The atmosphere in a congressional hearing room doesn't get much testier than this. Secretary of State James Baker III appeared on Capitol Hill last week to announce the Administration's terms for the $10 billion in loan guarantees that Israel is seeking to help resettle Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Taking a gamble no previous Administration has been willing to contemplate seriously, Baker laid out a blunt policy line to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. Israel has two choices, he said. The U.S. would back the loans for five years with no strings attached -- but only if Israel agreed to freeze its rapid construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Or Israel could complete those settlements in progress, in which case the U.S. would cut its guarantee by the same amount spent on them.
Those are demands that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has already said he could never accept. At the hearing, Florida Democrat Larry Smith wanted to know why the Secretary was placing conditions on the Israelis but not on the Arab side. When Baker gave a brief answer and then refused to elaborate, Smith's frustrations erupted. "I hope someday," he said, "the American public is going to determine whether you've finished the answers or not. It's disgraceful!"
But Baker knew what he was doing. The man who laid down his terms to Congress last week is the same dogged tactician who forged the framework for the Arab-Israeli peace process last year during eight painstaking shuttles around the Middle East. As a seasoned political strategist, a former campaign adviser for Reagan and manager for Bush, he seems to have calculated that antipathy to foreign aid is a more powerful election-year force than the usual voter support for Israel. He also seems to be betting that if Israel does not come around on the settlements before its parliamentary elections in June, Shamir will be bounced by voters for alienating Washington with his intransigence.
If Baker's latest ploy succeeds, it could be one more significant step toward an Arab-Israeli peace -- a prospect that has moved from the unthinkable to the merely improbable as a result of his shrewd and tireless prodding of both sides. The Secretary has repeatedly demonstrated a flair for problem solving, not only by launching the Middle East talks but also by working out an agreement with Congress on Nicaragua in 1989 and by helping stitch together last year's coalition against Saddam Hussein. Baker may not fashion foreign policy single-handedly -- certainly not in an Administration where the President is a seasoned internationalist who also consults closely with National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. But Baker is the man who, more than any other, gets White House policy to work.