he current foreign policy has to answer some serious questions, even as State Department officials continue to make fruitless trips to Tel Aviv and Riyadh. It is fair to examine whether we have a cohesive foreign policy regarding both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, and whether it is not even-handed enough (according to the Palestinians, at any rate). It is interesting to note that in recent weeks, the Palestinians have mounted an intensive PR campaign to refute the Clinton Administration's claim that it was Arafat who "scuttled" the Camp David meetings with then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak.
One problem- and it is a contentious one -- that the U.S. has refused to face head-on is that the right of the return of the Palestinian refugees into Israel contradicts the recognition of Israel's right to exist.
Over the years, U.S. foreign policy tried not to interfere in the internal Israeli political conflicts. What makes any U.S. intervention in internal Israeli affairs so difficult is really that Americans, basically as Westerners, can identify more readily with western-style people (it is a clear "they are more like us than the
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