Two Pro-israel Senators Differ over Whether the U.S. Should Supply Arms to Moderate Arab States

Two U.S. Senators, both staunch supporters of Israel, differed last night over whether the United States should supply arms to moderate Arab states.

Sens. Daniel Inouye (D. Hawaii) and Robert Dole (R. Kan.) expressed their views during a banquet at the 25th annual policy meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Inouye said that on the one hand the U.S. says to Israel “we love you. You are important” and on the other it provides F-15s and AWACS to Saudi Arabia and would have supplied shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Jordan if it wasn’t for “your efforts.” He said this position of “evenhandedness” at best confuses the countries in the Middle East and at worst implies “we really don’t mean what we are saying.”

But Dole said the “AWACS sold to the Saudis were new but so was the security situation in the region following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah.”

Dole maintained that “it is precisely because the U.S. and Israel share a strategic relationship that we are legitimately concerned over the prospect of the Soviet bear lumbering into the Middle East. Because we want to discourage radical regimes from stepping up the pressure against Israel we ought to grasp the importance of aiding moderate Arab states to ward off such forces.”

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Dole also said that while he “longs for the day” when the U.S. Embassy can be moved to Jerusalem, “I have little patience with candidates who go into contortions to demonstrate their new-found support for such a move a few days before an important primary in a state with a large Jewish electorate. Their friendship, like their reliability, is open to question.”

The Senator repeated the Reagan Administration’s position that to move the Embassy now would “seriously undermine our effort to act as a peacemaker” and this would not be in Israel’s interest. “What is in Israel’s interest is for us to stop playing partisan politics with Israel’s security and get on with the truly bipartisan policy for peace in the region, “Dole said.

Both Senators noted the bipartisan support in Congress for aid to Israel. Inouye noted that it is “almost unanimous in Congress that assistance to Israel is in our national interest.”

Dole pledged to continue his efforts to provide a free trade zone between the U.S. and Israel. “American has no better friend than Israel,” he said. “The reverse is just as true. If we remember that we can forget any differences.”