The most significant threat to
Israel would, of course, be military. International criticism is not without
significance, but nations do not change direction absent direct threats to their
interests. But powers outside the region are unlikely to exert military power
against Israel, and even significant economic or political sanctions are
unlikely to happen. Apart from the desire of outside powers to limit their
involvement, this is rooted in the fact that significant actions are unlikely
from inside the region either.
The first
generations of Israelis lived under the threat of conventional military defeat
by neighbouring countries. More recent generations still faced threats, but not
this one. Israel is operating in an advantageous strategic context save for the
arena of public opinion and diplomatic relations and the question of Iranian
nuclear weapons. All of these issues are significant, but none is as immediate a
threat as the specter of a defeat in conventional warfare had been. Israel’s
regional enemies are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such
divergent relations with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel does
not exist — and is unlikely to arise in the near future. -- George
Friedman
By George
Friedman
Last week’s events off the coast
of Israel continue to resonate. Turkish-Israeli relations have not quite
collapsed since then but are at their lowest level since Israel’s founding.
U.S.-Israeli tensions have emerged, and European hostility toward Israel
continues to intensify. The question has now become whether substantial
consequences will follow from the incident. Put differently, the question is
whether and how it will be exploited beyond the arena of public opinion.
The most significant threat to
Israel would, of course, be military. International criticism is not without
significance, but nations do not change direction absent direct threats to their
interests. But powers outside the region are unlikely to exert military power
against Israel, and even significant economic or political sanctions are
unlikely to happen. Apart from the desire of outside powers to limit their
involvement, this is rooted in the fact that significant actions are unlikely
from inside the region either.
The first generations of
Israelis lived under the threat of conventional military defeat by neighbouring
countries. More recent generations still faced threats, but not this one. Israel
is operating in an advantageous strategic context save for the arena of public
opinion and diplomatic relations and the question of Iranian nuclear weapons.
All of these issues are significant, but none is as immediate a threat as the
specter of a defeat in conventional warfare had been. Israel’s regional enemies
are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such divergent relations
with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel does not exist — and is
unlikely to arise in the near future.
Given this, the probability of
an effective, as opposed to rhetorical, shift in the behavior of powers outside
the region is unlikely. At every level, Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of
forming even a partial coalition against Israel. Israel is not forced to
calibrate its actions with an eye toward regional consequences, explaining
Israel’s willingness to accept broad international condemnation.
Palestinian
Divisions
To begin to understand how
deeply the Arabs are split, simply consider the split among the Palestinians
themselves. They are currently divided between two very different and hostile
factions. On one side is Fatah, which dominates the West Bank. On the other side
is Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip. Aside from the geographic division of
the Palestinian territories — which causes the Palestinians to behave almost as
if they comprised two separate and hostile countries — the two groups have
profoundly different ideologies.
Fatah arose from the secular,
socialist, Arab-nationalist and militarist movement of Egyptian President Gamal
Abdul Nasser in the 1950s. Created in the 1960s, Fatah was closely aligned with
the Soviet Union. It was the dominant, though far from the only, faction in the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was an umbrella group that
brought together the highly fragmented elements of the Palestinian movement.
Yasser Arafat long dominated Fatah; his death left Fatah without a charismatic
leader, but with a strong bureaucracy increasingly devoid of a coherent ideology
or strategy.
Hamas arose from the Islamist
movement. It was driven by religious motivations quite alien from Fatah and
hostile to it. For Hamas, the liberation of Palestine was not simply a
nationalist imperative, but also a religious requirement. Hamas was also hostile
to what it saw as the financial corruption Arafat brought to the Palestinian
movement, as well as to Fatah’s secularism.
Hamas and Fatah are playing a
zero-sum game. Given their inability to form a coalition and their mutual desire
for the other to fail, a victory for one is a defeat for the other. This means
that whatever public statements Fatah makes, the current international focus on
Gaza and Hamas weakens Fatah. And this means that at some point, Fatah will try
to undermine the political gains the flotilla has offered
Hamas.
The Palestinians’ deep
geographic, ideological and historical divisions occasionally flare up into
violence. Their movement has always been split, its single greatest weakness.
Though revolutionary movements frequently are torn by sectarianism, these
divisions are so deep that even without Israeli manipulation, the threat the
Palestinians pose to the Israelis is diminished. With manipulation, the Israelis
can pit Fatah against Hamas.
