This Blog is excerpted from a longer intelligence brief by George Friedman of STRATFOR; a subscriber based global intelligence service.
Stratfor reports that the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement (Sunni Muslims), with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Yom Kippur War (October 6-26, 1973) was a disaster for Israel and her defense forces (IDF). The war began with a massive and successful Egyptian attack across the heavily-fortified Suez Canal during the first three days, after which they dug in, settling into a stalemate. In the north, the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights at the same time and initially made threatening gains against the greatly outnumbered defenders, but their momentum waned. Within a week, Israel recovered and launched a four-day counter-offensive, driving deep into Syria itself. To relieve this pressure, the Egyptians went back on the offensive, but were decisively defeated; the Israelis then counterattacked at the seam between two Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal, and advanced southward and westward in over a week of heavy fighting. Israel encircled elements of Egypt's Third Army after an agreed United Nations ceasefire resolution. This initially prompted tension between the superpowers, but a ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25th to end the war. By the end of the fighting, Israeli forces were 40 25 miles from Damascus and 63 miles from Cairo.
One of the major problems the IDF had was replacing the tanks that were lost to the Egyptian and Syrian forces. Israel’s Prime Minister, Golda Meir, begged President Nixon to supply the IDF with much needed tanks and ammunition. Nixon, no great supporter if Israel, was reluctant to provide the aid for fear of alienating the Arab nations and causing them to cut off our supply of oil from the Middle East, which they did. Henry Kissinger finally convinced Nikon to go ahead with the aid and on October 14th U.S. C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies began delivering the much needed supplies to Israel including 200 M-60 tanks, 155mm artillery pieces and helicopters. It should be noted that on the day the supplies began to arrive in Israel news of the 18 minute gap in the Watergate tapes broke. The U.S. media was more focused on the tapes and less on the Yom Kippur war. To this day many Americans know little of this war that almost ended the existence of Israel
One of the outcomes of the 1973 war was the vast amounts of aid we gave to Israel and Egypt. In addition to the five billion in arms aid we gave Israel we allocated another 2 billion in direct aid. Egypt got over 3 billion in direct aid with 300 million for a Nile River mapping project that was a complete fiasco.
Another outcome was the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace accord (Camp David Accords) brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978. The act jump-started the peace process. Carter invited both Sadat and Begin to a summit at Camp David to negotiate a final peace. The talks took place from September 5–17, 1978. Ultimately, the talks succeeded, and Israel and Egypt signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in 1979. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the Sinai, in exchange for normal relations with Egypt and a lasting peace.
Many in the Arab community were outraged at Egypt's peace with Israel. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. Until then, Egypt had been "at the helm of the Arab world." Egypt's tensions with its Arab neighbors culminated in 1977 in the short-lived Libyan–Egyptian War.
Anwar Sadat was assassinated two years later on October 6, 1981, while attending a parade marking the eighth anniversary of the start of the war, by Islamist army members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were outraged at his negotiations with Israel.
We have had numerous “peace talks” between Israel and its Arab since the formation of Israel in 1947. All of these talks, with the exception of the Camp David Accords, have failed. The violence has increased and the influence from Hamas and Hezbollah has become stronger. The Muslim Brotherhood is flexing its radical Islamic muscles and can be credited with being the inspiration for the 9/11 attack and many more acts of Islamic terror throughout the world.
These peace talks are only window dressing for George Mitchell and Hilary Clinton. They will go nowhere and produce nothing but acrimony and cross charges. The Islamic war wants the total destruction of Israel. This is like the Germans calling for peace talks after the Allied call for unconditional surrender in WWII or like the Japanese calling for peace talks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were winning and it wasn’t going to happen. Right now the Islamic world is winning the propaganda war and Israel has lost a great deal of support in the United States, especially with the Obama administration.
I guess if the United States wants peace talks we will have peace talks.
