On 2 October 2012 US Middle East expert Juan Cole published
a piece on his Informed Comment blog entitled
Top Ten Things Mitt Romney Gets Wrong
About US Middle East Policy. As Mitt Romney may well become the President
of the United States in three months’ time, what he gets wrong about Middle
East policy is important to all of us.
Cole starts by noting that Romney had published an op-ed the
previous day criticising President Obama’s Middle East policies, but that
op-ed, apart from urging ‘strength’, offered no concrete alternative.
And, he completely misunderstands the history of the US role in the
region, which causes him to misunderstand its present dilemmas.
Cole then goes on to list the ‘ten top things Mitt Romney
gets wrong’ in delicious detail, the first five of which fly in the face of
Romney’s foundation proposition that the US got to where it is today in the
Middle East by ‘promoting human rights, free markets and the rule of law”. The
others reveal a flawed understanding of more contemporary events.
He concludes:
Romney’s understanding of the challenges for the US in the Middle East
is backwards, and so are his vague prescriptions. Military might, which you
trumpet as the solution, is useless in the face of popular movements, Mr.
Romney, and the US army could have done nothing to keep Mubarak in power or to
keep the Muslim Brotherhood from winning elections. An even more fawning policy
toward the Israeli Right Wing is not going to solve any of our problems in the
Middle East, but rather will exacerbate them as Apartheid becomes more severe.
And we’re already on a war footing with Iran, and any increase in tensions is
very dangerous unless it has a clear and achievable policy objective
(dissuading Iran from nuclear enrichment is not achievable).
As a new generation democratizes and public opinion becomes important,
US public diplomacy and reaching out to young people becomes crucial. Seeking a
modus vivendi with ascendant political Islam is now pivotal, because the US has
fewer and fewer puppets under its thumb. Are you good at public diplomacy
toward the Muslim world, Mr. Romney?
This is a great read, and an important one. Read it in full here.
In a 21 January post on his blog The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah asks whether Barack Obama is
running for re-election as President of the United States or Prime Minister of Israel,
and comments that
A new Obama campaign video makes it increasingly hard to tell, and even
more ominously ratchets further the Israelization of US politics.
Included in the post is the video in question: a 7-minute
YouTube Obama campaign video entitled America
and Israel: an unbreakable bond which
… alternates video and audio of Obama speaking before the Israel lobby,
AIPAC, and other Zionist groups, and clips of Israeli leaders endorsing Obama’s
leadership. It begins and ends with the US flag and the Israeli flag side by
side – thus bringing the Israeli flag directly into the US election campaign.
Although the clips of Israeli leaders … appear to have been taken from
interviews, they are cut to look as if they were provided specifically for the
purpose of endorsing the president.
…
As such, Obama is legitimizing the role of foreign – although certainly
only Israeli leaders – to participate directly in US campaigns. Can we imagine
Obama issuing a video in which he is endorsed as pro-Mexican by the President
of Mexico, or pro-Canadian by Canada’s prime minister? It’s inconceivable.
Barack Obama was elected in 2008 with expectations that he
would establish a new relationship with the Muslim world and bring some balance
to the US relationship with Israel. This was always more of a hope than a
reality. While he made a promising speech in Cairo and broadcast a greeting for
the 2009 Iranian New Year, he surrounded himself with the same old foreign
policy crowd who had spent their lives looking after Israel, and as they say in
business, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve
always got.
Sad to say too that when it comes to matters affecting
Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is both smarter than Obama and more
determined, so by September in Obama’s first year in office I was ready to
declare it all over as far any contest between the two was concerned (see Game,
set and match to Mr Netanyahu).
See Ali Abunimah’s post and the video in question here.
Readers of this blog will be aware that I am no fan of US
Middle East “expert” Dennis Ross, one of those members of the US foreign policy
establishment who migrates between the State Department and the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee and its offshoot and its offshoot the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), one of those people of whom I feel if
you asked the question, “Do you serve the United States or Israel”, they would
not understand the question.
