The United States reached out to hostile Arabs three decades ago with an offer to work toward making Israel a ``small friendly country'' of no threat to its neighbors and with an assurance to Iraq that the U.S. had stopped backing Kurdish rebels in the north.This was revealed on Friday as part of 28,000 pages of Kissinger-era foreign policy papers that were published online collection yesterday. Kissinger's comments about Israel are from a converstaion he had with Foreign Affairs Minister Saadoun Hammadi, eight years after Iraq severed diplomatic relations with the US.
``We can't negotiate about the existence of Israel,'' then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told his Iraqi counterpart in a rare high-level meeting, ``but we can reduce its size to historical proportions.''
Other Kissenger comments include what he thought the future of the US attitude towards Israel would be:
He said U.S. public opinion was turning more pro-Palestinian and U.S. aid to Israel could not be sustained for much longer at its massive levels. He predicted that in 10 or 15 years, ``Israel will be like Lebanon - struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world.''On the prospects for a Palestinian state, Kissenger said:
Kissinger said he could not make recognition of Palestinian identity happen right away but, ``No solution is possible without it.''A photocopy of the transcript is available here.
``After a settlement, Israel will be a small friendly country,'' he said.
Granted this is from the past, but the question does arise as to whether the current goal of the US under Bush is also to make Israel into "a small friendly country."
See also 6 Pages From The Transcript of Kissinger`s Meeting
Technorati Tag: Israel and Henry Kissinger and Palestinian State.
What would Walt and Mearsheimer have to say about this? That Kissinger confirmed their thesis 33 years ago? (That Israel's influence was harmful to America's foreign policy.) Of course if Kissinger acknowledged that 33 years ago, what's been the case since then?
ReplyDeleteI think that the actual transcript of Kissinger's meeting makes the question even stronger, with comments such as:
ReplyDeleteI would say that until 1973 the Jewish community had enormous influence. It is only in the last two years, as a result of the policy we are pursuing, that it has changed,
We don't need Israel for influence in the Arab world. On the contrary, Israel does us more harm than good in the Arab world.
Back in March, the NY Sun article "David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean" ends with:
A former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Morris Amitay, who is quoted in the Kennedy School paper, minimized the document's significance. "I would be worried if Henry Kissinger was saying this. But who are these guys?"
Maybe Mr. Amitay should be worried.
Maybe we all should be.