Who’s Really Isolated? He Who Misunderstands Middle East Realities
One of the mantras from Israel’s supposed foreign well-wishers is that the country is now “isolated.” You can tell the hostile ones because they quickly add that this alleged isolation is Israel’s own fault.
Sure, on the surface the first proposition makes sense. Israel has lost its two main regional friends—Turkey and Egypt—which are now hostile. The United States under its current government—but doesn’t President Barack Obama love Israel?—is no longer reliable. Isn’t rather notable that despite these two countries turning totally against Israel this has had zero effect on the Obama Administration’s totally positive policy toward both, a list to which could be added the Hizballah regime in Lebanon mentioned above. Perhaps the U.S. election in November will change this situation but there’s nothing Israel can do about that.
Yet none of this is in fact Israel’s fault. The Turkish people elected and reelected a subtly Islamist regime that loathes Israel for reasons having nothing to do with Israel. The Egyptian people elected an openly Islamist regime that loathes Israel for reasons having nothing to do with Israel. The problem is the ideology of the rulers. And the same thing applies to the United States, doesn’t it? At least in Egypt the armed forces are holding back the Muslim Brotherhood.
Erdogan, al-Mursi, and Obama are not really reacting to some Israeli mistaken policy and the problems won’t be solved by more unilateral Israeli concessions. Indeed, given the dangers of the situation—and most Israelis appreciate this—such give aways are out of the question. Nothing Israel does will fix the problem and any retreats will make matters worse.
Nor is anything Israel does likely to move negotiations with the Palestinian Authority ahead by even an inch (or, if you prefer, a centimeter).
So the situation isn’t wonderful on the surface and anyone who reads the newspapers and develops great theories in his own mind can reach that conclusion.
Yet the following development, for example, is more important than all of the anti-Israel media articles and boycott campaigns of the last year put together: This week the European Union is offering Israel upgraded relations in 60 different areas, removing all obstacles against Israel having full access to European government-controlled markets and cooperation with nine EU agencies, including Europol and the European Space Agency.
But let’s look deeper, specifically at the situation immediately on Israel’s borders, to see if things are as bad as they might seem.
Lebanon: Neighboring Lebanon is governed by Hizballah and various clients of Syria and Iran. That’s not good. Yet let’s remember that Hizballah and its allies are now trembling over what might be the impending fall of their Syrian backer. How will they fare without the Damascus dictator behind them? A Sunni Muslim dominated Syrian regime might hate Israel but it will not love or help those who aided the government that was murdering them.
And the Lebanese government has another problem. It wants to consolidate control over Lebanon and rule the country. Fomenting a war with Israel that brings Israeli warplanes to destroy the country’s power plants, bridges, airport, and pretty much every other major infrastructural project will make Hizballah hated.
A Hizballah direct offensive against Israel is not in the cards.
By the way, people are forgetting the implications of blaming Hizballah for the terrorist attack in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists. Hizballah is not some group hanging out in caves; it is the government of Lebanon. So will a U.S. government that has publicly blamed Hizballah for the attack actually take any action against Hizballah the government? Probably not but isn’t that a disgrace? Maybe after January 20 there will be someone in Washington DC who will recognize the rather bizarre contradiction in such behavior.
Then there’s tottering Syria. Israeli defense officials have pointed to the danger of jihadists operating in sections of Syria near the Golan Heights but no longer under the control of an overextended central government. True, Israel should be prepared for such a danger.
Yet the Golan border is well defended and closely watched. Terrorists are unlikely to be able to cross. As for a massive influx of Syrian refugees, why should they chance the minefields when they can more easily get out through Iraq, Lebanon, or Turkey? The long-run threat from a Sunni Islamist regime is real but then so is the discomfiting of an Iran deprived of its main ally. And Syria’s armed forces are going to be a mess for years to come. So once again this is an issue that must be taken seriously but is not all that menacing.
Let’s jump over to Egypt. Israel’s high priority is to build up its defensive forces along the border and complete the security fence there. Cross-border attacks are now a real problem. Yet they can be defended against. These attacks consist of terrorists firing across the border or advancing a very short distance into Israeli territory–mainly to fire on a single road that runs near the border–before they can be intercepted. For a real threat to exist, the situation would have to deteriorate considerably, with large terrorist units operating openly on Egyptian soil and being able to transport rockets from the Gaza Strip through miles of Egyptian territory. That could happen but we are nowhere near that point and such a scenario would mean that the Egyptian government and army were openly courting full-scale war.
