settlements in u.s. policytinct parts: absorption of all of jerusalem, and the establishment of...

SETTLEMENTS IN U.S. POLICY DONALD NEFF

From the start of Israel's occupation of Arab lands in 1967, the United States opposed the establishment of Jewish settlements in the territories. This pillar of U.S. policy was based on the legal bedrock provided by the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), adopted in 1949 and signed by Israel in 1951. Paragraph 6 of the convention's Article 49 states: "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." It was this clear and forthright international accord that provided the basis for the universal opposition that greeted Israel when it began, in the immediate aftermath of the war, to colonize the territories it had occupied, a process that has continued without pause despite U.S. and world condemnation.

In the years since the occupation began, the United Nations, both the Se- curity Council and the General Assembly, has repeatedly condemned Israel's settlement activity, declaring it a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. At best, the United States has an inconsistent record toward these resolutions. Nonetheless, Washington consistently maintained to the Arabs and within the international community that its position against settlements was based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, the implication-at times made explicit-being that they were "illegal." This continued to be the case up to 1981, when the newly elected Ronald Reagan declared they were "not ille-

Donald Neff is author of the Wariors trilogy (Amana Books), a study of how U.S. policy related to Israel and the Arabs during the wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973, and of the unpublished data base Middle East Handbook, on which this article is based.

Joumal of Palestine Studies XXIII, no. 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 53-69.

54 JOURNAL OF PALESTINE STUDIES

gal." Thereafter, U.S. policy was that the settlements were neither legal nor illegal, but an "obstacle" or "counterproductive" or "not helpful" to the peace process, to quote various descriptions that presidents have used over the past decade.'

Whatever the verbal formulation, and no matter how confusing the ambi- guity caused by the oracular declaration by Reagan about the settlements' legal status, the important point was that official U.S. policy remained con- stant in opposing settlements. Although President Bush quietly acquiesced in fundamental changes during his quest for reelection, opposition to settlements remained the announced core policy of the United States up to 1993, when Bill Clinton came to power.

The Clinton administration appears far on its way to adopting a public position aligned

Opposition to settlements more closely to Israel's and less rooted in remained the U.S. core policy America's moral or legal traditions. There up to 1993. have been few, if any, complaints from

Washington since Clinton's arrival about Israel's continuing settlement activity. And, in fact, his administration has diluted policy to the extent of publicly endorsing the use of U.S.-guaranteed funds to expand existing settlements. This could have a significant impact on final-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the two sides discuss the nature and extent of Palestinian self-rule.

The Colonization Begins

Israel started the 1967 war on 5 June and by 10 June was in military occupation of Arab East Jerusalem, including the Old City; Syria's Golan Heights; Egypt's Sinai Peninsula; the Gaza Strip with its teeming refugee camps; and Jordan's West Bank-a total of some 21,000 square miles. This was nearly triple Israel's area of 8,000 square miles within the 1949 armistice lines and nearly four times the 5,900 square miles allotted it in the 1947 UN partition plan. On 11 June, one day after the end of the fighting, Israel began the process of colonizing the Arab territories by razing the Maghrabi Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem next to the Western (Wailing) Wall of the Tem- ple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.2

What is now plain with hindsight is that Israel operated on a premeditated and pragmatic plan of settlement specifically aimed at testing whether it could successfully resist international pressure. Israel's strategy had two dis- tinct parts: absorption of all of Jerusalem, and the establishment of settlements in all the occupied territories. As early as 8 June, former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had declared: "Members of this generation who were inhabitants of the Old City [of Jerusalem], of Hebron, and the Etzion region should be among those returning to those areas to mark the continuity of Jewish [settlement] in those areas, before the beginning of political pressures to make Israel leave these."3 Ben-Gurion's concern about political

SETTLEMENTS IN U.S. POUCY 55

pressures grew out of the humiliation he had suffered eleven years earlier when President Dwight D. Eisenhower relentlessly pressured him to withdraw Israeli forces from the northern Sinai and the Gaza Strip, which they had captured in a surprise attack against Egypt during the Suez crisis.

Israel showed itself determined to act before such pressure could develop again. Its ambitions toward Jerusalem were the more urgent: within eighteen days of the end of fighting Israel was evicting Palestinians from the Old City, had passed new laws aimed at redesigning the City of Jerusalem so that its population was overwhelmingly Jewish, and had laid legal claim to the entire city as Israel's eternal capital. Though these actions brought protests from the United States and two separate UN General Assembly resolutions criticizing Israel, they elicited from Washington no actions similar to Eisen- hower's strong stance. As a result the Labor government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol ignored the outcries and instead turned its attention to settling the rest of the occupied territories.

The first Israeli settlement, Kibbutz Merom Hagolan near Qunaytra on Syria's Golan Heights, was established on 15 July 1967.4 On 24 September, Eshkol made the first public announcement of Israel's settlement plans.5 Although he had vowed at the start of the war that Israel sought no territory, Eshkol now said Israel would rebuild settlements at the Etzion bloc, an area of four settlements that had been lost to Jordanian forces in the 1948 war, and that plans were being discussed to reestablish Beit Haarava, also lost in 1948, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.6 The implication was that Israel was merely reclaiming settlements where Jews had lived before Israel's founding.7 The United States complained that Eshkol's announcement amounted to a change in Israel's previous position against retaining territory and that the new Israeli policy conflicted with Johnson's declared principles of peace,8 but took no strong action.