Ross, who is known around Washington as “Israel’s lawyer” has
never made any secret of his feelings towards Israel, so there is nothing
stealthy or furtive about his manoeuvring in support of that country, but this
being the case, the reliance that the Obama Administration, supposedly
dedicated to creating a new relationship with the Muslim world and with Iran in
particular, placed upon him is nothing short of extraordinary.
In March 2009, in Hillary's
envoy: not everyone is cheering, I commented on his bizarre appointment as
Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, and followed up with a post in May
2009 – Iran:
Hillary’s envoy (contd.) – in which I noted the views of an Orthodox Jew
who had served as US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, who commented that in
Middle East peace negotiations:
The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom
line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the
Arabs.
Further posts
included Dennis
Ross on the move?, noting rumours that he was moving to the White House,
and Making
U.S. Iran policy, an extended analysis of the dysfunctional way in which
the US Administration was approaching Iran, and Dennis Ross’s role in that.
Andrew Sullivan
addressed this theme in March 2010 in a post Dennis
Ross Bats for Netanyahu on The Atlantic’s blog The Daily Dish.
An interesting addition to the dossier was published as an
op-ed piece in Al Jazeera, 23 November 2011, following the announcement that
Ross is leaving his post. Entitled The incomplete
legacy of Dennis Ross, it was contributed by Robert L. Grenier, chairman of ERG Partners, a financial advisory and
consulting firm. Grenier retired from the CIA in 2006, following a 27-year
career in the CIA's Clandestine Service. He served as Director of the CIA
Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2006, coordinated CIA activities in
Iraq from 2002 to 2004 as the Iraq Mission Manager, and was the CIA Chief of
Station in Islamabad before and after the 9/11 attacks.
During the Clinton era he was the
deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, and saw
at first hand how Ross exercised his undoubted influence to undermine rather
than strengthen efforts to create a durable peace following the signature of
the Oslo accords.
Grenier’s summary assessment of
Ross’s contribution over his time in US Government is:
During his eight years as chief architect of the peace process under
Bill Clinton, Dennis was not so much a cause as a symptom of the deep,
disqualifying political dysfunction at the heart of US policymaking in the
Middle East. Without the dysfunction, you would not have had a Ross to exploit
it.
And now, we are told, Dennis is leaving, after nearly three years in
the Obama administration. His increasing prominence over those three years is a
mark and a measure of Obama's growing disappointment and failure. For an
administration which started with such elevated goals in the Middle East, it
has come to this: Instead of engaging Iran constructively, as it had hoped, it
has devolved instead to a sterile, sanctions-based stalemate, with scant
international support, strongly shaped by Ross, who advocates an Israel-centric
posture against the Islamic Republic. And instead of exerting judicious
pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians to achieve the two-state
breakthrough which US interests would dictate, Obama has had to cave instead to
the overwhelming political influence of Binyamin Netanyahu, and has looked to Ross
as his shield against a pro-Israel lobby which would otherwise turn against
him, and may yet do so.
The problem is, as Grenier puts it:
In his many years of successful advocacy, he has precisely mirrored
both the strengths and weaknesses of his client, and therefore must be assessed
as having represented his client badly: Like the Israelis, he is a brilliant
tactician and a strategic ignoramus. A better advocate might have saved his
client from himself. Instead, Dennis' many years of successful temporising have
helped to bring Israel to the point where a two-state solution is no longer
possible. Thanks in some measure to Dennis' efforts, Israel in future can be
Jewish, or it can be democratic: It cannot be both. Having served Israel to the
point of helping to destroy Zionism: That is the very definition of
catastrophic success.
I usually regard as Ronnie Barker-type news (“No nuclear bombs fell on Scotland again last night”) all commentary to the effect that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is a creature of the pre-eminent pro-Israel lobbying organisation the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that senior US foreign policy adviser Dennis Ross is a member of the AIPAC crowd, and that he once served as WINEP chief.
After all, the Wikipedia entry on WINEP tells us here how in 1985 AIPAC “helped” to bring WINEP into being. The deal as I understand it was that AIPAC, as a lobbying organisation, was not entitled to tax deductibility of donations, so AIPAC decided to set up an “independent” think tank which would qualify for tax deductibility, would do deep intellectual “research” of the right kind, and enable the AIPAC crowd to sail under a different flag when it suited them to do so. The idea was that WINEP would disseminate the AIPAC line, but in a way that disguised its AIPAC origins.
