Israel in the midst of the Arab winter
By Victor Kotsev
With Egypt slowly descending into chaos and Syria in a state of a civil war,
many analysts fear that the Arab Spring may be turning into a bitter Arab
winter. It will likely take years to comprehend the full extent of the changes
that are happening, and the basic status quo in the region stands to be
transformed significantly. The two conflicts that currently loom over every
other issue in the Middle East, the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Iran
standoff, also stand to be transformed, whether by exploding into violence, by
falling out of fashion, or in some other way.
In the middle of all this sits Israel, one of the main regional powers in the
Middle East, as well as, right now, one of the most stable economies in the
world (a dubious honor, given its size and dependence on trade links and
foreign aid). Many eyes are set on it: the decisions that its leaders must make
in the next year, for example whether to attack Iran or what, if any,
concessions to
make to the Palestinians, can alter the course of events in the entire region,
and perhaps in the entire world.
At the same time, and in contrast with this formidable reputation which they
enjoy, the Israeli leaders are just as anxious about the future (we can infer
this much from their statements and from leaks in the Israeli media). Although
they recognize that the lack of representative democracy among their neighbors
is a major impediment to a stable and comprehensive peace agreement, they are
suspicious of anything coming from the Arabs.
So is the majority of the Israeli public - in this way, at least, the Benjamin
Netanyahu government is entirely representative of its constituency. Growing
numbers of Israelis have stopped believing that an end to the conflict is
possible in their lifetimes.
"It is not a question of if there will be a war," a 24-year-old friend of mine
in Tel Aviv likes to say. "It is a question of when." Sometimes, she adds with
just a touch of bitterness in her voice a sentence along the lines of: "My
children will be fighting the same war, and their children, too."
That belief is largely motivated by history. War has been a constant companion
of modern Israeli history since the fateful day, May 14, 1948, when David Ben
Gurion declared Israeli independence. The very next day the Arab armies
invaded. The war was bloody and lasted almost a year; Israel surprised most
international observers by winning, though in retrospect careful military
analysis has shown that after a certain point fairly early in the conflict, the
Israeli victory was all but guaranteed.
The influential American think-tank Stratfor describes the geostrategic
situation of Israel in the following way:
The exterior lines of
Israel's neighbors prevented effective, concerted action. Israel's interior
lines permitted efficient deployment and redeployment of force. It was not
obvious at the time [1948], but in retrospect we can see that once Israel
existed, was united and had even limited military force, its survival was
guaranteed. That is, so long as no great power was opposed to its existence.
... The conquests of Israel occur when powers not adjacent to it begin forming
empires. Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, Rome, Turkey and Britain all controlled
Israel politically, sometimes for worse and sometimes for better. Each
dominated it militarily, but none was a neighbor of Israel. This is a
consistent pattern. Israel can resist its neighbors; danger arises when more
distant powers begin playing imperial games. Empires can bring force to bear
that Israel cannot resist.
Israel therefore has this problem: It would be secure if it could confine
itself to protecting its interests from neighbors, but it cannot confine itself
because its geographic location invariably draws larger, more distant powers
toward Israel. Therefore, while Israel's military can focus only on immediate
interests, its diplomatic interests must look much further. Israel is
constantly entangled with global interests (as the globe is defined at any
point), seeking to deflect and align with broader global powers. When it fails
in this diplomacy, the consequences can be catastrophic. [1]
This
is an apt summary not only of Israel's ancient history, but of the last six
decades as well. The new country did not become a regional hegemon immediately;
several major regional wars followed the one in 1948-1949. The Six-Day War in
1967 was by far the most spectacular demonstration of Israeli ingenuity,
courage, meticulous preparation, superb intelligence and full utilization of
the element of surprise - qualities and tactics that have since become the
hallmark of the Israeli military doctrine. At the end of that war, Israel
occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and much of the
Golan Heights. In military terms, that meant securing a certain amount of
strategic depth, though also spreading out forces and stretching supply lines
across greater distances.
