Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Council for the National Interest president discusses Middle East
By Matthew Chavez
Daily Lobo (U. New Mexico)
06/11/2007

(U-WIRE) ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a watershed event that revolutionized Israeli power in the Middle East and created the longest-running military occupation in modern history. The Six-Day War also transformed U.S.-Israeli relations. I spoke to Eugene Bird, president of the Council for the National Interest, about the United States' dimension of the conflict. Bird served for 23 years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, including as councilor of the U.S. embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He was embassy warden of the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

Matthew Chavez: Where were you during the Six-Day War, and how did you react to the news of Israel's surprise attack on Egypt?

Eugene Bird: I was in my office in the embassy in Cairo, and one of my friends called me from the airport and said in his thick Mississippi brogue: "Gene, President Nasser has gone mad. He's flying planes over the airport with stars of David on them." A little later, we got word that all Americans were to leave Cairo, as Nasser had accused us of helping the Israelis. "They could not have done this attack without help from you," is the way (Nasser) put it (to the U.S. embassy political counselor). The feeling was very strong, of course, that we were involved. I don't think we were, but it looks like (former U.S. President Lyndon B.) Johnson gave a yellow light to the Israelis instead of giving them a red light. He always claimed afterward that it was a bad idea to take the (Palestinian) territories because of the number of Palestinians that they would end up with, and, of course, that turned out to be true.

MC: Israeli professor Efraim Karsh wrote that "in one bold stroke, Israel was transformed from an embarrassing strategic liability into a valuable asset." Has the post-1967 U.S.-Israeli alliance rewarded the United States?

EB: It hasn't helped us much, has it? It hasn't helped Israel terribly much, except that the '67 war and the '73 war led to peace (with Egypt and Jordan), eventually. The missing piece is Palestine. One thing is for sure: Israel didn't have much of a strategic vision when she jumped off in '67. And it hasn't been helpful to us at all, because much of the trouble in the Middle East can be traced to the Israel-Palestine conflict. You leave these people without an anchor, without a country - you're going to have trouble. That would be true of Jewish people, too. MC: There are now almost a half million Israeli settlers in Palestine. What role has Washington played in Israel's colonization of the land under its military occupation?

EB: (U.S. officials) have been permissive and completely lacking credibility in their statements about (United Nations resolution) 242 - that is, land for peace - and a two-state solution. As for Israeli settlement, (the U.S. government) has been spending, in the last 12 years, about $500 million per year. Before, it was probably a little over half that. In the last 25 years, they have spent on the West Bank - in roads, colonies and the wall - probably $30 or $40 billion of American aid. So, there's a great deal of pessimism in the area at this point, because there doesn't seem to be any possibility of an activist policy by the United States, and if it was active, it would probably be active on the side of putting more pressure on the Palestinians than on the Israelis - and that's a mistake.

MC: Fouad Ajami, a professor who has advised the Bush administration, wrote in the June 3 U.S. News & World Report that "at the heart of the war lay the willful Arab refusal to accept Israel's legitimacy and statehood." Does this concur with your understanding of the war?

EB: (The Arab states) had just been defeated, and they did reject making peace with Israel. Israel accepted the 242 resolution, and they (the Arabs) didn't. He's right from that standpoint. But what did the Israelis expect? The Palestinians weren't going to welcome the occupiers. (The Israelis) wanted to keep the Old City (in Jerusalem) - they wanted to keep West Bank. They didn't care much about Gaza, but they wanted to get rid of all the people in Gaza, to deport them. One of the (Israeli) Foreign Ministry people told me back in '56 when they first took Gaza, "Well, you should open up the lands of Brazil and send all the Palestinians there."

MC: One month before the Six-Day War, President Johnson's national security assistant warned that "our single biggest liability" in the Arab world is the "sincere Arab belief that the Zionists exercise a veto on U.S. policy.'" Is there concrete evidence for this belief in the 40 years of diplomacy that unfolded?

EB: I've just come from Saudi Arabia and from Israel and all over the area. (They say,) "We love Americans, but we hate American policy." And they hate American policy because they think that it's controlled by AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). The Israel lobby just passed overwhelmingly - I don't think there was a single vote against it - a bill on the Hill calling to move the (U.S.) embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. If we did that, we would have a lot of Europeans and others who would be appalled by it, and we'd be adding gasoline to the fire out there. That's the result of the (Israel) lobby, and sometimes the lobby does more serious damage to American policy. Congress calls hearings devoted to working out a path to peace in the Middle East, and the three people that are there are all members of the AIPAC community. No Arabists, like myself, no area specialists, no Europeans and no United Nations people. That's pretty sad.

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