In March 2009, in Hillary's envoy: not everyone is cheering, I commented on the bizarre appointment of Dennis Ross as Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, and followed up with a post in May 2009 – Iran: Hillary’s envoy (contd.) – in which I noted the perception by an Orthodox Jew who had served as US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, who commented that the perception was that in Middle East peace negotiations:
The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.
Further posts included Dennis Ross on the move?, noting rumours that he was moving to the White House, and Making U.S. Iran policy, an extended analysis of the dysfunctional way in which the US Administration was approaching Iran, and Dennis Ross’s role in that.
Andrew Sullivan addressed this theme in March 2010 in a post Dennis Ross Bats for Netanyahu on The Atlantic’s blog The Daily Dish.
So the links between AIPAC, WINEP and Dennis Ross, and the fact that Dennis Ross is unashamedly an advocate for Israel within the highest circles of US foreign policy making, are not news.
Ross’s increased involvement in the Middle East peace process became apparent when the administration engaged in talks with Israel over extending the moratorium on settlement expansion. Ross, according to American and Israeli officials, was the driving force behind the idea of offering Israel a generous package of assurances — both defense-related and diplomatic — in return for three extra months of a freeze on the expansion of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
...
Even though Israel ultimately turned down the offer, the episode reinserted Ross as a key player not only on broader strategic Middle East issues, but also on the nitty-gritty of the peace process.
Later in the piece Guttman says:
Ross’s involvement in the peace process increased when the administration sought to ease its troubled relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and with the Jewish community. A longtime Middle East hand, Ross, who is widely liked and trusted by Israelis, was sent to assure Jerusalem that the Obama administration was committed to Israel’s security and wellbeing. He also publicly addressed Jewish audiences at several events.
Ross’s history as a veteran peace negotiator under successive presidents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush gives him a record of experience in the region that few can match. But critics counter that this experience reflects a record of U.S. failure in the region, particularly with regard to the Oslo process that collapsed under his long-term role as its chief negotiator and strategist on the U.S. side.
Nevertheless, Ross’ strong ties to Israel now make him indispensable to the administration. Those ties include his previous role as head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank founded by the Jewish Agency for Israel. His son, Gabe, is also married to an Israeli. These factors, together with Ross’s strong personal sense of Jewish identity, have gained him a reputation of being pro-Israeli.
Finally, there is this priceless quote from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League:
“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for “advocate.”
Further background on the origins of WINEP and its links with AIPAC may be seen in a 12 April 2010 item by MJ Rosenberg, this time writing for The Huffington Post. In Does PBS Know That “The Washington Institute” Was Founded by AIPAC?, Rosenberg gives an insider’s view of the history and takes issue with PBS and other media wheeling out WINEP commentators as though they were not part of the Israel lobby.
In Game, set and match to Mr Netanyahu of 24 September 2009 I commented that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must be laughing all the way home at the outcome of the meetings on Middle East Peace sponsored by President Obama, and went on to say
One of the big losers out of all of this is President Obama. This is a strategic defeat for him, not a tactical withdrawal. He talked tough to the Israelis, they didn’t budge, and he blinked. So forget about all the brave talk of moving to “final status” negotiations. Mr Netanyahu will turn up for the talks in the second half of October, but he knows that he simply has to insist on unacceptable parameters for the final status and the talks will go nowhere. The Israelis are quite comfortable with the status quo; it is the Palestinians who are desperate for change.
I saw this as a comprehensive victory for Netanyahu at the time, but the more I look at the history of this, the more I am convinced that the Americans were never seriously in the game.
Anyone who wonders why the United States has become so profoundly one-eyed on behalf of Israel, to the point where it seems unable even to conceptualise a Palestinian weltanschauung, will find an entry posted by Jeff Weiss on 9 January on the US blog Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle East an interesting read.
