Eizenstat Details Diplomacy to New Israel Fund

The ups and downs of American diplomacy in the Middle East over the last five decades was the theme of Stuart Eizenstat’s speech at a fundraising event by the supporters of the New Israel Fund (NIF) in Atlanta on June 8.

Eizenstat, who grew up in Atlanta, first went to Washington, D.C., at the age of 34 as President Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor. He has served five American presidents during his long career in government service. That evening, he received the New Israel Fund’s Tzedek/Justice Award.

More than 200 guests at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Buckhead heard him point out that “Israel has never been more secure, never more integrated into the Middle East than it is today.”

He noted that on his trips to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, he often sees more kippahs, the Jewish head covering, in the Arab capital city than he saw in the audience at the Conservative synagogue where he was speaking.

“In the last five years, since Abraham Accords began, there have been 500,000 Israelis who have visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi,” Eizenstat said, “and I have no doubt that if we were holding this New Israel Fund program in three or four years, that Saudi Arabia will also be part of the Abraham Accords.”

The Abraham Accords, which occurred toward the end of the first Trump Administration, led to peace agreements between the Arab governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. His comments were made on Sunday evening, June 8, just five days before Israel attacked Iran on Friday of that same week.

His optimism about the expansion of the agreements was based in large part on the success of a series of diplomatic agreements that began with the peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt during the Carter Administration in 1978 and 1979 in which he participated. That treaty was followed up by a similar agreement between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

But what he described as the “one bullet that changed the history of the Middle East” was the bullet that killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv just over a year later. He was shot by a Jewish Israeli in 1995 who opposed the Oslo Accords. Initially, they had promised a glimmer of hope for some sort of peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question.

“The death of Rabin killed the one person who was trusted by the Palestinians and trusted by the Israeli public as a former general,” Eizenstat said. “The Israelis trusted him implicitly, not to give away Israel’s security. And Arafat, the Palestinian leader, trusted him as well.”

Today, largely as a result of the attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, much of the appetite for an agreement with the Palestinians has evaporated. A recent public opinion poll by the University of Pennsylvania and the Geocartography Knowledge Group in Israel concluded that 56 percent of those surveyed favored the forced expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel and 82 percent supported the expulsion of Gaza’s Arabs.

“Public opinion has dramatically changed since Oct. 7,” Eizenstat told his New Israel Fund audience. “I frankly think that as close as all of us feel to Israel, we cannot appreciate what a shock and trauma Oct. 7 has been to the Israeli public.”

A dozen years ago, he pointed out, 61 percent of Israelis favored a two-state solution. Today, only about 25 percent are in favor of a separate Palestinian state.

Among that dwindling number are the supporters of the New Israel Fund, which honored the Washington insider. Since its founding in 1979, the NIF has distributed $345 million to 950 organizations working with Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Public opinion has dramatically changed since Oct. 7

The NIF’s Director of National Outreach – East, Alex Willick, opened the evening by saying that, “Oct. 7 tested the limits of everything NIF stand for, in terms of building a shared society,” and in its opposition to the policies of the present government of Israel.

“NIF is there to support the thinkers, the doers, the shakers, the future leaders of the pro-democratic camp that give me so much hope. We are there to speak the truth to power, to speak this truth in the streets.”

Willick said the organization is funding emergency civil rights work and underwriting legal action in the courts to support what he described as “the basic infrastructure of democracy and coexistence.”

In short, he emphasized that, “We’re making sure that somebody is out there planting the seeds of peace. This is not abstract work. It’s immediate, it’s measurable, it’s brave.”

For Eizenstat, too, the next steps Israel takes, particularly in Gaza, where the war has continued for 18 months, needs to be clear and measurable.

“Wars have to have an ending. They all do. And the question is, what do you end it with?”