U.S. in Tight Spot on Mideast Peace

Personally and politically, President Clinton may have more riding on the search for a lasting Middle East peace than on any other foreign policy issue.

But as the chances for agreement between Israelis and Palestinians stall and the precious goodwill that fleetingly improved these chances drains away, the president seems as frozen as the talks themselves, unsure how to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, uncertain how to recapture the momentum that once propelled the negotiations forward.

“The president and I have been concerned about the recent drift in the peace process,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher admitted earlier last week in a year-end news conference.

But aside from dispatching the administration’s chief Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross, back to the region this weekend for an on-the-spot assessment of the talks, Washington has not come up with new U.S. moves to rescue the process.

In part, this lack of action reflects a hard reality: The United States may be the globe’s lone superpower, but in the Middle East, the presidential arsenal for bringing Israel and the Palestinians to agreement is effectively limited to a single weapon: jawboning.

It is a weapon Clinton has been hesitant to use.

Last week Clinton seemed distinctly uncomfortable agreeing during a White House news conference with a questioner’s characterization of Jewish settlements on the Israeli-occupied West Bank as “an obstacle to peace.” It was a phrase that previous administrations used often, but the words seemed to stick in Clinton’s throat.

“We saw the ill ease of the president,” noted Richard Murphy, who served as an assistant secretary of State for Middle Eastern affairs under presidents Reagan and Bush. “He’s not comfortable criticizing Israel.”

A White House staff member described Clinton as someone who “doesn’t like to rebuke” allies. “That’s just not the way he operates,” the official said.

Aside from Clinton’s personal reluctance, other factors have also worked against stronger U.S. action recently to revive the stalled peace process. Among them:

* After working mainly as a cheerleader during his first term, encouraging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to continue their dash for peace, Clinton is still adjusting to the arrival of Netanyahu, who is highly skeptical of the entire framework within which it occurred.

“To put it bluntly, he doesn’t have a partner anymore,” summed up Richard Haass, a Middle East specialist at the National Security Council during the Bush years.

* For most of the first six months of Netanyahu’s tenure, the administration avoided criticism to give him ample room to try to carry out his campaign pledge of adopting new ways to make peace. Although one administration official indicated that any honeymoon period with Netanyahu is rapidly drawing to a close, another stressed that Washington is still determined to create a working relationship with the prime minister.

“I don’t believe you are going to see a fundamental transformation in the way we deal with Israel,” the latter said. “We still basically believe we can work with [Netanyahu].”

* The transition within Clinton’s national security team as he prepares for a second term has also largely precluded dramatic new moves. In addition to Christopher and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, several senior State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern affairs Robert Pelletreau, will be leaving their posts next month. Ross, however, will be staying on.

While Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s nominee for secretary of State, is expected to be more aggressive than her predecessor, experts pointed out that she can go no further than the president is willing to lead. They also noted that no area drew more of Christopher’s attention than the Middle East.

A senior official said Clinton and aides are prepared to criticize Netanyahu in public if necessary but would prefer to send their messages in private. “The best way to do business is in private,” the official said. “If what is done in private does not produce the desired effect, you can’t remain silent.”

Despite these factors, several Middle East specialists and foreign policy experts said in interviews that Clinton must speak out more forcefully if the peace process is going to be saved.

Agreeing that public scolding was Clinton’s only real option, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security advisor under President Carter, said: “Jawboning is a lot when the United States does it. It’s important for Israel to know where the U.S. stands.”

Added former National Security Council Mideast specialist Geoffrey Kemp: “Clinton now faces one of those rare periods of a couple of years where he can act presidential before he becomes a lame duck. He should speak out more forcefully.”

But with Israel in the equation, Clinton has found it hard to exert even relatively mild pressure. His decision Monday to turn the public rhetoric against Netanyahu up a notch by agreeing with the characterization of the settlements as an “obstacle to peace” drew quick counterattacks from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and his counterpart at the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.).

They wrote a joint letter to the Israeli leader expressing “support [for] your efforts to ensure the security of Israel’s people and its borders.”

Analysts believe that, aside from encouraging and cajoling, Clinton seems to have few options. “There aren’t a lot of levers out there he can pull,” Murphy said.

Middle East specialists inside and outside the administration noted that any attempt to soften Netanyahu’s hard line by threatening to cut the $3.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel would be both unwise and virtually impossible politically for Clinton to carry through. A program of $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees--which contains a provision for reducing the total by the amount Israel spends on West Bank and Gaza settlements--ends this year and, therefore, has only limited use as a signal of U.S. displeasure.

The settlements, which Netanyahu has consistently supported and for which he offered new financial subsidies earlier this month, are seen by Palestinians as an act of aggression.

Whatever the presidential options, the stakes involved in keeping the Middle East peace process alive are enormous, not just for Israel and the Palestinians but also the U.S. as well.

Continuing progress would help stabilize a notoriously volatile region that provides much of America’s imported oil and would remove an important irritant in Washington’s relations with the Arab world.

Arab sources argue that time is running out; they claim that, as the negotiations drag on, the mood among Palestinians has slipped from expectation to disillusionment to a despair that they fear is about to explode into new violence.

“There’s a concern edging on panic” among Palestinians, said James Zogby, director of the Arab American Institute here, who recently returned from the region. “The chances for new violence are only growing.”

Administration officials agree that the pressures on the Palestinian public are nearing dangerous levels. They insist, however, that Arafat and Netanyahu realize that they have no real choice but to continue talking peace.

The peace process can be stalled, “but it doesn’t go away,” one senior official said. “Both sides know there is no acceptable alternative. It is one thing to say no to a process when it doesn’t exist. It’s another to walk away from it when it does.”

But some academic Middle East specialists say that the foundation of the U.S. administration’s policy seems to be eroding.

“The United States had established a psychology of peace--a belief that the peace process is irreversible,” said Shibley Telhami, director of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. “That created a competition to jump on the bandwagon. That has now collapsed.”

In its place, he said, is a growing “expectation of inevitable conflict.”