Entitled Angry Arab says that after Bill Clinton got in, Arabists were ‘eliminated’ from State Dep’t, it is a commentary on a blog post written by Lebanese American academic As'ad AbuKhalil (“Angry Arab”)in response to a letter to the New York Times by Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman.
The comments posted on the Mondoweiss piece are worth reading too.
There is a very thought-provoking article, Israel ponders a nuclear Iran, by Avner Cohen, historian of the Israeli nuclear weapons program, in the latest (2 September 2010) online edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Cohen is the author of Israel and the Bomb (New York, Columbia University Press, 1998) and the article is excerpted from his latest book, The Worst Kept Secret (New York, Columbia University Press, 2010).
The article analyses the significance for Israel, and the choices it would face, in the event of Iran proceeding to the development of a nuclear weapons capability. Should Israel abandon its longstanding policy of ambiguity about its nuclear weapons program? Should Iran be “outed”, or would Israel’s interests be better served by parallel ambiguity about Iranian capability?
Cohen begins by analysing whether an Iranian capability would pose an “existential threat” to Israel, an assertion that used to be made by Binyamin Netanyahu, but is not much heard from him these days. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen declared so in 2009.
Others deny the proposition. Defence Minister Ehud Barak says, "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel. Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."
Cohen states the core problem for Israel as follows:
To Israelis, the Iranian nuclear threat is not that Iran may one day drop the bomb on Israel. Most Israeli strategists agree that it is extremely unlikely that Iran, unprovoked, would attack Israel with nuclear weapons because Iranians are aware of the catastrophic consequences of such an act. Rather, a nuclear confrontation between Israel and Iran might arise from misperceptions and miscalculations during a conventional crisis. Israel must also consider the possibility (however low) of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch by Iran and the risk of terrorist organizations acquiring nuclear weapons from Iran.
The real problem as perceived by the Israelis is that Iran's acquiring a nuclear capability could profoundly change the region's political dynamics. A second concern is that if Iran becomes a recognized nuclear state, even opaquely recognized, this could lead to a spiralling nuclear-arms race in the Middle East. A third is that the mere existence of the Iranian bomb or the fear that Iran has the bomb might lead Israelis to leave Israel for a friendlier place where their existence is not threatened.
Cohen counsels that Israel must be very cautious about using its limited freedom of action on the Iranian issue, and goes on to discuss a number of challenges that Israel must face in the light of this potential threat: how to organise its own decision-making processes on the issue and its multilateral diplomacy; how to articulate, introduce, and convey its “lines in the sand” to its own people and to others; what precisely is meant by terms like “nuclear threshold” and “point of no return”; whether and how to act unilaterally if Iran reaches that point of no return.
This is a sensitive subject within Israel decision-making circles and unsurprisingly is one which arouses strong sentiments. In his last interview before leaving office in 2008, for example, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said:
Part of our megalomania and our loss of proportion is the things that are said here about Iran. We are a country that has lost a sense of proportion about itself.
For Olmert, the international community, not Israel, should deal with the problem of a nuclear Iran.
After a fascinating discussion of the history of the Israeli policy of amimut (nuclear ambiguity) and the parallels between the things the Israelis used to say about their nuclear program in the 1960s and the things the Iranians say about theirs now, Cohen poses the question:
When should Israel and the international community remove the mask of amimut? When should the world start calling the Iranian capability a virtual bomb? Is it preferable to remove the mask from Iranian ambiguity, or is an opaque Iran preferable to an openly nuclear Iran? At what point should we insist on international nuclear accountability? And what will be the future of Israeli ambiguity in such a world? Until now, these questions have seldom been asked, but they demand a great deal of thinking, both worldwide and in Israel.
This article, and no doubt the book from which it is excerpted, is a “must read” for those who are interested in the triangular Israel-Iran-United States relationship that so much dominates the shape and future of the Middle East. Read the full article here.
In a thoughtful opinion piece in The New York Times, 29 March 2010, columnist Roger Cohen reflects upon the changing political scene in the Middle East.
He starts with the observation that the passage of the US health care bill is an important foreign policy victory for President Barack Obama, because it demonstrates that he is a tough politician with a capacity to deliver.
