Dr. Michael Hudson

What exactly do we mean by intervention in the field of foreign policy and international relations? Whilst looking for an answer, we soon realize that there is more than one kind of intervention and more than one degree of intervention, so before looking at the record of American interventions in the Middle East we should distinguish between different degrees and different kinds of involvement. In doing this, we should take an inventory of what international relations students call the ‘instruments’ of foreign policy; in other words, we should determine how big powers project their influence and how they try to make the things happen that they want to happen.

To begin with, one must ask the question: Is it proper and right to characterize the American involvement in this region as being heavily oriented toward ‘intrusive’ or ‘interventionist’ applications of influence as opposed to ‘normal diplomacy’? And related to that question is another: Assuming one were assigned the task of advising the top US foreign policy leadership regarding its future Middle East policy, what kind of advice might one give, and in particular, what ‘instruments’ of foreign policy - from normal diplomacy to military intervention - might one recommend be applied to the various issues that concern America with respect to the Middle East?

In Washington, ever since the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the US has come to be considered as the only remaining superpower in the world. If this is correct, we should ask ourselves how the US exercises its hegemony in a region such as this one, which, at least from the American perspective, has been extremely troublesome. How has it used its power and its leverage to achieve the results that it wants to achieve?

When we turn to the task of defining intervention in international affairs, I would propose that there are degrees of involvement on a spectrum ranging from normal and ordinary diplomacy to the most intrusive instrument, which is the actual application of military force. One might imagine that we usually begin with what we call normal diplomacy: the proposing of initiatives, the organizing of projects, or the starting of peace processes to deal with particular problems.

In the case of the US, we know that one important instrument has been the application of economic assistance in the pursuit of foreign policy interests. A wealthy country such as the US, if so inclined, can offer grants, loans, technical assistance and so forth so that a friendly government can remain stable or a particular leader will feel a new sense of obligation toward the US and its interests. Over the years, the US has offered economic as well as diplomatic assistance to a number of the key actors in the Arab-Israeli conflict. By far the most has gone to the Israelis, who have received increasing amounts of economic assistance from an American government trying to project influence in general and to manage the Arab-Israeli situation in particular. We can become a little more intrusive with the provision of military assistance: for the same reasons that the US gives financial aid, it also finds it useful to use the instrument of military aid, the giving of tanks and planes - or the selling of them if the client government can afford to buy them - to achieve certain kinds of influence. In the case of Israel, the American logic has held that a militarily secure - even superior - Israel will then be both able and inclined to negotiate a durable peace with relatively weaker Arab neighbors.

We can expand the notion of intrusive intervention further by moving along our spectrum toward the instrument of subversion. Subversion can provide the means of getting your way in a particular troubled region. The US government, especially since World War II, has developed a large intelligence community that includes the CIA and a number of other agencies. In addition to gathering intelligence, these agencies have also on occasion actively intervened beneath the surface in order to alter the political equation in a particular country. This is the ‘dirty tricks’ instrument, and it is pertinent to ask to what extent - and with what results - has the US used the technique of subversion - attempts to undermine governments, arrange coups, and assassinate leaders - over the years in the Middle East?

Finally, we come to the conventional notion of what intervention is all about, namely, the use of military force. This is the ultimate form of intervention and the instrument of last resort, not to be used very often. Military intervention is an instrument that may have benefits, but it also has risks, and it most definitely has costs. In speaking of it we should differentiate between the indirect use of military force, such as through unmanned missiles, the air force or navy, and the actual placement of troops on the ground in an attempt to occupy territory.

Now that we have distinguished various degrees of intervention, we may consider how the US has used these instruments in the Middle East over the years, especially since the end of World War II. What are some of the big, foreign policy or security issues pertaining to the Middle East that have concerned American foreign policy makers since the 1940s?

Number one, of course, is the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is the centerpiece of regional tensions and American concern going back to the middle-1940s. Another big issue area for the US was the containment of the Soviet Union: how to keep Communism and the Russians out of this area in order to prevent them from competing with American influence in the Arab World or in the Middle East in general.

Yet another issue is the need to maintain access to the oil resources of the Middle East and to maintain reasonable prices. Speaking from the point of view of American policy makers, this is what they, like the British before them, were perhaps most worried about. The oil reserves in the Middle East are important strategically, economically, and commercially, and Americans are unable to ignore the possibility that unfriendly external competitors might somehow get their hands on them or at least find a way to impede our access.

There is a fourth area that has occupied a lot of time on the part of American decision-makers, and that is the question of dealing with nationalism and inter-Arab politics. From the point of view of American foreign policy makers, as well as all the analysts within the intelligence community in the State Department and the Defense Department, the rise of radical nationalist sentiments was a matter of real concern, as it was in the past to the British Government. Why was it a problem? Because more often than not the nationalist movement in question - and I am thinking particularly of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s - was targeted at regimes with whom the US Government had good relations and upon whom it often depended for local assistance in the pursuit of its various interests. So if, for example, the government of Lebanon or Jordan were under attack or threatened by ‘Pan-Arabism’ - as they were in the 1950s and ‘60s - instability loomed and US policymakers fretted about preserving the friendly regimes in both countries. US intelligence operatives were active in both countries, and finally American forces intervened in Lebanon (and British forces, in coordination, intervened in Jordan) in 1958. Later, when the Palestinian muqawama (resistance) movement posed a challenge to the regime, this situation rang all kinds of alarm bells in Washington. The question policymakers had to consider in facing these ‘alarming’ situations was how a very powerful country 6,000 miles away from the scene of the trouble should deploy its resources and intervene to try and assist the beleaguered regime challenged by a nationalist movement.

Let us now look at the instruments of foreign policy that the US has employed in the Arab-Israeli conflict. How has the US dealt with the transformation of Palestine from an Arab land to a Jewish state from 1947 to the present day? What kinds of instruments did the US foreign policy team apply to deal with the consequences of the creation of the State of Israel and the Nakba - the displacement of the Palestinians - and the disruption that occurred in the Arab World in general?

In general, the US since the mid-1940s has been very active in taking diplomatic initiatives for a peaceful settlement of the problem. The US had of course supported the Partition Resolution of 1947 that was adopted by the United Nations, which was yet another diplomatic effort to try and resolve the Palestinian tragedy. Of course it was unsuccessful, being immediately followed by war, expulsion and instability. Once the conflict was over, the State of Israel was established, essentially through military success. It was then up to the US to try to find a way to move from a very unstable and tense standoff between Israel and its Arab neighbors - armistice agreements having been signed on the island of Rhodes in 1949 - to an arrangement according to which the new state of Israel would be accepted by the Arabs. The US supported and accepted the UN resolution after the War of 1948 that called for the repatriation of displaced Palestinians as long as they were prepared to live in peace with their neighbors in the new state of Israel, but like so many other diplomatic efforts that the US either initiated or supported, it was not successful, mainly because it was categorically rejected by Israel and not vigorously enforced by either the UN or the powers behind it.

