‘Secretary’ Gingrich

House Speaker Newt Gingrich is thinking about running for president two years hence, but apparently he already imagines himself to be the secretary of State. The only requisites he lacks for that job are tact, diplomacy and an understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is supposed to work.

Heading a congressional delegation to Israel this week, Gingrich labored mightily to undercut the Clinton administration’s program to encourage peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That effort is not above criticism, from Gingrich or this newspaper or anyone else. But as Gingrich surely knows, tradition dictates that elected officials refrain from attacking their country’s foreign policy once they cross the water’s edge. The more prominent the official, the greater the responsibility for speaking cautiously. Gingrich, by virtue of his speakership, is among the two or three most visible American public officials.

The Clinton administration has been trying, with a frustrating lack of success, to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to cede an additional 13% of the West Bank to Palestinian control. Netanyahu has never supported the peace process set in motion five years ago. He insists that Israel cannot yield more than an additional 9% of the West Bank without mortal peril to its security. If he truly believes that, then it can only be concluded that the 9% offer marks the end of Israel’s possible territorial concessions. In that event the Palestinians would be left in administrative control of a series of disconnected fragments totaling about one-third of the West Bank. That is hardly a viable basis for making peace.

That doesn’t seem to matter to Netanyahu and the hard-liners around him, nor does it perturb Gingrich. In Israel, the speaker applauded the prime minister’s rejection of U.S. efforts. This lack of restraint in his comments was not an aberration. A few weeks ago, in remarks that only recently became generally known, Gingrich denounced Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as “an agent for the Palestinians.” That fatuous characterization impugns not just the secretary’s credibility as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians but her very loyalty to the United States.

There is more. Netanyahu says Israel must have $1 billion in foreign--meaning U.S.--aid to enhance its security should it pull back any further on the West Bank. The money would go mainly to build roads to connect Israeli settlements. Gingrich thinks this is a fine idea. But the position of the U.S. government for 30 years has been that Israel’s settlements are, at a minimum, an impediment to peace. No matter. The speaker is ready to embrace a massive new aid commitment that would effectively endorse Israel’s increasingly provocative policy of transferring population to the West Bank.

There’s no way to tell whether Newt Gingrich’s venture into foreign policy boosted his presidential prospects. But certainly it did nothing to help his country’s peacemaking efforts.