D’amato and Kemp Sign Ad Warning Israel Not to Count on U.S. Support

Two of Israel’s staunchest Republican supporters have warned Israel: Don’t count on us.

That is not a position usually taken by Senator Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Jack Kemp, former secretary of housing and urban development under President Bush.

But in an advertisement last month that appeared in two Israeli newspapers, they warned against Israeli reliance on U.S. security guarantees.

The advertisement was placed by Americans for a Safe Israel, a group that opposes territorial concessions by Israel.

Any American promise to intervene in the face of Arab aggression after such concessions were made would be inherently futile, according to the ad.

“It’s not hard to imagine what Arab armies could do to Israel while congressmen were debating whether or not to authorize U.S. intervention,” said the ad.

At a recent conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Kemp expressed his support for the policy of the previous Israeli government, which opposed territorial compromise.

D’Amato has also expressed his preference for Likud policies and has been a supporter of Ateret Cohanim, which encourages Jewish settlement in the Moslem quarter of Jerusalem.

An official with the Israeli Embassy in Washington refused to comment on the ad, saying that “this is a domestic American debate.”

But the official, Nimrod Barkan, said that the security arrangements being considered as part of any peace treaty “are not guarantees, but seriously constructed security arrangements, such as withdrawals of forces and demilitarized zones.

“There are no American guarantees on the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty,” he said.

That treaty was also opposed by Americans for a Safe Israel.

Among the others signing the ad were U.S. Rep. Robert Dornan (R.-Calif.); former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney Jr.; former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams; and G. Gordon Liddy, a former Nixon aide.