Depending on how you count them, over the years there have been up to 20 or 25 distinct efforts by various American administrations to bring about a diplomatic solution. Among them one thinks of the Eric Johnston Plan of 1954/55, which was not only a diplomatic intervention in itself, but also an attempt to deploy economic assistance in order to persuade the parties to reach a permanent political settlement. This was an effort to encourage joint work on developing the water resources of the Jordan Valley to the benefit of all parties. On another occasion in 1955, the Eisenhower administration, which believed that economic assistance would be able to serve a political purpose, sent out a special envoy to quietly broker a diplomatic process between Nasser and the Israelis, but although the plan showed some promise for a while, it also did not work.

During the period of the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, Kennedy sent out Mr. Joseph Johnson to work on the refugee question, but although he spoke to the Israelis, the Jordanians, and to practically everybody who would listen, there was still no progress. In this case, as in so many others, it was the stubbornness of the Israeli government that ensured that those involved were unable to achieve any success. It should be noted that this period witnessed ever-increasing American financial assistance to Israel, although the other countries of the region such as Jordan and Egypt also benefited from US aid.

After 1967, diplomacy was once again on the agenda, and there were serious efforts by the US to engage the help of the Russians, the British and the French, but none were successful. Finally, after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the US sent in its ‘super diplomat’, Mr. Kissinger, who engaged in an exercise known as ‘shuttle diplomacy’ whilst trying to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Syria. Although Kissinger succeeded in his immediate purpose, he was unable to move the whole problem very far forward. One of the reasons why Mr. Kissinger’s diplomacy basically failed is that it ignored the question of the Palestinians.

We move forward to the era of President Carter, who initially wanted to organize a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli question through a conference in Geneva, in which all the major parties would participate, including the Soviets. This effort was quickly sabotaged, first of all by the anti-Soviet forces within the American political system, and secondly, by Anwar Sadat. Fearing that Carter’s approach gave too much prominence to the Soviet Union, he decided to override the American initiative and go to Jerusalem to try and break what he saw as the psychological barrier between Arabs and Israelis. In the process he bypassed the US as a kind of Godfather of the Arab-Israeli settlement plans. The Carter administration quickly adjusted its policies and built on Sadat’s initiative. Carter’s Camp David negotiations were a crucial diplomatic initiative, and led to the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Normal diplomacy, with presidential involvement, scored a victory fully as complete as any US military intervention, before or since.

We now come to the Reagan administration, which I imagine is not remembered with great affection here in the Middle East. President Reagan’s plan of 1982 put a strong emphasis on Jordan as a kind of custodian of Palestinian interests in the West Bank, and even today the Jordanian option keeps coming up in the American diplomatic arsenal. In any case, such normal diplomacy was entirely overshadowed by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an action for which the Reagan administration apparently gave Israel an ‘amber light’ to go ahead with. But Israel’s war went badly and led to an unanticipated military involvement by the US as part of a four-nation multinational ‘peacekeeping’ force. Actually, it was America’s second military intervention in Lebanon, the first having taken place in 1958.

After Israel had occupied about half of Lebanon and besieged Beirut, the US, along with Britain, France and Italy organized a multinational force (MNF) that was to enter Beirut. The Americans were eager to find a way to end the siege that was leading to the deaths of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians, and they wanted to do this by finding a way to get the Palestinian fighters out of Beirut. So President Reagan assigned the task to Philip Habib, an Arab American diplomat from Washington. Habib’s job was to quickly find a way to evacuate the Palestinian fighters and avoid a bloody showdown with the Israeli forces encircling Beirut. But at the same time the great powers decided - I believe with justice and wisdom - that it was important to interpose an international military force in Beirut to secure the safety of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians left behind and now unprotected by the Palestinian military forces that were being evacuated. Having secured the evacuation of the Palestinian armed forces, the multinational force quickly withdrew, but as soon as it withdrew, the Lebanese Christian militias moved forward and massacred several hundred Palestinian refugees living in the camps of Sabra and Shatilla. I remember going there a few weeks later and observing the consequences; it was a very grim and bloody business, especially when one takes into account the fact that throughout the massacre, the Israeli troops who were on the perimeters of the camps abetted the Phalangists by providing search lights so they could find their Palestinian victims and kill them.

The MNF hastily returned but the damage was done, and its commanders must have felt greatly ashamed for having left before its mission was completed and allowing this massacre to occur. Now, however, the MNF soon found itself unwillingly sucked into the ongoing civil war in Lebanon. The American stay in Lebanon ended in a tragic and humiliating manner early in 1984 when a Hizbollah truck bomber broke through the perimeter fence housing the US marines who were part of the multinational force at Beirut International Airport and blew up the truck, himself, and the building in which 240 or so marines were sleeping, killing them all. Meanwhile, another Hizbollah fighter did the same kind of thing to the nearby French multinational forces, killing 60 or so of their number. Following the catastrophe at the barracks, President Reagan, who had originally declared Lebanon a vital national interest, quickly changed his mind, and the rapid evacuation that followed put an end to this particular military intervention. One is left to one’s own conclusions about what this specific example tells us about the utility of military intervention in complicated and unstable situations.

Meanwhile ‘normal diplomacy’ resumed, but to little effect until President George Bush came to power. Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, was rather more inventive than his predecessors. In 1989, Baker began to take a very active but interventionist role in the Arab-Israeli problem by proposing a plan for bringing the parties together, and it was thanks to his efforts that we witnessed the convening of the Madrid Conference in 1991, which was the result of an unusually well structured and multi-faceted example of diplomatic intervention. What Baker and his colleagues attempted to do at Madrid was, as it were, to ‘square the circle’ to get around the extremely big gaps between Israel and the various Arab antagonists. Baker succeeded in doing this by proposing a comprehensive setting that brought the Syrians, who have always rejected diplomatic initiatives not of a comprehensive nature, into the game. At the same time he satisfied Israeli demands for bilateral face-to-face negotiations with each of the separate Arab parties. Built into the Madrid process was a set of bilateral negotiations. In addition, Baker and Bush sought to generate momentum by constructing a parallel set of multilateral negotiations that would include influential regional powers not directly involved in the Arab Israeli dispute. Various working groups were proposed to deal with several major region-wide issues, including arms control, refugees, water, and economic development. Despite all subsequent setbacks to the peace process, this multilateral structure is still more or less in place and could possibly contribute to the rejuvenation of the now-comatose peace process.

The US has often used diplomatic initiatives to try and build alliances across the northern part of the Middle East in order to try to contain the Soviets from infiltrating what we used to call the northern tier. In 1957, for example, Eisenhower promised modest economic assistance and US protection against the threat of international Communism to certain countries such as Jordan and Lebanon and others countries that cared to be included. This was also perceived as an effort to protect friendly regimes, such as those in Jordan and Lebanon, from an indigenous regional threat, which was indeed a kind of nationalist challenge to established regimes. There was at least one case - there may be more - of the use by the CIA of subversion or dirty tricks, whereby the CIA attempted in 1957 to overthrow a Syrian government in order to promote a regime in Damascus that would be more immune to the influence of Communism or nationalism, but the attempt was a failure.

