Veteran U>S. Diplomat Questions Obviously Biased U.S. Policy Toward Israel, Arab World

Spotlight
November 6, 2000

A perspective on the current conflict in the Middle East provided by a veteran American diplomat who spent much of his 30 year career in the State Department serving in the region was featured on the Oct. 15 broadcast of the SPOTLIGHT's weekly call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.
The guest was retired U.S. Ambassador Andrew I. Killgore, U.S. ambassador to Qatar from 1977-1980, Killgore's broad-ranging career in the diplomatic corps included stints in Frankfort, London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Amman, Baghdad, Daca, Tehran, Bahrain and New Zealand.
What follows is an edited transcription of the interview with Killgore.

What's happening in the Middle East?
Well, I think the Israelis have been over-reacting, that's one thing. Kids are throwing stones. Also this involves {the United States} pretty seriously because these helicopter gunships are American made. Also they are supposed to be used only for self-defense. That's part of the reason for anger against the United States.
Are you suggesting that the Israeli use of the helicopter gunships is not self-defense when they are shooting at these kids throwing rocks?
It doesn't look like defense to me.

A lot of people agree with your assessment, but I'm sure the Israelis would say they have to "defend" themselves.
Well,you know the Israelis-if you back up a bit after the 1967 war-they captured the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights of Syria and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. that gave the Israelis 78 percent of the whole British Mandate of Palestine, leaving the Palestinians 22 percent in the West Bank and Gaza. What's been going on, quite against international law, is that the Israelis have been planting settlements in the West Bank and Gaza ever since and confiscating Palestinian land.
Everyone, of course out there in the Middle East is fully aware of the huge amount of aid {the United States} gives Israel each year. It's really closer to $5 billion a year. As long as they have U.S. political support, I don't think any Israeli leader can make the serious compromises that would be necessary to give something that the Palestinians and the Arabs and the Muslim world can accept.
After the 1967 war, the United Nations passed Resolution 242 calling for an exchange of land for peace and that whole formula is as valid now as it ever was and I don't think the Palestinians could ever accept anything less, but they are still only giving them 22 percent. I think any statement that President Clinton would make about how forthcoming Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel was, at Camp David II, is misspoken. The Palestinians have got to have East Jerusalem since, in the first place, it is populated by Palestinians.
Israel always says that they can't give this land because they "wouldn't be secure." Are the Palestinians so angry because of what has happened to them during the lst half century at the hands of Israel that they would attack the Jews?
I don't think so. After all, if they got the West Bank and Gaza, they could work out an arrangement whereby they would be demilitarized. I'm sure they would be willing to agree to that. They won't have the resources. Israel has immense military power. Some say its the fourth of fifth military power in the world.
Well, Israel has the atomic bomb (even though they don't officially admit it).
It's always a question in my mind as to how useful the bomb is.
As a deterrent, the atomic bomb is pretty scary.
I agree, But the type of problem that Israel faces has manifested itself in the past few weeks: Palestinians don't want to be under Israeli control. There are two different aspects of the current problems: one is the use of the helicopter gunships, for the first time, so far as I know. So you have to ask why they use these military gunships. It is because they can't control it from the ground? The other thing is that the Palestinians inside Israel got shot dead in Nazareth
These Palestinians were actually citizens of Israel.