On Netanyahu’s inept performance in relation to the Obama Administration, Cohen observes:
Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he could steamroll Obama. He earned a frosty comeuppance.
The Israeli leader toyed with Obama’s unequivocal call in Cairo last June for a “stop” to Israeli settlements. He allowed the ill-timed announcement that 1,600 apartments for Jews will be built in East Jerusalem. Then, rather than scrap that, Netanyahu chose cheap cheers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with “Jerusalem is not a settlement.”
(I say cheap because everyone knows Jerusalem is not a settlement. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem is rejected by the rest of the world and any peace agreement will involve an inventive deal on its status. To build is therefore to provoke.)
Obama was not amused. He airbrushed Netanyahu’s White House visit. The message was clear: The Middle East status quo does not serve the interests of the United States (or Israel). When Obama says “stop,” he does not mean “build a bit.”
On Netanyahu’s efforts to make Iran the key issue (efforts which were demolished quite effectively by Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria (see Fareed Zakaria on Netanyahu), Cohen says:
Obama’s stance has also demonstrated that his focus on Israel-Palestine will not be diverted by Netanyahu’s push to place the Iranian nuclear program front and center. This is critical: Iran cannot be a Palestine-postponing pawn.
Cohen sees a changing scene as a result of Obama’s stance:
Already, there are shifts in Israeli attitudes as a result of the new American clarity. Last year, Netanyahu described Iran’s leaders as “a messianic apocalyptic cult,” which was silly. Of late we’ve had Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, setting things right: “I don’t think the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the neighborhood. They fully understand what might follow. They are radical but not total ‘meshuganas.’ They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process.”
...
Barak also got it right when he said that, absent a two-state solution, Israel would be “either non-Jewish or non-democratic.”
Obama is now insisting Israel act to avert that unhappy outcome. Americans, prodded by a report from Gen. David Petraeus, are beginning to see the link between terror recruitment and a festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Planning in Washington on Iran has shown a “marked shift in thinking away from the war strategy,” as Nicholas Burns, a former top State Department official, put it to me.
Cohen’s overarching message is that realism is needed all around. America cannot afford a third Muslim war. Israel cannot afford to open an unprecedented Persian front. The Arab world will always regard Israel as a bigger problem than Iran.
Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria had a piece in the 29 March edition (see here) on the subject of the current crisis in US-Israeli relations. Headlined Bibi’s bluster, it carries the strapline The Israeli Prime Minister says his nation’s security is his top priority. Too bad he’s undermining it.
Zakaria makes the point that this crisis hasn't been caused by just one event—the announcement, while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, to approve new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem. It caps a year of increasingly strained relations between Washington and Tel Aviv.
He notes that Netanyahu apologised about the timing of the housing announcement, but remains unyielding on the substantive question, and claims to be guided by the vital interests of the State of Israel. In identifying those vital interests, Zakaria says that it would be clear to anyone who has listened to Netanyahu over the last few years that Iran tops his list. He goes on:
But after watching Netanyahu's government over the past year, I have concluded that he is actually not serious about the Iranian threat. If tackling the rise of Iran were his paramount concern, would he have allowed a collapse in relations with the United States, the country whose military, political, and economic help is indispensable in confronting this challenge? If taking on Iran were his central preoccupation, wouldn't he have subordinated petty domestic considerations and done everything to bolster ties with the United States? Bibi likes to think of himself as Winston Churchill, warning the world of a gathering storm. But he should bear in mind that Churchill's single obsession during the late 1930s was to strengthen his alliance with the United States, whatever the costs, concessions, and compromises he had to make.
In a smart piece of analysis in Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Anshel Pfeffer, no fan of the Obama administration, writes, "When senior ministers or generals list Israel's defense priorities, there is always one point on which there exists total consensus: The alliance with the United States as the nation's greatest strategic asset, way above anything else. It is more crucial than the professionalism of the Israel Defense Forces, than the peace treaty with Egypt and even than the secret doomsday weapons that we may or may not have squirreled away somewhere…But [Netanyahu] has succeeded in one short year in power to plunge Israel's essential relationship with the United States to unheard of depths."