In the 1950s, in another friendly but fragile country – Lebanon - the US entered a phase of close and continuing coordination through the CIA station in Beirut with the government of Camille Shamoun when Shamoun was under attack by local forces and forces that were sympathetic to Gemal Abdul Nasser; the forces were enthusiastic about the recent union between Egypt and Syria and so forth. Later, during the Lebanese War of 1958, the government of Shamoun found itself increasingly besieged and Shamoun called for US military intervention in Lebanon to save him from the Communists and the Nasserists who, according to Shamoun, were basically hand in glove with the Communists. His pleas finally received a sympathetic hearing in Washington, although it was initially skeptical about his claims, and in the summer of 1958 US troops landed on the beaches of Beirut. Two months or so later, the conditions they set made it possible to bring the Lebanese war to a peaceful conclusion.

Note that the initial trigger for US intervention in Lebanon was not just or even mainly something that happened in Lebanon, but the overthrow of the royalist government in Iraq, a pro-British, pro-American government - after all, it was the seat of the Baghdad Pact - by military nationalist forces led by Abdul Karim Qassim. The coup rang alarm bells in Washington more than any number of pleas from a Lebanese president could do because under the circumstances, the Americans and the British felt that they were about to lose control of the Middle East. Pan-Arabism had succeeded in Egypt and spread to Syria, Syria and Egypt had united, and now the third major country in the Mashreq, Iraq, had suffered a bloody coup. American troops landed in Lebanon perhaps because it was easier to land on the beaches of Beirut than in downtown Baghdad. Simultaneously, British paratroopers landed in Jordan to protect young King Hussein who felt he was on the verge of being swept aside by the Jordanian masses, who at that stage were very enthusiastic about Arab nationalism.

The instrument of last resort, namely the military intervention, was used in this particular case because from the American viewpoint, it looked like the whole region was slipping out from under American influence, offering an opportunity for the Russians to push their way in. Such developments would have led to a real shift in the whole balance of power in the Middle East. The situation was unacceptable to Washington, so the US government decided it had no choice but to use its ultimate interventionist weapon.

Oil, quite obviously, is one of America’s most important interests in the Middle East. Worries about the security of Gulf oil supplies to the economies of the US and the other industrialized countries led to what is surely the most dramatic case of American military intervention in the region in recent years - the Gulf War of 1991. The war involved not only the bombardment of Iraq from the air and from the sea but also the application of a massive ground military force, an army presence to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and bring a tangible defeat to the trespassing Iraqi government. The American government decided that what Saddam Hussein has done was unacceptable and should be opposed with every available resource because oil was and remains such a vital national interest. It was not so much a question of protecting Kuwait, which as a state is not a vital national interest of the US, but rather the geopolitical position of a victorious Iraq that concerned Washington. It was feared that if Iraq continued to occupy Kuwait then it would be in a position to dictate oil production and pricing policies for the other Arab Gulf oil exporters and also pose a strategic military-security threat to Israel. Even though Iraq might not have then invaded Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and the other Gulf countries would have been so intimidated by the Iraqi presence on their borders that there would have been a major shift in the status quo of the balance of forces. A victorious Iraq would also be in a position not only to threaten Israel directly but also to mobilize other Arab governments toward a more hard-line anti-Israeli policy.

Having the power to do something about it and having the diplomatic influence in the world to mobilize an international coalition in support of this exercise, the US organized what was one of this century’s major wars in the Middle East. The intervention far exceeded the level of intrusiveness and severity of previous US involvement in the region; moreover, it went well beyond the use of the more normal diplomatic, economic or technical assistance or even subversive interventionist techniques that are available to a big power. Seven years after the war, I think we are in a position to conclude that the US intervention succeeded in accomplishing its stated aim - the liberation of Kuwait. It also succeeded in significantly weakening Iraq’s power and influence in the region. This success was due in great part to the multilateral nature of the military intervention - President Bush had prudently built up a broad-based coalition that included key Arab as well as European states.

We also know, however, that the post-war continuation of seemingly interminable and weighty sanctions on the Iraqi population in order to accomplish the eradication of Baghdad’s capability to deploy weapons of mass destruction has been politically very costly to the US. How costly? An anecdote may provide a clue. Speaking with a Western journalist in Jerusalem in February 1998 - just as it appeared that the US might mount a major military strike against Iraq for its continued defiance of the UN inspection regime - the journalist turned to me and remarked, “Well, I guess that means the end of the Pax-Americana in the Middle East.” My journalist friend felt that the US has been out-maneuvered and it had generated so much hostility with its repeated resorts to force and threats of force that it was losing international and even regional support.

At this point it might be worthwhile to note a fundamental principle of international relations - the theory of realism, or (in German) Realpolitik. The theory holds that states do what they have to do in the anarchic world of international relations. Sometimes that behavior is not very pretty, because it involves the use of armed force. Another key element is the notion of the balance of power. American strategists had decided by the time of the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, that the best way to have a stable balance of power in the Middle East and one that is favorable to American interests, is not to have an even balance, in which each side has more or less equal military power, because that might not be stable. The reason it might not be stable is that neither side would be sure that it was secure so both might test their strength and get into a fight. So they came up with the idea that if you want a stable region, it is better by far to have an uneven balance of power. This, in theory, is why the US supplied and continues to supply Israel with sufficient superiority in military power and technology, thereby making it irrational for any Arab state or army or any combination of Arab armies to challenge it.

Realpolitik practiced arrogantly can lead to unhappy situations. Perhaps the ultimate test of the success of American or external intervention in this region would be the following: if the people in the area are convinced that they have no choice, that they are unable to build weapons or regulate the price or supply of oil, that they are essentially helpless, then they would lack the will to resist foreign hegemony. Such perceptions could engender or exacerbate fatalism: people would feel that nothing really matters because whatever happens is just a matter of fate, and thus they are powerless to do anything about it. If that attitude were widespread in the Arab World, then those from the outside that would like to in fact manipulate and control people in this area would feel vindicated in their Realpolitik.

Obviously, this situation does not sound fair, but realists would respond bluntly – “So what?” The American policy to supply Israel with far more military capabilities than it needs, is (from the Realpolitik standpoint) precisely to create inequality in order to achieve that fundamental stability in which one side is clearly very strong and the other side is very weak.

In terms of the basic interests that the American Government has set for itself in this region, we seem to have succeeded. Why then, as we contemplate the future, are many of us sharing a real sense of concern over the American position in the Middle East down the road? Isn’t it a contradiction or a paradox for me to say that when I give a grade to the Clinton administration in the Middle East, I only award it a ‘C’? And why is it that so many people express the view that the US might be succeeding at present but it seems to be breeding hatred and contempt on the part of the people in the region in a very widespread manner? One answer to that might be that it’s too bad but maybe it doesn’t matter because the people do not really have much control over their governments, and the American government and most other governments conduct their foreign policies with respect not to the people, but to governments, to the states, the regimes. I see a real problem here: success on one level, but the prospect of failure in the future on another and ultimately more important level.

