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Americans Get Fed up with Hardline Israelis

Ted Morello writes from United Nations, New York
*** As US Secretary of State James Baker shuttles round the Middle East in an attempt to convene a regional peace conference he is not having much luck. The Israelis are as rigid as ever about holding on to Jerusalem and the occupied territories. In the US public opinion is becoming increasingly disenchanted with the Israelis. For one thing, they are not happy about the way money given to house Soviet Jewish immigrants is being used. ***
A key United Nations Security Council resolution has emerged in the wake of the Gulf war as pivotal to the newest round of efforts to settle the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.
Resolution 242 of November 1967 calls on Israel to withdraw "from territories' It captured during the summer war of 1967. In return, the Arab governments would recognise Israel's borders
Less comprehensive companion Resolution 338 of October 1973. an outgrowth of that summer's war. urges Israel and Its Arab neighbours to settle their differences by ne go nation.
In 1979 Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt after the two countries signed a peace treaty-to this day. the only one between the Jewish state and an Arab nation.
done little to prod Israel into complying with the UN resolu tions—in part because of Amer lean politicians' fear of aberrating the powerful pro-lsrael voting blocs in the United States.
But following the Gulf war. Washington has adopted a more even-handed approach. When President George Bush reported to Congress on March 6 that 'the war is over." he singled out resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for a Middle East settlement.
Most controversially, that would require Israel to accept the "territoflea-for-peace" ex change now openly advocated by Hush but anathema to the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
The Arab territorial de rounds focus on the return of the Golan Heights seized from Syria, and occupied Old Jerusalem, claimed by Jordan
Shamir says that because of the strategic value of the Golan Heights, from which Syrian guns fired on Israeli civilian settlements, the occupied territory, which ts patrolled by UN peacekeepers, "is not on the discussion tabic
And for biblical reasons. Is rael has vowed never to yield Jerusalem, with its Walling Wall revered by world Jewry Muslims as well as Christians assert an equally valid claim to the city, with its shrines sa cred to their religions
In follow-up missions US
Secretary of State James re ceived little encouragement form the Israelis on two points: giving up territory and stopping the building of Jewish settlements on occupied lands.
The Palestinians remained equally adamant that only the Palestine Liberation Organtsa tion (PLO) would speak for them at any Middle east con ference.
The PLO. repudiated by Israel as a terrorist organisation, has lost influence because of Its purely hortatory support of Iraqi President Saddam Hus sein in the Gulf War
Analysts say that tn his willingness to talk up to the Israelis now. Bush draws strength form several consld erations that irritate the US administration and much of the American public and ex pose Israel as something less than the bastion of US interests in the region:
In the Gulf war. Israel
proved an albatross around Washington's neck. Any mill tan value it might have had if It had joined the war against Saddam Hussein would have been outweighed by the fact that its troops would have been unacceptable to the Arab members of the fragile US-led coalition.
Aware that any unilateral ac Uon would endanger the al liance. Shamir took advantage of that fact to demand billions of dollars for not entering the war despite Iran's overrated Scud missile attacks on Israel
As one UN observer com mented; "Israel was able to sit on the sidelines and say to the allies: Let's you and him fight — and pay us for watching
Israel demanded and re ceived USS400 million ostensibly to build low-cost housing for Soviet Jewish immigrant It rejected US in sistence that the funds not be used to settle the immigrants on occupied Arab land After the US military vie tory. bush is unlikely to worry excessively about how the pro Israel-or any other special interest-lobby votes when he comes up for re-election In 1992.
A firm White House stand
Israel s Importunate lhe approval American
Public impatient *' »“PP"mng
after year
Ever increasing Israeli pleas for more and more are particularly galling at a time when America is battered by recession. hoanelessness
pO*rrt* Crt"*r
Senator Bob Dole a senior Republican generally sympa thciic to Israel, pointed out in debate on the 9400 million housing grant to Israel that (here are no restrictions on the use of US financing. Israel could. If It wishes build luxury housing for the Soviet Jewish immigrants Israel had already built housing that would not be out of place on Embassy Row tn Washington
Dole satd Tie also have countless tens of thousands of homeless tn thia country. They might ask; Whit about usT
And they might ask M more foudiy when they find out they are about to embark on a b* programme to provide housing to people living In a foreign land—especially tf they are leaving open the possibility that we will be subsidising bousing for a privileged few instead of many needy people.* — GEMINI NEWS