As long as the army is still running Egypt, though, the danger of a major upsurge in cross-border assaults or, even worse, an attack on Israel from Hamas in the Gaza Strip that would be backed by Egypt is limited. Israel has time to prepare.
Israel’s number-one border problem remains the Gaza Strip. Hamas periodically fires mortars and rockets while trying cross-border ground attacks. Israel has gotten its ground defenses in good shape and has created a fairly effective anti-rocket system. This doesn’t make things more pleasant for citizens in that part of Israel and it is quite possible that a new war will break out in future, as happened in late 2008. Yet such a battle is not an existential threat of the type common from 1948 into the 1970s.
Regarding Jordan, the regime has survived the Arab Spring and is still committed to controlling the border, a task it has handled pretty well over forty years. Terrorism from the West Bank remains a constant threat but the fence has made it a lot harder. That’s why Israel ignores, and will continue to ignore, international criticism. Might there be a new intifadah some day? Yes, but not that soon, if only because the Palestinian Authority realizes that such a gambit risks Hamas using the violence to promote itself and kick out its nationalist rivals.
Now none of this is meant to be complacent. But it is important to understand that Israel starts off with a much higher threat level than that faced by other Western developed countries which consider almost any threat with trepidation. By Israeli standards the problems are manageable.
And that’s why the main efforts of terrorist groups are to attack Israeli citizens and installations outside the country’s borders. The chief of military intelligence has revealed that twenty such plots were broken up before the one in Bulgaria succeeded.
Israel’s “friends” abroad simply can’t seem to get out of their minds the idea that the country faces such terrible threats that it must make big concessions and beg for peace with the Palestinians on just about any terms, or try to appease hostile surrounding countries in order to stave off their wrath.
What they don’t—and at times don’t want to—understand is that the situation is the exact opposite. When forces are after you that want to wipe you off the map, you cannot depend on your “friends,” and know that no compromise solution is desired by the other side, that’s the time to look after your own interests and defense.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis across the political spectrum understand this. Consequently, it doesn’t matter at all that Western pseudo-experts, pundits, and politicians don’t. Being isolated from strategic reality is far more dangerous than being isolated because people don’t like you.
The rest of the Middle East is in turmoil, the last Arab nationalist dictatorship is not only fighting for its very life but to prevent the country for which it ruled for more than half a century from disintegrating the way the Soviet Union did – which would be an all-too likely outcome since no one wants to be ruled from Damascus. A series of mini-states emerging out of the former Syria would be weak and none of them would be in a position to conquer the others, never mind to take on Israel. Without a strong Syrian patron, Lebanon is also likely to fall apart. This again reduces the danger to Israel. Egypt to the south faces an Islamic terrorist rebellion against its rule and far from being able to sponsor terrorists against Israel, will be consumed with putting down threats to the regime instead of putting its energies against the Jewish State. In short, the upheavals of the Arab Spring have not unified anti-Israel forces in the Arab World, it has done the exact opposite. Which leaves Israel confronting the main existential danger in the form of the nuclear threat from Iran. Assuming Israel can remove it, the threat Iran poses to Israel can be reduced to one of manageable proportions. That leaves the Palestinian Arabs who are on their own and who not likely to get significant Arab backing for years to come because the Arab World has other problems to deal with to take on Israel. And Israel will grow stronger and strengthen its ties with the rest of the world during this period of transition in the Middle East. The point is given this rather broad picture of chaos, instability and the decline of potential enemies, there is no reason for Israel to expect any initiatives it could take would make things better and in fact it might even make them worse. In short, the Middle East is the one place that in the long run could best benefit from the application of the ancient Hippocratic injunction “to do no harm.” The rest of the world would be well advised to heed it.
Or in other words, why should anyone expect western pundits, experts, etc. to understand Israeli middle east realities when they refuse to see their own national interests and strategies go down the drain?
Egypt, for example, was supposed to be the cornerstone agreement which “proves” that land-for-peace works and needs to be replicated in all disputed territories. But once the US started being nice to Egyptian MB without preconditions and the EU pressed for ending the Gaza embargo, then they’ve both undercut their own land-for-peace formulas in favor of the revolutionaries. Add to that the weakness of the West to keep south Lebanon clear via the 2006 UN resolution and Israel sees it can’t put any faith in outside powers at this time.
Of course, we see efforts to “just get back to the damn table”, but since the tables lost at least two legs and is falling over (sorry for the metaphor), Israel will justifiably ignore the illogical pleas for concessions.