My personal view is that it would be sensible for the US to change the style and the methodology of its involvement both in the Arab-Israeli conflict and in the Gulf. It also needs to rethink its methodology with respect to Islamism, although political Islam is a very complicated matter without any easy solutions. With respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue, it seems to me that the US record is not very encouraging. The conduct of American policy since the Madrid process has been mediocre, in my opinion, and is one of the reasons that we have been led into the present impasse. I would make one observation about the Palestinian role: in dealing with the US, remember how important the influence of domestic lobbies is in formulating or shaping or tilting the execution of American policy. The US committed itself as far back as 1947 to certain principles, and through a UN resolution - although no one in Washington remembers this now - to an independent Palestinian state, as part of the UN partition plan. In 1967 the US committed itself to UN 242 which by any interpretation means that the Israelis are supposed to get out of territories occupied in the Six-Day War. (I have it from the late Lord Caradon, who was one of the authors of 242, that the wording, while ambiguous, never contemplated anything but minor territorial adjustments in the shaping of a permanent peace.) Why is it then that the US, although it has committed to the resolution, has subsequently weakened and softened its position under strong American domestic pro-Israel pressure and under the pressure of the Israeli government to the extent that it no longer talks about Jerusalem in clear language? And why has the Palestinian side been so feeble and ineffective in trying to generate counter pressure inside the US to make the American government stand up to the positions it has already taken? One obvious answer is that there is a strong pro-Israel lobby. But I do not understand why the Palestinian side and the Arab side have been unable to articulate a respectable counter argument that people will listen to. I don’t think the blame lies entirely with the Americans. States are not generous by nature, and they are not going to do things that they don’t want to do; they have to be pushed.

Dr. Rex Brynen, ICAS and McGill University, Montreal, Canada

My name is Rex Brynen, and I teach in the Department of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. Although my work concerns the Middle East in general, a large part of it has to do with a variety of aspects of Palestinian politics, especially the refugee issue, peace negotiations and foreign economic assistance to Palestine since Oslo. I also spent two years attached to the Canadian Foreign Ministry as an academic advisor, which was an interesting experience in terms of being able to combine my academic interests with some practical experience. Policy processes certainly look a lot different from the inside than they do from the outside.

After his visit to the region in November, the Canadian foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy decided that Canada should adopt a more active policy with regard to the Palestinian issue. As a result, he formed a sort of inter-departmental taskforce to come up with recommendations on what a revised Canadian foreign policy with regard to the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict should look like. At this very moment, The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is in the process of writing up the report.

Prior to World War II, there was very little Canadian involvement in this part of the world, mainly because there were no obvious Canadian interests in this region. Canadian foreign policy tended to focus on two things: one was Britain (a legacy of our colonial past) and the other was the US. Canada and the US share the longest undefended border and one of the largest bilateral trading relationships in the world; over 80 percent of Canada's current trade is with the US, and Canada is by far the US's largest trading partner, although virtually everyone in the US presumes that the largest US trading partner is Japan. Canada was in the words of one parliamentarian at the turn of the century "a fireproof house far from combustible materials," meaning that what went on in much of the rest of the world did not affect Canada in any substantial way.

A second reason why there was not a lot of Canadian involvement in this region, which relates to the first, is that it took a while for our foreign policy to be an entirely 'Made in Canada' foreign policy. Apart from our interests, our foreign policy-making was also tied up with Britain in important ways, and until the 1920s and 1930s we tended to reflexively support British positions.

A third and probably less important - but still significant reason - was that there were no significant domestic lobbies in Canada pressing for greater Canadian engagement in this part of the world. There was a Jewish community, but it was discriminated against and so politically ineffective that it was unable to get the Canadian government to open Canada's borders to Jewish refugees in the 1930s. The Arab community, meanwhile, was very small. There had been immigration to Canada largely from what came known as Syria and Lebanon at the turn of the century and in the early 1900s. Most of these early immigrants ended up in the Atlantic provinces where the ships would dock, and their small community was certainly not vocal.

The situation began to change after World War II, which was something of a watershed in terms of Canadian global foreign policy. Canada, a founding member of the United Nations, emerged from the war as a more important country, having made significant contributions to the allied war effort. Although it was not in the top tier of powers, which after the war included the US, the Soviet Union and Britain, it was certainly part of a second level of global powers. The idea of being a middle power proved to be quite influential in Canadian foreign policy inasmuch as Canada realized that it could do certain things that a superpower could not, such as serve as a helpful mediator and suggest constructive solutions and so forth.

It was in the UN that Canada made its first significant contribution to the affairs of the Middle East through its sympathetic support for Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel. Canada was a member of UNSCOP (the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine), which came up with a majority recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into a Jewish and Arab state. Canada worked quite energetically for that position and recognized the State of Israel shortly after it was established, although it is not clear that its support reflected much else other than a kind of residual sympathy for Zionism that came from the sort of Judeo-Christian background of most of the key foreign policy makers of the time, combined with sympathy toward the plight of the Jewish refugees from Europe. Canada most certainly felt guilty about the Holocaust, particularly in light of its behavior before World War II when it had refused to provide a safe haven for Jewish refugees. As for the Palestinians, I believe that their rights or overall situation did not appear to Canadian policy-makers as a significant consideration.

Canada's next substantial engagement in the affairs of the Middle East came in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. The tripartite invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France, posed some very serious problems for Canada, not because of anything that was happening in the Middle East but because it led to the emergence of tension between Britain and the US. The US administration was profoundly unhappy with Suez and strongly critical of France's and Britain's role in the region, and it put huge pressure on the British to pull out from Egypt. In fact, it was largely that pressure that resulted in the British and French withdrawal from the canal zone. For Canada, being in a situation where its two major allies were arguing with each other was a very uncomfortable position to be in, and in order to facilitate a British withdrawal from Egypt, Canada proposed the idea of deploying UN peacekeeping forces in Sinai. That was in fact the birth of the notion of UN peacekeeping, for which the then Canadian Foreign Minister (and later prime minister) Lester Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize. So even at Suez, the driving force in Canadian foreign policy tended to be European and North American issues, not Middle Eastern issues.

Moving forward to 1967 and the June War, immediately prior to the outbreak of war Egypt demanded that the UN peacekeepers be withdrawn from the Sinai. One has to remember that the peacekeepers were only on the Egyptian side of the border since the Israelis had refused to have a peacekeeping force on their side. Nasser was therefore well within his rights to demand their withdrawal. Canada, however, was one of the countries that argued that the UN should refuse to withdraw. Fortunately, the UN realized that it was unfeasible for it to maintain a peacekeeping presence against the will of the host country and the forces were withdrawn. The fact that Canada had recommended that the peacekeepers remain did little for its bilateral relations with Nasser in 1967, and it was thus prevented from playing a substantial diplomatic role the way it had played one in 1956. I think that Canada learned a very important lesson from all this, namely, that it had to pay a little more attention to the perspectives of both sides.

