The New Face Of Israel
CHANGING THE RULES
United States leadership. Smerling
predicted Sharon will attempt to soft-
en his public image, much as he did
while campaigning the last few
Months, from that of a military leader
responsible for Israel's engagement in
Lebanon to that of an elder statesman.
For its part, the Arab world, say
Arab analysts, will be watching the
United States' interaction with
Sharon, and will be looking to see if
the Bush administration will break
from what they see as one-sided poli-
cies during the last eight years, said
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle
East history and director of the Center
for International Studies at the
University of Chicago.
"I think, because of his record,
Sharon will probably be held to a dif-
ferent standard than another Israeli
government," Khalidi said. "If the
Bush administration looks carefully at
the mood of the Arab world in the
last five or six months, they will listen
to the anger that has permeated Arab
opinions."
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from page 19
Some analysts said it will be easier for
Sharon coming into power with a new
Republican administration, as
opposed to one too closely tied to the
Clinton administration's investment in
the peace process.
Sharon's reception in Congress,
however, could be a mixed bag.
On one hand, Congress as a whole
tends to be supportive of the State of
Israel, passing large annual aid pack-
ages to the Jewish state and issuing
resolutions, such as supporting
Jerusalem as its capital.
Henry Siegman of the Council on
Foreign Relations predicted that
Sharon will have strong support, at
least early on, from key conservatives
in the U.S. House of Representatives
and Senate. These Republicans, he
said, had embraced hard-line Israeli
politics when Clinton took office as a
weapon with which to criticize the
Democratic president.
But many members of Congress
have also been strong advocates of the
peace process, and some may be less
inclined to support an Israeli leader
who takes a tougher line on conces-
sions for peace and is still seen by
some to be the spark that set off the
latest wave of Palestinian violence.
At least one former Likud prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was
successful in reaching out directly to
Congress, and analysts and pro-Israel
activists say Sharon will have to do the
same.
Howard . Kohr, executive director of
the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, said
that meetings have already started
between the Sharon government and
officials in both the White House and
in Congress.
"One can't overstate the importance
of personal relations in diplomacy,"
Kohr said. "And it's critical on Capitol
Hill. Members of Congress want the
attention as well, and they have an
expectation about having a relation-
ship with someone that they intuitive-
ly know is one of our closest allies."
AIPAC officials have gone on the
offensive in recent weeks, seeking to
educate lawmakers in the new
Congress about the facts on the
ground and the causes of the latest
casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
The Zionist Organization of
America, a persistent critic of the Oslo
peace process, will take a different
tack. The group has hired a third lob-
byist on a temporary basis — just to
help make the case for Sharon to
members of Congress.
"The argument we will be making is
that Sharon was right about the dan-
gers of Oslo, right about his expres-
sions of horror at [Palestinian leader
Yasser] Arafat's pro-terror policies,"
said ZOA President Morton Klein.
"We will urge them to be supportive
of a new prime minister who has
expressed strong concerns about the
dangers of Oslo despite the fact that it
was politically unpopular to do so."
Tough Sell
It is still too early to predict how the
view from Capitol Hill will affect aid
to Israel and other legislative issues
important to the Jewish state.
Foreign aid has often been a con-
tentious issue in the budget process
and pro-Israel activists have had to
fight hard in recent years — for a vari-
ety of reasons — for Israel's nearly $3
billion in annual U.S. aid.
A senior Democratic congressional
aide said that with a new administra-
tion in the White House and the pos-
sibility of a small foreign operations
budget allocation, getting this year's
appropriation through Congress may
be the toughest in years.
An early test of the mood in
Washington could be the renewed
effort to get supplemental aid to help
Israel pay the costs of last year's unilat-
eral withdrawal from Lebanon and
expand its anti-missile capability.
The Clinton administration request-
CHANGING THE RULES on page 24