Ask Bush to Veto Anti-Palestinian Bill (and CNI Commentary)

Despite our best efforts, the Senate version of the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 (S. 2370) passed the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday by voice vote, clearing the way for the bill to reach the White House. No amendments were allowed, no vote was recorded and no one other than the three members who rose in support of the bill could be seen in the House chamber.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Tom Lantos (D-CA), the bill's sponsors, lamented the fact that they could not send their original text on to the president and instead had to settle for the Senate's less draconian but nonetheless damaging language.

Anthony Weiner (D-NY) reiterated his constant demand that the U.S. close the PLO Mission to the United Nations, a measure that was in the House text but removed from the Senate version, before joining other prominent "pro-Israel" Democrats in condemning former President Jimmy Carter's new book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

The House version, H.R. 4681, like the Senate version, included a panoply of economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Palestinians for electing for a Hamas majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Both versions of the bill contained measures intended to sanction Hamas, fulfilling the bill's ostensible purpose, but also included numerous "AIPAC wishlist" items to punish Palestinians as a whole.

The Council for the National Interest is joining with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in its campaign to have the president veto this one-sided legislation.

TAKE ACTION: Contact the White House NOW by phone 202-456-1111, by fax 202-456-2461, and by email comments [at] whitehouse.gov and ask the President to veto S. 2370, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act. Tell the President that the United States should not be sanctioning people for exercising their right to vote.

The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is in the process of trying to set up a meeting with White House officials to deliver a petition signed by more than 340 U.S.-based organizations opposing the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act and to ask for a veto.

For more details about the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act and the U.S. Campaign's efforts to oppose it, see their website: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1188

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The Iraq Study Group: Three Plus Three Does Not Equal Seven
By Eugene Bird
December 8, 2006

America needs a rabbit's foot in the Middle East. We need to roll a seven if we are to get out of this situation.

It has been a remarkable year for U.S. policy in the Middle East. The debate about U.S. Middle East policy has been started by the combined effect of three "controversial" statements. The first was "The Israel Lobby" study released last spring by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which caused an enormous debate, the first of its kind in the United States. (You can order the DVD "The Tipping Point: Changing Perceptions of the U.S.-Israel Relationship," which includes a debate in New York City featuring Prof. Mearsheimer and both Mearsheimer and Walt at the National Press Club, at http://www.cnionline.org/pubs/). The two professors are currently writing a book to be released in the fall of 2007 on the same subject.

The second was the publishing of former President Jimmy Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," last month. An extremely vicious campaign to villify him is underway, but the book is climbing on the bestseller list.

Third, the Baker-Hamilton report is the highest-level statement to emphasize the connection between the Arab-Israeli dispute and an exit strategy for ending the war in Iraq. A high-level Israeli delegation, headed by its foreign minister and including the radical right-wing politician Avigdor Leiberman, is holding a session at the Brookings Institution this weekend, including a dinner at the Department of State. Damage control on the report is already underway.

In their testimony on Thursday, Pearl Harbor Day, before the Senate Armed Services Committee Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker made it clear that real progress towards a settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute would be the sine qua non of getting out of Iraq with honor and restoring American leadership in the Middle East. The question is whether the President will adopt that part of the report and move forward on a new peace process with the Palestinians, the Syrians, and eventually the Lebanese.

With two million Iraqi refugees, perhaps twice that number, now living in neighboring countries, the administration has achieved a complete implosion of the forces of stability in the whole Middle East. The President said he would "seriously consider" the Baker-Hamilton report's recommendations several times in his initial response in the Oval Office. But within 48 hours, it was clear that many of the 79 recommendations would not be implemented.

More than forty specialists on the Middle East were involved with the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The commission interviewed almost every person in a position of authority in the U.S. and Iraq, as well as representatives of the other major political players in the region. The commission even talked, with Bush Administration permission, with unspecified representatives of the Iranian government. It tried to talk with Muqtada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Sistani, the chief militia and religious leaders, respectively, of the Shia in Iraq, but both leaders refused to see them.

The group, however, failed to consult with any Palestinians or Islamists with significant political support in the Middle East outside of Iraq, such as leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. These are the groups that could be the key to unlocking the Middle East peace puzzle and might have met willingly with an American commission.

What is likely to happen now? We can look for signs in another three statements, all of which are expected to come out before the end of the year. A Defense Department study is expected to be completed next week, and a combined CIA and State Department report will follow, focusing presumably on the political development of Iraq. Then the President will choose among the 79 proposals by the Baker-Hamilton Commission and draw from the other two reports before making a major address.

These events don't yet add up to a real change in American policy towards Israel. If we want to roll a seven and end the game in the Middle East on favorable terms, we will have to hope that the Congress and the American public exercise real oversight and not leave the most important foreign policy enterprise of our generation, reaching a dialogue with modernizers and religious leaders of Islam and resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict before the situation devolves into a regional war in the Middle East.