By the beginning of 1968, Israel had cautiously established pioneering settlements in By the start of 1968 Israel had all the occupied territories. It had expropri- established settlements in all ated 838 acres for new settlements, expelled the occupied territories. hundreds of Arabs from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, razed or partly destroyed Palestinian refugee towns at Tiflig and near Jericho as well as 144 homes in Gaza, and secretly embarked on a major plan for building four large settlements in Arab Jerusalem.9

The process of establishing Jewish settlements where none had been before continued cautiously and stealthily under Labor party rule. In a successful effort to blunt international criticism, Israel established settlements in the disguise of "nahals," paramilitary outposts manned by youths. These outposts were supposedly meant to contribute to Israel's military security in the territories and therefore were sanctioned by the Fourth Geneva Conven- tion. In fact, they were harbingers of full-fledged civilian settlements. Most of the nahals became civilian settlements within a year or so of their estab-


lishment. The use of what amounted to a real-estate shell game considerably defused the settlement issue for almost a decade.

Levi Eshkol, of course, was not acting in a vacuum. Increasingly powerful forces within Israel were calling for the retention of the land that Zionism promised to the immigrant Jews. As early as 21 September 1967-three days before his public announcement that Israel planned to establish some settlements-there emerged a far-right group known as the Land of Israel Move- ment. Its slogan was "Not an inch," and its founding manifesto said:

The whole of Eretz Israel is now in the hands of the Jewish people, and just as we are not allowed to give up the State of Israel, so we are ordered to keep what we received there from its hands: the land of Israel.... Our present borders guarantee security and peace and open up unprecedented vistas of national material and spiritual consolidation. Within these boundaries, equality and freedom, the fundamental tenets of the state of Israel, shall be shared by all citizens without discrimination.'0

The Land of Israel Movement drew support from across the political spec- trum, including Eshkol's ruling Labor party and, especially, Menachem Be- gin's opposition Herut party." While the movement did not last as an organized force beyond the 1973 war, its emergence gave impetus to the even more activist Gush Emunim, which supplanted it as the militant leader sup- porting colonization.12 From this time on there was in Israel a committed pro-settlement constituency crossing party lines that politicians had to take into their calculations.

If Washington had acted during this period with the steely determination and clarity of purpose that the Eisenhower administration had shown in 1956 in demanding Israel's withdrawal after the Suez crisis, the chances are high that the militant settler movement would have been blunted. Instead, Washington's reaction was tepid words and no serious measures. This provided the Israeli settlers with a compelling argument they used time after time over the following decades as Israel repeatedly went its own way in opposition to official U.S. policy: If the United States was not ready to act to impose its own policies, why should Israel?

Washington and the Geneva Convention Although as early as three days after the 1967 war the United States pub-

licly asserted that the Fourth Geneva Convention applied to Israel and the occupied territories, it took four years for Washington unequivocally to link the convention to Israel's actions there. Thus, during a Security Council debate on 25 September 1971, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations George Bush stated: "We regret Israel's failure to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this convention."'13 Another four years were to pass before the United States-again in a Security Council debate on 23 March 1976- finally condemned the settlements as being illegal and an obstacle to peace. By that time, as a result of the surge of settlement activity by the Labor gov-

SETTLEMENTS IN U.S. POLICY 57

emnment under the prodding of hard-line settlers, there were about sixty-eight settlements in the occupied territories excluding Jerusalem; twenty-seven in the West Bank, including seventeen in the Jordan Valley; twenty-three on the Golan Heights; and eighteen in the Gaza Strip/Sinai. Total investment by Israel in the settlements was estimated at $500 million.'4 U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations William W. Scranton spelled out U.S. policy by condemning Israel's claim to Jerusalem and then told the Security Council:

Next, I turn to the question of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Again, my government believes that international law sets the appropriate standards. An occupier must maintain the occupied areas as intact and unaltered as possible, without interfering with the customary life of the area, and any changes must be necessitated by the immediate needs of the occupation and be consistent with intemational law. The Fourth Geneva Convention speaks directly to the issue of population transfer in Article 49. . . . Clearly then substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under the convention and cannot be considered to have prejudged the outcome of future negotiations between the parties or the location of the borders of states of the Middle East. Indeed, the presence of these settlements is seen by my government as an obstacle to the success of the negotiations for a just and final peace between Israel and its neighbors.'5

Yet two days after those spirited words, the United States tumed around and vetoed a Security Council resolution deploring Israel's changing the status of Jerusalem and calling on Israel to stop establishing settlements on Arab land. The vote was fourteen to one.16 At the time, President Gerald Ford was already deep in the presidential race to be held in November and needed all the domestic support he could gather.

As astonishing as it might seem, it took until 22 March 1979-twelve years after Israel's settlement campaign began-for the United States to allow the Security Council finally to address the matter with a stern resolution. Resolu- tion 446 found the Fourth Geneva Convention applied to the Arab territories under Israel's occupation, "including Jerusalem," that the settlements were therefore illegal and a "serious obstruction" to peace. The vote was twelve to zero with the United States one of three countries abstaining.17

By this time the UN action was far too late to influence events. A United Nations commission created by the resolution to study Israel's settlement policy reported in July the existence of 133 Jewish settlements and nearly 100,000 settlers in the occupied territories. It reported: "The commission found evidence that the Israeli Government is engaged in a willful, systematic and large-scale process of establishing settlements in the occupied territories for which it should bear full responsibility."'18

The dramatic increase in settlements was attributable to the coming to power of ultranationalist Menachem Begin in mid-1977.

Although Begin's Herut (Freedom) party had persevered as the major political opposition from the time of Israel's creation, Begin had never en- joyed wide popularity. This began to change in the wake of the 1973 war


and a general rise of dissatisfaction with the Labor party, especially its cautious policy toward settlements. The number of settlements Labor had established up to 1974 was relatively modest, less than twenty outside of Jerusalem.'9 Begin's upward political trajectory coincided in the winter of 1974 with the founding of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful).20

The leader was extremist Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who in 1968 had spearheaded the founding of the controversial and unauthorized Qiryat Arba settlement at Hebron in defiance of the Labor government. Qiryat Arba became the center of settler extremism, resulting in many violent attacks against Hebron's Palestinians.2' Hebron was where Brooklyn-born Dr. Baruch Goldstein was living when he massacred at least thirty Muslim worshippers at the al-Haram al-Ibrahimi, Abraham's tomb, on 25 February 1994. Gold- stein was a follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League and of Kach (Thus!), the racist political party in Israel that calls for the expulsion of all Palestinians. According to Israeli historian Ehud Sprinzak: "Rabbi Meir Kahane had been the first to introduce Jewish violence and vigilantism into the complex of relations between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank."22

At Dr. Goldstein's funeral, he was widely hailed as a hero by militant settlers, with his friend Shmuel Hacohen, 34, a teacher, saying: "I think it was necessary and it's necessary to kill a lot more. . . There are no innocent Arabs here, and thank God that one Jewish hero reminded us that it had become almost legal to kill Jews in the street. He was the only one who could do it, the only one who was 100 percent perfect. He was no crazy. "23

According to the New York Times, another Jewish mourner cried: "We are all Goldsteins." Rabbi Yaacov Perin said in his eulogy: "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."24 Such hate-filled words were a logical and chilling, evolution of the militancy of an earlier Gush Emunim hero, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, who in the early 1980s justified settlements by arguing:

We find ourselves here by virtue of the legacy of our ancestors, the basis of the Bible and history, and no one can change this fact.... Some argue that there are Arab lands here. It is all a lie and a fraud. There are abso- lutely no Arab lands here.25

The clash that dramatized the issue and brought the settlers into direct confrontation with the Labor government was the establishment in "Sama- ria" (the northern West Bank) of the Elon Moreh settlement. It was to become the symbol of the struggle between the settlers and Menachem Begin on the one hand and the cautious Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin on the other. On 30 November 1975, the settlers successfully defied the government by establishing Elon Moreh near Sebastia, south of Nablus. Gush Emunim leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger was among the settlers and left no doubt about the group's aim: "This is the beginning of settlement in Samaria. One more settlement, and another, and all of Samaria will be ours!" It was the final action in what became a successful effort to break Labor's prohibition against


establishing settlements amid the heavily Palestinian population in the northern West Bank.26

Two years later, on 17 May 1977, Begin came to power with 33.4 percent of the vote.27 Two days later he defiantly traveled to Elon Moreh and declared: "There will be many more Elon Morehs.28 He was true to his word. At the time, there were about 50,000 Jews living in Arab East Jerusalem and about 7,000 in forty-five settlements in the West Bank and in an additional forty-five in the rest of the occupied territories.29 When he left office six years later, there were close to 200 settlements in all the occupied territories with about 22,000 Jewish settlers in the territories and about 100,000 in East Jerusalem. Begin's Likud successor, Yitzhak Shamir, pursued an aggressive program over the next decade that was to substantially thicken and expand these focal points. In termns of new settlements, Shamir's accomplishments were fairly modest. Where he excelled even Begin was Shamir excelled even Begin in in expanding settlements to accommodate the expanding settlements. movement of Jews into the territories.30 When Shamir finally left office in mid-1992, there were some 245,000 Jews in some 250 settlements, including East Jerusalem.3

The Verbal Battle Over Settlements Begins When President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, he had a vision of find-

ing a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on UN Security Council Res- olution 242's fonnula of trading land for peace. The concept of withdrawal automatically precluded Israel's establishment of settlements. Thus Carter and Begin could hardly have been more diametrically opposed in their views on settlements, as quickly became clear after they held their first meeting 19-20 July 1977 in the White House. During their meeting, Carter had told Begin that under Resolution 242 Israel would have to withdraw on all three fronts and "I then explained to the Prime Minister how serious an obstacle to peace were the Israeli settlements being established within the occupied territories." Yet less than a week after Begin returned to Israel his cabinet con- ferred legal status on three settlements.32 Carter responded by becoming the first president to label in public the settlements as "illegal." At a press conference on 28 July, he stated:

The matter of settlements in the occupied territories has always been characterized by our govemment, by me and my predecessors, as an illegal action.33

The experience left Carter "extremely annoyed" with Begin, an emotion that was to grow more intense.34 For his part, Begin was less than impressed by the negotiating talents of the new president. After the White House ses- sions, Begin privately told his aides that he planned to go ahead establishing settlements despite Carter's opposition. The Americans, he said, would be angry for six months but then they would acquiesce.35


Essentially, Begin was right, although Carter did continue to insist that the settlements were illegal. On 21 April 1978, State Department Legal Adviser Herbert Hansell asserted that the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protec- tion of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949 applied to all the occupied territories under Article 49, Paragraph 6 cited above. Hansell's opinion effec- tively rebutted all of Israel's arguments that the Geneva Convention did not apply. He argued that Paragraph 6 was "applicable whether or not harm is done by a particular transfer." He contended that the paragraph applied whether or not the transfer displaced the local population, and whether or not the transfer was a mass one or merely of individuals. In response to Israeli claims that the convention did not apply because of the lack of international recognition of Jordan's claim to the West Bank, Hansell asserted that the question of prior sovereignty of the territories did not affect Para- graph 6. Its purpose, he wrote, was not to protect the interests of an ousted sovereign. Its "paramount purposes are protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory and reserving permanent territorial changes, if any, until settlement of the conflict."

