PROVING BAKER'S POINT:

Unbeloved Bush Aide Baker Reemerges in Mideast Thicket (E.J. KESSLER, 12/11/03, FORWARD)

Last week, President Bush tapped James Baker III, a Texas oil man, longtime family friend and political fixer who helped secure Bush's hold on the 2000 election in Florida, to be his "personal envoy" for sorting out the question of Iraq's debt. Coincidently, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations on December 3, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts mentioned Baker, along with President Carter, President Clinton and the elder President Bush, as someone whom he might send as an envoy to negotiate Israeli-Palestinian peace if he were elected president. Coincidently, too, Baker's reemergence comes on the heels of the administration's decision to deduct $300 million in loan guarantees to the Sharon government on account of Israeli settlement activity — a linkage that Baker originated during his days as secretary of state during the first Bush presidency.

Baker's tenure as secretary of state from 1989 to 1992 is remembered as a time of truculent relations between Washington and Jerusalem, when the top pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the senior Bush were at loggerheads over a number of issues, especially settlements.

At one point in 1991, American relations with Israel's Likud-led government were so strained that Baker declared Ariel Sharon, who was then Israel's housing minister, persona non grata in Washington. Despite his denials, Baker also is famous for allegedly remarking, in a private conversation on Middle East policy, "F*** the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway."

Baker's appointment, especially coming after the Bush administration quietly cut the loan guarantees on the eve of Thanksgiving, conjured fraught memories for some in the Jewish community — with both a prominent pro-Israel activist and a Jewish Democratic activist issuing warnings.

"The influence of James Baker is a factor in [George W.] Bush's pressure on Israel to reduce its military response to terror, in Bush's refusal to move the embassy to Jerusalem despite his campaign promise to do so, in his complaining about Israel's security fence, in his public demand for a Palestinian state and his public praise for the Geneva Accords," said the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein. A frequent critic of the Bush administration who opposes Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, Klein added: "You can be sure that his conversations with George Bush will not be limited to Iraq."

Coming soon from Morton Klein, "Protocols of Jim Baker".

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 12, 2003 4:19 PM