Stratfor reports that the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks Sept. 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
The United States has wanted Israeli-Palestinian talks since the Palestinians organized themselves into a distinct national movement in the 1970s. Particularly after the successful negotiations between Egypt and Israel and Israel’s implicit long-term understanding with Jordan, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be next on the agenda. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its support for Fatah and other Palestinian groups, a peace process seemed logical and reasonable.
Over time, peace talks became an end in themselves for the United States. The United States has interests throughout the Islamic world. While U.S.-Israeli relations are not the sole point of friction between the Islamic world and the United States, they are certainly one point of friction, particularly on the level of public diplomacy. Indeed, though most Muslim governments may not regard Israel as critical to their national interests, their publics do regard it that way for ideological and religious reasons.
The Israeli problem with the talks is that they force the government to deal with an extraordinarily divided Israeli public. Israel has had weak governments for a generation. These governments are weak because they are formed by coalitions made up of diverse and sometimes opposed parties. In part, this is due to Israel’s electoral system, which increases the likelihood that parties that would never enter the parliament of other countries do sit in the Knesset with a handful of members. There are enough of these that the major parties never come close to a ruling majority and the coalition government that has to be created is crippled from the beginning. An Israeli prime minister spends most of his time avoiding dealing with important issues, since his Cabinet would fall apart if he did.
But the major issue is that the Israeli public is deeply divided ethnically and ideologically, with ideology frequently tracking ethnicity. The original European Jews are often still steeped in the original Zionist vision. But Russian Jews who now comprise roughly one-sixth of the population see the original Zionist plan as alien to them. Then there are the American Jews who moved to Israel for ideological reasons. All these splits and others create an Israel that reminds us of the Fourth French Republic between World War II and the rise of Charles de Gaulle. The term applied to it was “immobilism,” the inability to decide on anything, so it continued to do whatever it was already doing, however ineffective and harmful that course may have been.
Incidentally, Israel wasn’t always this way. After its formation in 1948, Israel’s leaders were all part of the leadership that achieved statehood. That cadre is all gone now, and Israel has yet to transition away from its dependence on its “founding fathers.” Between less trusted leadership and a maddeningly complex political demography, it is no surprise that Israeli politics can be so caustic and churning.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, the PNA is even more troubled by talks. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two ideological enemies, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is generally secular and derives from the Soviet-backed Palestinian movement. Having lost its sponsor, it has drifted toward the United States and Europe by default. Its old antagonist, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is still there and still suspicious. Fatah tried to overthrow the kingdom in 1970, and memories are long.
For its part, Hamas is a religious movement (Sunni Muslims), with roots in Egypt and support from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Fatah, Hamas says it is unwilling to recognize the existence of Israel as a legitimate state, and it appears to be quite serious about this. While there seem to be some elements in Hamas that could consider a shift, this is not the consensus view. Iran also provides support, but the Sunni-Shiite split is real and Iran is mostly fishing in troubled waters. Hamas will take help where it can get it, but Hamas is, to a significant degree, funded by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, so getting too close to Iran would create political problems for Hamas’ leadership. In addition, though Cairo has to deal with Hamas because of the Egypt-Gaza border, Cairo is at best deeply suspicions of the group. Egypt sees Hamas as deriving from the same bedrock of forces that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood and those who killed Anwar Sadat, forces which pose the greatest future challenge to Egyptian stability. As a result, Egypt continues to be Israel’s silent partner in the blockade of Gaza.
Therefore, the PNA dominated by Fatah in no way speaks for all Palestinians. While Fatah dominates the West Bank, Hamas controls Gaza. Were Fatah to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza. Making matters worse for Fatah, Hamas does enjoy considerable — if precisely unknown — levels of support in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the PNA, is not eager to find out how much in the current super-heated atmosphere.
