Israel and Iran: on a collision Course

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Guardian- 11/07/2008

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, this week called the Iranian nuclear issue “a challenge not just for Israel but for the entire world”. He added that “Israel is the strongest country in the region and we have proven in the past that we are not deterred from acting when our vital interests are at stake”.

Barak’s statement reflected the extent of gravity and urgency felt in Israel regarding the ongoing march of Iranian nuclear ambitions. Such remarks do not necessarily portend imminent confrontation. But they point to an underlying dynamic seemingly leading to conflict.

Israel has observed the unfolding of events in Iran over the recent half-decade with increasing trepidation. Israeli concerns are not purely focused on issues of military hardware. The rise within the Iranian clerical-led elite of an ultra-radical faction, centred on the revolutionary guards and represented at the highest level by President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has been noted. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s newly-appointed chief nuclear negotiator, is the latest representative of this group to come to international prominence.

The desire of this faction is to revive what it sees as the authentic spirit of the revolutionary period, in the face of the waste, decay and corruption that is the reality of contemporary Iran. The drive to project Iranian power across the region is a vital aspect of this ambition. A nuclear capability would make this possible. Hatred of Israel is a genuinely felt sentiment in such circles. It is also a useful tool for building regional influence.

Israel sees the Iranian nuclear program within this framework. Israeli planners consider that the Iranians have been playing a clever game of buying time, and using the hopes of the international community to avoid conflict at all costs in order to make progress in their nuclear programme.

A recent IAEA report noted evidence that Iran was withholding information on high explosives testing relating to its nuclear programme. The report detailed military activities including attempts to develop a re-entry vehicle system designed to house a new payload for the Iranian Shahab-3 missile system.

The report stated that:

The agency is of the view that Iran may have additional information, in particular on high explosives testing and missile-related activities, which could shed more light on the nature of these alleged studies and which Iran should share with the agency …

Alongside the suspicions of covert Iranian projects to develop the military aspects of its nuclear programme, the IAEA report also noted that Tehran now has 3,500 uranium centrifuges at its facility in Natanz.

The latest revelations indicate that Iran’s revolutionary guards have set up a network of front companies to develop components for the advanced P2 gas centrifuge, which can enrich uranium to weapons grade two to three times faster than conventional P1 centrifuges – which Iran claims are the only kind used at the Natanz conversion facility.

So from Israel’s point of view, what is taking place is that a regime committed to its destruction appears to be in the ongoing process of developing what looks very much like a nuclear weapons programme. The hesitant diplomacy of the international community, meanwhile, appears a poor tool for deterring the Tehran radicals. The incentives packages in return for suspension of enrichment – contemptuously brushed aside by the Iranians, the half hearted implementation of the three UN security council sanctions resolutions, and the evident desire to avoid confrontation at all costs are unlikely to strike fear into an Iranian revolutionary guards man’s heart.

A former senior Israeli defence official, speaking at a private gathering earlier this week, detailed four means, in reverse order of preference, by which the Iranians could be induced to abandon their nuclear programme. These were: as a result of negotiations, as a result of sanctions, as a result of US military action, and, finally and least preferably, as a result of Israeli military action.

The former official gave a pessimistic overview of the progress made in the last years using the first two items. He noted that in a situation of extreme threat and lack of total clarity, the threatened party would have no choice but to act according to the worst-case scenario. Such statements should be taken seriously. They reflect an absolute determination to prevent the reality of Israelis being forced to live under the nuclear shadow of a state committed to their destruction.

Yet for all this, the underlying logic suggests that we are further from the endgame than might appear from the current sabre-rattling. Informed US sources contend that the Iranian enrichment program is beset by technical difficulties and wrong turnings. This means that despite the bluster, the Iranians are still a considerable distance from having nuclear weapons.

Whatever the accuracy of such statements, they suggest that the US is far from giving a “green light” to Israeli action against the Iranian nuclear programme. Without such approval, an Israeli operation would probably, for geographical reasons, be a physical impossibility. So fears of imminent confrontation may be premature. Bluffing, brinkmanship and attempts at intimidation have all been much in evidence in the last days. But excessive focus on the theatrical element should not be allowed to obscure the underlying reality. As it stands, the current situation in the Middle East puts the two countries on a collision course.

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Tzipi Livni and the new Middle East

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Guardian- 23/09/2008

Newly elected Kadima leader Tzipi Livni is the third person to lead this party in its less than three years of existence. In terms of presentation, she represents a significant change in Israeli politics. In terms of her core position on key issues, however, Livni has a great deal in common with her predecessor, the newly-resigned Ehud Olmert. Both followed a similar trajectory from the right of Israeli politics to its centre or centre left. The two undertook this journey for similar reasons. And these reasons are based on a similar reading of the key dynamics of Israel and the Middle East. This reading curiously omits a number of key factors, while exaggerating others.