This is the same Netanyahu that The Australian’s Greg Sheridan seems to see as a wise leader around whom we should all rally, attributing President Obama’s coolness towards him as an “anti-Israel jihad”, and describing the widespread criticism of Israeli actions as “hysterical” (see Greg Sheridan’s jihad).
Obama’s Anti-Israel Hysteria Dangerous and Destructive screamed the headline of Greg Sheridan’s major piece in The Weekend Australian, 27-28 March 2010.
His article begins:
Barack Obama’s anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American President.
And just in case you missed that phrase “anti-Israel jihad”, he uses it again towards the end of the article, when we are told that the hearts of the radical political theorists favoured by Obama are made to sing by “this anti-Israel jihad”, and elsewhere he poses the question why Obama has “gone into full jihad mode against Israel”. To Sheridan this “dangerous new lurch into anti-Israeli populism” is all because Obama’s personal popularity is more important to him than America’s standing in the world.
Popularity with whom, we wonder. Certainly not the voting public of the United States, where unshakeable support for Israel is a sine qua non of obtaining the highest office in the land – a criterion on which Obama was closely scrutinised during the election campaign. No, it is personal popularity in the Muslim world that Obama courts, which seems a trifle odd in a first-term President who shows every sign of wanting to be re-elected.
That word hysteria gets a bit of a workout as well. An addition to the headline, we are told that
The anti-Israel hysteria is totally disproportionate and wildly over the top. The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat because Israel is alleged to have used forged British passports in Mossad operation is a case in point.
... Israel’s friends now should rally around it, or the spectre of wild and hysterical anti-Israeli sentiment will be unleashed with all sorts of destructive consequences.
One begins to form the impression that the only possible reason for disapproving of the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (the proximate cause of Obama’s irritation with Israel) is the onset of an hysterical condition. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Sheridan cannot find a single Israeli contribution to the difficulties of finding a Middle East peace settlement. In his view, “all of the things that make peace impossible” are down to the Arabs:
- Arab and Palestinian refusal to accept the legitimacy of any Jewish state
- Palestinian insistence on certain deal breakers such as the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper
- the insistent and violent anti-Semitism of Palestinian and Arab propaganda, and
- the regional ambitions of players such as Iran and Syria.
All of these, he avers, will be completely unaffected by any decision to build apartments in a Jewish neighbourhood in East Jerusalem in three years time.
So the Palestinians are “refusing to participate in peace talks, which Netanyahu would be happy to participate in”. There is an important distinction to be made here between peace talks and any kind of peace settlement. To the extent that Mr Netanyahu would be “happy” to participate in anything with the Palestinians, it would be perpetual talks with the Palestinians of his choice (certainly not with Hamas, without whom no settlement is possible), leading nowhere except perhaps eventually to the stunted Palestinian Bantustans that he has in mind if in extremis Israel is forced one day to accept some kind of two state solution.
Towards the end of his article Sheridan fulminates:
Accompanying Obama’s own actions has been some of the most dangerous rhetoric ever to come out of a US administration, to the effect that Israeli intransigence endangers US troops by inflaming extremists in the Islamic world.
What Sheridan neglects to tell us is that this is actually a reference to Senate testimony given earlier this month by General David Petraeus, the Commanding Officer of Central Command, who has overall command responsibility for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that testimony, General Petraeus presented a 56 page document in which he listed five major challenges faced by Central Commmand, and a list of a dozen second-tier challenges, one of which was insufficient progress towards a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East, in relation to which the document said:
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. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas.
That all seems perfectly reasonable to me, but the significance of this element of the testimony should not be overstated; General Petraeus has been at pains to hose down the controversy which has resulted, pointing out that this is just one paragraph in a 56-page document, and that it is simply an account of part of the context in which US troops are fighting.
Sheridan goes on to make the remarkable claim that
No serious analyst anywhere believes that Israel is an important source of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Source is the key word here. I don’t think anyone seeks to argue that Israel is the source of the conflicts, but I think that no serious analyst would seek to argue that the Israeli-Arab dispute is irrelevant to either conflict, and that Israeli behaviour does not matter in the wider context of the Middle East.
