The 97th Congress ended the last days of 1982 with an absurd flurry of filibusters, marathon sessions, and last-minute deal-making. Almost lost in its confused shuffle to complete the 1983 federal budget was a vote on foreign aid expenditures in which Congress raised military aid to Israel to $1.7 billion, $500 million more than the level requested by President Reagan.
Total military and economic aid to Israel this year will now be $2.5 billion. With the passage of this expenditure, Israel has surpassed the wartime government of south Vietnam as the largest single recipient of U.S. aid in history. The aid increase was yet another personal defeat for the president, whose lobbying efforts to stop it had been bumbling and confused; but more importantly, it was a serious setback for any prospects for peace in the Middle East.
Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last June, the Reagan administration has groped for a policy to deal with the new situation in the Middle East. Originally the administration, despite occasional disclaimers, took a positive view of the invasion, and there is some reason to suspect that it was undertaken with the prior approval of our government.
Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon insists that he warned U.S. officials of the impending invasion during a visit to Washington in late May of last year. And Pentagon records show stepped-up shipments of military supplies to Israel during the early months of 1982, when the invasion was being prepared, as well as unusual increases in the U.S. naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean just before the June attack.
But as the Israeli siege of Beirut wore on and the civilian death toll mounted, U.S. support for Israel's war became a political embarrassment. George Shultz's first job as secretary of state was to carry out a thorough review of the Middle East situation and come up with new ideas for U.S. policy. The secretary's review resulted in Reagan's September 1 proposal for a freeze on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and for negotiations involving Israel, Jordan, and the U.S. with the dual goal of Israeli withdrawal from most of the occupied territories and the establishment of Palestinian governmental authority there in federation with Jordan.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reacted swiftly and predictably. He categorically rejected the plan and all of its parts. Most Arab leaders, including Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat, were somewhat more receptive, saying that the plan deserved serious study and consideration.
Palestinian openness to the Reagan proposal might surprise some, since the president specifically rejected two of the demands Palestinians usually consider non-negotiable: recognition of the PLO as their sole legitimate representative and the establishment of an independent state of Palestine. But despite their reservations about these aspects of Reagan's proposal, many Palestinian leaders are interested in the plan because it contains the most urgently needed first step for any Middle East solution, a halt to the Israeli settlements that are quickly turning into a de facto annexation of the occupied territories.
Since the invasion of Lebanon, the settlement process has continued to accelerate. Estimates of the amount of West Bank land now under Israeli control run as high as 55 to 60 per cent. The settlements remain the biggest single obstacle to any Middle East peace process. If Israel persists in its efforts to absorb the West Bank and Gaza and eventually annexes these territories, little room will be left for compromise. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict will become an all-or-nothing battle with the worst possible results likely.
Reagan's Middle East initiative has been further hindered by the fact that U.S. credibility for mediating a peace process and guaranteeing the results has reached an all-time low. U.S. credibility was dealt a severe blow just 15 days after Reagan announced his new plan when hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were massacred by Phalangist militiamen. The slaughter occurred after the U.S. had given Palestinians a written guarantee that their civilians would be protected following PLO troop withdrawal from Beirut. Many people in the Middle East understandably hold the United States ultimately responsible for the killings.
The congressional vote on aid to Israel created yet another credibility problem for the U.S. It is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone, in the Middle East or anywhere else, to believe that the U.S. really wants peace when it continues to bankroll Israel's invasion and occupation of Lebanon. It has authorized not only $1.7 billion in military aid, but also $785 million in economic support grants, which will pay indirectly for the very expensive settlement program in the occupied territories.
Even if the U.S. had the credibility to broker a Middle East process, such a course would not be the most productive in the long run. An international process involving the Israeli and Arab principals, western European representatives, and the Soviet Union, as well as the U.S., is still a better bet for a comprehensive and durable agreement. But at this point, the U.S. must take some preliminary steps before any peace process would be conceivable. First and foremost, the U.S. must inform Israel that any future assistance will be contingent upon an immediate withdrawal from Lebanon and the cessation of the settlements.
The current picture in the Middle East is not entirely bleak; there are small signs that a solution is possible. The peace proposal approved unanimously by the Arab heads of state at their summit in Fez, Morocco, last fall showed that they are willing to live with a permanent two-state solution to the Palestine question. Dissent against the policies of the Begin government is growing by leaps and bounds within Israel, though it is still confined to a substantial minority. And Reagan's plan, while not enough in itself to be the basis of a just settlement, does represent a move in the right direction.
But Begin remains intransigent, and our Congress has rewarded him for it. Even worse, the increased aid to the Begin government was pushed through Congress with the prominent support of some liberal politicians who are among the strongest opponents of U.S. aid to El Salvador and the most ardent supporters of the nuclear freeze resolution.
This action on the part of most of the congressional "doves" is further evidence that the peace movement has to put U.S. Middle East policy on its agenda. The nuclear arms race doesn't move forward in a vacuum. Rather, its momentum is a function of particular foreign policy goals on each side. So, too, disarmament and work toward it cannot take place in a vacuum but must strive to change the policies that the weapons exist to serve.
It is unfortunate that matters that should be settled by the Arabs and Israelis themselves have come to depend so much on the action, or inaction, of an imperial United States. But at present if there is going to be peace in the Middle East, the first moves have to be made here in the U.S., and very soon.
Danny Duncan Collum was a contributing editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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