Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Sep. - 4 Oct. 2000 Issue No. 501
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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The Jewish question

By Thomas Gorguissian

When the story first hit the papers last weekend, Washington circles were abuzz with speculation. Their Middle East counterparts were quick to conclude the worst. The State Department has suspended the security clearance of Martin Indyk, US Ambassador to Israel. Whether it is a question of negligence or espionage remains to be seen. Some have even dusted off "anti-semitism" from the arsenal.

According to The Washington Post, the suspension will remain effective until investigations into "suspected violations" of security standards are complete. Security officials at the State Department decided to pull Indyk's clearance on 12 September. No action was taken until 21 September. Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requested a briefing on Indyk on 19 September, after an anonymous phone caller told a committee aide that the department was going to ignore security concerns about the ambassador.

The move bars Indyk from handling classified materials, requires him to be escorted inside the State Department building and, as was reported, makes it virtually impossible for him to conduct his job at a sensitive moment in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Indyk, who returned to the United States earlier this month, was asked to remain in the country during the course of the investigation.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in the daily press briefing on Monday, "There is no indication of espionage in this matter. At this time, there has been no indication that any intelligence information has been compromised. This is a question of security procedures that have not been followed."

According to State Department officials, investigators are focusing on "the sloppy handling of classified information" over "a longer period of time" -- even before Indyk took up his recent post in Israel. Before assuming his current post, Martin Indyk, had been an assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

Indyk, 49, is the most senior US official to be accused of mishandling intelligence information. Observers also believe this is the first time the State Department has suspended the security clearance of one of its ambassadors.

Born in London and raised and educated in Australia, Indyk became the first American Jewish ambassador to Israel from April 1995 until October 1997. Indyk made history too by becoming a US citizen barely a week before he joined the National Security Council at the White House. Indyk also worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobbying organisation, in the early 1980s and for eight years served as the Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research institute specialising in Arab-Israeli relations. Indyk's increasingly larger role in policy-making within the Clinton administration has generated fierce Arab American criticism. Ironically, he has also earned the mistrust of some hard-line American Jews for joining the peace negotiating team and making compromises with the Palestinians.

On 21 January, Indyk was sworn in as US Ambassador to Israel for the second time. His mandate was to work closely with the Israeli government toward achieving a comprehensive peace and strengthening US-Israel relations. It was also reported that Indyk was chosen to return to Israel at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Boucher played down the affair by mentioning that the department has suspended this year the security clearances of five employees for violations of security policies. Another 27 employees have had their security clearances suspended for other reasons in the last 18 months. Nonetheless, leaders of Jewish organisations in Jerusalem and Washington, haunted by the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal, are worried about the fallout from the investigation of the first Jewish US ambassador to Israel, Los Angeles Times reported. One American Jewish official in Israel fears the repercussions of the investigation "if it raises this whole dual loyalty issue."

In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's spokesman Gadi Baltiansky praised Indyk's contribution to peacemaking and said Israel considered the investigation "an internal American matter." The same day in Jerusalem, the American Jewish leader Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) questioned whether anti-semitism was behind Indyk's suspension. "If there are so many in similar positions, why is it that the only one that has been singled out on this issue is the ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, who happens to be Jewish?" he asked. "And until I see other people in the same situation, I have to ask the question," Foxman told Israel's Army Radio. Boucher refuted this charge as "not only absolutely false and absurd, it's frankly pretty insulting as well."

In this stage of the investigations, many questions remain unanswered. Observers believe that Indyk will not return to Israel. On Monday, one of the reporters asked Boucher, "How would you assess the loss of Ambassador Martin Indyk to this process [peace process] at this point?" The spokesman chuckled, then answered, "Well, I don't want to declare Martin a total loss at this point."

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