Just like it real life, it is sort of amusing when friends or family who are failing at marriage, finances, or in some other realm offer advice (to the successful) on how to succeed.
In an encounter last year with one of the motley Euro-fools that regularly trek to Israel to tell them what they “must” do, Israel’s outspoken Foreign Minister Lieberman essentially told them to “mind their own business”, that they should contend with Europe’s own problems before meddling in those of Israel. The reaction from Israel’s left-wing media bubble was unsurprising. Lieberman’s retort was deemed “undiplomatic” and worse, but he was essentially correct.
I must be pretty isolated. To me, the last time the Middle East made any sense was just before the Ptolemies took over Egypt.
For a real threat to exist, the situation would have to deteriorate considerably, with large terrorist units operating openly on Egyptian soil
and yesterday, 8/5/2001 there was a major attempt at attacking Israel using stolen Egyptian APCs, after killing some 16 Egyptian soldiers, one to explode and blow a hole on the border fence and the other passing through to carry out the attack which thanks to Israeli intelligence was thwatered in time.
Will Egypt do something or just paper over the incident?
Yes my friend Egypt will most definitely do something. The will remilitarize the Sinai under the rubrick of ‘fighting jihadis and terrorists’ while all the time blaming the Mossad to their own people for these attacks.
But here’s old bipolar Barry Rubin writing again. Before the election he wrote that if the Brotherhood won there would be war within three years, but now here he is writing oh things aren’t bad, they’re just dandy in fact. And don’t take any notice of those Egyptian tank divisions that soon will be coming over the Canal
Syria is not coming out this civil war a major player. Although I expect that if the MB winsthere will be plenty of pressure for a good will gesture on the Golan to ” give democratic forces there a victory”. I think Prof Rubin underestimates the Mb’s infiltration of the Egyptian military. They remain a threat.
The Syrians down a Turkish aircraft with impunity. Why now? After all the there have been incursions before , dozens of them . The answer is simple. Turkey used to have Israel as an ally. And Israel was a supremely reliable ally. Without having to worry about Israel the Syrians , with Iranian backing, view Erdogan with contempt and unconcern. Just another Obama puppet that he will abandon if the going gets tough.
Which begs the question.- Without Israel as an ally who is really isolated? Do you think Obama is viewed as a reliable ally? While the worlds press fumpfer about Israel’s ” isolation ” the truth is more apparent every day. The EU does not love Israel all of a sudden. They do however need us more than ever. One can only hope the folks running the show in Yerushalayim wake up to the strategic shift in the balance of power.
The Egyptians are learning very quickly that the status quo under Mubarak was a much better place to be.
Last week Israel issued a warning against travel to the Sianai due to an impending terrorist attack.
This was the official response from Egyptian officials:
“An Egyptian security source on Friday accused Israeli travel agencies of being behind Israeli authorities’ warnings to Israeli tourists in Sinai, who have been urged to leave.
“It has become common in Israel for travel agencies to spread these rumors in order to keep Israeli tourists inside Israel instead of going to Sinai, which causes losses for these agencies,” the source told DPA.
“These travel agencies are the main source behind warnings issued by the counter-terrorism department in Israel, which issues similar warnings at the same time every year because Israeli and Russian tourism spikes in the Sinai at this time,” the source added.
The source asserted that there are no terrorist organizations in Sinai and that the security situation is under control, adding that it is not dangerous for Israeli tourists, who have continued to visit Sinai because they know who is behind these “rumors and lies.”
We all know what happened this morning. Sixteen Egyptian soldiers, caught unprepared are dead as a result. Israel was ready with extra security and the terrorists, in 2 armored vehicles which they took from the Egyptians, were dispached at the border.
The Brotherhood has tried to cozy up to Hamas, loosen border security and travel to and from Gaza and dropped its security cooperation with Israel. This is the result.
Do you think they will get the message now?
Apparently not. It seems the Arab press and leaders are already calling it a “zionist plot”.
