HHMI Newsgroup Archives

From: voicesunited [mailto:voicesunited@mindspring.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 4:44 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:
Subject: Fw: Israel News - Golan Issue Continues - Bush on Israel


From THE NATIONAL UNITY COALITION FOR ISRAEL
A Coalition of 200 Jewish and Christian Organizations Representing 40
Million Americans,
dedicated to the security of Israel.

Phone: (913) 432-7900  Fax: (913) 432-7997
Email: <voicesunited@mindspring.com>
See our Web Page at: <http://www.Israel-unitycoalition.com>
____________________
Today's Headline(s):
1. Israel to seek $17 billion in US aid for peace with Syria
2. Mofaz: Door still open for deal with Syria
3. Bush Remark on Mideast Stirs Concern on the Right
____________________

Editor's Note:  The next two articles indicate that Golan negotiations
continue despite the inconclusive Sunday meeting, March 26 in Geneva,
between Clinton and Assad. Reports are that the Administration is still
pushing for billions of dollars for Syria and US troops on the Golan.

The Jerusalem Post - Tuesday, March 28 2000 18:55 22 Adar II 5760

1. Israel to seek $17 billion in US aid for peace with Syria
By Nina Gilbert

(March 28) - The defense establishment has requested $17 billion in aid from
the US to compensate for the costs
of redeployment, alternative security arrangements and defenses, and
compensation for a loss of strategic assets
in the event of a treaty with Syria, a defense official told the State
Control Committee yesterday.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Moli Ben-Tzvi, of the Defense Ministry's and IDF budgeting
branch, said the funds would only cover security costs and the sum takes
into account that Israel would have an early warning station on Mount
Hermon. The aid would therefore need to be boosted if there is no Mount
Hermon station and would not cover the costs of compensating settlers on the
Golan Heights, the committee was told.

The committee convened yesterday to hear an opinion from State Comptroller
Eliezer Goldberg on the
budgetary resources for a peace accord with Syria and whether Israel can
depend on US aid. Goldberg did not
attend yesterday's session, and talks on the matter are to continue.

Dr. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN and currently president of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said he was concerned that the Israeli
request would be seen as exaggerated and could undermine the foundations of
US-Israel relations.

Committee chairman Uzi Landau (Likud), accused by the government of
exploiting the committee for his own
political interests, said the experts who spoke to the committee yesterday
had shown that the government's plan to preserve security in an accord with
Syria has been disproved, since Israel is unlikely to receive the necessary
aid from the US. Landau said Prime Minister Ehud Barak had been negligent in
his peace moves toward Syria since he did not take into account or did not
understand American politics and society.

Minister Haim Ramon noted that the peace treaty with Egypt also entailed
huge costs, which over time were
offset by savings from a decline in defense expenditure and also brought
economic benefit. According to Ramon,
the $17b. figure is only an estimate of the professional defense echelon.

MK Moshe Arens (Likud), a former defense minister, said he did not believe
that $17b. would be enough to cover the economic and security losses
emanating from a withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Arens said he doubted
that Israel could get such aid from the US.

Despite the fact that the Geneva meeting failed to deliver a Syria-Israel
peace deal, the Administration continues to work to that end. As a result,
the Israeli Army Chief of Staff recently declared that a peace deal with
Syria still is within reach. It is apparent that the Administration will
stop at nothing to reach a deal that would include tens of billions in new
aid to Syria and Israel and US troops on the Golan Heights. If the
Washington Post is correct, the Administration will attempt to speed up the
Israel-PLO track (with new aid promises?) in an attempt to coax Syria back
to the table. This isn't over yet.


The Jerusalem Post - Tuesday, March 28 2000 16:37 21 Adar II 5760

2. Mofaz: Door still open for deal with Syria
By Arieh O'Sullivan

TEL HASHOMER (March 28) - The door to peace with Syria is not closed and
under the right circumstances can
be reopened, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz said yesterday.

Speaking to military reporters following a meeting with recruits at the
IDF's main induction center at Tel Hashomer, Mofaz said it is "still too
early to say it's over," in reaction to the failure of talks between US
President Bill Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva on Sunday.

"The door is still open for continuing the talks, of course in keeping with
Israel's vital security interests," Mofaz
said. "We have to hope that the negotiations will continue. This situation
could change. No doubt, everyone in Israel, certainly in the IDF, prefers
for a withdrawal [from Lebanon] to be done under an agreement," said Mofaz,
who added that the IDF was going ahead with its plans to withdraw
unilaterally by July and to maintain security in the North.

Whether Israel withdraws with or without an agreement, the IDF will be
prepared to react to any attempt by
Hizbullah to continue its war against Israel, Mofaz said.

"If there is fire it will demand that we deploy and react accordingly," he
said. "The IDF is the mightiest army in
the Middle East within a radius of 1,500 kilometers from Jerusalem, and we
will know how to give the appropriate and suitable answer to any situations
that will develop," said Mofaz, citing, whether coincidentally or not, the
rough distance to Teheran.

He sidestepped reports of an argument between himself and Prime Minister
Ehud Barak over the character of a
unilateral withdrawal. He said only that the plan, dubbed "Morning
Twilight," had been shown to Barak.

"Understandably, in presenting this kind of plan there is a dialogue between
the military and political levels and
certain questions were raised," Mofaz said.

The differences of opinion reportedly revolved around a desire by the IDF to
stay in a number of frontier outposts
which straddle the international border or are slightly inside Lebanon.

"The moment you get out of the security zone and Lebanese territory, then
you leave the outposts in the
security zone; it is very clear," Mofaz said. "The outposts along the border
will at this stage remain on the border.
We will leave the outposts inside the security zone and deploy along the
border with Lebanon.

