'Serious dollars' behind proposed Israel lobby

By Paul Haist

"I think there are serious dollars on the table," was about as specific as Israel Policy Forum Executive Director David M. Elcott would be when asked recently about the outcome of an October meeting in New York intended to bring together top Jewish philanthropists and U.S. Israel policy activists to explore funding for a new pro-Israel lobby.
Initially characterized in the media as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, officials associated with the proposed lobbying coalition and with AIPAC later said it was incorrect to describe the proposed coalition as an "alternative" to AIPAC.
Elcott was in Portland Oct. 30 to meet with local leaders in connection with the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland's Jewish Leadership Institute.
Afterwards, he sat down with the Jewish Review to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and efforts by him and others to form a coalition to press the U.S. government to take an active role in finding a resolution to that conflict.
While he declined to say who attended the Oct. 25 meeting and offered no specifics about the meeting, he did say that the coalition effort remained alive.
"We are going forward with the next steps toward building a coalition that will bring together two groups that have never worked together," said Elcott.
"Our hope is we are going to have the financial resources, the political clout and the prestige and the hype that goes with something like this," he added.
When the effort to form a coalition of like-minded philanthropists with what the JTA described as "the dovish pro-Israel community" first surfaced in the media, billionaire philanthropist George Soros figured prominently in the news stories, which reported that he, Peter Lewis, Edgar and Charles Bronfman and former congressman Mel Levine were invited to attend the Oct. 25 meeting.
Earlier meetings had explored ways to achieve greater U.S. involvement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Organizational leaders associated with the new initiative include Morton Halperin who directs Soros' Open Society Institute, Jeremy Ben-Ami who was a top policy advisor to President Clinton, and Debra Lee who is president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, among several others.
Pressed on how much money may have been committed to the coalition effort, Elcott pointed to his organization's $2 million annual budget.
"We need to spend a little bit more on this effort to try to end this conflict, so were looking for multiples of that," he said, still declining to be specific.
Elcott was far less coy on his assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and why it is important to resolve it sooner rather than later.
Elaborating on the two groups that comprise the nascent lobbying coalition, he described one as organizational leaders like himself.
The other, he said, "are people like George Soros and others who have never particularly focused on Israel but have come to the realization that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has the potential of a world conflagration."
They believe, he added, that "if there is a way to find a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and get that off the map, so to speak, that would go a long way, perhaps, to lower the impending conflict between the Muslim world and the West."
Elcott believes that the way we talk about the conflict needs to change: "The old paradigm, dove-hawk, left-right, peace, are gone."
He assigned the Oslo accords to history's trash heap.
"The idea that we can achieve a peace settlement, that two peoples (Israelis and Palestinians) will come together, hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' failed miserably," said Elcott. "You'd have to be unbelievably na?ve to believe that the Palestinians are going to be our friends; We've seen enough evidence to know that a peace settlement, in the ways countries understand peace settlements, is not in the offing. So, Oslo failed in that sense."
He was no more optimistic about the unilateral steps taken by Israel after Oslo and the outbreak of second intifada.
"The second phase was the hawkish phase ? in which we would use our power unilaterally to do what we think is necessary to defend the state of Israel, defuse the situation and have a two-state solution," he said, pointing to efforts by Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
But the results were no more satisfying than Oslo.
"What we've learned ? is you can't do that any more, at least the way we used to think we could. Unilateral military action simply is not going to be able to annihilate your enemy. That's what Israel learned this summer," said Elcott.
"Unilateral power also failed," he concluded.
Elcott thinks the entire conversation needs to be reframed.
He described what he called "a pragmatic response" by asking, "What is going to better the security of the state of Israel?"
Then he posed a series of what-ifs that argued for abandoning tiny West Bank settlements "surrounded by 100,000 Palestinians," and dismantling the estimated 100 Jewish settlements that the Israeli government itself identifies as illegal under its own law.
"Is it patriotic to not dismantle them and therefore undermine the rule of law in Israel? Or is true patriotism and attempting to protect the integrity of the state of Israel—getting rid of those settlements?"
On the question moving now to resolve the crisis and create a separate state for Palestinians he asked, "Is it dovish or hawkish to want to have a Palestinian population (in Israel) equal to the Jewish population of Israel? Is that defending the security of Israel or is that undermining the security of Israel?"
While eschewing dove and hawk classifications, Elcott defends the proposed new lobbying coalition as "hawkish on Israeli security."
"It's not a dovish group," he said. "It's hawkish on ensuring Israel's long-term viability and health. It's very hawkish. It's an Israel advocacy group deeply committed to the security and long-term viability of the state of Israel."
Arguing on behalf of U.S. leadership in the quest for a resolution to the conflict Elcott said, "We're pushing for an American policy that understands the security of the United States and that its long-term viability in the Muslim and Arab depends on settling this conflict."
He expressed concern for worsening circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. relations with Iran and deteriorating conditions in Somalia.
"It's all the more pressing to get this piece off the table," he said. "If America could broker a settlement that would allow for a Palestinian state, it would go a long way to balance what is now the universal negativity toward the United States."
Pointing to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the oil sheikdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, Elcott said that a successful U.S. initiative "would bolster other regimes that we need to care about a lot now."