They are Israeli citizens, but there's a difference. They {Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel} don't have equal rights {with the Jewish citizens of Israel}
After Ariel Sharon visited what the Jews call the Temple Mount and which the Arabs refer to as Haram Al-Sharif, the Arab citizens of Israel did what they had never done before: they began demonstrating.
They had never done that before as far as I know. There's a little bit of a difference. It wasn't really {that it was an Israeli leader} visiting the Haram Al-Sharif, where those two great Muslim mosques are located {that offended the Arabs}. It was that {the visitor happened to be Ariel Sharon, who was in charge of the Israeli forces who invaded Lebanon in 1982 and at that time the Israelis pulled off a massacre at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, which I think was instigated by Sharon.
The Israeli government held a commission of inquiry and found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre of some 2,000 men, women and children. So Ariel Sharon is, in the Palestinian view, the very heart and soul of wickedness and evil.
In short Sharon is the most hated Israeli of all.
The point is that he went into the Harem Sharif with up to 2000 armed men with him. In other words, it was a statement which said. "This area is ours." The Palestinians can't accept that. This is the third holiest site in Islam. I don't know waht Barak had in mind, but he permitted this.
It is argued that the Israeli hard-liners led by Sharon and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu don't like the proposed peace agreements that have been in process.
No, not at all. They want to take it all.
Is this conflict a religious war?
I think it has become religious to a degree. It's ethnic, it's historical, it's religious, it's Arab-Jew, it's also the Arab world with all its resentments against the Western world (of which the United States) is a part). Don't forget that after World War I, Britain and France took over most of the Middle East and didn't give the Arabs any independence as they had promised that they would. Of course, the British had ruled in Egypt since the 1880s and so it is the colonialized world against the colonial {rulers}.
If you look at Israel as the last of the colonialists, it is, in a way, the worst of the lot. In the normal colonial situation, the colonized people would revolt and make trouble and the colonial power would just pull out. The fellow who had been in jail in the colonies would become the prime minister. But the Israelis went in and colonized the land by force and they are maintaining themselves by force.
They could make a deal whereby they could exist in the Middle East by carrying out UN Resolution 242. The problem as I see it si that the Israeli lobby is so strong in the United States and the American politicians ae such panderers that they will never put the pressure on the Israelis and tell them: "Look, you've got to give the Palestinians something."
There is a movement in the United States to get the Muslim Americans activated and organized to vote this year. They are going to be watching very carefully. There are sufficient numbers of Muslim voters in some states to make the difference in who wins that state.
As a U.S. ambassador you met with a lot of common people in the Arab world. Do those people truly feel that they have been victims of colonialism?
Oh, absolutely. If I heard it once, I heard it 10,000 times. I spoke Arabic, trained by the State Department in Arabic languages and culture, and I lived right there in Jerusalem, in the whole vortex of the dispute.
A lot of Americans believe that because the Arabs have dictatorships and tribal chieftans that the people don't have much of an opinion of their own.
No, Arab leaders are very keenly aware of how the Arab man in the street feels about all of this.
Mos Americans aren't aware that most Jews in Israel are not particularly religious and that they are largely secular.
I lived two-and-half years in Jerusalem and almost all-in fact, all-of our Israeli friends were basically secular. Arabs, generally, are quite religious. The higher, more educated classes are more secular, although they go through the form frequently.
I've just read the book by Israeli scholar, Dr. Israel Shahak, Jewish History/Jewish Religion, which says a lot about Jewish religious practices in Israel and their attitude toward nonJews.
It's a shocking book.
It is a shocking book, and I think that if every American read it, the power of the Israeli lobby would be pared back in this country. I'm inclined to think that the only solution would be for the United Nations and the United States to draw the boundaries for the Israelis and the Palestinians.
You know, in the UN partition resolution which was pushed through by President Harry Truman on Nov. 29, 1947, Palestine was divided into three parts: one for the Jewish state, one for an Arab state, and one for a separate entity for Jerusalem and Bethlehem due to the three religions in that area. The third was envisaged as an international area where Jews, Christians and Muslims would have access to their holy places.
A lot of Americans, myself included, feel that the Israeli hardliners are not going to give up until they have the so-called "Greater Israel" and that part of this gambit that has taken place in the last several weeks is part of an Israeli scheme to spark another war of conquest. In the SPOTLIGHT we pointed out that the Germans recently gave the Israelis a gift of two attack submarines. Are you familiar with that gift?
I wasn't.
The Israelis could use these submarines to launch missiles right into Syria.
I know that the Germans have provided Israel with lots in terms of {holocaust} reparations, but I didn't know about the submarines.
The SPOTLIGHT has also reported that the United States developed a laser weapon that could blind an opposing military, that it will not be used by U.S. forces but that it was given to the Israelis. Have you heard about that?
Good Lord. It's getting harder and harder for the United States. It's costing us a lot and I think the political situation will begin to balance out to a more even-handed position.

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