Concluded Hansell: "While Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for the reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law."36

Although the Carter administration continued to speak out against settlements, it was anything but consistent in its votes in the United Nations. Of the seven resolutions critical of settlements passed during Carter's four-year term, the administration supported only three, one in the Security Council and two in the General Assembly.37 It abstained in the four other cases, twice in the Security Council and twice in the General Assembly.38

The single affirmative vote in the Security Council involved the embarrass- ing episode in which Carter humbly retreated in public under withering criticism by Israel's supporters, claiming that there had been miscommunications and that the vote should have been an abstention.39 This extraordinary turn- about on 3 March 1980 came because of the fury of Israel's supporters at the resolution's mention that settlements were illegal in the territories, "including Jerusalem."40 Carter recognized that the vote would harm his chances in the approaching presidential primaries in New York and Illinois.41

By the time Carter left office, Israel had formally annexed Jerusalem as its "eternal capital" and had at least eighty-nine settlements on the West Bank, thirty in the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai, and twenty-eight on the Golan Heights.42

Jimmy Carter's ringing declaration that settlements were illegal did not survive the end of his term. Less than a month after he assumed office, Ron- ald Reagan declared on 2 February 1981: "I disagreed when the previous administration referred to them as illegal-they're not illegal." He added, however, that Israel's "rush" to establish settlements was "maybe ... unnec-


essarily provocative."43 This odd formulation, which implied that the settlements were legal but did not explicitly say so, left the United States without a coherent policy toward settlements. David A. Korn, the State Department's director for The Reagan formulation left Israel and Arab-Israeli affairs at the time, the United States without a recalled: coherent policy toward

settlements. For more than a year afterward, the United States remained mute on

Israeli settlements. American silence was all the signal Mr. Begin's Likud government needed to initiate an accelerated settlements program. By Sep- tember 1982, the administration realized what damage it had done to its Middle East peace efforts and the formula "settlements are an obstacle to peace" became standard State Department rhetoric.44

The Bush administration had barely moved into the White House before Israel announced, on 15 March 1989, the establishment of a new settlement near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, adding that it was the first of a new series, with seven more to come.45 Unlike all presidents before, with the possible exception of Richard Nixon, Bush was intimately familiar with the settlement issue because of his tenure as ambassador to the United Na- tions in the 1970s, not to mention his eight years as vice president. He strongly opposed settlements, but he had no illusions about Israel's unbend- ing attitude toward them, especially under a Likud government headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who in his inaugural speech pledged to continue the "holy work" of establishing settlements.46

The stark contrast between the views of Bush and Shamir was signaled on 22 May 1989 when Secretary of State James A. Baker, appearing before the annual meeting of Israel's powerful American lobby AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), sternly warned Israel:

For Israel, now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel. Israeli interests in the West Bank and Gaza, security and otherwise, can be accommodated in a settlement based on Reso- lution 242. Forswear annexation. Stop settlement activity.47

Despite Baker's words, settlement activity increased dramatically toward the end of 1989, when a flood of Jews from the Soviet Union began to arrive in Israel in the waning days of the cold war. By the beginning of 1990 they were landing in Israel at the rate of 1,000 a week.48 On 14 January 1990, Shamir took the opportunity to respond to Baker. He said the number of Soviet immigrants was expected to increase and as a result "we need the Land of Israel and a big and strong state of Israel. We will need a lot of room to absorb everyone, and every immigrant will go where he wants."49 A spokesman for Shamir later said the prime minister supported settling in any part of Palestine and would not be unhappy to see Soviet Jews move to the occupied territories.50


When Shamir later contended that East Je- rusalem did not count as occupied territory

Bush was the only president since all of Jerusalem was Israel's, Bush retal- to identify East Jerusalem as iated by making the only presidential state- occupied territory. ment ever identifying East Jerusalem as

occupied territory. He said on 3 March 1990 at a press conference:

My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jeru- salem.... And that's our strongly held view.51

The Loan Guarantees Only two days prior to Bush's statement, Secretary of State Baker had made

an historic declaration himself. On 1 March he said that the administration would consider guaranteeing a loan to build housing for the new Soviet immigrants-but only if the money was not used in the territories. This was a truly memorable declaration since it was the first time any administration since Eisenhower's had linked U.S. aid to making Israel conform with U.S. policy. However, the linkage was not to Israel's $3 billion annual official aid but to a separate request it had made for $400 million in loan guarantees. Baker told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Aid that the administration was sympathetic to the request, but that it wanted to be sure that "guarantees provided will not simply supplant other money that is then used to support settlements in the occupied territories."52

Despite Baker's words, the House and Senate quickly approved the mea- sure. However, the administration refused to act on it until it received assurances from Israel. Pressure mounted for the administration to release the funds and, finally, on 3 October 1990, it said it was ready to do so. Baker explained that he had received the proper assurances from Israel not to use the money in the territories.53 But within four days Prime Minister Shamir publicly said the agreement did not cover Arab East Jerusalem and that Israel would go ahead with construction of a new Jewish settlement between the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus.54 When Baker was asked on 8 October about Shamir's claim, he refused to answer55 but continued to withhold the funds. (They were not finally released until 20 February 1991 after Baker believed he had received Israeli assurances that they would not be used in the territories.56) Baker and Bush further showed their displeasure on 12 Octo- ber 1990 by having the United States join in a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for "acts of violence" against Palestinians during a confrontation 8 October at the Haram al-Sharif in Jeru- salem in which seventeen Palestinians were killed:57

In early 1991 Israel began letting it be known that it wanted the United States to guarantee a total of $10 billion in loans over a five-year period to house Soviet immigrants. The Bush administration succeeded in getting