The Arab States and the
Palestinians
The split within the
Palestinians is also reflected in divergent opinions among what used to be
called the confrontation states surrounding Israel — Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
Egypt, for example, is directly
hostile to Hamas, a religious movement amid a sea of essentially secular Arab
states. Hamas’ roots are in Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim
Brotherhood, which the Egyptian state has historically considered its main
domestic threat. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime has moved
aggressively against Egyptian Islamists and sees Hamas’ ideology as a threat, as
it could spread back to Egypt. For this and other reasons, Egypt has maintained
its own blockade of Gaza. Egypt is much closer to Fatah, whose ideology derives
from Egyptian secularism, and for this reason, Hamas deeply distrusts Cairo.
Jordan views Fatah with deep
distrust. In 1970, Fatah under Arafat tried to stage a revolution against the
Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. The resulting massacres, referred to as Black
September, cost about 10,000 Palestinian lives. Fatah has never truly forgiven
Jordan for Black September, and the Jordanians have never really trusted Fatah
since then. The idea of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank
unsettles the Hashemite regime, as Jordan’s population is mostly Palestinian.
Meanwhile, Hamas with its Islamist ideology worries Jordan, which has had its
own problems with the Muslim Brotherhood. So rhetoric aside, the Jordanians are
uneasy at best with the Palestinians, and despite years of Israeli-Palestinian
hostility, Jordan (and Egypt) has a peace treaty with Israel that remains in
place.
Syria is far more interested in
Lebanon than it is in the Palestinians. Its co-sponsorship (along with Iran) of
Hezbollah has more to do with Syria’s desire to dominate Lebanon than it does
with Hezbollah as an anti-Israeli force. Indeed, whenever fighting breaks out
between Hezbollah and Israel, the Syrians get nervous and their tensions with
Iran increase. And of course, while Hezbollah is anti-Israeli, it is not a
Palestinian movement. It is a Lebanese Shiite movement. Most Palestinians are
Sunni, and while they share a common goal — the destruction of Israel — it is
not clear that Hezbollah would want the same kind of regime in Palestine that
either Hamas or Fatah would want. So Syria is playing a side game with an
anti-Israeli movement that isn’t Palestinian, while also maintaining relations
with both factions of the Palestinian movement.
Outside the confrontation
states, the Saudis and other Arabian Peninsula regimes remember the threat that
Nasser and the PLO posed to their regimes. They do not easily forgive, and their
support for Fatah comes in full awareness of the potential destabilizing
influence of the Palestinians. And while the Iranians would love to have
influence over the Palestinians, Tehran is more than 1,000 miles away. Sometimes
Iranian arms get through to the Palestinians. But Fatah doesn’t trust the
Iranians, and Hamas, though a religious movement, is Sunni while Iran is Shiite.
Hamas and the Iranians may cooperate on some tactical issues, but they do not
share the same vision.
Israel’s Short-term Free Hand
and Long-term Challenge
Given this environment, it is
extremely difficult to translate hostility to Israeli policies in Europe and
other areas into meaningful levers against Israel. Under these circumstances,
the Israelis see the consequences of actions that excite hostility toward Israel
from the Arabs and the rest of the world as less dangerous than losing control
of Gaza. The more independent Gaza becomes, the greater the threat it poses to
Israel. The suppression of Gaza is much safer and is something Fatah ultimately
supports, Egypt participates in, Jordan is relieved by and Syria is ultimately
indifferent to.
Nations base their actions on
risks and rewards. The configuration of the Palestinians and Arabs rewards
Israeli assertiveness and provides few rewards for caution. The Israelis do not
see global hostility toward Israel translating into a meaningful threat because
the Arab reality cancels it out. Therefore, relieving pressure on Hamas makes no
sense to the Israelis. Doing so would be as likely to alienate Fatah and Egypt
as it would to satisfy the Swedes, for example. As Israel has less interest in
the Swedes than in Egypt and Fatah, it proceeds as it has.
