Netanyahu plays a Russian rope trick
By Sreeram Chaulia
The day-long public disappearance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
on September 7 had his country's gossip-mongers salivating. Many went to work
on speculative theories about just why he suddenly vanished from the media's
eye and official records. The strange disappearance of a head of government is,
after all, no small scoop.
The initial alibi from the prime minister's military secretary - that he was
"visiting a security facility" within the country - attempted to avert prying
eyes in a country where the press corps dutifully obey military censorship
laws. Netanyahu's aides believed that spinning the story of his inspection of a
top-secret Mossad installation inside Israel would be enough to satiate the
curious.
But this version soon tanked; and rumors multiplied (allegedly from disgruntled
elements within Netanyahu's inner circle) that
"Bibi", as he is popularly known, was on a sensitive diplomatic mission to a
foreign country. The Palestinian daily al-Manar claimed that he flew to an
undisclosed Arab state with which Israel has no formal relations and used the
undercover route to preclude criticism from foreign-policy hawks at home.
A more credible narrative began emerging in tidbits that Netanyahu was actually
in Moscow with top military advisers in tow. He is said to have borrowed a
private plane from an Israeli business magnate for the clandestine 15-hour
trip. The ambiguous responses to queries about this from both Russian and
Israeli officials added fuel to the fire of guesswork.
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said evasively, "We have seen these
reports in various media, but there is nothing more I can tell you." The same
source added, "I am not saying yes or no." Netanyahu's own office was
tongue-tied and issued vague post hoc messages that distanced itself from the
Mossad facility yarn and exculpated National Security Adviser Uzi Arad from
spreading this apparent falsehood.
According to the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Netanyahu was in Moscow to
present concrete evidence to the Kremlin that Russian arms were making their
way to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. The Israeli agenda
allegedly also included persuading Russia not to sell its S-300 anti-aircraft
missiles to Iran.
The S-300 system has been bothering Israeli war planners for a while,
particularly since the mysterious case of the "hijacked" Russian ship, the Arctic
Sea, came to light in late July. Ostensibly carrying timber bound for
Algeria, the vessel was reported to have been captured off the coast of Sweden
by pirates and vanished until it was "rescued" by the Russian navy some 25 days
later, near the Cape Verde Islands.
Since the waters of Scandinavia are among the safest for mercantile shipping
and given the hush-hushing of the incident by the Russian government, strong
suspicions emerged that the Arctic Sea had something more valuable on
board. An anti-piracy official of the European Union as well as an unnamed
general from the Russian navy suggested that the freighter was taking S-300 or
Kh-55 missiles to Iran via an organized Russian crime syndicate. Mossad got
into the act with hints that the Arctic Sea was transporting "a Russian
air defense system for Iran".
After the Russian navy "retook" the ship and escorted it home, Moscow conducted
an official enquiry and declared the "hijackers" to be eight ethnic Russians
with criminal backgrounds who were simply chasing ransom money. Sergei Lavrov,
the Russian foreign minister, termed the canard about the freighter's
contraband missiles to Iran as "an absolute lie".
But informed insiders in the Israeli media kept insinuating that Mossad had
either "tipped off" Moscow that it was tracking the covert missile supplies on
the ship or, more colorfully, that Israeli intelligence hired ethnic Russian
gangsters to abort the Arctic Sea's journey before it reached Iran.
Netanyahu's hidden dash to Moscow is being bandied about as a sequel to the
oceanic missile-smuggling saga. If Netanyahu did go to Russia with evidence, it
could have been used as a shaming device to compel his hosts not to beef up
Iranian defenses. The Russian newspaper Kommersant even asserts that the
Israelis were planning to attack Iran soon to stop its alleged nuclear program
and that "Netanyahu decided to inform Kremlin of this".
A key question regarding Netanyahu's rope trick is why he resorted to a secret
face-to-face with the Russians (presumably with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin,
President Dmitry Medvedev or someone close to one of them) if he just wished to
warn them or convey war plans. Could the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, the Russian
Embassy in Tel Aviv or plain old telephonic communication not served that
purpose?
The answer lies in the mounting mutual distrust between Israel and its longtime
special ally, the United States, over restarting peace talks with the
Palestinians. Since the Barack Obama administration has taken charge in
Washington, unprecedented pressure has been applied on Israel to completely
halt Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
So low is the confidence of Netanyahu's right-wing government in Obama that an
internal memo by Nadav Tamir, the Israeli consul general in Boston, lamented
recently that "the distance between us and the US government is causing
strategic damage to Israel".
Racially insulting depictions of Obama in Arab headdress and as a Muslim who is
partial to Palestinians have proliferated in Israel, especially among settlers
adamantly defying the recalibrated American position. They reflect popular
angst that the greatest insurance policy to aggressively pursue Israeli
national interests - a blank check from Washington - is now outdated.
For the past several months, Netanyahu has been walking on pins and needles,
trying to juggle Washington's demands to halt settlements and his own
coalition's desire to alter facts on the ground demographically before any
land-for-peace deal is signed with the Palestinians.
One old strategy of states that are losing the unconditional love of a former
ally is to court a rival of that ally and force the ally to realize the
horrible blunder it is committing. Netanyahu's veiled personal visit to Russia
could be part of such a long-term hedging strategy against at least three or
probably seven more years of Obama rule in Washington.
For decades, Israel has had a single vector foreign policy towards great
powers, banking on total diplomatic and military cooperation of the US. But
with relations with Washington at an all-time nadir, Tel Aviv is forced to seek
new powerful friends like Russia.
Since Moscow continues to contest Washington in every theater - from Latin
America and Central Asia to the Middle East - Netanyahu could be probing an
opening to Russia that the US would not take lightly. If Russia can somehow be
inveigled to act tougher on Iran for its nuclear standoff, Israel would find
fresh room to keep the heat on Tehran.
Already, Israel-Russia defense ties are on an uptick after a breakthrough US$50
million agreement on transferring the Israel Aerospace Industries' unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were used by Georgia against Russia in the war
over the breakaway Georgian state of South Ossetia last year.
Netanyahu's Russian gambit is a balancing maneuver that is being done on the
sly because of the sentiment in Tel Aviv that Obama cannot be trusted.
Netanyahu undertook a cloaked personal mission possibly out of fear that US
intelligence is preying harder on cable traffic or electronic communication
between Israel and Russia. Even in the friendliest of times, American
intelligence is known to have kept an eye on Israeli diplomatic correspondence
and vice versa.
Netanyahu's decision to hoodwink his own public and media and fly in person to
Russia must be understood in light of Israel's current paranoia about American
policies in the Middle East.
With no less a figure than Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor
grudgingly accepting that Netanyahu did fly to Russia on September 7, the
cobwebs are slowly clearing from Israel's quest to counter the diplomatic
isolation it is encountering in the Obama era.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal
Global Law School in Sonipat, India.
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