The October War of 1973 was also important to Canadian foreign policy in the region, not only because it demonstrated the continuing instability of the region, but because of the Arab oil embargo. Only two oil shipments for Canada were actually stopped, and the fact that Canada did not rely for the greater part of its oil on the Middle East led to a certain amount of confusion as to the extent to which Canada was affected or supposed to be affected by the embargo. Nevertheless, the embargo demonstrated to Canada and the European countries the potential of the conflict in the Middle East to have broader economic repercussions.

If one takes a look at the history of European diplomatic engagement in support of a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, it really only becomes constructive after 1973, by which time the Europeans - who were heavily dependent on Middle East oil - had learned that they had to try and promote a fair peaceful negotiated settlement in the region because of the security of European oil supplies. Canada is closer to Mexico and Venezuela and it produces a substantial amount of oil as well as other energy sources, which means it has never been as affected as other Western countries are by the increases in the price of oil or embargoes.

In 1973, Canada probably had only three or four embassies in the entire Middle East; of those only one - in Iran - was in a Middle Eastern oil producer. Only after 1973 did Canada begin to substantially increase the level of diplomatic representation in this part of the world.

The 1970s also saw an attempt on the part of the Trudeau government to somewhat reorient Canadian foreign policy. Trudeau was of the view that Canada was excessively reliant on the US, especially with regard to trade - even today, the degree to which Canadians have trade dependency on the US is about the same as the degree to which the Palestinians have dependence on Israel - and his government decided that Canada should try and diversify its trade policy and improve relations with Europe as a way of somehow counterbalancing trade with the US. The attempt was only moderately successful, because whereas the US is right next to Canada, the Europeans are on the other side of the Atlantic.

Even today, the level of Canadian interaction with the US is incredible at all levels. Although the US always focuses on the Mexican border, the number of people who daily cross the Canadian border is many times larger than the number who cross that of Mexico.

Certainly if one looks at Canadian voting behavior in the UN, one does not see a great deal of difference between Canadian voting behavior and US voting behavior. Canada almost always voted with the US on resolutions pertaining to the Middle East, and apart from the US and some very small irrelevant countries we had the most pro-Israeli voting record in the UN - partly because the Middle East was not terribly important to us whereas the US was.

The year 1979 was important in Canadian foreign policy because during the course of the election campaign, the person who became Prime Minster, Joe Clark from the Conservative Party, had rather rashly promised large Jewish populations in Toronto that he would move the Canadian Embassy to Jerusalem. After becoming Prime Minster and realizing that the issue was extremely complicated, he asked the former Conservative Prime Minister who was on a special mission to the region to investigate it further. The Stanfield Report, as it was known, stated very clearly that Canada should not move its embassy. Equally as important was the fact that the report made it clear that Canada had not paid enough attention to the Arab World or the situation of the Palestinians and that its level of diplomatic representation was still not adequate. In short, the Stanfield Report helped to propel much greater attention to the Middle East and to propel forward the development of a more independent Canadian view of the region with much less dependence on whatever the view was in Washington.

The early 1980s witnessed an incident that was very important to the evolution of Canadian foreign policy, namely, the hostage situation in Iran. Some of the American Embassy personnel hid in the Canadian Embassy and in the so-called 'Canadian Caper', we managed to smuggle them out of Iran with forged Canadian documents, which made us enormously popular south of the border for a certain period of time.

Later, in 1982, Canada was extremely critical of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and it was, I believe, the only Western country to maintain embassy staff in Beirut, including its ambassador, throughout the siege. The embassy got hit several times, which was important because the war brought to people's television screens an entirely new view of Israel; in other words, an Israel that was shelling large civilian areas in West Beirut. The Canadian Ambassador was there and he was constantly interviewed on Canadian television about the carnage in West Beirut, so the Canadian perceptions of the Middle East and Israel underwent a significant change.

Public perceptions changed even more as a consequence of the Intifada, which had a huge effect on public opinion, particularly among the younger generation of Canadians who grew up from the 1980s onwards with a totally new image of Israel as a country that had invaded Lebanon and broken the bones of Palestinian demonstrators and so forth. I happened to start teaching around that point, and the difference between students in 1987 and students now is dramatic; there is far more sympathy toward the Palestinians now than there was before the Intifada.

However, what one has to keep in mind about public opinion is that the majority of Canadians vote mainly because of national unity issues, taxation or economic issues, and those who vote on the basis of Middle Eastern policy are disproportionately in the Jewish community. When looking at public opinion, it is not enough to look at what views people hold: one must also consider who is likely to go out and do something about their views. People will say that they sympathize with the Palestinians, but the vast majority are unlikely to take any kind of positive action. It is the degree of mobilization that is important, not the degree of sympathy and non-sympathy.

After World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, the pro-Israel lobby in Canada became increasingly effective, and it was arguably the single most effective foreign policy lobby in Ottawa, which promoted the idea that people would actually vote for a candidate based on their position on the Middle East. Was this because of money? No. Campaign financing was never really an issue because in Canada our parties are federally financed. Of course the Jewish community has several economic advantages in Canada, but so does the Arab community, being well above the average in terms of professional skills, wealth and so forth. The main reason for the success of the Jewish lobby is that it has always been good at mobilizing its members and has good support in the Jewish community. There is an awful lot to be gained from looking at how it operates. It is extremely well-organized, and it is very effective at getting information out. Moreover, up until very recently, it tended to speak with one voice. Due to the fact that the Jewish community dates from the initial arrival of European settlers in Canada, it is a community that is comfortable as any other in the Canadian political environment, and its members know who to talk to and how the system operates.

One significant change in the mid '70s or early '80s was that there was an increase in Arab immigration into Canada, particularly because of the Lebanese Civil War. There are roughly 250,000 Lebanese in Canada and another 40,000 or so Canadian Lebanese who are now in Lebanon, which means there are nearly 300,000 Canadians from Lebanese backgrounds.

In spite of its size, the Arab Canadian community is not able to mount a lobby that is anywhere near as effective as the pro-Israeli lobby. For one thing, its members come from different Arab countries and they are reluctant in some cases to engage in politics. More than half of them are Lebanese (especially Maronite and Shi'ite) and they necessarily don't like the Palestinians a great deal. Moreover, while second-generation Arab Canadians are fairly attuned with how the political system operates, the first generation are not so attuned and do not always judge well when it comes to deciding when to make loud public noises and when to have quiet lunchtime meetings. Nevertheless, in Ottawa, for example, where Arabs are the third largest community, Arabic is the most common language after English and French and there are MPs of Lebanese background, which has had its effects in terms of a somewhat greater sensibility to Arab viewpoints. In contrast to the US, I would say that we are now witnessing far more effective Arab-Canadian participation and politics.