Israel to delay its formal request until September, giving Washington time to build the case that there should be linkage between U.S. aid and settlements. But even with this enormous aid request pending, Shamir refused to delay or stop establishing new settlements. Instead, Israel embarked on an unprecedented settlement campaign. More Israeli housing units were scheduled for construction during Israel's fiscal 1991 (March 1991-March 1992) than during the entire 1967-1984 period.58 By spring 1991, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl was reporting that Israel was involved in "the biggest settlement construction program ever launched."59

By September there were about 225,000 Jewish settlers living in the territories-120,000 in Arab East Jerusalem, 90,000 in the West Bank, 12,000 in the Golan Heights, and 3,000 in the Gaza Strip.60 Plans for an even more massive program were already being considered by the Shamir government.61

Israel set 6 September 1991 as the day it would make formal its applica- tion for $10 billion in loan guarantees. On the eve of the date, Bush and Baker swung into action to delay Israel at a time when the peace process was finally showing encouraging signs. But personal entreaties to Shamir and Israel's U.S. lobby, AIPAC, fell on deaf ears. Not even appeals based on the fact that the historic Madrid peace conference was about to take place de- terred Israel.62 Shamir went ahead and lodged the formal request on the expected date. An angered President Bush responded by calling reporters to the Oval Office on the same day and, in effect, declaring war on Shamir. Still basking from the lightning victory over Iraq in the Gulf, Bush publicly ap- pealed to Congress to delay action on the request for 120 days.63 Shamir's response was to declare on 8 September that the United States had a "moral obligation" to give Israel the guarantee.64

The fight was now joined. On 12 September some 1,000 Jewish Ameri- cans from at least thirty-five states descended on Washington to lobby lawmakers as part of an organized pro-guarantee effort.65 That same day Bush called a news conference to threaten that he would veto any congressional effort to grant the guarantees to Israel any time short of his request for a 120-day delay. Said Bush: "I'm going to stand for what I believe here.... And I'm asking the American people to support me in this request."66

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir shrugged off Bush's threat of a veto, saying: "We don't see any reason to change our position."67 It took until 2 October before the Senate finally agreed to Bush's request and delayed the matter for four months.68

A breakthrough in the peace process appeared to have occurred on 18 October when the Soviet Union restored diplomatic relations with Israel, as Tel Aviv had long sought. On 20 October Israel finally accepted a joint Mos- cow-Washington invitation to attend an international peace conference in Madrid on 30 October, the first conference to include Palestinian representa- tives, as well as those of all of Israel's Arab state neighbors.69 But to assure an accurate representation of his policies, Shamir decided to represent Israel himself, saying: "Everybody knows what I represent."70 Just what he repre-


sented was later explained by Shamir himself. After being voted out of office and the elapse of nearly a year of fruitless negotiations between Israel and its Palestinian and Arab partners in the Madrid peace process, Shamir admitted:

I would have conducted the autonomy negotiations for ten years, and in the meantime we would have reached half a million souls in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].... Without such a basis there would be nothing to stop the establishment of a Palestinian state.71

Despite Shamir's later admission of his strategy during the Madrid peace process, hard-liners within his coalition were deadly opposed to the talks. Two factions deserted Shamir's coalition on 19 January 1992 and left the government to face new elections in the summer.72 Shamir responded the next day by taking an even harder stance on settlements. Symbolically start- ing his reelection campaign in the West Bank settlement of Betar Illit, Shamir declared: "No force in the world will stop this construction. We say to ourselves, and to the Gentiles of the world and to the next generations, here will be our homeland, here will be our home, forever and ever. . . .3We will build, and I hope very much that we will also obtain guarantees.

President Bush reportedly "went ballistic" when he heard Shamir's remarks. But no public comment came from the White House.74 Instead, with a wiliness born of a lifetime in politics, Bush launched a subtle campaign to demonstrate to Israel's supporters how tough it could get if Shamir continued his obstruction. Suddenly a series of negative reports and even more negative public comments began appearing. On 14 February, a report by the General Accounting Office revealed that Israel's pledges to restrict new housing within Israel in return for the 1991 $400 million loan guarantee were meaningless.7

A month later came a damaging leak that there was "overwhelming" evidence of Israel's cheating on written promises not to reexport U.S. weapons technology to third countries, including China and South Africa, both on America's embargo list.76 Unnamed U.S. officials added there was well- founded suspicion Israel was also selling secrets of America's vaunted Patriot anti-missile missile to China.77 Instead of denying or not commenting on the leaks, the State Department inspector general charged on 1 April that Israel was engaged in a "systematic and growing pattern" of selling secret U.S. technology in violation of U.S. law.78

Finally, on 1 May 1992 the State Department released a study showing that Jewish settlements in the occupied territories had increased by 25 percent over the past year. The building activity was so great that it outpaced Israel's efforts to entice residents to the new housing units. The report said about 245,000 settlers resided in around 250 settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem, making Jews 13 percent of the occupied territories' population.79

In the meantime, the Bush administration also pursued public diplomacy on a parallel track. During appearances before congressional committees in February, Baker strongly defended linkage between the guarantees and settle-


ments. The next month, on 17 March, Bush turned down a proposed com- promise on the guarantees offered by Senate leaders on the grounds that there were too many loopholes in the proposal. In April Bush ignored a ninety-nine to one vote in the Senate expressing a non-binding sense of the Senate "that the United States Government should support appropriate loan guarantees to Israel for refugee absorption."

