When American blood was shed on its own soil Sept. 11, Sen. Max Cleland gained “a new dimension of insight” into the life of an average Israeli.
“U.S. citizens, me included, can now understand what it’s like to live under a reign of terror,” said the Democrat from Georgia in San Francisco last Thursday. “We understood it before, intellectually. But now we’ve actually lived through it.
“This is what Israel feels like when a disco is blown by a suicide bomber and innocent people die.”
Cleland was in town to thank local Jewish leaders and pro-Israel activists for their ongoing support at a luncheon, hosted by Sam Lauter of San Francisco. During an interview following the luncheon, he called this country’s new discernment of terrorism a “unification of spirit” and a reinforcement of U.S.-Israel ties.
“Now we’re a band of brothers and sisters,” said Cleland, in an unmistakable Georgian twang. “We’re in this war against terrorists together, in the same foxhole. And together we can make an impact towards peace that wasn’t possible on Sept. 10.”
In those efforts toward peace, Israel and America are making it known “to our enemies that there is no daylight between us,” said Cleland, a member of the senate’s Armed Services Committee, who lost both his legs and his right arm while fighting as a captain in the Vietnam War.
“The United States, Israel and many other countries have drawn a line and have said there’s no more hiding — if you go against us, you will pay a price.”
Cleland went on to criticize PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s vacillating approach to Mideast peace. While “Israeli leader after leader has wanted peace,” Cleland said Arafat is “all over the place; he’s quicksilver; he can’t cut the big deal, he can’t move from revolutionary to statesman.”
He said the Palestinians “have been schooled and brainwashed [to hate Israelis], which is a tragedy in and of itself.”
And while he does not believe Arafat has direct control over the terrorist groups targeting Israeli civilians, he does believe that Arafat has “a moral imperative” to condemn them.
Cleland predicts it will take a different leader to navigate the Palestinians in the direction of peace. Ultimately, he said, they need a leader who will allow “decent schooling and open inquiry. As more Palestinian people find out how other people live, the more they’ll realize that their own leaders have let them down.”
As for now, the “climate of fear on both sides” makes negotiating difficult. Therefore, he hopes that as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni returns to the Middle East, the Israelis and the Palestinians will embrace his “straightforward, no-nonsense” approach, building confidence and allowing the chance for peace to re-emerge.
Cleland reaffirmed that the U.S. armed services are “committed, as never before, to supporting our friends and allies, who support us.” He also said he doubts Osama bin Laden had expected this outcome of unity and action in the aftermath of the New York and Washington, D.C., attacks.
Judging by the suspected terrorist mastermind’s past attacks, including the World Trade Center truck bombing of 1993 and the 2001 USS Cole boat bombing, Cleland believes bin Laden thought his “plane bombs” would make the United States “retreat and hide behind our technology.”
Instead, “he awoke the sleeping giant” because now “we’re in their knickers. See what a difference Sept. 11 made?”
The situation mirrors that of the Middle East, where PLO leader Yasser Arafat, hoping for more concessions, passed up former Israeli Prime-Minister Ehud Barak’s peace deal in the summer of 2000, Cleland said.
“Arafat went back and thought he had won. The Palestinian people hailed him a winner and Barak a loser. But after that, the peace process degenerated basically into a war. So the loser was not Barak; it was peace itself.”
Referring to Arafat’s slight of the “hand of friendship” offered by Barak at Camp David, Cleland said, “It takes two to tango.”
It’s not possible “to have one side agree and the other not, and live under terror,” he said.
“I understand that better, tragically, since Sept. 11.”