So Greg Sheridan has managed to convince himself that the responses of the Americans and the British to the passport forgeries and the announcement of the extra settler housing in East Jerusalem are hysterical and wildly over the top. After all, what is a bit of passport forgery between friends? And the Israelis apologised to Vice President Biden for the unfortunate timing of the housing announcement, so why all the drama?
Interestingly, commentators in Israel are capable of taking a stance that is much more critical of Mr Netanyahu. Writing in the mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on 28 March (see here) columnist Zvi Bar’el writes about “how Israel’s security situation has deteriorated during Netanyahu’s short term in office”:
We're not talking about yet another clumsy Israeli foreign minister whom no one wants to meet, or irksome building permits. Netanyahu poses a threat to Israeli security because he tips the balance of U.S.-Israeli relations, which are essential for our survival.
Of Netanyahu’s performance in Washington, and more generally, Bar’el concludes:
In a properly-run country, concerned about its own survival, thousands would have met the prime minister on his return, calling for his resignation. In such a country, gangs of squatters who steal land and buildings in Jerusalem would be considered organizations opposed to the nation's security interests. They would be taken to court, at least. In Israel, they are a symbol of national pride.
This arrogant government is sure that ever since it annexed the occupied territory in Jerusalem, it granted Israel control for all eternity. Jordan's King Abdullah can tell the lovers of eternity what happened to the so-called legal annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Jordan. This is the same Jordanian East Jerusalem that Washington will recognize as the capital of Palestine.
For generations the settlers have been blamed for posing an obstacle to peace, for acting against the policy of the government, which, poor soul, can't stand up to these bullies. And so, while Washington believed that the Israeli government wanted to take action against such subversive organizations but had problems, it showed restraint, gave in a little about the construction freeze, patted Netanyahu on the shoulder and granted extensions to the government so it could manage its own affairs.
There is no longer any basis for this approach. The Israeli government, and the seven wonders in charge of it, are inseparable from the bullies. And so Washington had to conclude that the government and prime minister were simply lying.
Washington's main interest is no longer whether the peace process will advance, because there are no guarantees that even direct talks with the Palestinians will end in an agreement. Washington's interest is to preserve its standing in the world against a small state and its crafty government, which made it a laughing stock. This will be a true test of the United States' ability to apply foreign policy. What is good for Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington figures, will also suit Israel now, because if Israel rebuffs Washington, Iraq and Afghanistan will, too.
And so the American formula is the same for all three. The United States will take care of the security of Israel/Iraq/Afghanistan, but security will not be measured only in the number of weapons sold to them, but also in the creation of conditions that will avoid the need to use them. To a certain extent, it will also be measured by these countries' willingness to agree to U.S. policy. In this way, a new condition has been created that should have been applied a long time ago. According to it, any country that is willing to harm the international standing of the United States is gambling on its own security. This is not a threat, but a clarification.
Strong stuff. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide whether Greg Sheridan or Zvi Bar’el is closer to the mark, closer to the temper of the times.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the Middle East. According to the report from Doha by Bloomberg’s Indira Lakshmanan, published in the Australian Financial Review, 16February 2010, she is visiting Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build support for pressuring Iran and for urging the Palestinians to return to peace talks with Israel.
In regard to the first of these objectives, she was urged by the Qatari Prime Minister to engage in direct dialogue with Iran, in response to which:
Mrs Clinton replied that Mr Obama made numerous overtures last year to engage Iran, with scant results.
“Engagement has to be a two-way street”, she said. “It cannot be done alone in a room talking to yourself.”
What Mrs Clinton neglected to mention was the long history of US meddling in the internal affairs of Iran, and in particular the Bush Administration’s policy of encouraging ethnic separatist groups – covert action carried out by proxy, in the case of the Baluch, through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate or, I.S.I., and in the case of the Kurds by the C.I.A. in cooperation with Israel’s Mossad (see Meddling in Iran). It is by no means clear that the Obama Administration has abandoned these policies. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserted not in a speech delivered in the Kurdish city of Bijar on 12 May 2009. If the policy of encouraging ethnic separatism has been abandoned, the US should come right out and say so, if it is serious about engaging with the Iranian leadership.