With regard to the question of Palestinian self-determination, although senior members of the foreign ministry and ambassadors could not speak with the PLO in the past, everyone else could, so Canada in fact had close contacts with the PLO. The restrictions on meeting with the PLO were eliminated during the Intifada, when Canada began to speak for the first time about Palestinian self-determination. Even today, Canada is often reluctant to talk about self-determination, and the reason is Quebec, where part of the population wants to form an independent, sovereign state through a process of self-determination. As a result, Canada's policy on Palestinian self-determination and Palestinian statehood, and even its policy with regard to how Canada is represented to the Palestinian Authority, reflects concerns over how that could come back to haunt Canada with regard to Quebec.

Dr. Rex Brynen

Before identifying Canada's national interests, one has to recognize the fact that interests are vague and ambiguous things; it is not as if politicians have a list in the safe somewhere and they just go and check it when an issue comes up for consideration. Different decision-makers are going to tend to have somewhat different perspectives on what the interests are, or perhaps more accurately, on the weight of the various interests.

Clearly, Canada is interested in peace and stability in this region. Of course, the two do not necessarily go together: it is possible to have a reasonable amount of stability without peace and it is certainly possible to have stability without justice. In the case of Canada, however, they are seen as linked.

Why is peace and stability of concern to Canada? Because the Middle East is an important part of the world for economic reasons: that is to say, what happens to the Middle East, because of the presence of oil, has global ramifications. The Middle East is also important geostrategically because of the proximity to Europe, the presence of the Suez Canal and so forth. The region is also important because of the potentially destabilizing consequences of regional conflict. It is a heavily armed part of the world, and there is always a significant risk of war and of war expanding. During the Cold War the concern tended to be that confrontation in the Middle East might spiral out of control and become an East-West confrontation, and that was certainly a risk in 1973, for example, when the Russians began to ship not only military equipment but possibly nuclear materials to Egypt. Since the end of the Cold War, the concern about regional conflict spreading tends to focus more on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in this region, as well as the means to deliver them, particularly missiles and aircraft.

After the mid-‘70s decision of OPEC to increase oil prices we had a global recession, which affected Canadians in much the same way that it affected everyone else. A large part of Canada's gross national produce comes from trade, and if there is instability in other parts of the world, it affects Canada's trade interests.

Terrorism is another issue that Canadian decision makers are concerned about, not only because of existing levels of international terrorism, but also because Canada has a large multi-ethnic population, which comes from all around the world and sometimes imports regional conflicts into Canada. One has to take into account the fact that most Canadians originate from somewhere else, and for this reason, amongst others, there is always concern that conflicts in other parts of the world will in some way involve Canada.

In addition to peace and stability, Canada also tends to see respect for International Law as important, because it views International Law and the UN as important ways of helping to support international peace and stability. Because of that, the value of a strong UN certainly figures more in Canadian foreign policy that it does in that of the US, Britain or France. Canada is a middle power, and it is therefore stronger in a club than it is by itself, so Canada tends to put more emphasis on International Law and on multilateral institutions than do some other countries.

Because of Canada's interest in peace and stability, it is also keen on promoting sustainable development around the world - although speaking as an academic, I could question whether the two are automatically connected. It is interesting to note that in 1995 or thereabouts, Canada reorganized its foreign ministry in order to establish an entirely new branch called the Global Issues Branch, which looks at things such as development, democratic reform, refugees, global environment issues and so forth. In short, there is a view that support for global development is an important part of our general concern with peace and stability.

Trade is a second important part of Canadian foreign policy. As I said before, Canada is a country that depends for a very large part of its gross national product on trade, so it is always very concerned with establishing trade relations and opening up investment opportunities and so forth. There is a related trade or economic interest in access to Middle East oil supplies. Canada is not dependent on Middle East oil supplies because we produce a lot of our own energy, whether oil or hydroelectric, and because we buy most of our oil from places like Mexico and Venezuela. Having said that, whenever anything happens in the Middle East and there is less Middle East oil on the market, all oil becomes much more expensive. Of course, if you live in Alberta, which is a large oil-producing province, this may not be a problem; if you live in Quebec or Ontario, which consume oil, it is. For the federal government, oil is important because it is important to the global and national economy.

Canada's support for sustainable development also factors into Canada's trade interests. In general, there are two basic assumptions: one, that an expanding global economy promotes greater trade, and two, that Canada, like most foreign countries, uses it foreign aid as a way of trying to promote trade links. Some of our aid is tied, which means that the recipient has to spend it back in Canada. This, however, is true of virtually all countries, and if you look at Western countries in general, Canada ties less of its aid on average than most. In the case of aid to the West Bank and Gaza, very little of the aid is tied.

With regard to other Canadian interests, one has to do with the attachment of Canadians to the region, in other words domestic political concerns, coming in this case either from the Canadian Jewish community or from the Canadian Arab community. Are these interests or are they not interests? If you are a politician making decisions about foreign policy in this part of the world, you are not just thinking about peace and stability or about trade and economic interests, you are also thinking about domestic constituencies and how things will play out in those domestic constituencies. The fact that Canadian foreign policy has to reflect the particular interests that Canadians have, whether they are Arab Canadians, or Canadians from India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, etc, is taken for granted and reflects the particular ties that so many Canadians have to other parts of the world. In fact, as the proportion of people coming to Canada from the developing world increases at the same time as the proportion of people coming to Canada from Europe sharply decreases, Canada has far more interest in other parts of the world. Hundreds of Canadian police officers have served in Haiti, for example, not only because this was something constructive that Canada could do in its own hemisphere, but also because there is an increasingly large Haitian community in Canada.

When Canada thinks about its policy in the Middle East or elsewhere, it has to take into consideration how players other than those most immediately involved will react to a given situation. Canada pays a great deal of attention to US views, and it occasionally stands up against US foreign policy, as it did with regard to the embargo against Cuba, for example. We provide development assistance to Cuba, and we are affected by the so-called Helms-Burton Law, according to which people who invest in Cuba are barred from entering the US. Many of the major companies that invest in Cuba are Canadian and we have condemned the law, saying that the American isolation of Cuba is inappropriate and that Cuban democratization is better served by trade and intercultural links and so forth. This has made us somewhat unpopular in certain parts of the US Congress: Senator Jessie Helms, for example, has talked about how Canada is a threat to vital US interests because of its subversion of the embargo and so forth.

With regard to the land-mines treaty, our whole foreign policy was essentially built around isolating the US and various other countries, even though the US was very critical of our stand. Ironically, the fact that our bilateral relationship with the US is so good means that Washington is sometimes a little more tolerant of us getting our own way. Of course there are times when we defer to the US because our interests are not strong while the US has strong preferences, and we realize that some issues are simply not worth us risking our good relations with the US government. On the whole, however, Canadian foreign policy continues to be affected by US views and, to a very limited extent, by the views of the Europeans.

Finally, there is this whole nebulas idea of Canadian values pertaining to justice, democracy, human rights, gender equity and environmental protection and so forth, and the extent to which these values are reflected in foreign policy. It is sometimes difficult to know if the values are simply self-serving rhetoric that we use when we do what we intended to do anyway, or if they actually drive foreign policy. Canada got involved in the landmines issue because it thought it was the right thing to do, but there are other things we became engaged in where our values probably didn't figure too prominently at all.

