At the same time, the US has been using its global leverage to prevent the international community from supporting Palestinian rights or pressuring Israel to respect international law. In a congressional testimony last month, under-secretary of state for international organisations, David Welch, vowed that the US will work to ensure that Israel is treated fairly at the United Nations. 181 and 194 dealing respectively with the right of Palestinians to establish a state in Palestine and the right of refugees to return to their land. Welch revealed that President Bill Clinton had personally asked French President Jacques Chirac and other world leaders not to pursue such efforts at the United Nations. There is a discernible pattern here of America retracting its commitment given at Wye, while using its international prestige and power to guarantee Israel a negotiating edge over the Arab parties.
Analysts believe the pattern is likely to continue.
They will lose any margin of manoeuvre, however limited, they might have enjoyed as a result of differences between the US and Israel. Under Netanyahu the US was forced to intervene and demand Israeli territorial concessions in order to save the peace process. Ironically, both agreements gave unprecedented authority to Israel to determine the scope and timing of its troop withdrawal or redeployments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, some Israelis, including Barak, concluded that US eagerness to salvage the peace process had prompted territorial concessions that did not adequately correspond to Israeli security interests. This Israeli view was endorsed and defended by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after meeting with Barak last month.