The most striking agreement between Arabs and Israelis was the Camp David Accords negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Those accords were rooted in the 1973 war in which the Israelis were stunned by their own intelligence failures and the extraordinary capabilities shown by the Egyptian army so soon after its crushing defeat in 1967. All of Israel’s comfortable assumptions went out the window. At the same time, Egypt was ultimately defeated, with Israeli troops on the east shore of the Suez Canal.
The Yom Kippur War (October 6-26, 1973) was a disaster for Israel and her defense forces (IDF). The war began with a massive and successful Egyptian attack across the heavily-fortified Suez Canal during the first three days, after which they dug in, settling into a stalemate. In the north, the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights at the same time and initially made threatening gains against the greatly outnumbered defenders, but their momentum waned. Within a week, Israel recovered and launched a four-day counter-offensive, driving deep into Syria itself. To relieve this pressure, the Egyptians went back on the offensive, but were decisively defeated; the Israelis then counterattacked at the seam between two Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal, and advanced southward and westward in over a week of heavy fighting. Israel encircled elements of Egypt's Third Army after an agreed United Nations ceasefire resolution. This initially prompted tension between the superpowers, but a ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25th to end the war. By the end of the fighting, Israeli forces were 40 25 miles from Damascus and 63 miles from Cairo.
One of the major problems the IDF had was replacing the tanks that were lost to the Egyptian and Syrian forces. Israel’s Prime Minister, Golda Meir, begged President Nixon to supply the IDF with much needed tanks and ammunition. Nixon, no great supporter if Israel, was reluctant to provide the aid for fear of alienating the Arab nations and causing them to cut off our supply of oil from the Middle East, which they did. Henry Kissinger finally convinced Nikon to go ahead with the aid and on October 14th U.S. C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies began delivering the much needed supplies to Israel including 200 M-60 tanks, 155mm artillery pieces and helicopters. It should be noted that on the day the supplies began to arrive in Israel news of the 18 minute gap in the Watergate tapes broke. The U.S. media was more focused on the tapes and less on the Yom Kippur war. To this day many Americans know little of this war that almost ended the existence of Israel
One of the outcomes of the 1973 war was the vast amounts of aid we gave to Israel and Egypt. In addition to the five billion in arms aid we gave Israel we allocated another 2 billion in direct aid. Egypt got over 3 billion in direct aid with 300 million for a Nile River mapping project that was a complete fiasco.
Another outcome was the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace accord (Camp David Accords) brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978. The act jump-started the peace process. Carter invited both Sadat and Begin to a summit at Camp David to negotiate a final peace. The talks took place from September 5–17, 1978. Ultimately, the talks succeeded, and Israel and Egypt signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in 1979. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the Sinai, in exchange for normal relations with Egypt and a lasting peace.
Many in the Arab community were outraged at Egypt's peace with Israel. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. Until then, Egypt had been "at the helm of the Arab world." Egypt's tensions with its Arab neighbors culminated in 1977 in the short-lived Libyan–Egyptian War.
Anwar Sadat was assassinated two years later on October 6, 1981, while attending a parade marking the eighth anniversary of the start of the war, by Islamist army members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were outraged at his negotiations with Israel.
We have had numerous “peace talks” between Israel and its Arab since the formation of Israel in 1947. All of these talks, with the exception of the Camp David Accords, have failed. The violence has increased and the influence from Hamas and Hezbollah has become stronger. The Muslim Brotherhood is flexing its radical Islamic muscles and can be credited with being the inspiration for the 9/11 attack and many more acts of Islamic terror throughout the world.
These peace talks are only window dressing for George Mitchell and Hilary Clinton. They will go nowhere and produce nothing but acrimony and cross charges. The Islamic war wants the total destruction of Israel. This is like the Germans calling for peace talks after the Allied call for unconditional surrender in WWII or like the Japanese calling for peace talks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were winning and it wasn’t going to happen. Right now the Islamic world is winning the propaganda war and Israel has lost a great deal of support in the United States, especially with the Obama administration.
I guess if the United States wants peace talks we will have peace talks.
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