There are three possible explanations for Mrs Clinton’s failure to mention this important matter, none of which does her much credit: she is wilfully misleading her various audiences; she doesn’t know what is going on; or she doesn’t see the connection.
On the question of pressuring the Palestinians to return to peace (sic.) talks with Israel, why is it that the US pressure is always on the Palestinians rather than on the people who have stolen their land?
In Game, set and match to Mr Netanyahu (24 September 2009) I observed that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must have been laughing all the way home at the outcome of the meetings on Middle East Peace sponsored by President Obama - all of the Americans’ tough talk from last May about how the President “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions,” (see West Bank Settlements: full marks to Mrs Clinton) had collapsed to the usual posture in the face of Israeli intransigence – hand-wringing and bleating from the sidelines.
The Israelis would be well advised not to celebrate this particular victory too loudly, but having achieved it, and seen off just about everyone who might have the temerity to suggest that there is something in the Goldstone Report that might warrant investigation (or perhaps even a little self-reflection) on the part of Israel, the Israeli right is showing distinct signs of hubris, an insouciant belief that it doesn’t matter whom Israel chooses to insult or offend.
Two examples of this are given in the course of a major piece in The Weekend Australian, 13-14 February 2010, on the redrawing of the map of the Middle East, by The Australian’s Middle East correspondent John Lyons (see Inquirer, page 6, Arabs seize the initiative as US blinks.
The first consists of intemperate and unwise personal attacks on President Obama and his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is the son of an Irgun member, has strong personal ties to Israel, and is an influential politician in his own right. Nothwithstanding that pedigree, two settler leaders have written to Emanuel saying:
You are like the Hellenists who acted against the Israeli nation. You advise President Obama against Israel, and incite and instigate against us. You are a traitor against the entire Jewish people.
Emanuel has come under attack also from prominent hawk and former Israeli diplomat to the US Yoram Ettinger, who attributed the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat to “the intense involvement of ... Emanuel in Obama’s policy making and in the Massachusetts election”.
As for the President himself, Ettinger has warned him that Israel’s friends on Capitol Hill are being mobilised against him:
President Obama is intent on clipping the wings of the Jewish state morally, strategically and territorially. However, this is not a top priority for him. He would not confront Israel’s friends on Capitol Hill and in the public if they are mobilised against his prescription. Does Obama have the power to overcome such a pro-Israel alliance and impose a solution on Israel?
For the Israeli right to get these sorts of sentiments off its collective chest might be all good clean fun, but they would be wise to recall that it is the United States that underwrites Israel’s security, at very considerable foreign policy cost to itself in the rest of the Middle East and much of the rest of the world, and accordingly Israel has a very strong strategic interest in the continuation of American goodwill. Wise also to reflect that politicians of every stamp have big egos and long memories.
Be careful whom you antagonise would be my advice: if these elements do mobilise their friends against President Obama, and he is re-elected anyway, it will be a strategic setback for Israel.
The other example of Israeli hubris concerns the recent humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador to Israel, Mr Oguz Celikkol. To understand the full significance of this it is necessary to bear in mind that, from its earliest days, the state of Israel followed a “peripheral strategy” of cultivating close relationships with the non-Arab neighbours of its Arab antagonists, notably the Shah’s Iran and Turkey. Israel does not need Turkey any more apparently. As The Australian tells it:
On the order of [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon called in the ambassador to protest about a recent episode of a Turkish television series depicting Mossad agents as child-snatchers.
In an ambush, Ayalon called the ambassador to his office, then called in the photographers. He refused to shake the ambassador’s hand and in Hebrew told the photographers: “Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair and we are in the higher ones, that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling”.
The upshot of this deft piece of diplomacy was that Prime Minister Netanyahu had to intervene and force Ayalon to apologise, and Defence Minister Ehud Barak was left to try to patch up relations with Turkey.
