The Democratic Party’s full platform committee approved a staunchly pro-Israel Middle East plank last weekend after a failed effort by an Arab-American delegate to amend the language.
The rules require a vote of 15 delegates to debate an amendment, but Salam al-Marayata of California could muster only 14. As a result, the deliberations here were a sharp contrast from platform committee meetings in prior years, when Middle East language provoked some of the most fractious and bitter debate.
Tom Dine, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said this week that the final document’s strong language and the lack of opposition to it reflect Israel’s “special relationship with the U.S. as a core value within the heart of the Democratic Party.”
He said it also points to “the tremendous growth of participation at every level of government and politics on the part of thousands of activists in the Jewish community.”
Roughly 40 of the 186 members of the platform committee are Jewish, as are 10 percent of the delegates to the party’s national convention, scheduled to open July 13 in New York.
Stuart Eizenstat, who was domestic policy adviser in Jimmy Carter’s White House and a founder of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said there has been a “sea change” since the 1988 convention in Atlanta, when a “full-blown Palestinian state” plank was taken to the floor and supported by one-third of the delegates.
“Jewish Democrats were mobilized as a result, and were determined to fill the vacuum created in part through their own laxity and taking things for granted.”
Since then, Eizenstat said, Jewish groups such as the new Democratic council and AIPAC have organized at the grass-roots level to raise the visibility of issues of concern to the pro-Israel community.
ATTACKED AS ‘PUERILE PANDERING’
Eizenstat said the absence of the Rev. Jesse Jackson from this year’s presidential campaign also played a role because there were no Jackson delegates with a Palestinian state on their agenda.
He said the campaigns of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts had instructed their delegates to vote against amendments on the Middle East plank.
And finally, Eizenstat said, the Labor Party victory in the Israeli elections last week “helped head off steam” on the issue.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), co-chair of the platform committee, said the language was a reaffirmation of the work of the state parties and a reflection of Clinton’s priorities.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said his faction did not have the candidates or the delegates to press their agenda in the campaign-controlled platform drafting process.
Zogby authored the amendment offered at the weekend meeting. He had offered it to the platform drafting subcommittee, which rejected it, and had not planned to bring it up again, but he said Marayata wanted to submit it for the record.
The amendment, said Zogby, “offered minor modifications to make the language more of a policy statement, and less a piece of puerile pandering.”
The final document, which was drafted and approved by a platform subcommittee in Santa Fe earlier this month, is an unequivocal affirmation of support for Israel.
The “end of the Cold War does not alter America’s deep interest in our longstanding special relationship with Israel,” the plank says.
A ‘SIGNAL OF REASSURANCE’
It also affirms the importance of the Middle East peace process “rooted in the tradition of the Camp David accords.” It says “direct negotiations between Israel, her Arab neighbors and Palestinians, with no imposed solutions, are the only way to achieve enduring security for Israel and full peace for all parties in the region.”
The plank chastises the Bush administration for tilting toward the Arab parties. “The United States must act effectively as an honest broker in the peace process,” it says.
“It must not, as has been the case with this administration, encourage one side to believe that it will deliver unilateral concessions.”
Finally, the document states that Jerusalem is “the capital of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”
At a weekend news conference, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown refused to address the specifics of the language, but he defended the plank.
“I don’t think there is anything in the platform that will have a negative impact on the peace process,” he said.
Eizenstat said the language is a deliberate “signal of reassurance” that there “is not going to be a continuation of the past 3 1/2 years of a tilt” to the Arabs. “The assurance is necessary if Israel is to engage in the peace process,” he said.
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