The October War in 1973 - known in Israel as the Yom Kippur War - saw several
dramatic reverses. The Egyptians launched it with a surprise attack across the
Suez Canal, overwhelming the Israeli defenses. The Syrians followed suit.
Recently declassified records reveal unmitigated panic at the highest levels of
the Israeli government in the first days of the war. The following excerpt from
a conversation between Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister at the time, and
Moshe Dayan, a legendary hero of the 1967 war and Meir's defense minister, is
particularly revealing:
Golda Meir: "They have no reason not to continue. They smelled blood."
Moshe Dayan: "To conquer Israel, finish off the Jews." [2]
The Israeli army eventually pulled itself together and won the war - though not
without the help of a massive weapons air lift from the United States, the new
superpower ally the Jewish State had acquired in 1967. Rumor has it that the
Israelis threatened to nuke the Arabs in order to secure American generosity,
but neither party will comment - in any case, Israel sticks to an official
policy of ambiguity on any topic related to its nuclear program.
The war in 1973 was the last big regional war, at least for several decades to
come, and was arguably a major turning point for both sides. Up until that
moment, the Arabs had never given up the hope of wiping the Jewish state off
the map; they had rejected practically every Israeli effort to negotiate, as
demonstrated by the famous three "nos" of the Khartoum summit of the Arab
League following the 1967 war: no to peace, no to recognition, and no to
negotiations.
However, just as the Arabs were finally shaken in their confidence in 1973 (and
forced to realize that Israel was there to stay), so too were the Israelis.
They had started to rely too heavily on their military prowess, which had in
part enabled the Egyptians to surprise them. More importantly, they were
shocked to see how quickly their enemies could recover from the 1967 rout with
aid from the USSR, the rival superpower of the US in the Cold War which was
raging at the time. The Soviets had generously supplied the Egyptians and the
Syrians with equipment, military doctrines, and even instructors to help train
their armies.
Gradually, the Israelis began to understand that, when heavily outnumbered and
surrounded by what they perceived as a "sea" of close to 300 million Arabs, no
victory was conclusive, and a single defeat could mean their end. This in turn
fed into an earlier fear, the fear of the destruction of the Jewish people
which had almost been realized three decades earlier during the Holocaust, and
which the initial military exploits of the Jewish State had somewhat mitigated.
Arguably, these realizations also eroded the confidence that even a
comprehensive peace treaty - something that traditionally would follow lopsided
victories such as those that had been achieved - would guarantee Israeli
security. The Israeli public became altogether disillusioned with the prospects
for lasting peace.
Peace treaties remained highly desirable - not least due to the economic
benefits and the generous American military aid they tend to entail - and
Israel sealed a couple of deals, with Egypt and Jordan, in the decades
following the Yom Kippur war. Still, just as the Arabs started to shift toward
a position that welcomed negotiations, the Israelis started to pull back.
These shifts in Israeli attitude were not immediately noticeable after 1973; it
took almost three decades, the apparent failure of the Oslo Accords in the
1990s and the Palestinian suicide terror of the Second Intifada in the early
2000s, for Israelis to become more or less apathetic to the peace process. The
prominent Canadian-Israeli journalist and academic Bernard Avishai, an
important figure in the Israeli peace movement, describes this poignantly. In a
public lecture taped in October 2008, he relates his experience returning to
Israel in 2002 after not living there since the 1970s.
