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Washington Watch
Prime Visitors
Sharon, Abbas visits bring activists to Washington.
JAMES D. BESSER
Special to the Jewish News
S
upporters of both sides in the
Israeli-Palestinian drama are
swarming over Capitol Hill,
making their cases in advance
of this week's back-to-back summits in
Washington.
Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas
was due in town on Thursday, and his
official reception is designed to rein-
force the message that the administra-
tion is pleased with the changes he is
making in the Palestinian Authority.
The administration's strategy with
Abbas will be "diplomacy by seduc-
tion," said David Harris, executive
director of the American Jewish
Committee.
Abbas will meet with President Bush
on Friday; before that, he will sit
down with Vice President Dick
Cheney, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice and a slew of top
Congressional leaders.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
will arrive on Sunday and is scheduled
for meetings that, for him, have
become routine: the State Depart-
ment, the White House and leaders of
key House and Senate committees.
In advance of the summits, spinmeis-
ters from both sides were out in force.
This week, advisers to the
Palestinian negotiating team contin-
ued their multimedia presentation to
Congress describing Israel's security
fence, which they say is encroaching
into what was supposed to be the
Palestinian state.
The fence, they told lawmakers and
staffers, would trap Palestinians in
small enclaves on 45 percent of the
West Bank.
That message is "getting a positive
response," said Edward G. Abington, a
former State Department official and
now a consultant to the Palestinian
Authority.
Abington and other Palestinian rep-
resentatives also were trying to sched-
ule a meeting between Abbas and
selected Jewish leaders during his
Washington visit; the pro-peace
process Israel Policy Forum (IPF),
which met with Abbas recently in
Ramallah and broached the subject of
7/25
2003
22
a meeting in Washington, is helping
with the guest list.
IPF officials say representatives of
major American Jewish organizations
will be invited.
A small group of Jewish leaders was
also scheduled to meet with
Palestinian security minister
Muhammad Dahlan on Thursday.
Mixed Reception For Abbas
Abbas is also getting a more tangible
welcome from Capitol Hill.
More than 70 House members,
including 10 members of the Jewish
delegation, signed a letter supporting
the administration's decision to give
$20 million in direct aid to the
Palestinian Authority in an effort to
shore up his shaky leadership position.
Signers of the letter, which was pro-
moted heavily by IPF, include pro-
Israel leaders like Rep. Gary
Ackerman, D-N.Y., and Rep. Howard
Berman, D-Calif.
But hawkish pro-Israel groups were
planning a different kind of reception.
The Zionist Organization of
America has been blasting Abbas since
his appointment earlier this year; on
Tuesday the group announced an
"emergency vigil"" with protestors
wearing "concentration camp-style
uniforms to dramatize the fact that
Abu Mazen is the author of a book
denying the Holocaust."
The group also is waging a national
letter-writing campaign urging
President Bush to "rescind his support
for a Palestinian Arab state."
In addition, the Center For Near
East Policy Research was scheduled to
hold a pre-summit news conference to
highlight continuing anti-U.S. and
anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian
texts and in refugee camps, along with
the dangers posed by U.S. funding for
the training of a Palestinian police
force — which the group claims could
result in an "army of global terror."
Victims On Hill
With a critical round of Mideast
diplomacy about to start, a group rep-
resenting Israeli terror victims and
their families came to Capitol Hill on
Tuesday to keep official Washington
focused on the huge human costs of
the region's endemic violence.
The delegation of 23 Israeli and
American victims included Sarri
Singer, the daughter of New Jersey
Senate Majority Leader Robert Singer.
Ms. Singer was injured in a Jerusalem
bus bombing that killed 17.
The visit was sponsored by the One
Family Fund, an Israeli-based organi-
zation that fund-raises and advocates
for Israeli victims of terror and their
families.
"We came to bring about a new
awareness of what is going on in
Israel, and how this isn't just a prob-
lem for Israel but for the whole
world," Singer said in an interview.
"People need to realize terrorism can
happen anywhere."
Too often, she said, the devastating
impact of terrorism is lost in the news
stories that emphasize the sweeping
political and diplomatic issues and
downplay the human dimension.
She said the group has no political
agenda, and that the timing of the
visit only days before a new round of
Mideast summitry was an accident.
"The goal of our visit is to make
people understand what the families
are going through, and that more has
to be done to help them," she said.
"We want peace and we want any-
thing that can bring peace, but there
can be no peace until the terrorism
stops."
The delegation met with both of
New Jersey's senators — Sen. Frank
Lautenberg, D, and Sen. John
Corzine, D, as well as Sen. Chuck
Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who rep-
resents Singer's home district, hosted a
Capitol Hill reception for the group
along with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-
Calif.
The victims group also attended a
lunch hosted by conservative activist
Gary Bauer and met with the execu-
tive committee of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
the pro-Israel lobby.
New Iranian Missile
Visiting Israeli officials, including
Sharon, are adding another issue to
their crowded Washington agendas:
Iran's recent deployment of the
Shahab-3 missile, a long-range ballistic
missile capable of hitting Israel, as well
as U.S. troops in the Middle East.
Word of the missile deployment
came only days after U.N. weapons
inspectors found traces of enriched
uranium in environmental samples
taken in the Islamic state.
Both Ariel Sharon and Foreign
Minster Silvan Shalom were expected
to raise the issue of Iran and its acceler-
ating weapons of mass destruction pro-
gram in their meetings with adminis-
tration and congressional officials —
although Jewish activists point out
that, on this issue, the Bush adminis-
tration and the Israeli government are
mostly reading from the same page.
"In the past, Israel had to push hard
because Iran's weapons program was
not at the top of Washington's list of
priorities," said a longtime Mideast
observer. "Today, it is; Sharon and
Shalom will discuss it, but they won't
have to work very hard to get the
administration to pay attention."
On Monday, President Bush, speak-
ing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas,
blasted Iran and Syria for continuing
to "harbor and assist terrorists. This
behavior is completely unacceptable,
and states that support terror will be
held accountable."
Shoshana Bryen, special projects
director for the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs (JINSA), said
the newly deployed missile does not
create an immediate shift in the
Mideast military balance, but tha, in
the longer run, it points to a huge
danger for Israel.
"Iran doesn't require long-range mis-
siles to hit Israel," she said, thanks to
thousands of short-range missiles in
Lebanon under the control of the
Republican Guard. "Right now, they
can hit most of Israel."
But she said that "the point of the
long-range missiles isn't to use conven-
tional weapons; once they have a long-
range missile capability and a nuclear
capability, and once they put them
together, then you have qualitatively
changed the situation for Israel."
The Israeli officials were expected to
press the administration for more con-
crete action to deal with the emerging
Iranian threat — although Israeli
diplomats were careful to point out
that they are not urging U.S. military
action.
Hate Crimes Compromise?
Congress hit the "fast forward' button
this week as lawmakers raced to get
out of town -for their August recess.
At the top of their to-do list: appro-
priations bills needed to keep the gov-
ernment in operation after the new fis-
cal year starts on Oct. 1.
But the appropriations process is
taking on particularly onerous over-