Our decision to commit forces to the US in the Gulf this year certainly didn't seem to reflect our emphasis on reaching a diplomatic settlement. In 1991, Canada pressed the US very hard to get an explicit Security Council authorization for the Gulf War, and the UN eventually mandated the use of ‘all necessary means’ in the conflict. This time around, however, Canada did not press the US to obtain an explicit mandate for enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 687, which would imply that in this particular case, Canada seems to have forgotten its commitment to International Law and has sided with the Americans for various other reasons.

It should be noted that individual prime ministers and foreign ministers can make a difference to foreign policy when it comes to their level of sympathy and activism. The current foreign minister is very activist and fairly sympathetic, and although the Middle East is not high on the list of issues he worries about globally, it may have got a little higher when he came out to the region in November. The Prime Minister is sometimes active with regard to foreign policy issues but he is inclined to play it very conservatively when it comes to the Middle East.

Moving to the US, the differences between the Bush-Baker administration and the Clinton administration are substantial and have to do with the fact that the Jewish vote in the US disproportionately goes to the Democrats. The various policies of the Bush-Baker era had a lot to do with the pattern of party support, but they also had a lot do with the fact that the Bush-Baker team was a different team in inclination than is the Clinton team, which is very sympathetic to Israel and reluctant to apply any kind of pressure.

In trying to understand Canadian interests, we can look for an example to the Misha'al assassination, which involved the use of Canadian passports. What were the Canadian interests at stake in this particular instance? One interest, which would have suggested that we not make a fuss about the whole affair, was the value of Canadian security cooperation with Israel. Canada cooperates with the Mossad in terms of the supply of information, mainly because it is prohibited by law from spying abroad, although we do have what are called ‘security liaison officers’; they do not really spy but they keep their eyes and ears open. Canada has security cooperation agreements with a lot of countries, which include Israel, Jordan and Egypt amongst others, and so you can just imagine the Canadian security intelligence service saying, ''Well, let's not make too much of a fuss about the use of our passports as a lot of the information we get on potential terrorist threats comes from Israel and we don't want to upset the Israelis and risk losing our supply of data." The Israelis are very effective at cultivating these sorts of close links to other intelligence and security agencies.

However, in this particular case there were also political factors at work, because domestically the population was outraged about the misuse of Canadian passports. There was concern about the security of Canadians abroad and about the fact that if Canada allowed countries to misuse its passports, then Canadians travelling around the world would be suspect. Moreover, this was an infringement on Canadian sovereignty, and I think that these factors turned out to be far more important in the foreign policy decision-making process than our security relations with Israel and were responsible for the fairly firm official reaction to the misuse of Canadian passports.

What about Canadian foreign policy in the Gulf? At the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Canada's calculation of its foreign policy interests was very clear. The Canadian government felt that this was the violation of another country's sovereignty, which threatened to de-stabilize the global economy and represented a test case of the UN's ability to provide for collective security. The Iraqis were given more than adequate diplomatic opportunity to back themselves out of Kuwait, which they refused to do, and this according to Canada meant that the UN mandate to use military force to liberate Kuwait was justifiable. There were debates within the Foreign Ministry at the time as to whether sanctions and diplomacy should be given more time and there were debates over the possible consequences of the use of military force, both regionally and in terms of alienation between the West and the Arab World and over the potential civilian cost, but to be frank, for the most part there were no debates over the justification to use military force in terms of protecting Kuwait's sovereignty at the request of the UN and Kuwait - hence the commitment of Canadian forces to the coalition. This time around, in the context of the most recent tensions in the Gulf, I think it is rather different. One does not have the occupation of a sovereign country or the threat to global oil supplies or to other Canadian interests in the region. Today, the interests are twofold: one, the importance of applying the weapons inspection system in full and making sure it does not break down, and two, the weight of the Canadian relationship with the US. I think that most of the Canadian government is probably convinced that Saddam Hussein will, given half the chance, produce weapons of mass destruction and that being somewhat unpredictable, he might even decide to use them, having already used them in the course of the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurds. Admittedly Canada doesn't make a big issue about the fact that Syria, for example, posses chemical weapons, but this doesn't mean that it is not concerned; it is simply far more concerned over past Iraqi behavior and the fact that there is substantial evidence that Iraq has tried to hide part of its weapons programs from UN inspectors.

With regard to the current crisis, I think one can make a good argument that military force would not have solved the weapons inspection problem because it would have led to the withdrawal of UN inspectors from Iraq and the end of inspections. That would lead us to suspect - although it is very hard to dissect the Prime Minister's brain to see what he was thinking at a given time - that it was the relationship with the US and the idea that friends should stand by friends even if they are not entirely convinced they are right, that was behind the official position of the Canadian government.

One has to remember that Canada is a middle power that does not have significant military resources other than for peacekeeping and any form of Canadian intervention is largely symbolic. We can undertake peacekeeping activities, which we have performed all over the Middle and elsewhere in the world since the '50s. We can also provide economic assistance, and although our aid budget has shrunk it still represents a reasonably good proportion of our gross national product when compared to that of other countries. And, of course, we can provide some diplomatic engagement, although in general there are limits as to what Canada can do. It is able, however, to do somewhat more in association with others, which I think explains why Canada is inclined to try to be part of a broader framework.

Certainly, Canada would prefer a diplomatic solution to the Gulf Crisis. Canada's view is that there is a series of requirements under UN Resolution 687 and that if Iraq were to adhere to these requirements, the embargo should come to an end. The problem is that it is not Saddam who is getting hurt by the embargo but the people of Iraq. Nevertheless, I assume that the Canadian position is that it is Saddam's choice and that he has the option of ending sanctions with full compliance. In this context one has to realize that Security Council resolutions are binding and that once a country joins the UN, technically speaking it gives up part of its sovereignty and accepts the fact that the UN Security Council can formulate binding resolutions on matters of international security.

I admit that there is legitimate concern about the effects of sanctions. On the other hand, if you take them off when the Iraqis are not cooperating, you send a signal that even if you disobey UN instructions, you still get the punishment removed. There is currently some thought going on in the Department of Foreign Affairs on the ineffectiveness of sanctions and their ability to harm the wrong people. In general, Canada is becoming less supportive of the whole idea of sanctions, but then we come to a major problem, namely, how do lift sanctions when the US wants them to remain.

With regard to Canada's position pertaining to the peace process, the Canadians maintain that they will support whatever the Israelis and Palestinians agree to, including an independent state. Canada actually used the magic word self-determination in the late '80s, and there is a debate going on right now over the establishment of a Canadian representative office in the Palestinian Territories. At the moment, many Palestinians seem to be under the impression that the Canada Fund office in Ramallah is a kind of Canadian representative office, but this is not true. [Subsequently, a Canadian representative office was opened in the fall of 1998 in place?