I began to
notice ... that no one used the term "peace process" any more. No one would
talk about diplomatic initiatives, no one would look at the details of the
peace process any more. And I as a journalist whose last year living in Israel
was the year of the First Camp David Agreement in 1979 was a little mystified
because in 1979 we used to do nothing but think about "if Sadat does x, will
Dayan do y. If Carter does y, will ... Assad do z" ... and so on. We spent a
lot of time agonizing, torturing ourselves over the likelihood of this or that
diplomatic move, and this continued through to the 1990s and the Oslo peace
process ... No one was talking about this any more. People were talking about "hamatzav"
- "the situation." Hamatzav. And they spoke about the situation a little like
the way alcoholics speak about being alcoholic. It's a condition that you
manage, but you never expect, ever, for the rest of your existence, to cure…
[3]
For Avishai and for other prominent Israeli peace
activists, the cause of this apparent political apathy is internal rather than
external: an unresolved conflict among Israelis.
Avishai speaks of a sizeable group of ideological Jewish hardliners, "for whom
Jerusalem is the kind of anchor for a Jewish state like Iran is a Muslim state.
They believe in theocracy, they want a theocracy. That kind of person is deeply
threatened by the influx of Arabs. It's not a problem that they are coming to
Old Israel, it's they are coming to Judea."
He calls them "Judeans", and contrasts them to the "Israelis". "The real
question is: About 2/3 of Israel is Israeli. About 1/3 of Israel is Judean, and
sort of concentrated around [Jerusalem and the settlements]. Are Israelis going
to fight Judeans for the sake of Palestinians? ... These Israelis can make
peace with the Palestinian state, but these Judeans cannot."
"Fight" is a strong word to use, perhaps, and the idea of a civil war between
Israelis of different political persuasions seemed almost absurd right now.
(This is despite the occasional act of vandalism by extreme right-wing settlers
against the Israeli army or the occasional dirty diaper or rock thrown against
the Israeli police by disgruntled ultra-Orthodox youth.) Yet even so,
emigration is constantly perceived as an existential danger; besides, faced
with so many enemies, Israel usually needs all the solidarity it could muster -
anything less is understood as a jeopardy.
Consequently, Israelis are loath to take steps that could threaten their social
consensus - particularly in exchange for uncertain returns. Most have adapted
to the reality of war, and, like the inhabitants of other parts of the world
plagued by intractable conflicts, have learned to seek a certain kind of
normalcy or stability within that reality.
The Israeli government takes a similar approach, resisting fundamental changes
in the status quo, trying to seal itself off from neighbors, and maneuvering to
adapt to anything that happens in the region. There are many threats, including
very recent ones: after the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak
last February, for example, the Israeli defense establishment has felt
compelled to dust off contingency plans for a possible collapse of the peace
treaty in the future. The instability in Syria, which is threatening to bring
down the hostile but predictable Syrian regime, adds suspense.
The crisis with Iran also looms. It is hard to believe that Israel would attack
on its own, without at least tacit American consent and support. However,
Israel's ability to surprise is well-known.
Many uncertainties remain. The Israeli economy is doing well, but a new
recession in Europe and the US may reverse that in months, if not weeks. Given
that thousands of missiles are pointed at Israel's small territory, a war could
cause large-scale death and destruction.
Yet one need not see the future in dark colors only; a moment of crisis and
uncertainty is also a moment of opportunity. It is also possible to imagine
optimistic scenarios for the Middle East. On Tuesday, for example, a senior US
official announced that the death of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il had
occurred just as a deal for the halting of the country's nuclear program was
being finalized. [4] The statement is suspicious for its timing, but it does
point to a creative way to influence Iran's thinking on the nuclear issue.
After all, North Korea provides not only advanced weapons and technology to
Iran, but also a policy paradigm for a regime which has enjoyed security due to
the possession of nuclear weapons. If (late Libyan leader) Muammar Gaddafi had
not given up his nuclear program, an argument goes, he would still be alive and
in power today. If, on the other hand, the North Korean regime gives way under
pressure, that might affect the strategic calculus of the ayatollahs - and of
other regimes in the region. If it balks, could we imagine a North Korean
Spring next year?
Such a scenario, of course, is highly speculative. Realistically, as the
Rolling Stones once sung, you can't always get what you want. But then again,
you usually get at least some of what you want truly, at least some of the
time.
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