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Israel: A Regional Earthquake?
Leslie Susser
The Prime Minister's national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy, is not usually given to rosy visions. So when the former Mossad chief laid out a utopian picture of the Mideast after a U.S. invasion of Iraq, he startled the top defense and strategic experts from over 40 countries who formed his audience.
Addressing the prestigious Munich Conference on Security Policy in early February, Halevy spoke of "shock-waves" from a post-Saddam Baghdad having "wide-ranging effects in Teheran, Damascus and Ramallah." He envisaged a post-Arafat Palestinian leadership negotiating in good faith with Israel, and a progressive and prosperous Iraq rejoining the family of nations. Syria, no longer feeling a need to compete with Iraq, would loosen its ties with Iran, leading to a weakening of the Iranian hold in South Lebanon, Halevy predicted. Syria would withdraw from Lebanon, and Hizballah would be disarmed.
"Syria could feel comfortable in allowing Lebanon true freedom, withdrawing the 30,000-odd Syrian soldiers from Lebanese territory and opening an embassy in Beirut for the very first time since Lebanon�s independence," he elaborated. And "the departure of Syrian and Iranian forces from Lebanese soil, accompanied by the disarmament of Hizballah, could enable Lebanon to make peace with Israel."
Even as the U.S. ran into a wave of diplomatic objections from erstwhile allies and world protests, Halevy was not the only top Israeli security official speaking in such an optimistic vein of the war that the Bush administration seeks to launch and of its aftermath. Military Chief of Staff Moshe Ya�alon has spoken of a "regional earthquake" creating a "new regional order," and predicted the end of the intifada. "Remember," he said in an interview with the Yediot Aharonot daily, "the last Palestinian intifada ended in 1991, with the last Gulf War."
And Amos Gilad, the newly appointed "national commentator" on the war with Iraq -- deputed to reassure Israelis as the conflict progresses -- called the imminent American strike a "miracle," which would help solve Israel�s dire security and economic problems.
But how likely is the American attack, if it indeed takes place, to have the kind of impact defense officials hope for? Will it really prove to be the deus ex machina that puts Israeli-Palestinian negotiations back on track and helps spark an economic recovery? Or should Israeli leaders also be considering Ariel Sharon�s attempts to restructure the Middle East through the 1982 war in Lebanon, which failed abysmally?
One of the skeptics is Maj. Gen. Ya�akov Amidror, a former head of army intelligence research, on retirement leave from the IDF, and just back from a stint in the U.S. as a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Amidror, though a political hawk, argues that American plans for remaking the Middle East through the war in Iraq could fail.
The Americans have a four-stage master plan, he says: first, topple Saddam and destroy Iraq�s weapons of mass destruction; second, set up a new regime to stabilize Iraq; third, democratize Iraq; and fourth, use the successful Iraqi model to democratize the Middle East as a whole. The underlying goal, Amidror says, is to neutralize global terror by turning the Middle East into a conglomeration of Western-oriented societies in which Al-Qaeda-style terror would have no breeding ground. And the historic models for successful democratization of totalitarian societies are Germany and Japan after World War II and Eastern Europe after the Soviet collapse.
"Now the Americans are saying, �If we don�t democratize the Arab and Islamic world, the war against terror will go on for ever,�" Amidror told The Jerusalem Report. "The first move in democratizing the Arab and Islamic world must be democracy in the Middle East. And because of the threat posed by its weapons of mass destruction, there�s no better place to start than Iraq."
But the American analogy between Eastern Europe and the Mideast is misguided, Amidror says, and a "domino effect" after Iraq is most unlikely. "In Eastern Europe, as soon as the Soviet chains were removed, all the countries there evolved towards more open societies. In the Middle East, there is no such single set of chains. Here, each country stands on its own. The regimes are not dependent on some external power that is about to collapse."
Amidror believes the Americans have every chance of succeeding in the first phases of their grand plan: toppling Saddam, destroying his weapons of mass destruction and stabilizing Iraq. That would be no mean achievement but, he says, the impact on the region as a whole will be much slower in coming than many American and Israeli analysts believe. "Maybe in the initial stages we�ll see signs of seemingly greater openness by Arab countries and the Palestinians toward Israel. But as soon as they see that [the Israeli-Arab conflict] is not what the American war is all about, there won�t be a significant change."
Prof. Ephraim Inbar, a Mideast strategic analyst at Bar-Ilan University, suggests that the war will provide at least one obvious short-term benefit for Israel: toppling Saddam Hussein. "Whatever comes after Saddam," says Inbar, "will be better with regard to weapons of mass destruction and the long-range missiles that can reach Israel."
But like Amidror, Inbar, also a political right-winger, doubts whether the U.S. will achieve its longer-term goal of democratizing the entire Middle East. As for the other ripple effects, Inbar believes some are already being felt. For example, that�s how he reads moves among Palestinians to sideline Yasser Arafat. "With America projecting power and calling the shots, the Palestinians may feel they have little choice but to get rid of Arafat," he says.