One thing to remember is that our relationship with the US has not always been friendly. Before we became a country in 1812 we fought a war against the US, during which we burnt down the White House. The reason Canada confederated in 1867 was in part military defense against the possible American threat: at the end of the Civil War, the US was very heavily armed and there was real concern about expansion northwards. In fact, up until World War II, Canada had active defense plans for dealing with a US invasion.

Our trade relationship with the US would suggest that you could have a big trading relationship without it necessarily being to your disadvantage. In fact, under the North American Free Trade Agreement that we signed with the US and Mexico, which established a single market from Mexico to Canada, we actually came out ahead and the Americans now complain that we are exploiting them. We would prefer, of course, to diversify our trade, but that is not going to happen, and it is not going to happen in Palestine either: Palestine will always be primarily trading with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt and most predominantly with Israel.

On the issue of Quebec, there are those who argue that if Quebec gains its independence and Canada is split in half, the country will no longer be viable and will be absorbed by the US. It is very hard to run separated countries, and if Quebec were to leave, it would drastically change the distribution of power within the county. Quebec has become a very important consideration in some aspects of foreign policy. The federalists won the last referendum by less than a percentage point.

The Canadians who are hard-core sovereigntists and want an independent Quebec no matter what probably represent only 20 percent of the Quebec population. Most of the sovereigntist vote and some of the federalist vote comes from people who speak French, who are unhappy with Quebec's position in Canada and who feel that Quebec should be stronger and have more power and influence, although, at the same time, they would be perfectly willing to live in a united Canada were the status of Quebec to be improved to their full satisfaction. But then there will always be people who ask why the people of Quebec should get things that they as residents of other areas do not, which makes it extremely hard to sell the rest of Canada on the idea of giving Quebec more power. I would argue that the situation in Quebec is different to that elsewhere. There is a French minority in Quebec that has to worry about preserving its national identity, and this is a strong enough argument for giving Quebec disproportionate autonomy, although I understand why people will reject this argument and return to the issue of inequality. It is very difficult to sell people on the idea of an unequal political system.

In actual fact, Quebec already does have quite a few special powers. For instance, it is illegal to have English signs outside: all the signs must be in French, and any English must be half the size of the French. In fact, we have language inspectors who go around giving tickets to people who break this rule. In addition, if you come to Quebec from outside and you speak English, you are prohibited from sending your children to an English school and are obliged to send them to one where the official language is French. I can understand that it is necessary to protect Quebec's Franchophone national identity, but it is easy to see why a lot of people say that a lot of what goes on in Quebec is unfair.

I believe it is hard to fit multiple groups in a single state. The American model is a sort of forced assimilation model, where everyone becomes American. I do not like the system, but it appears to work well and the Americans do have a tremendous sense of patriotism as a result. I prefer a model that is a mosaic of different cultural identities in the same state, but it is not at all clear that it works very well.

There are so many problems surrounding Quebec. Had the last referendum gone the other way, it would have meant that in the part of Quebec where I live, where 80 or 90 percent of people continue to say 'no' to an independent Quebec, we would have been left with a huge chunk of Quebec where the majority of residents had voted to stay Canadian. What is supposed to happen to them? Are they forcibly ripped out of Canada and made to become part of an independent Quebec, even if they don't want to be? One also has to consider the native Indians in the north, who do not want to be part of an independent Quebec. The land was originally theirs, and since the treaties they signed were with the British Crown, they say Quebec has no right to take northern Quebec out of Canada without their permission. Even were Quebec to win, the question is confusing, i.e., ''Do you give the national assembly the mandate to negotiate an agreement on the basis of the resolution passed on etc., etc.'' It is very confusing language, which means that if Quebec won by one percent, a lot of people would turn around and say that it only won because the question was misleading.

Imagine that Quebec gained its independence: Who would control the border posts? Who would collect taxes? There is certainly the scope for a lot of potential administrative chaos, which could lead to violence, particularly on the part of the native population who may just simply say we do not want Quebec police here; the federal police will be allowed on our land, but we refuse to go. It could get a lot worse than many people think.

There are of course parallels with the Palestinian situation. Francophone nationalists would argue that I am a settler, while I would probably argue that I am a Palestinian and no one has the right to suddenly put me in a state that I do not want to be a part of. It is a complicated issue. Do you keep the existing borders or do you re-draw the borders, and if you re-draw borders, how do you redraw them? Even now the Supreme Court is trying to work out how this will all occur, and the federal government is hoping that by showing how messy it is, support for sovereignty will decline.

With regard to the transfer of information, pro-Israeli groups in North America have an extremely advanced communications system. I receive on a daily basis in my electronic mail four or five pieces of information from the Israeli Government Press Office, from the Foreign Ministry, and from the Prime Minster's office, not to mention the six or eight items that I receive per day from various right-wing Jewish lobby organizations. Imagine how much I would receive if I were a member of the Canada-Israel Committee! How much do I get from the Palestinian side? Zero, or at least something approaching zero. It is clear, therefore, that the pro-Israeli lobbies are networking with great success. In fact, the Israeli government, which has an excellent website, pioneered the whole communications revolution by using the Internet to simultaneously communicate to its supporters around the world and it is doing so very effectively. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are trying but they still have a long way to go. The Palestinian Ministry of Information website is absolutely appalling! I actually contacted the ministry when it set up its website and said that I didn't think that its method of getting information across would be very effective. The constraint was not time, but understanding how to use information effectively. The Palestinians could learn a great deal by looking at the AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Canadian-Israel Committee to see how they operate.

Does the PLO office in Washington ever provide any reporting? Does anything ever come back to Ministry of Planning or the Ministry of the Economy on what is being said in Congress? The Lebanese forces have much better representation in Washington that the PLO does in terms of effectiveness, even though the leadership is sitting in jail! The level of networking and information exchange is what makes the Jewish lobby so effective and the Palestinians should really make an effort to learn from their example.

Canada has always been an enthusiastic supporter of the multilaterals, but the problem here is that if the Israelis do not like the ways things are progressing or the people involved, they simply refuse to attend. At the second refugees working group meeting in Ottawa, for example, the Israelis were upset because one of the members of the Palestinian delegation was a member of the PNC. This resulted in a ludicrous unofficial cocktail party before the official dinner, during which the Israelis told the head of the Palestinian delegation that they could not sit down at dinner with his colleagues because of the presence of this particular Palestinian. As a result, we snacked on hors-d'oeuvres for a whole two hours while the Israelis insisted on negotiating with the Palestinians in the room outside the dining room. This gives some indication of the extent of the problems that

sometimes occur.

The trouble is, Canada does not have the capacity to pressure Israel, while America will not even try. All we can do in Canada is to try to do some of the preparatory work to make things easier during the actual negotiations. For example, there has been quite a bit of work carried out with data bases, whereby we have tried to obtain more accurate figures pertaining to the number of refugees and their socioeconomic profiles and needs, which should help the Palestinian negotiators later on. Fortunately, the Israelis are unable to prevent us from doing that type of work, which means we have to concentrate on the kind of work that is useful but not provocative.