A single point sums up the story
of Israel and the Gaza blockade-runners: Not one Egyptian aircraft threatened
the Israeli naval vessels, nor did any Syrian warship approach the intercept
point. The Israelis could be certain of complete command of the sea and air
without challenge. And this underscores how the Arab countries no longer have a
military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will nor interest to
acquire one. Where Egyptian and Syrian forces posed a profound threat to Israeli
forces in 1973, no such threat exists now. Israel has a completely free hand in
the region militarily; it does not have to take into account military
counteraction. The threat posed by intifada, suicide bombers, rockets from
Lebanon and Gaza, and Hezbollah fighters is real, but it does not threaten the
survival of Israel the way the threat from Egypt and Syria once did (and the
Israelis see actions like the Gaza blockade as actually reducing the threat of
intifada, suicide bombers and rockets). Non-state actors simply lack the force
needed to reach this threshold. When we search for the reasons behind Israeli
actions, it is this singular military fact that explains Israeli
decision-making.
And while the break between
Turkey and Israel is real, Turkey alone cannot bring significant pressure to
bear on Israel beyond the sphere of public opinion and diplomacy because of the
profound divisions in the region. Turkey has the option to reduce or end
cooperation with Israel, but it does not have potential allies in the Arab world
it would need against Israel. Israel therefore feels buffered against the
Turkish reaction. Though its relationship with Turkey is significant to Israel,
it is clearly not significant enough for Israel to give in on the blockade and
accept the risks from Gaza.
At present, Israel takes the
same view of the United States. While the United States became essential to
Israeli security after 1967, Israel is far less dependent on the United States
today. The quantity of aid the United States supplies Israel has shrunk in
significance as the Israeli economy has grown. In the long run, a split with the
United States would be significant, but interestingly, in the short run, the
Israelis would be able to function quite effectively.
Israel does, however, face this
strategic problem: In the short run, it has freedom of action, but its actions
could change the strategic framework in which it operates over the long run. The
most significant threat to Israel is not world opinion; though not trivial,
world opinion is not decisive. The threat to Israel is that its actions will
generate forces in the Arab world that eventually change the balance of power.
The politico-military consequences of public opinion is the key question, and it
is in this context that Israel must evaluate its split with Turkey.
The most important change for
Israel would not be unity among the Palestinians, but a shift in Egyptian policy
back toward the position it held prior to Camp David. Egypt is the center of
gravity of the Arab world, the largest country and formerly the driving force
behind Arab unity. It was the power Israel feared above all others. But Egypt
under Mubarak has shifted its stance versus the Palestinians, and far more
important, allowed Egypt’s military capability to atrophy.
Should Mubarak’s successor
choose to align with these forces and move to rebuild Egypt’s military
capability, however, Israel would face a very different regional equation. A
hostile Turkey aligned with Egypt could speed Egyptian military recovery and
create a significant threat to Israel. Turkish sponsorship of Syrian military
expansion would increase the pressure further. Imagine a world in which the
Egyptians, Syrians and Turks formed a coalition that revived the Arab threat to
Israel and the United States returned to its position of the 1950s when it did
not materially support Israel, and it becomes clear that Turkey’s emerging power
combined with a political shift in the Arab world could represent a profound
danger to Israel.
Where there is no balance of
power, the dominant nation can act freely. The problem with this is that doing
so tends to force neighbors to try to create a balance of power. Egypt and Syria
were not a negligible threat to Israel in the past. It is in Israel’s interest
to keep them passive. The Israelis can’t dismiss the threat that its actions
could trigger political processes that cause these countries to revert to prior
behavior. They still remember what underestimating Egypt and Syria cost them in
1973. It is remarkable how rapidly military capabilities can revive: Recall that
the Egyptian army was shattered in 1967, but by 1973 was able to mount an
offensive that frightened Israel quite a bit.
The Israelis have the upper hand
in the short term. What they must calculate is whether they will retain the
upper hand if they continue on their course. Division in the Arab world,
including among the Palestinians, cannot disappear overnight, nor can it quickly
generate a strategic military threat. But the current configuration of the Arab
world is not fixed. Therefore, defusing the current crisis would seem to be a
long-term strategic necessity for Israel.
Israel’s actions have generated
shifts in public opinion and diplomacy regionally and globally. The Israelis are
calculating that these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the
strategic posture of the Arab world. If they are wrong about this, recent
actions will have been a significant strategic error. If they are right, then
this is simply another passing incident. In the end, the profound divisions in
the Arab world both protect Israel and make diplomatic solutions to its
challenge almost impossible — you don’t need to fight forces that are so
divided, but it is very difficult to negotiate comprehensively with a group that
lacks anything approaching a unified voice.
Source:
stratfor.com
9:41 PM
Sultan Shahin
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