Critics’ charges that President Clinton’s efforts to restore peace to embattled Israeli-Palestinian relations are “photo-op foreign policy” enrage Israeli elder statesman Abba Eban.
“I think it’s little short of outrageous that [Clinton] should be under any criticism whatsoever for what turns out to be a salvationary, life-saving action in the most literal sense of the term,” Eban told the Jewish Bulletin Saturday of last week. “The alternative to a presidential initiative would have been the deadly escalation of the violence and the bloodshed.”
In San Francisco to speak at the State of the World Forum sponsored by the S.F.-based Gorbachev Foundation, Eban, a former Israeli foreign minister, called the Clinton administration “the most ardent of all administrations in the United States in its devotion to the American-Israeli relationship…unparalleled almost.”
He pointed to the initial quiet after last week’s Washington summit as evidence of the administration’s genuine sway over parties in the Mideast conflict. The summit to date “really did have the effect of arresting the escalation of violence and bringing the participants down to earth,” he said.
Active in Israeli political life for more than four decades, the South African-born, Cambridge-educated Eban is one of Israel’s best-known diplomatic figures. Now over 80, he still commands attention and eager audiences with his elegant use of English and broad knowledge of international affairs.
In an interview in his Fairmont Hotel suite, the former Labor Party Knesset member had few positive words about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership to date. The prime minister’s first several months in office, he said, have led to near-total immobility in the peace process and significant damage to Israel in the court of world opinion.
“I would say in the last three months, there has been a steady decline in our country’s repute,” Eban said, “largely because it was obvious that the previous Israeli administration handed over a concrete prospect of peaceful development and this has been frittered away since then.”
That deterioration, said Eban, who is currently working on a television special about the peace process, is apparent in a number of areas.
These, he said, include Israel’s failure to withdraw troops from the West Bank town of Hebron despite promises to do so by March; a loss of confidence on Jordan’s part in the peace process; the absence of a formula for negotiations with Syria; and the freezing of once-promising relations between Israel and states in the Gulf and North Africa — characterized most notably by the Moroccan king’s refusal to receive Netanyahu.
Eban admitted that most of these developments took him by surprise.
“All this was unexpected because Mr. Netanyahu began [his term] with the statement that he was there to carry out the agreements concluded in Oslo,” he said. “I took that seriously.”
So did the Israeli public, he said, noting a recent public opinion poll that rated former Prime Minister Shimon Peres as more popular than Netanyahu, who beat Peres in the election. “This is a rather peculiar evolution of things,” Eban said.
Asked to look to Israel’s future, Eban said he decided early in his career not to be a political prophet. Nonetheless, he did issue a dire prediction on what could happen should the peace process remain in a state of limbo. “There will not be status quo; status quo does not exist,” he said. “There will be an explosion.”