Indeed, efforts in February by the U.S. and its EU, Russian and U.N. partners in the "quartet" seemed to be easing Arafat out to make way for a more pragmatic leadership. After Terje Larsen, the U.N. representative to the Mideast, told him he could choose between being the Nelson Mandela of the Palestinian revolution, its venerated elder statesman, or a Haile Selassie languishing in exile, Arafat agreed to appoint a prime minister, who will presumably assume most of his authority.
Amidror, however, remains unconvinced. He believes that as long as Arafat is around, in whatever capacity, he will be in charge; and the upshot will be ongoing terror and diplomatic deadlock.
Immediately after Iraq, Amidror predicts, "the Americans will want to show their allies in Europe and the Middle East that they are not one-sided and that they are taking steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute." But, in his view, there will be no quick fix. Only if Israel insists that the Palestinians get no reward for vio-lence will there be progress, he says. That, and the changes in Iraq, could, over time, lead to a breakthrough. "The combination of these two things, the Iraqi model and Israeli firmness, could bring about changes in Palestinian society and a turning away from terror, but it will be a long process."
Amidror also questions official Israeli estimates of quick progress after war in Iraq on Israel�s northern border, with Syria, Lebanon and the Hizballah. "Why should toppling Saddam weaken ties between Syria and Iran, their presence in southern Lebanon or their support for the Hizballah?" he asks rhetorically.
The immediate problem for Israel along the northern border is the armed Hizballah presence, which Chief of Staff Ya�alon says has become "intolerable." According to IDF estimates, the organization now has around 1,000 Katyusha rockets trained on targets in Israel up to 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the border. Ya�alon says openly that this situation will have to change after the war in Iraq, "either through agreement or through a military operation."
Again, Amidror is skeptical. The U.S., he says, will not approve a preemptive Israeli strike against Hizballah. And even if the Americans were to define Hizballah as a dangerous terrorist organization and confront the guerrillas, it would not be in Israel�s interest for "American blood to be spilled fighting on Israel�s northern border."
The only way to disarm the Hizballah, he argues, is for America to put intense pressure on Syria. "If they pressure Damascus, excellent. They are a superpower and they will have won in Iraq. But if there is deterioration into war against Hizballah, it is in our interest that we fight the war. We cannot afford to create an image of a country that, whenever it has a military problem, calls in the Americans," he says. "We must persuade the Americans of the urgency, not only for us but for the Middle East as a whole, of the need to disarm the Hizballah, Iran�s sole success in exporting its revolution. There is a wide common interest that it should not look like an Iranian success."
Inbar -- accepting some of Halevy�s optimism -- suggests that a post-Saddam American presence in Iraq, between the Syrians and the Iranians, and their fear of being next on America�s list, might in itself lead to dramatic changes in South Leba-non. And, he adds, if the U.S. seriously pushes its democracy agenda, it might force the Syrians out of Lebanon, opening the way to an Israeli-Lebanese accommodation. He goes even further: "If the Syrians pull out of Lebanon, there could be pressure on them to negotiate with Israel. And if they are serious about it, even Sharon will pay the price, withdrawing from the Golan Heights to more or less the 1967 borders."
Both Inbar and Amidror agree that after a U.S.-Iraq war, Iran, with its nuclear program, will remain a major source of concern for Israel. But
Inbar expects the ruling mullahs to become more pro-American in their orientation, and therefore less dangerous to Israel. "There is already a degree of Iranian bandwagoning," he says.
Amidror thinks change in Iran will come from the grass roots, but that it will take time and won�t be immediately affected by the war in Iraq. Nor does he see the Americans getting directly involved in Iran, despite President Bush�s including it on his "axis of evil." "Will the Americans deal with every country that they know is about to go nuclear?" he asks. "I doubt it. They will hope for the domino effect. They will disseminate propaganda by radio. But they won�t pay the price of war against Iran."
As for the Israeli economy, the hope is that it will benefit greatly if war in Iraq does help snuff out the intifada. Government officials believe the return of investors and tourists to a safer Israel would recharge the stagnant economy. To this Inbar adds another potential economic catalyst: cheaper oil in the post-Saddam period. "If the Americans win the war and lift all the economic sanctions on Iraq, there will be lots of oil in the market and prices will go down. That will be good for the world economy and therefore for Israel too. It would also weaken the Arabs� economic clout."
In his critique of the official Israeli line, even Amidror assumes at least a partial American victory in Iraq. But what if the Americans bog down in Iraq trying to do too much? What if their plans to democratize the entire region exacerbate the conflict between Islam and the West, rather than tame it?
Shlomo Brom, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, argues that a lengthy U.S. military government in Iraq could strengthen the perception of the war as Western colonialism in new clothing. "The result will be like Israel in Lebanon in 1982. It started with the population throwing rice and flowers and ended with the Hizballah." Then, opposing forces could be set in train that make Halevy�s optimistic comments in Munich look like so much pie in the sky and place Israel under greater threat than it was before the war started.
Another former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit reportedly told interlocutors in the U.S. recently that the consequences of a failed attempt to democratize the Middle East could be diasastrous for Israel. An unstable region with regimes falling all through it, he apparently said, could trigger a veritable world war between the U.S. and the Arab world -- hardly a rosy vision for Israel.
March 10, 2003
Israel
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