"We are preparing plans and getting ready for a withdrawal from the security
zone by July," Mofaz said,
adding that the tenders have already been issued and work has begun.

FORWARD - March 24, 2000

3. Bush Remark On Mideast Stirs Concern On the Right
Texan Called Overly Similar to Clinton

By ELI LAKE - FORWARD STAFF

WASHINGTON - Jewish conservatives are raising concerns that Governor George
W. Bush's views on negotiations between Israel and the Arabs are too similar
to the views of President Clinton.
In particular, the conservatives fear that remarks in an interview in The
New York Times last week by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee
suggest that he will continue what they say is Mr. Clinton's practice of
ignoring violations of the Oslo accord by the Palestinian Arabs. Sources
close to the Bush campaign, however, are insisting that their candidate
offers an alternative to the Clinton administration's approach to Israel's
security and say that details of that approach will be forthcoming as the
campaign evolves.
The reaction to Mr. Bush's comments reflect uncertainty over what his Middle
East policy would be if he were elected president; unlike his expected
opponent, Vice President Gore, Mr. Bush is a relative unknown on foreign
policy, with no significant track record. He has delivered only two speeches
on foreign affairs, neither of which addressed the Middle East in detail.
Although some of his foreign policy advisors, such as former assistant
secretary for defense Richard Perle, are widely considered to be reliable
supporters of Israel, the governor has yet to draw out significant
distinctions between himself and Mr. Gore on Middle East issues. One
apparent distinction that has been made, however, concerns the American
embassy: Mr. Clinton, citing national security interests, has declined to
enforce a 1995 act of Congress requiring that the embassy be moved to
Jerusalem from Tel Aviv by May 1999; Mr. Bush has pledged to "begin the
process" of moving it as soon as he takes office, although he has not
specified what he means by "process."
"The [New York Times] interview suggested that here was a consensus between
Republicans and Democrats. It was not necessarily a policy statement, but
the implications were clear," a Middle East expert, Daniel Pipes, said.
"If Bush says we are going to continue the same policy, that might be good
enough for the flipped-out left wing of Jewish America, but it ain't good
enough for us seriously committed Aipac, pro-Israel activists, who are sick
and tired of the Clinton-Gore dishonesties in the Middle East," a top
advisor to Mr. Bush's former Republican rival, Senator McCain, told the
Forward. The advisor, Sidney Rosen, who has chaired Democrats for McCain for
the past 18 years and is an active member of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, said he doesn't expect many Jews who voted for Mr. McCain
to move over to the Bush camp in the general election. "It's like a choice
between Tweedledee and Tweedledum."
In the New York Times interview, Mr. Bush was quoted as saying, "It's very
important for a president not to impose a United States solution on the
peace process. So to the president's credit, it seems to me on the Middle
East he's working hard to bring people together."
The president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, reacted
with chagrin. "It is disappointing that Governor Bush is unaware that
virtually every time there has been a dispute between Israel and the Arabs,
the Clinton-Gore administration has sided with the Arabs," Mr. Klein said.
He suggested that America, under Mr. Clinton, had maintained a double
standard in condemning Israeli construction in east Jerusalem while ignoring
construction by Palestinian Arabs.
"We don't know about Bush, except indirectly," the president of the Orthodox
Union, Mandell Ganchrow, said. "I don't know that he would do anything
different from Clinton."
Mr. Bush's remarks came as Israeli and Palestinian Arab delegations prepared
to go to Washington this week to discuss the remaining issues in the
negotiations initiated in Oslo, Norway, in 1993. Both sides have agreed to
work toward reaching a final timetable by May for resolving final status
issues, such as the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the transfer of land to
Palestinian Arab refugees. The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser
Arafat, has said he will declare an independent Palestinian Arab state by
the end of the year. And although Israel handed over an additional 6.1% of
land in the West Bank last Wednesday, other developments have marred the
negotiations. Last week, a top aide to Mr.Arafat, Hani Al-Hassan, said on
Palestinian Arab satellite television, "We have 43,000 rifles now, and if
Israel continues to ignore our rights, we will know what to do." He added,
"I told our cadres that they ought to be ready and vigilant because the
peace process is dead."
In this context, some Republicans say they expect Mr. Bush to make a more
detailed policy announcement in the coming months. "I think his plans would
include an address before a major Jewish organization and hopefully he will
go into more detail about his position on Middle East issues," the
campaign's finance chairman for the greater Washington area, Joseph
Gildenhorn, said. Mr. Gildenhorn, an ambassador to Switzerland under the
governor's father, President Bush, said that the campaign has focused
largely on domestic issues up to now.
Other Bush supporters go even further in defending the governor's position.
I think, thus far, he's taken the most important step by saying he will move
the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That's a pretty darn good start
for me. For the die-hards, that's enough red meat to feast on until he rolls
out a more detailed policy," Rep. Matthew Salmon's chief of staff, Glenn
Hamer, said.
The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matthew Brooks,
pointed out that Mr. Bush differs on many issues central to Israel's
security. For example, Mr. Bush supports increasing the budget for missile
defense systems, while Mr. Clinton has been opposed to such investments.
Mr. Perle, one of the top advisors to the governor on foreign policy, said
that he was sure Mr. Bush would oppose pressuring Israel to make concessions
with which it was uncomfortable. "Any public figure is going to be cautious
commenting about the details of a sensitive negotiation of which he is not
fully informed. If the results are unsatisfactory," Mr. Perle added, "I have
no doubt Governor Bush will make his view very clear."

**********************************************************************

Return to Newsgroup Archives Main Page

Return to our Main Webpage


©2011 Hebraic Heritage Ministries International. Designed by Web Design by JB.