Nachshon Waxman, an Israeli soldier and U.S. citizen who was killed in 1994 in a failed rescue effort after he was kidnapped by militants of the extremist Islamic group Hamas.

Clinton also briefly visited Bet Haruch High School, which lost three graduates in the recent political violence. Outside, he told reporters: “If you want to be free and safe, you have to stand against terror.”

To further that goal, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Director of Central Intelligence John M. Deutch remained in Israel after Clinton departed Thursday night.

They were to meet with their counterparts in the Israeli Foreign and Defense ministries and in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, to seek ways to improve Israel’s capacity to detect and deter terrorist violence.

Clinton sent Congress a request Wednesday night for $50 million in new funding for the Defense Department to be used to enhance Israel’s antiterrorist capabilities.

The assistance program will include training and technical assistance, advanced bomb-detection devices, X-ray systems to find explosives in packages and on people, robots to handle suspect packages and state-of-the-art thermal and radar sensors.

The United States and Israel will also cooperate on research and development efforts to find new means to prevent future attacks.

A senior Clinton administration official said the United States will be sharing information and technology with Israel that it shares with no other nation--including the United States’ closest historical ally, Britain.

At the news conference, Clinton was asked by an Israeli whether the American people would be satisfied with his response if the bombings had occurred in the United States and involved a proportional number of victims--10,000. A Jerusalem Post editorial Thursday said the American public would not be assuaged by the “mindless platitudes” that emerged from the Sharm el Sheik summit and the president’s visit to Israel.

Clinton replied: “Our people would be off the wall: They would be angry. They would be furious. They would want action.”

But, Clinton said, the American reaction was not mere rhetoric. “These are not empty commitments,” he declared.

Clinton’s final event of the visit was a speech at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center just blocks from where a Muslim bomber killed 13 people and himself 11 days ago. The president spoke before a backdrop of U.S. and Israeli flags and a wall of sunflowers.

“We know your pain is unimaginable, and in some extent unshareable, but America grieves with you,” he told an audience of 1,200.”It is not in our power to rid the world of evil. But today it is within our power to fight on for peace.”