By such maneuvers, Bush managed to retain high support for his hard line against Israel. And in the end he succeeded: Shamir lost the 23 June elections, thereby ending fifteen stormy years of rule by his Likud bloc. The Labor party headed by Yitzhak Rabin won forty-four seats against Likud's thirty-two in the 120-seat Knesset.80

Bush administration officials openly greeted Rabin's victory and Shamir's loss. They predicted there would be an improvement in relations with the United States and that Bush would now approve Israel's pending request for $10 billion in loan guarantees.81 The predictions were correct. But the implied euphoria was ill-founded. For in the end, it was Bush and not Rabin who capitulated and the historic attempt to link settlements to aid was essentially abandoned.

The Dilution of US. Settlement Policy

Yitzhak Rabin was hailed by U.S. officials and the media as a leader the United States could work with. But Rabin was experienced, tough, and shrewd, and by now, George Bush was in the waning days of a presidential campaign in which he was fighting for his political life. Both men were con- fronted with the necessity to save face among their domestic constituencies.

Rabin as prime minister two decades earlier had proved to be a supporter of settlements. But he differed from the ultranationalists in believing they should not be placed among heavy concentrations of Palestinians, where they caused needless friction. Thus Rabin made a distinction between what he called "political" and "strategic" settlements. He identified the strategic settlements as those that Labor had founded in the first decade after the 1967 war along the barren frontiers with Syria and Jordan. Jerusalem was a separate case. He considered it, as did Likud and other ultranationalists, as Israel's capital and therefore Israel's right to settle beyond question.

Bush, on the other hand, could not be seen as backing down on an issue that had become the centerpiece of his administration's policy and which had directly led to the rapidly deteriorating relations with Israel over the past three years. Yet Bush's mantle as the hero of the Gulf war had long since fallen. By 13 July, when Rabin officially took over, it was clear that some- thing dramatic had to be done to save Bush's faltering reelection bid. In this atmosphere of political desperation, the president invited Rabin to the Bush summer retreat at Kennebunkport and on 11 August struck a deal that allowed both sides to claim victory. But only Rabin's claim was true.


In return for Bush approving Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees, Rabin promised to halt "political" settlements. But he added that Israel would have to continue to be concerned with "security" settlements and he left no doubt that settlements would continue in Arab East Jerusalem. As he had earlier said, Rabin also intended to go ahead with completion of some 10,000 units already under construction.82 This was some improvement over Likud's program but hardly anything that approached compliance with U.S. policy. In fact, it was merely a return to the consistent policy the Labor party had carried out between 1967 and 1977. Yet the administration and Israel and its supporters hailed the accord as a breakthrough and an important concession by Israel. The impression was left that Israel was actu- ally stopping all settlement activity.83

A compliant media fell in with the euphoric mood and gave the impression that Bush had won a major victory. Congress was likewise impressed. On 1 October, it approved the loan guarantees. At the same time, it reserved to itself the right to override any presidential suspension of the guarantees should Israel use them outside of its pre-5 June 1967 frontiers.84 The last provision was a needless one, since Bush had already indicated that he would overlook completion of over 10,000 units in the West Bank and all new construction in occupied sections of Jerusalem as well as establishment of "security" settlements on the Golan Heights and along Israel's frontiers.

Passage of the loan guarantees was Israel's greatest victory in its decades- long fight to gain U.S. approval for settlements. While no public announcement followed passage of the guarantees about the president's position on how they could be used, Israel made it obvious by its actions that for the first time Washington was acquiescing in the use of funds guaranteed by America to build and expand settlements.

Washington tried to put a gloss on the change by insisting that if Israel did use any

For the first time Washington of the funds in the territories the amount acquiesced in the use of U.S.- would be deducted from the following year's guaranteed funds to build $2 billion increment. This gave the appear- settlements. ance that Washington was standing fast in its

opposition to settlements. But if the only penalty Israel paid for violating U.S. policy was a deduction in future guarantees, then it was no penalty at all. For it was obvious that there was a limit to how much Israel could profitably spend in the territories before they were overbuilt. Indeed, in June 1993 a conference on the loan guarantees entitled "What do you do with $10 Billion?" was held in Tel Aviv at a time when the first installment of the money remained on deposit at the Bank of Israel and Michael Bruno, governor of the Bank of Israel under Shamir, was saying that there was little need for the money.85 Be that as it may, the bottom line of the Bush arrangement was that the United States would let Israel go ahead with settlement activity as long as it was willing to pay what amounted to a very modest price.


Indeed, when the Clinton administration on 5 October 1993 recom- mended to Congress that the $2 billion in loan guarantees for Israel in U.S. fiscal 1994, which began 1 October, be cut by $437 million-the price it put on Israel's use of the loans in the territories-there was barely a peep out of Israel.86 One reason was that Israel had almost certainly spent far more than that sum in the territories during fiscal 1993. Another was that there already was a scheme afoot to have the president annul the penalty or find some other way to grant it to Israel as additional aid.87

There was a diplomatic magician's sleight-of-hand at work here. While the public impression was that the United States had blunted Israel's settlement activity, the underlying reality was that a significant erosion of U.S. policy had occurred. For the first time the United States was implicitly allowing use of funds backed by U.S. guarantees for Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. It is only a half-step from that to approving use of direct U.S. aid funds, a step that may not be too far distant.

