[Peace-discuss] Update on Israel

[Brussel Morton K.]

Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University
Oakland, CA, July 22, 2008

Responding to the Israeli voices and actions noisily advocating a  
preemptive strike against Iran, Ha-Aretz columnist Uzi Benziman (July  
21, 2008) writes, "Before bombing Iran, it would be best [for Israel]  
to solve the conflict with the Palestinians. By the way, there does  
appear to be a link between the two threats."  While Benziman doesn't  
specify the links, there are at least two significant ones.

First, the effect of foregrounding the Iranian nuclear threat, which  
both the International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence  
agencies say does not now exist, has been to take the spotlight off  
Israel's continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories.  The  
agreement brokered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to open the  
Gaza Strip crossings last November was only a partial palliative at  
best.  No political progress has been made on the Gaza front since  
Israeli and the US continue to isolate and reject negotiations with  
Hamas, which they simplemindedly define as a terrorist organization  
allied to Iran. According to the latest report of the Crisis Group,  
in the West Bank, Israel has not loosened its closure regime or  
halted its military incursions.  The economy has not grown much.  And  
the Palestinian Authority has used harsh tactics against Hamas  
sympathizers, including torture, that undermine good governance.   
Meanwhile, the negotiations launched at Annapolis in November 2007  
are on life support and President Bush is taking no heroic measures  
to resuscitate them.

Second, the political forces in the United States who have been  
loudest in advocating a confrontational stance towards Iran are the  
same forces that have obstructed Palestinian-Israeli peace.   
Prominent among them are AIPAC, the ADL, the ZOA, the Council of  
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and right wing  
evangelical Protestants exemplified by John Hagee's Christians United  
for Israel.

On June 8 Shaul Mofaz, Minister of Transportation and former defense  
minister and IDF chief-of-staff, proclaimed that an Israeli attack on  
Iran was becoming "unavoidable."  That same week the Israeli air  
force carried out a practice bombing run on Iran in the eastern  
Mediterranean.  Two weeks later Israeli officials "leaked" the news  
of the exercise.

Mofaz is positioning himself as the security hawk in the potential  
contest to succeed Ehud Olmert as Prime Minister and leader of the  
Kadima party should Olmert be forced to resign due to ongoing  
investigations of alleged financial corruption.  Like President Bush  
and Vice-President Cheney, both Mofaz and Prime Minister Olmert  
reject the findings of the US National Intelligence Estimate released  
in December 2007 which concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons  
program in 2003.  Olmert and Mofaz also apparently dismiss the views  
of former Mossad director Ephraim Halevy, who said in a public  
lecture last October that the Iranian threat "is substantive, but not  
existential" (Ha-Aretz, Oct. 18, 2007).

Not to be outdone by Mofaz's blustering, Olmert made a not-so-secret  
visit to Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona on July 1 which served to  
advertise its nuclear capacity.  Israel's nuclear weapons are a major  
source of regional insecurity, and its neighbors often express their  
concern about their danger.  Doesn't Olmert's visit then seem  
counterproductive?  Isn't it notable that, as was the case before the  
U.S. invasion of Iraq, intelligence professionals have a more sober  
analysis than the political leaders to whom they report and whose  
policies are supposedly based on that analysis?

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini, another aspirant for Olmert's job, is  
positioning herself as the "moderate" in the Kadima leadership.  She  
has criticized Olmert's exaggeration of the Iranian threat.  Shortly  
after Halevy publicly downplayed the Iranian danger, Ha-Aretz  
reported that Livini also believed that "Iranian nuclear weapons do  
not pose an existential threat to Israel."  The same article revealed  
that Livni was out of the loop on Israel's decision to attack Lebanon  
in 2006 and that her chief advisor was pessimistic about the  
possibility of reaching a permanent settlement with the Palestinians  
any time soon.

However, President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, were interested  
in convening the Annapolis conference and encouraging Palestinian- 
Israeli negotiations, although there was no hope of them succeeding  
during the president's last year in office.  The real purpose of this  
charade remains unclear.  To the extent that it had a strategic  
vision, it seems to have been motivated by the desire to line up  
America's "moderate" Sunni Arab allies - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia  
and the smaller Persian Gulf statelets - against Hamas and its shi'a  
supporters, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah.

So, Livni has dutifully headed up the Israeli negotiating team and  
Rice has logged tens of thousands of miles in fruitless visits to the  
Middle East with almost nothing to show for her efforts. Until she  
dispatched Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William  
Burns to Geneva to meet with Javier Solana, the European Union's High  
Representative for a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Iran's  
nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, on July 19, Condi had fallen into  
line behind warmonger-in-chief Cheney on Iran.

This is the first official contact between the United States and Iran  
since the revolution of 1979, a momentous policy shift followed up by  
public discussion of the possibility of opening a US interests  
section in Teheran.  It is especially remarkable since only two  
months before, while addressing the Israeli Knesset, President Bush  
compared Barack Obama's willingness to engage in diplomatic talks  
with Iran to Europe's appeasement of Nazis at Munich in 1938.   
Meanwhile, Admiral Michael Mullen, chair of the US Joint Chiefs of  
Staff has been conducting his own campaign against a US strike on  
Iran.  Earlier this month, he warned against opening a "third front"  
and called for "dialogue" with Iran.  On July 20 he told Fox News  
Sunday that he was concerned that any US or Israeli strike on Iran  
would risk "significant" turmoil in the Middle East.  Thus, it  
appears that the likelihood of an American assault on Iran has been  
significantly reduced.  Since two-thirds of all Israelis oppose a  
solo Israeli attack on Iran according to a poll conducted last  
December, Prime Minister Olmert might want to avoid a second  
unpopular and potentially disastrous military adventure.

However, it's too soon to breathe a sigh of relief.  The Geneva talks  
did not produce the result that Solana hoped for.  He gave Iran a two  
week deadline to freeze uranium enrichment in return for freezing the  
sanctions now in place.  However, as Julian Borger wrote in The  
Observer "for now, US moderates are in the ascendant."

Lest good sense win the day, the American Israel Public Affairs  
Committee has leaped into the breach to promote an ultra-aggressive  
posture towards Iran embodied in House Concurrent Resolution 362.   
According to Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American  
Council, this non-binding resolution "was the top agenda point of the  
7,000 AIPAC members who descended on Capitol Hill" after their annual  
conference in June.

The resolution, which is on the fast track to adoption by the House  
and Senate,

demands that the President initiate an international effort to  
immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and  
diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear  
enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran  
of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection  
requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and  
cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international  
movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the  
suspension of Iran's nuclear program.

This language, as one of the bill's 247 (!) co-sponsors Rep. Robert  
Wexler (D-FL) acknowledged, "could lead to a US blockade of Iran."  
Unless it is authorized by a UN Security Council resolution, a  
blockade is a violation of international law and an act of war.   
Should this occur it would be the ultimate irony, since Israel  
claimed that the casus belli for its preemptive attack on Egypt and  
Syria in 1967 was Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran.  But  
AIPAC and its allies in the Bush administration and the US war party  
are not particularly good at learning from history.

Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University
Oakland, CA, July 22, 2008
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