In your article you present what German scholars call “the status of investigation” (at the moment). You do note some vectorial stresses “now” that could lead to this or that in the future, but not right now. I understand, very briefly presented, your analysis as the following: Israel finds itself in a bind facing states ruled by Islamists (Sunni MBrotherhood and Erdogan Sultanism plus Shia Hizbollahism<-Iran). Against this religious inspired ideology Israel did nothing to initiate nor can do nothing to end hostilities, being that they arise from theological imperatives. Not the acts of Israel, rather the very "being" of Israel is the problem for the Islamists. I find Israel's relationship to the hostile Palestianians to entail interaction with Israel since the beginning, if not before 1948. Certainly some Islamism is present, but more is present. (Nevertheless, judging from the Charters of 1964 and 1968 plus occasional consultation of the Palestian Times, I doubt that the Palestian leadership wants a final two-state solution that cannot end in one-state remaining solution–and that excludes Israel.) My freely constructed summary of your analysis presents a very horrowing situation! If I were an Israeli I would be quite worried. If I were an American Jew I would share the concern. Relative to all these difficulties you interpret the current situation in such a way that you allow me to think that matters are not as immediately pressing as the doom's day picture I just painted (with your brush). BUT, add to the situation Israel's "friend" Obama and the nature of the problem is more compromised. At best Obama remains in the "doubtful" category. Your review of the "status of investigation" leaves untouched a consideration relevant to the Obama problematic. What do I mean?
For the moment and indefinitely the most important support of Israel is the USA. I suggest the thesis that Romney would offer more positive support of Israel than does "friend" Obama. If Obama, for instance, should ever seek to enact the ideas of Semantha Power relative to the Palestianians, Israel would be forced to make "compromises" that amount to a surrendering appeasement. At any rate, such dubious "friendship" in the person of Obama hovers in the background as, say, a possible vectorial force detrimental to Israel's fundamental, if not existential interests. If my analysis here holds water, I must note consternation on my part. About what?
Israel per se cannot influence the re-election or not of Obama. But American "Jews" (I will explain quotations marks below) do have a say and, if they cease with their massive vote for democrat candidates, could contribute to Obama's loss. Your analysis appears to be so clear, i.e., dangers facing Israel are so evident that I find myself wondering why American "Jews" are not up in arms with concern. From afar I can only guess. What is your analysis? I will explain the problem for me in an analogy to the Catholic revolt against Obama's "Kulturkampf" against Catholicism and Evangelicals.
The Catholic bishops of America are crystalizing opposition to the infringement of freedom of conscience. This will probably break up the "Catholic" vote which is strongly in the democrat camp in normal times. I put "Catholic" in quotation marks in order to note that the term –Catholic– does not refer to a homogeneous group of worhsipers within a tradition of loyalty to bishops and ultimately the Bishop of Rome. "The Cardinal Newman Society" sends information around and one can clearly see that there are Catholics and there are "Catholics", i.e., people affiliated with the Church yet expousing theological views that remove them from the traditional communion, indeed, place them in opposition. In other words, "Catholic" with quotation marks indicates a term that refers to bearers that are, indeed, in theological conflict, often of a fundamental nature, leading to homogeneity. I understand why the "Catholic" vote, being the vote of carriers of the term, is likely to be less pro-Bishop than I would expect. The reason is theological disagreement! Now to the "Jews".
I placed the term –(American) Jew– in quotation marks. I have the impression that the "Jews" of America share internal conflicts, particularly relative to Israel, that evince significant heterogeneity. In other words, your analysis is so evident, I would think there would be a closing of ranks amongst American Jews as I would think there would be a closing of ranks amongst American Catholics around their bishops. I know why the "closing of ranks" amongst Catholics is less overwhelming than I would have expected 50 years ago. I do not understand why said "closing of ranks" is not an identifiable phenomenon amongst Jews in America. Certainly in 1948 or the 1970s there would be a voting potential showing homogenous motivation. Or?
My consternation has the following origins: 1) Your analysis that is so evident that I cannot see how someone, particularly an American Jew, could overlook the problematic. 2) From the news, both US and from what I read in the Israeli press, I have the "impression" (which might be false) that there exists today a diverse reaction by "Jews" to Obama's evident disadvantage for Israeli interests. The result is that I do not understand the "why" of said diversity (as I do understand the "why" of the non-homogeneous support of the Catholic bishops). Is there a reason for the lack of a political "closing of ranks" or have I misjudged the situation?
The assumption by Leonard of diversity in the American Jewish community is of course justified, although the polls indicate that most Jews, including Jewish youth (contrary to Peter Beinart), do indeed take Israel’s security and well-being very seriously indeed. It will be a major factor in Jewish voting. But it contests with a widespread Jewish adherence to liberal left values, established already in the first generations of those who fled extremely authoritarian and racist societies in eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For such Jews opting for a new life in the New World, liberal left values reflected an optimism that oppressive governments and unjust social conditions could be improved, for human nature was or should be basically good. Conservatives tend to be more sceptical about the improvability of humanity, and therefore more cherishing of the stabilities achieved through present socio-political institutions. (At that time in the U.S., however, most of the elite or central socio-political institutions were not welcoming to Jews, so conservative advocacy of them did not resonate so much to most Jews.)