Although it could have renegotiated with Israel, the Clinton administration instead chose formally to endorse the use of U.S. guarantees for settlements. The endorsement came in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Sub- committee on the Middle East on 9 March 1993 by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastem and South Asian Affairs Edward Djerejian. When asked about use of U.S. guarantees in construction of Jewish housing in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, he replied: "There is some allowance for-I wouldn't use the word 'expansion' but certainly continuing some activity-construction activities in existing settlements."88

President Bill Clinton appears to be moving from allowing guarantees for expansion to endorsing Israel's right to settlement. He has proved so far to be one of America's most pro-Israel presidents, ready to change basic policies on such issues as deportations, Jerusalem, and UN Security Council Res- olution 242. Now a basic change in policy on settlements is at hand. His administration has already shown itself to be increasingly reluctant to employ the phrase "occupied territories," and instead has indicated that it agrees with Israel's terminology that they are "disputed."89 During the 1993 session of the United Nations, the U.S. delegation opposed such traditional refer- ences as "occupied territory, including Jerusalem," claiming that the lan- guage prejudged the outcome of negotiations, and it refused to condemn Israel's settlement activity because it was "unproductive to debate the legali- ties of the issue."90 To characterize the settlement issue as a mere "legality" is a long step indeed toward total desertion of a basic U.S. policy that had stood since 1967.

NOTES

1. Jody Boudreault, Emma Naughton, and Yasser Sa- laam (eds.), US. Official Statements: Israeli Settle-

ments/The Fourth Geneva Convention (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992) (hereinafter


Boudreault et al., US. Official Statements: Israeli Settle- ments), pp. 19, 23-37. 2. Rafik Halabi, The West Bank Sto?y (New York: Har- court Brace Jovanovich, 1981), pp. 35-36; Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts about the US. -Is- raeli Relationship (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill, 1993), pp. 172-73. 3. Meron Benvenisti,Jenrsalem: The Torn City (Jerusa- lem: Isratypeset Ltd., 1976), p. 233. See also Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (New York: William Morrow, 1976), p. 372. 4. Geoffrey Aronson, Creating Facts: Israel, Palestinians and the West Bank (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Pal- estine Studies, 1987), p. 16. See also Israel Shahak, "Memory of 1967 'Ethnic Cleansing' Fuels Ideology of Golan Settlers," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 11, no. 5 (November 1992), pp. 24, 88. 5. Terence Smith, New York Times, 25 September 1967. 6. Ibid. 7. Prior to 1948, there had been only seven Jewish settlements in the newly occupied lands of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and Jewish land ownership was at most 1 percent; see Walid Khalidi, "The Palestine Problem: An Overview,"JPS 21, no. 1 (Autumn 1990), pp. 9-10. 8. Hedrick Smith, New York Times, 27 September 1967. 9. Israeli Housing Minister Ze'ev Sharef revealed de- tails of the Jerusalem settlements on 18 February 1971; see Facts on File 1971 (New York: Facts on File, 1972), p. 123. 10. Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 38. Also see Ammon Rubenstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), p. 103; Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (Tel Aviv: Steimatzky's Agency Ltd., 1976), pp. 708-9. 11. Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right, pp. 39-40. 12. Rael Jean Isaac, Israel Divided: Ideological Politics in theJewish State (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 1976), pp. 3-13; Rubenstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited, p. 103. 13. Boudreault et al., US Official Statements: Israeli Set- tlements, p. 127. 14. Terence Smith, New York Times, 12 May 1976. 15. Boudreault et al., US. Official Statements: Israeli Set- tlements, p. 15. 16. The text of the draft resolution is in New York Times, 26 March 1976; Jody A. Boudreault (ed.), United Nations Resolutions on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Con- flict, Volume 4: 1987-1991 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1993), pp. 413-14. 17. UN Security Council Resolution 446; the text is in Regina S. Sherif (ed.), United Nations Resolutions on Pal- estine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Volume 2: 1975-1981 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1988), p. 188. 18. UN Document S/13450 and Addendum 1 of 12 July 1979. The report is extensively quoted in Issa Nakhleh, Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem (2 volumes) (New York: Intercontinental Books, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 483-93. 19. Meron Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Project: A Survey of Israel's Policies (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984), p. 52.

20. Aronson, Creating Facts, p. 17. 21. For a report on violent frictions with the Palestini- ans of Hebron caused by the settlement, see Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right, p. 89; Robert 1. Friedman, Zealotsfor Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Set- tlement Movement (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 18-19; Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1986), pp. 106-12; Janet Abu-Lughod, "Israeli Settlements in Occupied Lands," in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (ed.), The Transformation of Palestine: Es- says on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2d edition) (Evanston, IL: Northwestem Uni- versity Press, 1987), pp. 139-64; David McDowall, Pal- estine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1989), p. 170; John Quigley, Palestine and Israel: A Challenge toJustice (Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). 22. Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right, p. 88. 23. David Hoffman, "Extremists Laud Gunman as 'Hero': Hard Core of Settlers Defends Attack as Part of Anti-Arab Struggle," Washington Post, 28 February 1994, pp. Al, A14. 24. Clyde Haberman, "Israel Orders Tough Measures Against Militant Settlers: Arafat Dismisses Rabin's Moves As 'Hollow'-," New York Times, 28 February 1994, p. A1. 25. McDowall, Palestine and Israel, pp. 170-71. 26. Aronson, Creating Facts, p. 39. 27. Peretz Merhav, The Israeli Left: History, Problems, Documents (New York: A.S. Bames, 1980), p. 342. 28. Aronson, Creating Facts, p. 46. 29. Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Ternito- ties, Special Report, July 1991; Aronson, Creating Facts, p. 70. 30. Author interview with Geoffrey Aronson, Wash- ington, D.C., 24 January 1994. 31. Associated Press, Washington Times, 9 May 1992. 32. William B. Quandt, Camp David. Peacemaking and Politics (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1986), pp. 80-83. 33. Boudreault et al., US Official Statements: Israeli Set- tlements, p. 14; New York Times, 29 July 1977. 34. Quandt, Camp David, p. 83. 35. Eric Silver, Begin: A Biography (New York: Ran- dom House, 1984), p. 168. 36. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Legal Ad- viser, Digest of United States Practice in International Law 1978 (Washington, D.C.: Govemment Printing Office, 1979), pp. 1575-83. The text is in Boudreault et al., US. Official Statements: Israeli Settlements, pp. 7-11. For a detailed discussion, see Thomas Mallison and Sally V. Mallison, The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order (London: Longman, 1986), chapter 6. 37. SC 465, 1 March 1980; GA 34/90, 12 December 1979; and GA 33/113 B, 18 December 1978. 38. GA 35/122 B, 11 December 1980; SC 452, 20 July 1979; SC 446, 22 March 1979; and GA 32/5, 28 Octo- ber 1977. 39. The text of Carter's remarks is in Jody Boudreault and Yasser Salaam (eds.), US. Official Statements: The Status ofjerusalem (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Pal- estine Studies, 1992), pp. 46-47. 40. SC 465. The text is in Sherif, United Nations Reso- lutions on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Volume 2: 1975-1981, p. 191; Mallison and Mallison, The Palestine


