“Don’t Panic” –Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
What should Israel’s policy and
priorities be in President Barack Obama’s second term? There will be two
key themes: minimize antagonism and cope with the negative consequences
of U.S. regional policy.
Protect bilateral relations.
Israel’s government must ensure
continued U.S. aid; intelligence-sharing; and other forms of
cooperation. Obama will almost certainly maintain these programs. This
status quo situation is protected by support
for Israel in Congress and the Defense Department. Whatever verbal
friction or temporary tempests taking place—including signs of Obama’s
personal dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--should
not change this.
Keep Obama from damaging Israel’s situation in regard to the Palestinians.
Obama must decide whether to put a
priority on the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” meaning pressure on
Israel to make concessions while the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t
keep its commitments and makes
no compromises.
Obama probably won’t behave this way.
His botched attempt on Israel-Palestinian peacemaking during the first
term is the only such failure he has ever acknowledged. Obama knows
success is unlikely and that neither
the PA nor Arab states will help him.
There are many more pressing issues for
U.S. policy. Dramatic changes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria, among
other places, take center stage. When Obama wants to show the United
States isn’t too close to
Israel, thinking that will make Muslims like him, he can do so by
relatively symbolic, minor measures.
At any rate, the Israeli government is
quite capable of offering cooperation, making concessions on relatively
unimportant issues, stalling for time, and essentially calling the PA’s
bluff. It should be added
that by creating a far more dangerous regional situation, Obama has made
major Israeli concessions on territory unthinkable. In the end, though,
nothing will happen on the peace process front.
3. How
will Obama handle a regional situation increasingly characterized by
revolutionary Islamist movements in power or battling for
it?
Radical regimes now exist in Egypt, the
Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey, though Obama doesn’t see this.
Obama is going to be supportive for these governments except for Hamas
in the Gaza Strip. Even
there, Hamas benefits from U.S. help and tolerance for its allied regime
in Egypt.
Given Obama’s policy, the Islamists are
likely to become stronger. Aside from consolidation and increasing
confidence for those five governments, the most likely Islamist advance
is the seizure of power in Syria.
And since these same people are
dedicated to Israel’s destruction and often speak openly about
committing genocide against Jews generally, a U.S. policy that is
simultaneously weak and friendly toward its most
fanatical enemies is a huge strategic problem for Israel.
During Obama’s second term, Israel is
likely to face sporadic attacks from the Gaza Strip against which it
will periodically have to retaliate against. Obama will remain aloof,
issuing statements but giving no
real support. This isn’t a good situation but it is a manageable one.
The real difficulty would come if Hamas
launches an all-out attack on Israel as it did in late 2008. But this
time there would be a significant difference. Hamas can expect some
level of Egyptian support. That
could take many forms:
Hamas headquarters, weapons’
storehouses, and other facilities being moved onto Egyptian territory so
that Israel cannot touch them; a massive flow of arms, weapons, and
money across the border financed in part
by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood; an influx of Egyptian volunteers to
fight alongside Hamas, whose death would lead to howls of revenge in
Egypt and other such measures.
Beyond this, Egypt could escalate into
allowing—it is already doing little to prevent them—cross-border
terrorist attacks on Israel. It is conceivable that demands from
Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood cadre,
the regime’s own revolutionary enthusiasm, the need to distract popular
attention from domestic failures, and ideological hysteria, Egypt could
end up in a war-like situation or even an open war with Israel.
That would be more likely if Israel had to send military forces into the Gaza Strip as happened in 2009.
The Egyptian military, the only bulwark
against such an adventurous Egyptian policy, has already been tamed by
the Muslim Brotherhood regime and Israel cannot depend on the United
States to press sufficiently
hard for enforcement of the treaty or to deter Egypt.
As a result, Israel will have to be
ready to fight such a smaller or bigger war by itself. If a Muslim
Brotherhood-dominated regime were to be in power in Syria, it could join
in and a new war take place.
In fact, for the first time in almost
forty years, under Obama, Israel cannot depend on real U.S. support or
protection against any Arab threat or aggression. And so Israel, while
striving to get Obama to do
as much as possible, will just have to take care of itself. It is
capable of doing so.
44. Iran and
the Nuclear Issue
Although it is possible to pretend
differently, the reality is that Obama will never attack Iranian nuclear
installations or support such an Israeli attack. This situation, among
other factors, makes an Israeli
attack on Iran extremely unlikely. That in itself is not necessarily a
bad thing. The problem is that Obama will not launch a credible and
systematic effort to contain Iran’s aggressive policy, as opposed to
putting in place early-warning stations and defensive
missiles in the Gulf and verbal threats of retaliation if Iran uses
nuclear weapons.
Ironically, the solution—aside from
Israel’s own defensive efforts—is the very Sunni Islamist power that
also threatens Israel. Given the rise of Sunni Islamism and the Syrian
civil war, Iran’s influence is going
to be largely restricted to Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Iraq.
But what if Israel perceives a credible
threat from a nuclear-armed Iran? How much help can it expect from
Obama? Of course, he will say the right things. Yet the U.S. judgment on
what constitutes a real threat
which must be countered even by military force is going to differ
sharply from that of Israel. As long as it is just a question of Iran
getting nuclear weapons, that disagreement matters less. If it comes to a
possibility of Iran using nuclear weapons that
gap will be a matter of life and death.
So Obama’s reelection is a serious
problem for Israel, albeit not a catastrophe or a threat to the state’s
existence. For the first time in more than four decades, Israeli
leaders—and not just Netanyahu-- understand
that the country cannot depend on the United States as a protector.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His
latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other
recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh
edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle
East (Wiley), and The
Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website
of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin
Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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