THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511100602
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SIMON SERFATY
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin has caused an emotion rarely seen in the United States regarding such matters. The teary eyes of President Clinton, and the public tears of such ``cold'' personalities as Henry Kissinger and James Baker, revealed the close ties the late Israeli prime minister had developed with many Americans since he served as ambassador to Washington nearly a quarter of a century ago.
But this is not all. The impressive bipartisan group that represented America at the funeral Monday - including past, current and future presidents - also confirms that for this nation and its leaders, Israel is not a country-like-any-other. If anything, the assassination has reinforced the credibility of the U.S. commitment to that state. The message to the world is that even for a Republican Congress - represented in Jerusalem by its two leaders, Robert Dole and Newt Gingrich - isolationism has its limits.
Rabin's assassination also reflects the growing sentiment that the world has moved into an era when the violence that can be inflicted from within becomes even more significant than the violence that can be suffered from the outside world.
No democracy can escape such tragedies any longer. The political debate has lost its civility because the political discourse has lost its sense of proportion. It is not just in Israel that the head of government can be called a ``traitor'' or worse. Every day, invectives aimed at public figures set new standards. America has reacted to Israel as one of its own because the script of the drama is so very familiar to Americans.
But after a few days, these emotions will fade and the enormity of what has occurred will begin to affect policy. Notwithstanding the hopeful rhetoric heard at the funeral, initial prospects are not encouraging.
Eulogies are designed to remember the dead after everything that went wrong during their lives has been forgotten. Rabin's widow was right to admonish the mourners gathered around her home last Sunday with a gentle question and a bitter dismissal: Why didn't you come when he was alive? It is now too late.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had never come to Israel since he assumed his functions after Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981, and Jordanian King Hussein, who had not been back in Jerusalem since the Israeli Army re-entered that city in 1967, came at last.
Now they are, with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the next targets of their own extremists, whose passionate opposition to the peace process must have been encouraged by what their Israeli counterparts did. Is such concern the reason why Arafat looked so somber in Gaza, while Hussein sounded so fatalistic and Mubarak remained so discreet in Jerusalem?
Negotiations in the Middle East take place between individuals. Removing the aura of representativeness that surrounds them is to force the peace process into a dead end. At the very least, negotiations are now stalled until new elections show convincingly that Shimon Peres is a new leader for most of his people rather than the new target of some of his people. Such elections are likely to be held soon, but they are unlikely to provide either of the two main parties a mandate for the next round of negotiations.
For one, Peres hardly shows a winning electoral record over the past 25 years. He has lost three times and tied once - hardly an encouraging performance. More significantly, the fact that caused Rabin's death remains even after the violence it prompted has been roundly condemned by all: Peace between Jews and Arabs does not make the Middle East more stable.
Within each country, passions run too high. A few concessions helped return some lands to their previous owners and some troops to their previous barracks. But these were easy concessions compared with what remains to be done:
An agreement with Syria that includes final disposition of the strategic Golan Heights, which a majority of Israelis view as vital to their security.
Further talks with the Palestinians, including the final disposition of Jerusalem, which hardly any Israeli views as negotiable.
The final status of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which prompted those divisions in the first place.
To place matters in perspective, it may help to recall that more than 15 years after Egyptian President Sadat went to Israel and U.S. President Jimmy Carter negotiated an agreement at Camp David between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a majority of Egyptians still view the Israelis as the enemy of their people.
Under different circumstances, this would have been a good opportunity for the United States to pull the region out of the diplomatic quagmire into which it threatens to slip.
When hatreds run so deep, and divisions so wide, negotiations need an outside catalyst to keep them going, a skilled guide to help explain where they should go, and an impartial referee to articulate the penalties of failure. In the Middle East, perhaps more than elsewhere, only the United States can play these roles. This is a matter of national interest that few appear willing to deny, as well as a matter of national purpose that a large bipartisan majority of Americans have proved ready to acknowledge.
But unlike in Bosnia, a new U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East could not be pursued at the level of an assistant secretary of state, however gifted a man he might be, or even that of the secretary of state, however honorable he may be. The president will be needed.
Nor can such participation be limited to a cameo appearance, as was the case for the agreements signed by Israel, the PLO and Jordan during two years - and however skilled the president may be in managing a handshake between sworn enemies.
To bring Syrian President Hafez Assad to the end point (or to threaten to proceed without him once and for all), to widen the negotiations to other issues (including Lebanon) and to other participants (including some of the emirates in the Persian Gulf), and to deepen the dialogue on the issues that have been conveniently ignored to date (including Jerusalem) will not be easy.
But unless it is done soon, the radicalism that has shown its ugly face in the state where it was least expected will be even uglier in neighboring and more distant states where radicalism has become a way of life.
Yet no U.S. initiative can be expected. Even in the arena of foreign policy, the attention of the administration is elsewhere, and President Clinton's ability to focus on these negotiations long enough to get results is in doubt. Elsewhere is, of course, Bosnia, about which U.S. policy is torn between Clinton's goal to end the war and Congress' resolution, repeated at the end of last month, to stay out of it.
The troop commitment Clinton wants to make will not be accepted by Congress until it has been shown that a peace signed in the winter would be respected by all protagonists in the spring. Such a demonstration will not be easy to believe. Nor will the explanation of what U.S. interests would justify taking the risks inherent in a resumption of the war next spring be easily accepted. With 25,000 troops caught in the middle, the United States might be either forced to fight, a la Vietnam, or forced to run, a la Somalia.
Neither outcome would reassure those who might be willing to take additional chances for peace in the Middle East. A president who does what he said he would in Bosnia will soon clash with both the Congress and the American public. A few body bags next spring might suffice to kill Clinton's chances for re-election in the fall. A U.S. pullout might help him survive in the fall, but it would weaken America's credibility abroad.
And while failure to achieve peace in Dayton would end the necessity for the United States to risk war in the Balkans, such an outcome would confirm Clinton's ineffectiveness to provide the world a leadership commensurate with the scope of U.S. interests and the reality of American power.
Even with Rabin at the wheel, the peace process in the Middle East was coming to a difficult turning point. Without him, the curve has become more dangerous.
Pending new elections, in Israel first and in the United States next (as well as in Palestine next January), the temptation may be to await better weather in 1997. That is dangerous too. The passengers now on the peace train are getting restless, and some may choose to change course or drop off. Meanwhile, those who were standing at the stops ahead may grow tired of waiting and go home.
As for those who choose to endure the rough ride, they may find conditions worsening enough to cause a derailment even as the train stands still. MEMO: Simon Serfaty is a professor of U.S. foreign policy in the Graduate
Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.
ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing by John Earle, The Virginian-Pilot
Color photo
Simon Serfaty
Associated Press photos
Shimon Peres, left
Yitzhak Rabin, above
by CNB