Problem in International Law and World Order, pp. 474- 76. 41. Seth Tillman, The United States in the Middle East: Interests and Obstacles (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Uni- versity Press, 1982), p. 167. 42. The Arabs Under Israeli Occupation 1980 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1981), pp. 7, 21, 25; maps on pp. 6, 20, 24. 43. New York Times, 3 February 1981; Boudreault et al., US Official Statements: Israeli Settlements, p. 19. 44. David A. Kom, letter, New York Times, 10 October 1991. 45. New York Times, 16 March 1989. 46. Quigley, Palestine and Israel, p. 176. 47. Boudreault et al., US. Official Statements: Israeli Set- tlements, p. 48. 48. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 25 January 1990. 49. Paul Taylor, Washington Post, 16 January 1990; Lany Cohler, Washington Jewish Week, 8 February 1990. 50. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, 5 February 1990. 51. Boudreault et al., US. Official Statements: Israeli Set- tlements, p. 35. 52. Al Kamen, Washington Post, 2 March 1990. The text of Baker's remarks is in "Documents and Source Material,"JPS 19, no. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 175-79. 53. Associated Press, New York Times, 3 October 1990. Texts of Israel's 2 October letter to Baker and a clarify- ing letter dated 18 October are in "Documents and Source Material,"JPS 20, no. 2 (Winter 1991), pp. 190, 191-92. 54. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 8 October 1990. 55. John M. Goshko, Washington Post, 9 October 1990. 56. Al Kamen, Washington Post, 21 February 1991. 57. UN Security Council Resolution 672; the text is in New York Times, 14 October 1990. 58. Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territo- ries, November 1991. 59. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 5 April 1991. 60. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 18 Septem- ber 1991. 61. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 8 September 1991. 62. John M. Goshko and John E. Yang, Washington Post, 7 September 1991. 63. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 7 Septem- ber 1991. 64. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 9 September 1991. 65. Adam Clymer, New York Times, 15 September 1991. 66. The text is in New York Times, 13 September 1991. 67. Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 14 September 1991. 68. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 6 October 1991. Also see Thomas R. Mattair, "The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Madrid Conference, and Beyond," Ameri- can-Arab Affairs 37 (Summer 1991), pp. 8-29.

69. Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 19 October 1991. 70. Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 24 October 1991. 71. Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 27 June 1992; David Hoffman, Washington Post, 27 June 1992. 72. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, 20 January 1992. 73. Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 21 January 1992. 74. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Washington Post, 24 January 1992. 75. U.S. General Accounting Office, "Israel: U.S. Loan Guarantees for Immigrant Absorption," GAO/NSIAD- 92-119, 12 February 1992. 76. Edward T. Pound, Wall Street journal, 13 March 1992; David Hoffman and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, 14 March 1992. 77. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, 12-13 March 1992. 78. Excerpts of the inspector general's audit report are in "Documents and Source Material," JPS 21, no. 4 (Summer 1992), pp. 167-71. 79. The text of the report is in "Documents and Source Material,"JPS 21, no. 4 (Summer 1992), pp. 171-73. 80. Sammy Smooha and Don Peretz, "Israel's 1992 Knesset Elections: Are They Critical?" Middle East Journal 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 444-63. 81. Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post, 25 June 1992. 82. See Rabin's 1992 inaugural address; text in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, 14 July 1992, pp. 23-27. 83. Ann Devroy and Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post, 12 August 1992. 84. Amendment to the 1993 Foreign Aid Bill, pp. 197- 206. Also see Helen Dewar, Washington Post, 2 October 1992; Gene Bird, "How Israel Got the Loan Guarantees Opposed by 80 Percent of Americans," Washington Re- port on Middle East AfJairs 11, no. 5 (November 1992), pp. 12, 86. Text of the legislation is in "Documents and Source Material,"JPS 22, no. 2 (Winter 1993), pp. 158-61. 85. David Hoffman, Washington Post, 10 June 1993. 86. Clyde Haberman, New York Times, 6 October 1993. 87. Israel Shahak, "The Israeli govemment and the settlements," Middle East Inteniational 466 (7 January 1994), pp. 16-17. 88. Text in Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories 3, no. 3 (May 1993), pp. 2, 6. 89. See Donald Neff, "The Clinton Administration and UN Resolution 242,"JPS 23, no. 2 (Winter 1994), pp. 20-30. 90. Jules Kagian, "Rewriting resolutions," Middle East International 465 (17 December 1993), p. 10.