LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: Bill Clinton, Please Stay Home
By Arlynn Nellhaus

January 20th brought a big sigh of relief in Israel. President Clinton is gone. And may he stay gone. May William Jefferson Clinton find something other to play with than Israel's future.

His relentless tinkering, his desperate chase for a Nobel Peace Prize (in hopes the world would forget Monica, Gennifer and Paula?) have left Israel in peril.

Now rumor has it that he will come to Israel to boost Prime Minister Ehud Barak's flagging campaign for re-election.

It wouldn't be the first time Bill Clinton meddled in Israeli politics. He sent James Carville's team here to help elect Barak in 1999.

Bill Clinton was so focused on the Israeli-Palestinian matter that he neglected even greater Middle East dangers, such as Iraq's creeping acceptance, despite all Saddam Hussein’s crimes, into the family of nations, as well as Iran's growing missile proficiency, thanks to Russia.

Clinton and Barak formed a symbiotic relationship. Both were determined, for their own reasons of self-aggrandizement, to sign a deal, any deal, between Israel and Yasser Arafat.

And both were delusional about Arafat and the Palestinian's people's intentions.

Together, they put Israel in a leaky boat.

Israel never before has been so endangered. In fact, Clinton's "bridging proposals" were "killing proposals" for Israel’s physical security and Judaism’s core spirituality.

For American consumption, Clinton managed to turn the image of Yasser Arafat into a sort of khaki-covered Santa Claus. But that khaki concealed a heart of stone, hardened by hatred of Jews and Israel, inciting acts of aggression and savage violence.

Examples abound:

-- The 1993 Oslo Peace Accords allowed the Palestinian Authority an armed police force of only 9,000. Yet it quickly grew to 19,000. When Israel objected at that point, Clinton played deaf. By 1999, there were 42,000 armed men in the so-called Palestinian "police force."

-- In 1995, after member of Congress saw videos of Arafat calling for a holy war against Israel, Clinton helped stifle public showing of the videos, further laundering Arafat’s image.

-- Under Oslo, the Palestinian Authority was required to end incitement to war, and introduce peace education. Not only did it not do that, but the Palestinian Authority continued incitement – and then stepped up hate education against Jews and Israel in the school system. The result: In 1999 Clinton presided over a new accord between Barak and Arafat that eliminated those clauses.

-- Since Arafat began "Intifada II" in September, Clinton declined to utter a word of public criticism against the Palestinian Authority policy of sending armed men to kill Israelis, a revolving-door policy for jailed killers, or the Palestinian media’s incitement to war against Israel.

-- Disappointing Israelis who had believed in his professions of even-handedness, Clinton bowed to Palestinian objections, and refused to visit any part of the Old City with Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, thereby insulting his hosts.

The list could go on and on.

To add injury to insult, Clinton propounded his "bridging proposals." Among them, all Moslem neighborhoods in Jerusalem, which are side-by-side with Jewish neighborhoods, would have been under the Palestinian Authority. Even Christian areas, like the Armenian Quarter, would have been under Moslem control.

Not to mention Jewish areas, such as the Temple Mount, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives -- the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world. Access to these would have been placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Israelis well remember that while the Mount of Olives cemetery was under Jordanian occupation before the Six-Day War in 1967, the Jewish tombstones were used in latrines.

The prospect was unbelievably scary -- and incomprehensible.

With Clinton’s departure, after an international outcry from Jewish groups protesting against Israel surrendering sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount, and dividing Jerusalem, Barak backtracked.

Sort of.

Maybe.

Since Barak changes his mind from one hour to the next, who knows?

Those Israeli red lines stood since 1967, yet two politicians attempted to erase them by personal fiat, without public consent. And they weren't the only red lines crossed.

Consider the Jordan Valley, where Jewish residents far outnumber Arabs. Yet, according to Clinton’s plan, it was to go to the Palestinian Authority. For decades, the Israeli military always held the view that control over the Jordan Valley was a necessity for Israel's physical security. The U.S. Army's own assessments supported that strategic view.

Not only did Clinton’s plan call for the surrender of the Jordan Valley, it called for the evacuation of the Golan Heights, another strategic asset. Yet, if Israel were pressed to return the Golan Heights to Syria, still at war against Israel -- from whence that country invaded Israel twice -- Saddam Hussein, perhaps with Iraq, and joined by Iran, could have a straight shot through Syria, down the Golan, to Tel Aviv.

No wonder Saddam Hussein today boasts of Iraq’s million-man army, ready to fight with the Palestinians to destroy Israel. He sees an opening.

The danger Clinton and Barak created for Israel is real. Their "peace process" opened Israel's door to war.

All this damage to Israel’s security came at the same time the Israeli press reported President Clinton claiming how much he loved Israel. He loved Israel so much, he clasped it so tight to him, he may have had Israel in a death grip.

Did President Clinton say he was a friend of Israel?

As the saying goes, "With a friends like this, who needs enemies?" The Jerusalem Post reports that 82-percent of its on-line readers share this view.

In other words, Bill Clinton, please stay home.

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem.