by Mitchell Plitnick
With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
With a 72-hour truce apparently holding in Gaza and Israel having ended its ground operation, now seems like a fair time to assess where things stand. Has anyone emerged from this war in a better position? Is there anything that can, at least in a cynical and Machiavellian sense, be called a victory?
Palestine
It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of the physical destruction was borne by the people of Gaza. At this point, the numbers are just horrifyingly grim: 1,968 dead — 1,626 of whom were civilians — and 7,920 wounded. While we don’t have a precise percentage, we do know that there are at least 2,111 children and 1,415 women among the wounded.
The already mangled sole power plant in Gaza was damaged even further, leaving most of the strip without electricity. The United Nations Development Program estimates between 16 and 18,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed and over half a million Gazans (out of a population of roughly 1.8 million) have been internally displaced.
As one report put it, “…almost every piece of critical infrastructure, from electricity to water to sewage, has been seriously compromised by either direct hits from Israeli air strikes and shelling or collateral damage.”
This is clearly the worst hit Gaza has taken, demonstrably more severe than Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). Even so, there seems to be no appetite there for a return to the status quo ante from the mass media, social media or my own interactions; the call for an end to the seven-year Israeli blockade of Gaza as part of a lasting ceasefire persists.
Concomitantly, Hamas, though still facing the same problems as before (an inability to pay civil employees, increasing isolation in the region due to the decline of the Muslim Brotherhood and little leverage of their own to address Gaza’s economic woes) has been strengthened politically by Israel’s onslaught.
Once again, Hamas survived without conceding, and that grants them a considerable boost. It won’t last forever, of course, but they have re-established themselves as the leaders in confronting Israel. The unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah has also apparently survived the fighting, though in practice the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure makes implementation there much more difficult. Palestinian unity was the primary reason that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lied to the Israeli public about the fates of the three murdered Israelis in June — the event that sparked the spiral into this violence. That, too, can be counted as a victory.
The relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is very unclear. It seemed strained in June, as Israel swept through the West Bank under the pretext of looking for the three youths who they knew were already dead. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued his security cooperation with Israel during this time and even prevented demonstrations against Israel’s actions after the fighting started in Gaza.
But as the fighting wore on, Abbas, who at first supported Egypt’s ceasefire proposal that Hamas could not accept, began supporting Hamas’ demands to end the fighting. By the end, Abbas was accusing Israel of war crimes, threatening to sign the Rome Statute and thereby bringing Israel to the International Criminal Court, and calling for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted. Officially, the PA has not broken the unity agreement — another major victory for Hamas.
Yet Hamas could not have missed the signals of this round. They managed to increase global awareness of the blockade, but found themselves being pressured by the Arab League. Turkey and Qatar remain Hamas’ only allies, but they proved largely ineffectual against the United States, Egypt, and the Saudis (despite the Saudi rhetoric, which was varied and clearly unsympathetic to Hamas but sympathetic to Gazan civilians).
At this point, efforts again appear geared at getting the PA back into the business of controlling Gaza’s borders. For Hamas, that will be a mixed blessing. If it happens with the unity agreement intact, then Hamas will have won itself a clear place in the Palestinian political system, and Israel will have to accept it if they let the PA administer the border crossings. Israel won’t like that at all, but the US, Egypt and the Saudis may push hard for such an arrangement in the interest of stability. This would also be a step toward ending Hamas’ control over the strip, to the extent that there is anything that can legitimately be called Palestinian control in Gaza.
Israel
The Israelis are not buying into Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim of decisive victory in this operation, but they are overwhelmingly supportive of his decisions. In part, this reflects an appreciation of reality — Israel did a lot of damage in Gaza, but didn’t do itself a lot of good. The other part is that most Israelis believe that Netanyahu didn’t really want things to go this far.
Bibi whipped his country into a racist frenzy when those young men were kidnapped. Knowing Israeli sensibilities as he does, Bibi knew that their deaths would end the story, but a kidnapping would continue to enrage hard-line sectors of the Jewish populace. The idea was to drum up popular support for a series of actions against Hamas which, Netanyahu hoped, would shatter the Palestinian unity deal.
But Bibi’s right flank immediately started pressuring for escalation. Bibi didn’t want that, but once Hamas started fighting back in earnest, the political pressure for a broader operation was more than he could resist. The pressure continued, as did Hamas’ firepower, probably more than Bibi expected them to use. As matters escalated, Netanyahu had to keep re-defining the mission’s goals. First it was punishing Hamas for the murders, then it was a “quiet for quiet” arrangement — in other words a straight up ceasefire.
That idea was not met with public approval. By this time, Israelis were considerably frightened. Hamas’ rockets were penetrating much farther into Israel than ever before, and while the Iron Dome defense system limited the actual damage, it did not limit the spread of fear. So, the Israeli goals became diminishing Hamas’ rocket ability and eliminating what Israel called “terror tunnels.”
The tunnels are very frightening to Israelis and Israel appears to have eliminated them. But there are two big problems with this narrative. Firstly, destroying the tunnels was the main focus of the ground operation, but Egypt managed to destroy hundreds of them without a military attack; they simply flooded them from the Egyptian side. The second problem is that, while Israeli fears about the tunnels are understandble, it’s worth noting that Israel has known about them for quite a while and Hamas hadn’t used them until this round of fighting began.
So what, really, did Israel achieve? It caused Hamas to use about two-thirds of its rockets, but those can be replenished, and at the point of the ceasefire, Hamas and other factions were still firing at will. Israel destroyed Hamas’ tunnels, but they had been there for years and were posing only a potential threat. Israel meanwhile failed to destroy the unity agreement, at least for now.
These gains were bought by Israel at the price of Palestinian blood, and a higher domestic death toll than Israel is accustomed to (67, including three civilians). As much as it appears like Tel Aviv doesn’t care about that price, it is clear that Israel’s image took a major hit in this engagement. Formerly sympathetic media showed injured Gazan children and destroyed neighborhoods. Even the United States expressed concern about the disregard for civilian life and called the attack on a United Nations school that was housing refugees “disgraceful.” The UK is now reviewing all military sales to Israel, and Spain has suspended all military sales.
Those things should not be overstated. England and Spain are merely expressing their displeasure at Israel’s total disregard for civilian life in Gaza and will re-commence their sales to Israel in due course. Despite its occasional statements, the US has repeatedly defended Israel throughout this episode and is using the ceasefire to send more supplies to its ally.
Still, Israel has definitely come out of this appearing far more villainous than Hamas. That’s going to make a difference going forward. Israel may no longer be able to bury the issue of the Gaza blockade, a form of collective punishment that has only helped solidify Hamas’ rule in Gaza and has deprived the people while failing to prevent the buildup of Hamas’ rockets. No one bought into the anti-Iran portion of Netanyahu’s rhetoric, another failure for Israel. Even in the US Jewish community, this onslaught shook a lot of pro-Israel faith and sent other Jews out of their living rooms and into the streets.
I see nothing but an illusion of victory here for the Israeli right. And for the rest of the country, the surge in extreme nationalism made Israel look a lot more like a fascist state than the Middle East’s “only democracy.”
The United States
There’s really little to say here. The US will look back at its actions in the Middle East in 2014 as one of the lowest periods in its diplomatic history. Secretary of State John Kerry failed to broker a ceasefire, and when he finally got one, it was broken within two hours. While both sides had different stories about who really broke the ceasefire, the Israeli narrative dominated and allowed Netanyahu to tell the United States not to “second-guess him” about Hamas.
Leaks to Israeli media disparaged both President Barack Obama and Kerry. The US again showed the world that while it does have the power to pressure Israel, it is not going to use it, no matter how bloody Israel’s actions become or how many times it insults its American patron. The US meanwhile stands alone in defending Israel’s actions.
The Obama administration has occasionally had some good ideas about the Middle East, but has repeatedly shown it doesn’t have a clue about how to implement them. It paints itself as an advocate for peace, but shows no willingness to back up its words in the face of Israeli resistance. That’s why it’s more important now than ever for Europe or some other outside party to push its way past the US in dealing with this issue.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The two ceasefire proposals aimed at ending the accelerated violence in Gaza and Israel also offer one of the best illustrations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The circumstances and the content of each proposal demonstrates very well why outside pressure is necessary to end this vexing, seemingly endless struggle and [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The two ceasefire proposals aimed at ending the accelerated violence in Gaza and Israel also offer one of the best illustrations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The circumstances and the content of each proposal demonstrates very well why outside pressure is necessary to end this vexing, seemingly endless struggle and just how differently Israelis and Palestinians view both current events and the conflict as a whole.
Let’s look at the two proposals. Egypt, acting as the United States normally does, worked out the details of its ceasefire idea primarily with Israel. The deal reflects the Israeli and Egyptian agenda: it mostly follows the formula of “quiet for quiet,” essentially bringing back the status quo ante of early June. It offers Hamas a vague promise of future negotiations to address the siege of the Gaza Strip. But this is hardly something Hamas will put stock in. The 2012 ceasefire agreement, which was negotiated by then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a man much friendlier to Hamas than the current Egyptian leadership, also made such a promise and it never came to anything. Finally, Egypt says it is willing to open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt more widely but only if Hamas allows Palestinian Authority security to police it instead of their own people.
It’s not hard to see why Hamas viewed that offer, and its exclusion from the talks, more like a call to surrender than a ceasefire. Indeed, that’s what it was. The offer was likely made with the expectation that Hamas would refuse it. That is one reason, along with the fact that I don’t see them getting a better deal from continued fighting, that I thought Hamas should have taken it. But it is perfectly understandable that they did not.
Hamas recently confirmed its terms for a ceasefire: Israel should lift the siege it has imposed on the strip for the last seven years, and release all the prisoners it arrested last month during its sweep of the West Bank while the Netanyahu government was keeping the Israeli public and the world from immediately finding out that the three youths who were ostensibly being searching for were already dead. In exchange, Hamas would agree to a ceasefire.
Those terms are undoubtedly unacceptable for Israel, and Egypt for that matter. They won’t because they don’t have to. Each of them, by themselves, is far more powerful militarily than Hamas. Together, they are even more so, and they have the backing of the United States, quite openly. More discreetly, they also have the backing of much of the Arab leadership in Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states, which, with the exception of Qatar, generally despise Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ ideological forebears.
Therefore, Israel and Egypt will follow the most basic rule of international politics: might makes right. They will ignore minor details like peace, security for both Gazans and Israelis, and most of all, international law. They will do this because they can.
But really, what is Hamas demanding? That they be set free from a crippling siege that has remained in full force with only minor and occasional amelioration through ceasefires and flare-ups alike. That seems like a perfectly reasonable demand, an expectation, even, especially since Israel claims that it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza. Inside, that may be true, but Israel controls the airspace, the offshore areas and the overwhelming majority of Gaza’s borders, except for the southern one, which Egypt controls. It permits only limited amounts of supplies into the strip, bars many things like chemicals and building materials entirely and allows almost no exports. According to most international law experts, Israel has the responsibilities of an occupying power proportionate to the control it exerts. Thus, Israel is not responsible for internal policing of Gaza, but it is responsible for the effects of its control — meaning the siege is illegal.
Hamas, and most Palestinians, surely see the demand to lift the siege as a minimal one. Hamas is not, after all, demanding that the entire occupation regime be lifted for a ceasefire to take place, nor that Israel, for example, repair the damage it has done to Gaza’s only power plant or compensate Gaza for the destruction of its airport.
But the majority of Israelis see the siege as a defensive measure. They believe lifting it will enable Hamas to reload with much more and better weapons and then they will strike much harder and might, at that point be able to deliver a real blow to Israel, something far beyond their ability right now. Most Israelis do not see the Egyptian proposal as a Hamas surrender, but rather as a very reasonable return to the status quo ante.
Israelis believe their leaders when they say they are not targeting Gazan civilians, despite the rather conclusive evidence to the contrary (such as bombing an open beach with children playing on it, destroying a hospital with patients in it, bombing the homes of Hamas leaders with their families inside, etc.). Palestinians see the destruction of civilians, homes, and Gaza’s infrastructure as justifying firing rockets at Israel. Israelis see Hamas as willing to sacrifice its own civilians in order to kill Jews. Palestinians see Israel as offering them a choice of being bombed to death relatively quickly or starved to death more slowly.
The point is not whether one view or the other is right or wrong (we all obviously have an opinion on that, myself included). The point is that these are two completely irreconcilable views. When we combine that with the massive imbalance of both political and, especially, military power involved and the sense both sides have that they cannot afford to be seen as letting the “violence of the other” dictate the terms of the ceasefire, we see the impasse. So where does that leave us?
Ultimately, it is more than likely that Israel’s overwhelmingly greater ability to cause death and destruction, along with the fact that Hamas (and Gaza in general) has very few countries willing to stand up for it in the international arena, will force Hamas to accept a deal that closely resembles the one they just rejected. But all that will do is reset the clock to ticking down to the next round.
If there were a genuine desire to find a way to stop this endlessly repeating loop, there would need to be forceful international mediation. Such mediation cannot come from those countries that stand with Israel against Hamas (Egypt, the US) nor those who have the reverse position (Turkey, Qatar). It can only come from an international delegation, either under the auspices of the UN or in the form of a committee from a variety of countries. There would need to be international guarantees and sanctions applied to both sides (and, crucially, actually enforced) for violations of any agreement.
That, of course, is not something Israel would ever accept. It has no reason to sacrifice its impunity, because it has might — militarily, economically and politically — on its side. And as long as that is true, it simply has no good reason to moderate its position. In this regard, it acts like any other country. And the ineffectual Hamas rockets, terrifying though they may be to so many in Israel, are not coming anywhere near giving Israel any incentive to change.
The bottom line: it is the United States, which unconditionally runs interference for Israel in the Security Council and which arms Israel and completely ignores the fact that Israel uses US-made weapons in blatant contravention of US law, that is fueling this fire. It will support Israel in its refusal to allow any other outside party to mediate, and will certainly ensure that Israel retains its impunity. And the US will do this against the better judgment of its president and secretary of state, both of whom are well aware that the security of Israelis and the very lives of Palestinians both depend on ending the 47-year old occupation, lifting the siege of Gaza and allowing the Palestinians to achieve their freedom. Such is the effect of domestic politics in the United States, and it is playing out in blood in the Gaza Strip right now.
Photo: Relatives and friends of the al-Kaware family carry 7 bodies to the mosque during their funeral in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, on July 9, 2014. The father, a member of the Fatah movement, and his 6 sons were all killed the day before in an Israeli air strike that targeted their home. Credit: AFP/Thomas Coexthomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images/Used under a Creative Commons license
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
At +972 Magazine my friend and colleague, Larry Derfner, a former columnist for the Jerusalem Post, says he believes that by deciding to go forward with a third unity agreement with Hamas at this time, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “has shot the cause of Palestinian independence in the foot.” [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
At +972 Magazine my friend and colleague, Larry Derfner, a former columnist for the Jerusalem Post, says he believes that by deciding to go forward with a third unity agreement with Hamas at this time, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “has shot the cause of Palestinian independence in the foot.” Put bluntly, I disagree completely, and I told Larry so publicly on his Facebook page.
Larry basically argues that the recent collapse of the peace talks has been almost universally blamed on Israel, and that this created an opportunity for Abbas to build some real support in the international community, including from major powers. But the distaste for Hamas’ policies undermines that opportunity, so why couldn’t Abbas have waited until after he made some hay out of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obstructionism?
Larry is correct in saying that a unified Palestinian government, if that is what results from this agreement (far from a sure thing) carries certain problems, and most of them are based on how the world sees Hamas. The Saudis and the al-Sisi government in Egypt certainly don’t care for Hamas, and neither does much of Europe or Russia. But when Larry says that Hamas is considered “anathema” he is vastly overstating the case outside of Israel and the United States, two parties which most Palestinians have realized are working day and night to keep the occupation going. Abbas may have finally acknowledged that reality as well.
In any case, my argument here is an edited and somewhat fleshed out version of what I said to Larry on Facebook, which involved a brief dialogue.
The reconciliation move was not primarily about Israel, it was about Palestine, and the very drastic need there for a legitimate government. That tank has just about hit zero for both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas.
Secondarily, it is also about the long-delayed realization that Israel will never sincerely pursue peace with the Palestinians, and that this is not because of Netanyahu-Bennett-Lieberman, but because of simple political realities wherein Israel has little compelling reason to make peace and tons of political pressure not to. It is also about the fact that U.S. President Barack Obama has demonstrated, in a more overtly “pro-Israel” way than George W. Bush did, that the United States will never, ever be a help in this regard, and rather only a hindrance.
However, the Israel-U.S. part, remains secondary. Their obstructionism is why considerations of Israeli and U.S. reactions aren’t stopping Palestinian reconciliation — but that is not the reason reconciliation is happening. This reconciliation is a dire Palestinian necessity. That is so primarily for reasons of having a legitimate and representative leadership, which Palestine has not had since 2006, when the elections and their aftermath robbed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of that legitimacy and left both Fatah and Hamas without it. A unified Palestinian leadership will involve what is currently missing from both parties in terms of how they work on the international stage — popular support.
For Fatah, the timing is particularly advantageous because the shift in Egypt has weakened Hamas and, combined with Iran’s growing rapprochement with the West and the loss of Hamas’ base in Syria, Abbas finds himself in a position where he believes he can bring Hamas into the PLO but maintain Fatah’s superior position in that organization.
The US may well cut off funding. The Saudis have indicated in the past that they will boost their own support in such a case, but Saudi pledges to the Palestinians are notoriously unreliable, and they are also deeply unfriendly to Hamas. But the intra-Palestinian conflict is also one of several stages where the Saudi-Qatar rivalry plays out, with Qatar backing Hamas and the Saudis supporting the PA. This surely leads Abbas to believe that the Saudis are more likely than usual to make good on their promises to the PA.
But even if the Saudis fall short on funding, the risk here is what? That the PA will collapse? If that comes about due to reconciliation, but is also accompanied by a stronger PLO, Fatah is better off, and quite likely in the long run (though certainly not the short), so are the majority of the Palestinians. Hamas, for its part, recognizes that it is very isolated and the horizon only looks worse for it in the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood has suffered a huge setback, focused in Egypt but also throughout the region, and its opponents are pressing their advantage.
Obviously, Hamas is a target in this regard, being generally viewed as a branch of the Brotherhood. It therefore desperately needs to reinforce its identity as the Palestinian resistance movement. It also needs to renew its connections and focus on other Palestinians movements as opposed to other Arab movements.
These are all reasons for Palestinian reconciliation, and why this moment is a good time for it. Meanwhile the reactions of Israel and the United States don’t really figure into Palestinian motivations for this decision. Indeed, given the visceral, and, it should be noted, not unmerited hatred for Hamas in Israel (and this is not at all confined to the right-wing) and the hysteria it receives in the United States, where Congress has legislated far stronger measures against any dialogue with Hamas than Israel, the reactions from Washington and Jerusalem would be the same whenever an agreement was signed. The European Union and United Nations have always expressed support for Palestinian reconciliation. After all, it was Israel itself that argued that Abbas couldn’t make a deal that would stick because he didn’t represent all Palestinians. So, everyone outside of the US and Israel wanted this to happen. But it happened for Palestinian reasons. The moment was helped along by the United States reaching new heights of prevarication and fecklessness under John Kerry’s watch, and by Netanyahu’s refusal to even pretend to be interested in an agreement; those events merely made it easier for reconciliation to happen.
All of this pre-supposes that this deal will actually be implemented, which is by no means certain. I think there’s basically a 50-50-percent chance that Abbas was sincere about this (I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that Hamas is serious for the reasons I just stated, and also because this involved the Gaza-Hamas leadership rather than the Khaled Meshal, exile branch). If Abbas wasn’t sincere, and if he does not intend to move forward with implementation and with elections in due course, he has forever sacrificed any chance of reaching a deal with Hamas, because they will never trust him again. Of course, at 79, Abbas won’t be there much longer in any case.
So, that would be one outcome. If Abbas does not intend to implement, then this is likely a strategy to try to convince the US and EU that he will take steps in the international arena, specifically at the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC), if the West doesn’t exert serious pressure on Israel. If that is what he’s doing, that’s not very wise, because he will have burned the Hamas bridge, which he needs to cross at some point, and because no matter what the Palestinians threaten to do, there is no circumstance where they can ever hope to see serious positive action from the U.S. until the domestic political waves shift. The U.S. isn’t likely to change any time soon and it can’t be realistically affected by Abbas anyway.
In either case, Israel and the U.S. have made their own positions on Palestinian freedom clear: they will only impede it. Therefore, such concerns only need to be taken into account due to the balance of power, but allowing those concerns to stop action will only deepen the problems faced by the Palestinians.
On the most basic level, if we agree that ending the occupation in the near future is, for whatever reasons, not going to happen, then shouldn’t the Palestinians take a long-term step toward that possibility? The criticisms have mostly centered on timing, but anyone who wants to see a peaceful resolution of this conflict must agree that at some point, the Palestinians must have one clear leadership. Therefore, I can’t see how this hurts the goal of ending the occupation.
Any step the Palestinians take is going to be met with Israeli financial reprisals. But should they do nothing? There is a clear and obvious benefit here: No deal, even if one is reached, can possibly hold unless it includes agreement by legitimate representatives of the Palestinians. Just like in Israel, where its legitimate representatives are representing both those who want peace and those who want Greater Israel, the Palestinians’ body politic must also be legitimately represented. So, what better time is there to take such a step than now, when the Israeli government has clearly shown that it’s not interested in a 2-state solution and the US has also made it clear that it will (or can) do nothing to aid a sustainable solution no matter how obnoxiously Israel behaves?
If this is truly the beginning of Palestinian reconciliation, and that is a very big “if,” then this move will also push the Palestinians away from dependence on U.S. mediation and Israeli “largesse.” That’s a completely positive outcome. The problem in the talks, ultimately, is not Bibi’s obstructionism or the lack of a U.S. backbone. It is the fact that making peace is a huge political and ideological risk for both Israelis and Palestinians. While Palestinians have a compelling reason to take that risk, the potential benefits for Israel do not nearly match the potential risk, both perceived and actual. Israelis, even many who support a mutual peace, feel they are risking their very lives with a two-state solution. In that situation they will certainly be making territorial compromises, losing some water resources, and compromising their historical narrative.
In order to make those risks politically worthwhile, there must be carrots for positive action and sticks for failure. Both exist for the Palestinians, but Israel only sees some carrots, and even those are rather abstract and uncertain. The U.S. is not going to provide the sticks for the Israelis, as Yasir Arafat and, later, Abbas, once hoped. If Palestinian reconciliation makes way for another path in the international arena for them to find a few sticks, anyone who supports peace should support this move. The EU and UN know it. Even the Obama administration seems to hold some glimmer of this thought. More than a few in Israel understand that Palestinian reconciliation is a good thing for Israel as well. Only the Israeli right thinks otherwise, and the fact that they think this is a victory for them only reveals the bankruptcy of their analysis.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The collapse of the U.S.-led talks between Israel and the Palestinians is now complete. In the wake of the latest deal between the Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, Israel has terminated the talks. The United States, true to its form, is backing the Israeli position. In so doing, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The collapse of the U.S.-led talks between Israel and the Palestinians is now complete. In the wake of the latest deal between the Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, Israel has terminated the talks. The United States, true to its form, is backing the Israeli position. In so doing, we see yet another demonstration of why the so-called peace process, as it has been constructed for two decades, cannot possibly lead to a resolution of this long and vexing conflict.
U.S. angered and confused
As far as the U.S. position goes, one need look no further than the statement made by State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki. “It is hard to see how Israel will negotiate with a government that does not recognize its right to exist,” said Psaki yesterday. “The Palestinian reconciliation deal raises concerns and could complicate the efforts to extend peace talks.”
Well, as it turns out, it led to the suspension, at least for now, of the U.S. effort to extend the talks, an effort that any U.S. citizen, whatever their politics, should find embarrassing. But let’s examine that statement. Why, one wonders, would Psaki find it so “hard to see” how an Israeli government could negotiate with an unified Palestinian one? It is not Hamas Israel would be negotiating with, for a start, but a representative Palestinian Authority (PA). Indeed, one of Israel’s chief complaints has long been that even if they struck a deal with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, it might not hold since he does not represent all of the Palestinian body politic as does Benjamin Netanyahu for the Israeli one.
More to the point, even if this deal represented a new and unified Palestinian government (which it does not, as I shall explain below), why must the parties involved in it all recognize Israel’s right to exist? After all, the current Israeli majority coalition includes two major parties — Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi — that explicitly reject the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, unlike the Palestinians who would continue to be represented by Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister belongs to one of those parties. Why does Psaki find it so easy to see how a Palestinian leadership could negotiate with such an Israeli government while finding it so hard to see how Israel could negotiate with a far milder version of the Palestinian side?
Beyond this, the real issue for the United States, from what I’ve been told, is that the Palestinians took the U.S. by surprise with this move. They seem to understand that this hasn’t really changed Abbas’ approach to talks, but they also know that it will complicate any further efforts at diplomacy because Congress has already made it clear, through years of legislation, that any government that includes Hamas will not be welcome.
Have the Palestinians finally moved away from dependence on the U.S.?
The deal that Hamas and Fatah signed may actually be different from the previous reconciliation deals, but the test of that will be in the one area the other two failed in: implementation. This deal is mostly an agreement to implement the previous agreements. There has never been any movement on those previous deals, so is there reason to expect there will be now?
Maybe there is. The previous deals were struck with Hamas leaders in exile, not the ones running what there is for them to run in the Gaza Strip. That always presented a serious impediment to implementation. This one was agreed to in Gaza itself, with the Gaza leadership. That might make a difference, but only if there is a genuine desire on both sides to implement it. Even then, Israel can certainly act to block any meaningful elections, which the agreement foresees in six months.
The timing of the agreement is certainly intentional. It is a response to Netanyahu’s ultimatum to the Palestinians to choose between more talks with Israel and reconciliation with Hamas. It is also a message to the United States. What that message is depends on where Abbas goes from here. If he moves to set up a technocrat, caretaker government pending elections, then he is probably planning to shift away from dependence on the United States. If, on the other hand, the agreement flounders like the prior ones, then Abbas is hoping that this move will, in relatively short order, prod the Obama administration to press Netanyahu for a settlement freeze. If that is the case, it is both a desperate and vain maneuver.
Israel’s reaction
The Netanyahu government reacted as one would expect, by cancelling the talks between Israel and the Palestinians. This means little, as the deadline for these talks was a mere six days away. Notably, however, Netanyahu’s attempt to frame the incident as Abbas choosing the “terrorist Hamas” over peace talks with Israel hasn’t been very successful yet. Despite U.S. fecklessness, its rebuke of Abbas fell well short of what Bibi wanted while the European Union openly welcomed the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation and urged the resumption of talks.
Netanyahu won’t change his tune, and, although the U.S. Congress has not yet chimed in, it is a sure bet that there will, in due course, be a bipartisan parade of congressional lawmakers supporting Netanyahu’s position that the Palestinians cannot be both unified and a party to negotiations. This, unsurprisingly, stands in contrast to much of the Israeli opposition. That the left-wing Meretz party condemned Netanyahu’s termination of talks was unsurprising, but the more confrontational tone of the centrist Labor Party was not certain until it happened.
Labor’s stance means there will be at least some pressure within Israel to re-engage in talks. Yet, in reality, little has changed. These talks were dead in the water anyway. The United States is irritated with Netanyahu’s brazen disinterest in any progress, and now they’re even more irritated with the Palestinians for trying to stir up the pot and make something happen. But, as always, it is only the Palestinian side that faces any substantive consequences from Washington.
And on the Palestinian side? Well, there is some potential for change here, but it will be a while before we know whether Abbas plans to take advantage of it. If he is not sincere about following through with this agreement, Hamas will never be party to such talks again until Abbas is out of power. At 79 years of age, Abbas may not be in power much longer in any case. And if he doesn’t follow through, aid from the West will continue unabated, the talks will remain in limbo and the status quo, including settlement expansion, will hold until something else breaks it.
But if Abbas does pursue implementation of this agreement, there will be some tough times ahead. Congress will cut off funds to the PA and Abbas will have to count on more revenue from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. EU funding is likely to continue, but to whom will the money go? Israel will probably hold the taxes that it is required to hand over to the Palestinians, but only until the PA appears on the brink of collapse, at which point they will release it. But the disruption will add to the economic decline the West Bank is experiencing, which will get worse if they have to depend on Saudi outlays rather than U.S. ones. The Saudis have a well-earned reputation among Palestinians for pledging a lot more aid than they deliver.
The PA may well collapse under this weight. Whether it does, or does not, if Abbas pursues reconciliation with Hamas, he will have to also bring his case for Palestinian freedom to the United Nations with all the tools at his disposal and forget the lost hope he placed in the United States. In the short-term, this will mean even more hardship for Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza as Israel will certainly take reprisal actions. But in the long run, it is their last, best hope for ending the occupation.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
When it comes to the tedious dance between the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the more things change, the more they stay the same. As 2013 draws to a close, we have another proof of that cliché.
As 2013 dawned, President Barack Obama began his second term, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
When it comes to the tedious dance between the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the more things change, the more they stay the same. As 2013 draws to a close, we have another proof of that cliché.
As 2013 dawned, President Barack Obama began his second term, and Benjamin Netanyahu — whose horse in the US race, Mitt Romney, had lost decisively — was winning re-election but embarking on a very difficult set of talks to cobble together a governing coalition in Israel. As there always is with a second-term US president, there was some speculation that Obama might decide to damn the torpedoes of domestic politics and put some moderate pressure on Israel to compromise. Despite some illusions, by the end of the year it became clear that this wasn’t happening.
A little less than a year ago, John Kerry was named Secretary of State and vowed not only to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians but to bring them to a conclusion. Few believed he could get the two sides talking again, but Kerry managed it and thereby breathed a bit of life into Washington groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now who have staked their existence to the fading hope of a two-state solution. But even fewer objective observers believed Kerry could actually fulfill the second part of his pledge, and as 2013 comes to an end, all the evidence points to the vindication of that pessimistic view.
The talks were restarted because Kerry asserted US authority, cajoled and convinced the two sides to talk again and was willing to exert some public pressure on the Israeli government as well as the Palestinian Authority to make it happen despite the political difficulties both sides faced in agreeing to them. But when it came to matters of substance, the sort of pressure that would be required — a good deal more than was needed just to restart the talks — was absent.
Recent events have demonstrated that the United States’ position on a final agreement still largely reflects Israeli concerns and de-prioritizes the more pressing concerns of the Palestinians. The key issue this time has been an ongoing Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley. For the Palestinians, this is a sine qua non. After all, it is very difficult to sell the idea that a military occupation has ended when the armed forces of the occupying country are still there.
The US’ idea of “compromise” on this point seems to be that Israel would maintain its hold on the Jordan Valley for some period of years, and then would gradually hand it over to the Palestinians if the Palestinians behaved themselves. It’s not hard to understand why the Palestinians see that paternalistic arrangement as the US taking Israel’s side, rather than as a compromise proposal.
Indeed, the US approach remains unchanged regarding Israel and Palestine, despite rather profound shifts in US policy across the region in the wake of regional changes and Obama’s re-election. The US has clearly moved to extricate itself from many of the region’s issues, has refused to take the interventionist steps its key ally, Saudi Arabia, was pushing hard for, and opened the door to diplomacy with Iran. But in Israel-Palestine, the approach remains the same: the issue is primarily viewed not through the lens of millions of innocent people living under a harsh military regime without civil or human rights, but through the lens of Israeli security.
This picture can sometimes be confusing because of the obvious dislike and mistrust that exists between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. There can be little doubt that there is real contention between the two, and this often plays out in public. But the reality is that this tension only lies between greater and lesser extremes of Israeli intransigence. The radical right-wing view, whose most prominent advocate in the Israeli government is Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, was laid out in Ha’aretz on Dec. 27: “Ya’alon demands that the army have freedom of movement in all West Bank cities. He also wants full Israeli control in the Jordan Valley and of all border crossings, as well as of the air space.” In other words, no significant end to the occupation, ever. The more moderate position thus becomes Netanyahu’s, which would allow for Palestinian control over areas outside the major settlement blocs (although the surrounding territory, which currently falls under the jurisdiction of the settlements’ “regional councils” would likely be included in the blocs that remain Israeli), and a reduction in Israel’s presence in the Jordan Valley along the lines that Kerry is proposing as well as some American and Palestinian participation in border crossings and air space.
Obviously, that puts a middle ground between more or slightly less occupation of the West Bank, and doesn’t allow for a real end to the Israeli occupation or anything approaching Palestinian sovereignty. So, as has happened many times over the past twenty years, the Palestinians correctly see the United States as joining a rejectionist Israeli position, even while the ever-increasing popular ranks of the Israeli right, and their supporters in the US, see the very same US positions as siding with the Palestinians.
But other things are changing. Israel, including the current government, has long seen participation in peace talks as an end unto itself because it served to ease international pressure. But this time around, the effect of merely holding talks has been considerably diminished. The European Union went ahead with conditions on an economic aid package that bar cooperation with settlements and businesses housed in them. The effect of this action is minimal; it won’t affect a great many programs, and Israel has avenues to attain most of the same cooperation. But along with explicit European warnings about further actions if peace talks fail, this is a clear message to Israel that Europe is losing patience with Israeli settlements and intransigence.
There is also the growing consciousness of the occupation in civil society movements advocating boycotts against and divestment from Israel, commonly referred to as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. Consider the recent decision by the American Studies Association in the US to approve an academic boycott against Israeli institutions. It, too, won’t have a dramatic effect on Israeli academics’ ability to pursue their work, but the message that was sent was profound. That was clear by the nearly hysterical reaction in Israel and among the well-connected supporters of Israel’s rejectionist policies in the United States. These popular forces coupled with the impatience in Europe, a potential rapprochement between the West and Iran and the concern over the changing terrain in the Arab world are creating pressure on Israel to change. Right now, Israel’s response is to dig its heels in even deeper, but that could change quickly if more Israelis start feeling the effects of international opprobrium.
In the end, though, the biggest obstacle remains on the Palestinian side. The Palestinian Authority commands very little real sway these days among the Palestinian masses, and Hamas is not seen by many as a viable alternative. Exceedingly few Palestinians believe the PA’s reliance on the United States is a fruitful course toward their freedom, but Hamas, even beyond the obvious obstacles that were placed in front of it by the siege on Gaza, has offered no alternative strategy. Instead, the two sides vie for supremacy among an occupied and dispossessed people who largely prefer to see the two come together into an unified leadership.
There is some reason to hope for 2014 and beyond that Israel and the Palestinians arrive at a reasonable agreement. But for that to happen, the Palestinians themselves must become active participants, as was the hope after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. They need to be a party with their own agency and strategy, not a partner trying to prove itself to Israel’s closest ally with the dream that the US will suddenly turn to support them. The issue must be seen internationally as one of a monstrous occupation that must end for both moral and practical reasons, and that the occupation must end in a way that gives Israel a sense of security. But right now the main goal is to give Israel security while ending the occupation is viewed as a bonus. That dynamic must change, but the leadership in Washington continues to stand in the way.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
There is an odd sort of atmosphere today around the soon-to-fail Israel-Palestine talks. A dramatic gesture by the United States, presenting its own security plans to both Israel and the Palestinians, has engendered mostly yawns. Yet the events of recent days have clarified the likely results of these [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
There is an odd sort of atmosphere today around the soon-to-fail Israel-Palestine talks. A dramatic gesture by the United States, presenting its own security plans to both Israel and the Palestinians, has engendered mostly yawns. Yet the events of recent days have clarified the likely results of these talks, despite the ongoing secrecy around them.
Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently proposed that Israel agree to abandon the Jordan Valley (constituting some 20% of the West Bank and situated in Area C, which falls under complete Israeli control under the current arrangement) in stages over an extended period of time and subject to the “good behavior” of the Palestinians. The current plan seems to be that Israeli forces would remain in the Jordan Valley for ten years while Palestinian forces are “trained.”
Not surprisingly, the Palestinians, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas disapprove of this idea. But they do so in lukewarm terms, not wanting to offend Kerry, with the hope that when the April deadline for the current round of talks rolls around that the Palestinian side will not, as it was in 2000, be portrayed as the party who refused peace. Still, as former US President Jimmy Carter once told me, a continued Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley is unacceptable to the Palestinians. Indeed, it is impossible to say that an occupation has ended when the occupying army is still there. That should be obvious.
But that’s apparently not the case for Kerry and President Barack Obama. There should be no confusion on this point: however much the US administration has shifted its Mideast position regarding Iran and the broader Arab world, nothing has changed with regard to the occupation. The friction between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration can obscure this reality, but a lot of that friction is based on Netanyahu’s frustration that the United States will not follow his regional designs. With regard to the Palestinians, the rhetoric may be different, but the actions of both Israel and the United States on the ground in the real world are little different than they have been for twenty years.
The Jordan Valley issue has been a known point of contention all along. Kerry and Obama have insisted that matters like this one can be worked out, but Kerry’s proposed solution is simply the Israeli position rehashed. Netanyahu objects to Kerry’s proposal simply because he wants the Jordan Valley to be part of Israel in any final agreement. That is not workable, but a long term Israeli presence that can easily be extended — all that has to happen is the Palestinians need to be declared “not ready” at the end of ten years — effectively accomplishes the same thing, with Israel still controlling the territory, although they might not be able to build more settlements there for some time.
Palestinian forces have already been trained by the US, and even Israel agrees that has worked well, so this insistence on more training is absurd. But the real problem here is more fundamental and points to exactly how we will know that the United States is serious about brokering a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, if they can ever reach that stage.
As many critics of US policy in Israel-Palestine and the role of the Israel lobby in creating that policy have pointed out, a US President is capable of taking on the lobby and winning, but it involves a big political fight and expending a lot of political capital. This has happened in recent weeks with regard to Iran — the Lobby has backed off. When an administration wants to fight that battle for resolving the issue of the occupation, it will do so by changing the terms of the discussion. Right now, as it has been for decades, the occupation is approached in Washington as a security issue for Israel. In reality, Israel is the regional superpower, both militarily and economically, while the Palestinians have no way at all to defend themselves. When the occupation is the priority and is treated as intolerable, then the discourse can be centered around security for all within the framework of ending the occupation rather than being a security issue within which perhaps there is some way to end the occupation.
Obama and Kerry probably know this, and have chosen to work within the existing framework and just do the best they can under those conditions. They must also know that this approach will likely fail, but the very effort will augment their efforts regarding Iran and the general reorientation away from involvement in any of the other current and brewing conflicts in the region.
The reason the United States will not engage in that political battle touches on the myths that are so often heard about the Israel-Palestine conflict; particularly the one that tells us that resolving that conflict is a “US national security interest.” That is somewhat true, but it is a far less urgent concern than ratcheting down the conflict with Iran, for instance, or extricating the United States from the regional conflicts that our other “dear friend” Saudi Arabia is so intimately involved in.
Both the rapprochement with Iran and broader regional shifts offer clear benefits to the United States. In the wake of the Iraq debacle, they go a long way to ensure that such an enormous expense in blood, capital, and regional stability doesn’t happen again. They also help boost the potential for US engagement in trade and diplomacy throughout the region — engagement with Iran is a huge boon toward that goal while staying away from regional conflicts. Continuing to work with whomever is in power also allows the United States to protect future relationships with these states, rather than with only the current regimes. Threats by the Saudis to shift their business to Russia or China are empty. Neither of those countries have anything more than the smallest fraction of money and military assistance the US can and will continue to offer.
But the Palestinian issue, despite its higher profile, offers little to entice a US president to go to war politically. No one in the Muslim world will suddenly forget the decades of US support for Israel’s occupation. There are no obvious economic benefits to finally addressing the legitimate claims of the Palestinians. The military benefits are mostly the removal of some obstacles to US operations, the sort of thing David Petraeus got in so much trouble for pointing out when he said, in testimony before Congress, “…The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
So, yes, this issue could be addressed, but it’s a lot less potentially beneficial than the positive results of other policy shifts Obama is pursuing, and it would entail a considerably bigger political battle. So, it’s not going to happen. Indeed, the Palestinian issue is probably being pushed now by Washington in order to manufacture a payoff to Netanyahu for his acquiescence to real US priorities.
The path to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict has been clear for some time. The Palestinians need to abandon their dependence on the United States, which will not ever deliver the goods. They need to pursue an international strategy that creates real political pressure on Israel. The ground is fertile — Israel’s obvious unwillingness to abandon the key territories on the West Bank, well beyond the major settlement blocs, and its refusal this past weekend to permit Holland to provide an electronic scanner that would have allowed Palestinians in Gaza to export goods without putting Israeli security at risk have exposed the hollowness of Israel’s security arguments. Israel’s actions are not about security, but about power, and this fact is something the Palestinians and their supporters around the world can exploit. It can also be used by true friends of Israel who recognize that Israel’s security is at risk not because of Iranian threats that never existed (see Juan Cole’s excellent explanation of that here) or some small bands of Palestinian militants, but by Israel’s continued refusal to compromise.
Europe seems to be taking some steps toward reorienting the politics around the occupation to create the incentives Israel needs to change its policies. The Palestinians need to follow their lead, as do the many supporters of a just peace throughout the world, including in Israel. Waiting for the US to deliver the goods is more futile than waiting for the Messiah.
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the outset of a meeting focused on the Middle East peace process in Bethlehem, West Bank, on November 6, 2013. Credit: State Department.
]]>By Mitchell Plitnick
There’s a showdown coming, and the outcome may determine how the US runs its foreign policy in the Middle East, at least for the next three years and perhaps much longer.
The issues at hand are both immediate and long-term, and both involve an awful lot of “daylight” between [...]]]>
By Mitchell Plitnick
There’s a showdown coming, and the outcome may determine how the US runs its foreign policy in the Middle East, at least for the next three years and perhaps much longer.
The issues at hand are both immediate and long-term, and both involve an awful lot of “daylight” between the positions of the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel. The very top of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right “kingmaker,” Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Naftali Bennett, has launched a full-scale attack on the policies of Barack Obama. They have dispensed with the fiction that Israel is not a domestic US issue and have brought into the light of day the enormous influence they have in Congress.
Bennett came to Washington to meet with members of Congress to directly lobby them to oppose the policies of the President of the United States, particularly with regard to a potential agreement with Iran that would forestall any possibility of a military strike. If Bennett was from any other country, no matter how close an ally, a foreign leader lobbying Congress to oppose the plans of a President whose agenda is backed by a majority of US citizens and who is trying to avoid a conflict whose repercussions could be dire would be outrageous. But with Israel, such niceties are ignored because, whether it’s Bennett or the U.S. members of AIPAC, lobbying and winning for Israeli interests over those of the United States or the rest of the world is routine.
But the issue is not limited to Iran by a long shot. Differences at least as profound have appeared in the context of the failing new round of peace talks that Secretary of State John Kerry worked so hard to put together. Kerry has had some unusually strong words for Israel in this regard, and the response from Netanyahu has been nothing short of hysterical. And while Kerry flatly denied the rumors that he would table Washington’s own plan in January if the two sides cannot make progress, a bridging proposal certainly seems like a very real possibility, and one that Israel would almost certainly resist.
As I explained elsewhere in some depth, both of these issues are consequential, but they also point to an even larger and more fundamental concern. That concern is not held exclusively by Israel, but is very much shared by Saudi Arabia and other countries throughout the region: the trajectory of U.S. policies and presence in the Middle East.
The United States has been the key external power in the region for decades, and it is not about to abandon its allies or, more importantly, its interests. But since 9/11, and especially since the invasion of Iraq, the US has extended its military in the region to no good effect. While both the US public and its president have made it clear in recent years that they wish to substantially diminish Washington’s military “footprint” in the region, Washington has come perilously close to war with Iran and to military intervention in Syria, due to its tangled alliances. Similar issues could well arise in Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain, while the US continues a drone war in Yemen that could also escalate at any time.
What it seems Obama is trying to do is back the US away from war and limit Washington’s susceptibility to pressure from its closest allies in the region. In short, he is trying to base US regional policy on US interests, not on Saudi or Israeli ones. While US interests do indeed include supporting its allies, Obama wants to ensure that decisions on engaging in conflict are based on much broader range of U.S. interests in the region.
But Israel has come to expect a US policy based on its purported “security” needs, and Saudi Arabia has come to expect US policy to support the kingdom’s own regional ambitions. The fury of the Saudis was not hidden when the US decided not to attack Syria, nor has their irritation with Obama been difficult to detect over his lack of support for greater Saudi intervention in Bahrain and their enthusiastic backing for the military coup in Egypt. The language we have seen emanating from Israel and directed against Obama and John Kerry has been unprecedented.
Congress is where the key battles will be fought, but it’s not the only battleground. Both Israel and the Saudis have strong connections to American elites and have never had a problem getting their views aired in the White House and State and Defense Departments. But Congress is where the notion that the Saudis and especially the Israelis are the main barometers for US policy truly holds sway.
The talks between Israel and the Palestinians seem more and more like a bargaining chip for Obama with each passing day. The talks were doomed to begin with, and there seems to be little point in their further pursuit. Might Kerry be pressing forward with them so that he can present the rumored US bridging proposal, only to withdraw it in exchange for Israel’s acquiescence to an agreement with Iran? This seems like a pretty plausible scenario.
There is another aspect to both the Israel-Palestine talks and the Iran debate. In both cases, the Obama Administration is being much more forthright than any administration in decades that Israel’s view, while respected, is not shared by the administration. Congress is already stirring around this, but is treading carefully. If it appears too much like Congress is bowing to Israel against the president’s wishes, particularly at a moment when the U.S. public’s views about military intervention in the Middle East, in particular, are clearly more in line with the White House, the political risks become all the greater, especially with congressional campaigns just starting up. It is certain that such a perception is not something AIPAC relishes.
If Congress can thwart Obama’s and Kerry’s efforts regarding both Iran and the Israel-Palestine talks, US foreign policy will be entrenched on a track controlled by domestic lobbies representing Israel and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. In other words, the status quo will hold, likely for quite some time. If Obama loses this battle, the likelihood that a successor would willingly take it on is substantially diminished.
But this is as good an opportunity for a shift away from domestic lobbying forces in foreign policy making as we have seen in a very long time. It’s a battle Obama can win, if he is willing to see it through. No, he may not be able to win on both the Israeli occupation and Iran, but winning on Iran alone would be enough to bring about a profound shift in US Mideast policy. Israel knows that, and so does Saudi Arabia. The battle lines are thus drawn, and it’s a fight of profound importance, even beyond that of the two specific issues that have brought the battle to a head.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State John Kerry at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, April 2013. (Photo courtesy of US Embassy)
]]>The Sunday Times has once again recycled its periodic claim that Israel and Saudi Arabia are about to join forces for an attack on Iran. According to Uzi Mahnaimi, Israel’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, is formulating contingency plans with Saudi officials if Iran’s nuclear program “is not significantly curbed” [...]]]>
The Sunday Times has once again recycled its periodic claim that Israel and Saudi Arabia are about to join forces for an attack on Iran. According to Uzi Mahnaimi, Israel’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, is formulating contingency plans with Saudi officials if Iran’s nuclear program “is not significantly curbed” in the agreement that may be signed this week in Geneva:
Both the Israeli and Saudi governments are convinced that the international talks to place limits on Tehran’s military nuclear development amount to appeasement and will do little to slow its development of a nuclear warhead.
As part of the growing co-operation, Riyadh is understood already to have given the go-ahead for Israeli planes to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran.
Both sides are now prepared to go much further. The Sunni kingdom is as alarmed as Israel by the nuclear ambitions of the Shi’ite-dominated Iran.
Mahnaimi’s corpus of “scoops” for the Sunday Times over the past decade include well over a dozen reports that an Israeli military strike on Iran is imminent. Mahnaimi has also provided fanciful depictions of secret high-tech weaponry Israel might deploy in an attack like “the gamma pulse that could send Iran back to the stone age” and a bacteriological ethnic bomb Israel had developed that would only harm Arabs.
Two previous Sunday Times reports have alleged that the Saudis were comfortable and cooperative with the prospect of an attack on Iran through their air space.
On Jul. 5, 2009, in an article titled, “Saudis Give Nod to Israeli Raid on Iran,” Mahnaimiquoted a diplomatic source who claimed that “The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israel air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia.” According to Mahnaimi, then Mossad chief Meir Dagan had held secret talks earlier that year and had assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.”
On Jun. 12, 2010, a very similar report by the Sunday Times‘ Hugh Tomlinson alleged — citing an unidentified US “defense official — that Saudi Arabia had practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems in order to allow Israeli warplanes passage on their way to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. He added that the Saudis have allocated a narrow corridor of airspace in the north of the country.
Saudi sources denied the report. Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi envoy to the UK, declared that any such move “would be against the policy adopted and followed by the Kingdom,” and that Saudi Arabia would not allow any violation of its territories or airspace.
Mahnaimi reported on May 13 of this year that Israel was preparing to join Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey in establishing “an early warning system to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.” The American-brokered proposal, Mahnaimi wrote, “may eventually lead to technicians from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan working alongside Israelis in joint command-and-control centres.”
Israeli news sources, including Haaretz, the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, Israel Today and Y-Net are today uncritically reporting the Sunday Times‘ claim that an Israeli-Saudi attack is in the works, without mentioning the almost identical stories of 2009 and 2010, or the plethora of predictions of an Israeli attack on Iran during the course of the past decade that never happened. The business daily Globes vaguely alludes to previous reports, but claims that “there has been substantial progress in the relations between the two countries — progress based on a common Iranian enemy.”
An analysis by Jane’s Intelligence Review in July revealed evidence that the Saudi base at Al-Watah has two launch pads for Chinese DF3 missiles — one directed against Iran and the other pointing toward Israel. A two-part series in Israel Today from October belied its upbeat headline: “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel and the House of Saud” with skeptical statements from several analysts about the existence or prospects of any such alliance.
This hasn’t stopped Israelis from fantasizing about the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran in recent weeks, while worrying about the prospect of Saudi Arabia seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon of its own. “It’ll be fun, my friends,” wrote Ari Shavit in Haaretz last week. “The Sunnis and the Jews are boiling with anger. Therefore, they are now holding hands and launching a campaign against the Christians and Shi’ites who are closing a deal in Geneva.”
As of the time of this post’s publication, English-language Arab news sources have made no mention of Mahnaimi’s claims. Having been burned by Mahnaimi in the past, mainstream U.S.media (thus far) seems to be ignoring the story as well.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Not everyone shares the optimism surrounding the recent communication between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani. From Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Monarchies and, of course, Washington, DC, voices of war are in a panic that tensions between the U.S. and Iran might be reduced by some means [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Not everyone shares the optimism surrounding the recent communication between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani. From Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Monarchies and, of course, Washington, DC, voices of war are in a panic that tensions between the U.S. and Iran might be reduced by some means other than further devastation of the Islamic Republic.
The concern that Iran might emerge with a better relationship with the United States is quite vexing for the Gulf rulers and for Israel. For some years now, the drive to isolate Iran has focused almost entirely on the nuclear issue. In fact, regionally, much of the concern has been the ascendancy of Iran as a regional player more broadly, with revolutionary rhetoric that challenges the dominance of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Since the destruction, by George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, of the dual containment policy, the issue for these parties has been how to contain Iran and its regional influence.
Iran has been cast as an “aggressor nation,” and this has been sold by illustrating Iran’s support for Hezbollah and other militant groups, its often bombastic rhetoric, and for the past decade, Iran’s ducking from some of its responsibilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). What gets left out is that Iran has never initiated an attack on another nation, its threats to “wipe Israel off the map” are factually known as (just not in mainstream discourse) to be a de-contextualized mistranslation of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words, and even Iran’s failures with the IAEA have been part of a back and forth exchange, where they refuse or neglect to comply with some things in response to what they see as US-led unfair sanctions or restrictions. That doesn’t mean Iran has not caused some of these problems itself, it has. Lack of transparency on nuclear issues tends to raise the hackles of one’s enemies. But all this has hardly been the one-way street that’s been portrayed.
Too much scrutiny toward all of this sits poorly with Riyadh, Jerusalem, and in many circles in Washington. But because so much of the anti-Iran feeling has focused for so long on the nuclear issue, such scrutiny could come to bear at least a little more if Obama and Rouhani work things out. Labelling Iran an “aggressor nation” without the nuclear issue simply wouldn’t have the same impact anymore.
To combat this, Israel has been publicly playing down Rouhani’s overtures, sometimes calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and more generally, taking the “prove it” line. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standard for proof is unrealistically high, and this is no accident. He has said that the conditions Iran must agree to are: halting all uranium enrichment, removing all enriched material, closing the reactor at Fordo and stopping plutonium production. This position is an obvious non-starter, but it reflects what has been the United States’ own position until now. Obama’s statements, while far from explicit, have given Iran reason to believe that this may have changed.
The reactions of Israel and the Gulf states would be puzzling if preventing a nuclear Iran was their main focus. But this has always been a means to an end: to isolate Iran and slow its rise as a regional power. The over-emphasis on the nuclear issue risks blunting other tools.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is already setting its sights on this issue. An AIPAC memo published on Sept. 20 urges the negotiations to be “backed by strength,” a vague enough statement, but one that shines light on its specific proposals.
One option AIPAC wishes to impede is the possibility of sanctions relief. “If Iran suspends its nuclear activity, the United States should be prepared to suspend any new sanctions” (emphasis added). This seems to make it clear that AIPAC wants to see the continued isolation of Iran no matter how the nuclear issue is resolved. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions have repeatedly demanded that Iran suspend its enrichment programs and heavy water reactor programs, but the most recent resolutions, particularly UNSC 1835, also emphasize the UNSC’s commitment “to an early negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue” (emphasis mine). That is not something AIPAC wishes to see. An Iran that gets an agreement can be strengthened regionally. An Iran that either continues to labor under the status quo of sanctions and the looming threat of war or surrenders on the nuclear issue is seriously weakened. That is the game that’s being played here.
But this time, the playing field is much less certain. In the wake of the outcry against an attack on Syria, will AIPAC be able to push its measures through Congress without watering them down sufficiently to give Obama room to pursue substantive negotiations with Iran? Other than paranoia, there is scant evidence to support the position that Iran is merely putting on a show to stall for time while pursuing a nuclear weapon. But America’s own war footing keeps the risk of another Western misadventure in the Gulf region a real possibility. Obama seems bent on steering us away from that, and at least at first blush, seems to be acting on the will of his constituency in doing so.
Saudi Arabia will certainly add its voice to Israel’s on Capitol Hill. And Iran is not Syria. As appalled as many in the U.S. were over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, they were not convinced, for a variety of reasons, that this was cause for their country to take military action again in the Middle East. Syria may not be well-liked in the United States, but it is not a direct enemy. Iran is perceived as such, and has been ever since the fall of the Shah and the ensuing hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979-80. It may be that concern over Iran and the nuclear issue will provide fertile ground for AIPAC’s efforts to sabotage peace talks. It will also be a good deal easier to push their agenda in Congress because they won’t be advocating the immediate use of U.S. armed forces against Iran, as was the case with Syria.
While the congressional playing field is not entirely clear yet, one thing is obvious. Obama is going to need support in his peacemaking efforts. That support will need to come from the U.S. public and he will need to know that he has it in order to counter what is sure to be a furious onslaught from the most powerful forces that oppose any normalization with the Islamic Republic. That onslaught is coming and it is going to be furious. Obama will also need support from Iran, of all places. Rouhani will need to maintain the positive face he is portraying. And Rouhani should not be alone in this endeavour. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, apparently recognizing that Rouhani had not gone far enough in distancing himself from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, has made sure to unequivocally acknowledge the Holocaust and its horrors. However prominent one thinks that issue should be, the clear statements were obviously intended to forestall the use of that issue against progress in upcoming nuclear talks.
More of that will be needed. Obama has restarted his Iran diplomacy on the right foot, being bold with his phone call to Rouhani and cautious in his public statements. He is proceeding deliberately but not giving his opponents big openings to attack his efforts at diplomacy. But the storm that is heading for Capitol Hill on this issue is going to be fierce. Obama will need all his skills and all the help he can get in weathering it.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
US President Barack Obama’s decision to use force in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons but to seek Congressional approval before doing so was very surprising. It is a major reversal of the behavior of every president since the 1973 War Powers Resolution was enacted. That Resolution, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
US President Barack Obama’s decision to use force in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons but to seek Congressional approval before doing so was very surprising. It is a major reversal of the behavior of every president since the 1973 War Powers Resolution was enacted. That Resolution, which set limits on the President’s ability to embroil the United States in a lengthy military action in the wake of two extended but undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam, has been a point of contention for presidents ever since, with all of them without exception calling the resolution unconstitutional.
The constitutionality of the resolution has never been tested in court, like whenever it has been violated (as Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon and Bill Clinton did in the Balkans). Congress has merely voiced its disapproval, but taken no further action. Neither side can be sure of how the Supreme Court would decide the question. But every Chief Executive from Nixon to Obama have claimed that it violates the separation of powers by impinging on the president’s purview as Commander in Chief. Others claim, with some justification, that it actually codifies presidential impingement on Congress’ exclusive authority to declare war.
Obama surely knows that the War Powers Resolution would not have even come into play in his proposed action. The resolution does not stop the president from taking a limited action that would last, at most a few days, although the constitutional question is considerably more complicated. But the tug of war between the legislative and executive branches that it represents is an ongoing one, with Congress always pushing for more involvement in foreign policy and the president jealously guarding his prerogatives. It is absolutely unprecedented for a president to give any ground on this without a fight.
That, however, is what Obama has done. He knows well that the US public does not want to see us involved in another Middle East war; that, as despised as Bashar al-Assad is, the Syrian rebel forces are no longer identified with the Syrian people Assad is hurting in the minds of many Americans, and that some of the most radical elements among them scare Americans more than Assad does; that Russia will veto any action against its Syrian ally at the UN Security Council; and that, especially after the vote in Britain’s House of Commons against action, the president has few allies abroad to offer international legitimacy to American actions.
Given that he surely knows Congress has no legal right to vote on this question, Obama’s decision is a purely political one. He is quite likely unhappy that his foolish declaration of a red line at chemical weapons has put him in this position, and he is being attacked from all sides, either for not acting right away or for bringing the US closer to a new intervention in Middle Eastern conflicts. He knows that his credibility in the region is now at stake and that allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as adversaries like Iran, will lose even more faith in him if he fails to act. So he is sharing that burden with Congress.
I suspect that, given that the red line has been drawn and most members of Congress will not want the US to look weak and indecisive — however much the Republicans might enjoy Obama looking that way — Congress will vote to support a strike. There will also very likely be a lobbying push in support of Congressional support for Obama. Saudi Arabia opposes Assad, so it would certainly want to see an attack. Israel is much less interested in seeing Assad ousted because a new Syrian government is unlikely to keep the Syrian-Israeli border as quiet as the Assad dynasty has for four decades now. But, despite his being the devil Israelis know, the Israelis don’t have any stake in seeing Assad emerge triumphant at this point, since that would represent a major victory for Iran and, especially, Hezbollah, and there is no way of knowing how Assad would deal with Israel after a victory. Still, while Israel has no great stake in the victor of this conflict, it very much wants to see the chemical and biological weapons Assad has destroyed. Israel does not want those weapons in Syria at all, whoever might have them. So, AIPAC will spur into action, although they may do so quietly, not wanting to be perceived as pushing the US into a war for Israel.
If Obama is wise, he will use the time he now has to try to, at best, find some common ground with Russia where they can come together on a diplomatic plan or, at least, shore up more international support for his “limited attack” on Syria. What seems unlikely, unless Congress does vote against the attack, is any other way to avoid a strike on Syria. Obama has committed the US with his red line declaration, and now, if he doesn’t act, not only does it damage his credibility; it will also tempt the Assad regime to do it again.
No doubt, Iran will be a major part of the debate. A major argument for striking Syria — and it is likely to be very persuasive on the Hill — will be that if we don’t, it will destroy our credibility with respect to “all options” being on the table in preventing Iran from a nuclear weapon. The more productive place for Iran to occupy in this discussion is much more of a long shot. That is, that Iran, if brought into the diplomatic process as a partner, can help find an actual resolution that stops, or at least curtails the massive violence in Syria. Such an engagement with Iran could also help solve the ongoing nuclear conflict and give Washington time to test the intentions of the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani. That course seems to have been hinted at by Obama in recent statements, and some excellent analysts, including Jim Lobe and Barbara Slavin believe he may be trying to open the door to including Iran in the process. I would applaud loudly if this turns out to be the case, but it still seems far too risky a political move to me.
In the end, I think Congress will approve the resolution. Having gotten an unprecedented gift from Obama in the form of a president asking for congressional authorization when he doesn’t have to, lawmakers will want to encourage such behavior in the future. Combined with the credibility question and Saudi and Israeli lobbying, that should bring a sufficient number of votes into his column. I suspect Obama must have done some informal gauging of Congressional opinion on this question in the days before he made this announcement.
It is unclear what Obama will do if the vote goes against him. It would seem unlikely that he would defy such a vote, but he might if the House and Senate split on it. That’s a possibility, as the House GOP is more virulently anti-Obama and isolationist in orientation.
But if Obama gets his stamp of approval, then the lasting legacy of this episode will be his decision to ask Congress at all. There’s a real double-edged sword here. On the one hand, it is obviously a more democratic way of operating. On the other hand, a major reason for keeping foreign policy in the hands of the executive is that Congress is much more subject to political pressure and lobbying. Increasing Congress’ role in foreign policy means increasing that role for lobbying groups, and not only AIPAC. It lessens the role of strategic thinking in the process, a role which is already far too small. As with many other aspects of life in the United States, it will only work well if people get involved on a much larger scale than they are now.
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