The chairman of the House subcommittee that deals with the Middle East told a Jewish audience Sunday night that the United States must continue to sell arms to Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
“I do not think it is in our national interest, I do not think it is in Israel’s interest, for the United States to be replaced as the key military partner to these two Arab countries,” said Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East.
On the other hand, he added, “it is not in our interest to sell these countries everything they ask for.”
Speaking to the more than 500 delegates attending the annual meeting of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council at the Washington Hilton, Hamilton said that “the bruising battles over arms sales in the last several years has served none of us well.”
Hamilton suggested instead an arms sale policy of “something between selling everything and selling nothing.”
Earlier in the day, NJCRAC marked the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — which was signed on March 26, 1979 — with a special session that turned into a friendly debate between Moshe Arad, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and his Egyptian counterpart, El-Sayed Abdel Raouf el-Reedy.
The two envoys agreed that the peace treaty has worked despite disagreements that have developed. “And both countries are determined to keep it that way,” Reedy said.
However, the ambassadors disagreed on how to get to the next step, a solution to the Palestinian problem.
Reedy called for an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian state, while Arad said such a state would pose a security threat to Israel.
Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), who spoke Sunday night along with Hamilton, warned that many Americans, who have little knowledge about the Middle East, now believe that it is Israel that is blocking negotiations.
Packwood stressed that it is up to Israel to decide whether it wants to negotiate with the PLO, but it must demonstrate that its decision is correct.
Packwood said that the public does not understand that even before statehood, Israel showed it was willing to give up land for peace.
He said the argument that Israel should give up “land for peace” is incorrectly stated. He said it should be, “Will the Arabs guarantee peace if they get land?”
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