In any event, at present for very many assimilated and secularized American Jews “universalistic” and “progressive” left liberalism is practically a religion. It is a secular “religion” as important as, or for some few highly vocal figures (lionized and encouraged in the general media, showing yet anew a kind of distaste for and distancing of more self-affirmative Jewish spokespersons) even more important than, traditional Jewish religious and communal allegiances. Naturally there are many gradations in this tendency, but it is undeniably a major focus of value-conflict in the Jewish community.
In other words, the tensions are quite similar after all to those described by “Leonard” above that are tearing apart the Christian community as well; in both cases the conflicts are theological-ideological in nature, with most of the mainstream church denominations increasingly taken over by quasi-secularist “multi-culturalist” (or fully secularist in implication) “universalistic” left liberal progressives highly critical of traditional Western civilization and its accomplishments, while the most traditionalist, formerly mainstream Christian religious communities, proud of their past and present accomplishments, have become a counter-culture within U.S. Christendom. Interestingly, too, some of the chief symptoms of this chasm in the Christian community are shown in heated polemics in mainstream churches precisely about Israel, Jews, and Christian Zionism.
The whole thing is related to a historic fundamental moral and ideational crisis in Western civilization itself, amounting to a breakdown in civilizational self-confidence. As Robin Shepherd has shown in his A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel (2009) in regard to the much further advanced British and wider European version of the same moral and political disintegration, this crisis is encapsulated in and symbolically expressed through the anti-Zionism of so much of the centrist liberal left today, who make up the “elite” of educational institutions, political offices, cultural leaders and artists, journalists and media commentators, and the mainstream churches too.
I know that that sounds like over-dramatization of the significance of anti-Zionism and the role of ideas about “Jews” in wider cultural discourse (however evident it should be to readers of the British press, especially The Guardian newspaper, or Le Monde in France, etc.), but it should not, because Jews after all are central to the internal Christian and therefore mainstream Western self-identification and self-definition, from the New Testament to the present day. E.g., it is amazing to see how prominently (and favorably) Jewish Scriptures, and therefore often “Jews” and “Judaism,” featured in the writings of early modern mostly Protestant formulators of liberal democracy itself from the 15th century onwards, and then, with a more ranting type of negativity, in the radical secularism and more statist theorists of the late 18th century French Enlightenment: e.g., Voltaire was a fanatical antisemite who identified “Judaism” with the Catholic Church that he wished to “erase.” All of the major crises of Christian faith and turning points in Christian theology and worldview have made much use of themes centered on the Jewish people, religion, and scriptures, in their internal debates down through the ages, because Christianity claims derivation from and appropriation of the Jewish Scriptures, and Jews and Judaism symbolize major and central aspects of the Christian religion itself. The contemporary disproportionate and emphatic discourse about Israel and Zionism in Western media, elite circles and churches shows that fundamental aspects of present-day Western religion and values are symbolically involved.
The liberal Jews in the American Jewish community, like everyone else in the West, inherit this highly charged legacy, and some of the more assimilated amongst them are quite willing to betray allegedly inherently problematic Jewish community interests and autonomy for the sake of the aforesaid egalitarian “universalist” left liberal values. These values impugn forthright pride in the Western civilizational and moral legacy, and favor views that are critical of it. Israel can and even must therefore be criticised, as a paradigm Western liberal democracy surrounded by “understandably” hostile anti-Western forces, for alleged sins easily overlooked or not even accepted as such when they and far worse are done by Israel’s authoritarian enemies. Obama’s tendency to put the public pressure and onus of concessions solely on Israel, and his uncritical promotion of links to the Palestinian and other Muslim militant groups, can therefore be excused or deemphasized by such Jews in favor of approval of his general ideologically leftist “universalistic” agenda.
The iranian threat towards Israel and the sunni arab countries is totally ignored, the passivity of Obama and Europe in the syrian crisis is 10 times more shocking than the passivity of the western democracies in the spanish civil war.Is it possible that a crippled Russia unable to send a significant military force to Assad is able to withstand the syrian crisis .The main operator is iran and despite all the prattling of BHO and Ms Clinton , the iran regime is the actual winner, when it should be the loser . I do not share Mr Rubin optimism.The western countries are much too weak .