The essence of both Livni and Olmert’s view of Israel’s strategic position is a very pronounced pessimism. Both of them believe that Israel is suffering from a slow erosion of its international legitimacy. As Livni expressed it in a recent speech:

A process of erosion is taking place in Israel’s basic positions on everything related to ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the international community. Issues that were very obvious to us and principles that we could clearly stick to are gradually being worn down.

Livni explains this statement in the following terms: “Today, the existence of Israel is being delegitimised, not just its physical survival but also its existence as a national home for the Jewish people.” She considers preserving and re-building Israel’s receding international legitimacy is dependent upon achieving Palestinian statehood.

This view directly parallels statements made by Olmert. Olmert, too, considered that Israel was “finished” unless a rapid two-state agreement could be reached with the secular Palestinian leadership. Olmert, like Livni, based this view on what he regarded as Israel’s declining international legitimacy. His view was that a failure to reach a final status accord would result in a “civil rights” struggle by the Palestinians, which would find support in the western world.

Kadima’s leaders, since the Annapolis conference of November 2007, have adopted a stance of commitment to the belief in historic compromise with al-Fatah. Unlike the left, however, the leaders of Kadima are committed to this path not because of hope, but because of fear.

The odd thing about their fear is that it fails to correspond with current realities. First of all, by any measurable standards, Israel’s international standing is not substantively declining. A vociferous movement to try and make this happen exists on the European (particularly the British) left. But at the risk of upsetting some readers of Comment is Free, it must be pointed out that this movement has enjoyed no substantive and lasting successes.

Rather, the key dynamics of the region are serving to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a second-tier conflict – of substantively declining importance to the region and the world as a whole.

The really important and dangerous strategic processes and events today are happening far to the east of the Levant. Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the scenes for the truly vital battle taking place between the west and its allies and the forces of various versions of Islamic revival. The eye of this storm is the Iranian nuclear programme. In its dimensions and in it significance, this fight dwarfs all other regional processes.

This central dynamic is producing a new strategic map in the Middle East. It places Israel effectively on the same side as Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states and perhaps Iraq – against Iran, Syria and their clients – in a new regional cold war. The latter, in turn, are interested in Israel in so far as they would like to see it destroyed. But this desire is in no way affected by or connected to any existing or future negotiating process between Israelis and Palestinians.

The vitally important process of the Islamisation of regional politics that underlies all this is in turn redefining the stances of the Palestinians. Hamas is holding its ground in the Gaza Strip. Its de facto rule over 40% of the Palestinian residents west of the Jordan River renders any idea of a secular “civil rights” struggle by the Palestinians absurd. The ineffectual Fatah-controlled West Bank Palestinian Authority remains forever locked in its patron-client relationship with the EU and the US. The trend on the ground there too is toward greater religious and political militancy.

At the same time, the local situation west of the Jordan is currently under control. Few people are dying. Like many other festering sores in the region, the dispute needs an equitable solution. But it is for the moment containable.

Now none of this is cause for celebration for Israel. Much of it is very worrying. But what it emphatically does mean is that neither Israel’s existence, nor the preservation of its relations with the west, nor its links with its de facto regional allies, are dependent on reaching an ever-elusive compromise deal with an ever-less relevant Palestinian secular nationalist camp. The trends point elsewhere. In these fearful days for the region, it seems strange to point to a fear that is almost wholly without basis. But the core outlook of the two Kadima leaders currently exchanging the baton of Israel’s leadership appears to be based on such a phenomenon.

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Sound of a Dictator preparing for a long Battle

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 31/03/2011

President Bashar al-Assad’s speech to the Syrian parliament was noteworthy more for what the Syrian dictator did not say than for what he did.

Remarks by Assad aides to the media in the last days had raised expectations that Assad might try to defuse protests by offering a series of concessions. In particular, the possibility of a lifting of emergency laws in place in Syria since 1963 had been hinted at by senior adviser Bouthaina Shaaban.

No such commitments were forthcoming from the Syrian president. The brief address was an announcement by the regime of its determination to stand its ground. It reflected a belief on the part of Assad that to appear to waver at this moment might prove costly. He apparently believes that his regime is sufficiently strong to be able to wear down the protesters without seeking to compromise with their demands.

Instead of wavering, he chose to reiterate the core elements of his regime’s by-now-familiar take on current events in Syria and the wider region.

Since the outbreak of the unrest, the official information channels of the Syrian regime have maintained that an Israeli plot is responsible for the protests. Sana news agency has claimed to have identified mysterious “armed gangs” seeking to commit acts of violence against civilians. The Syrian media has also cited SMS messages coming from Israel that encourage Syrians to take part in the revolt.

Assad’s speech followed and developed this line.

“Plots are being hatched against our country,” he told the assembled parliament members. “Saboteurs are trying to undermine and divide Syria, and to push an Israeli agenda.”

Assad likened the current events to the situation in 2005. In that year, a popular uprising in Beirut and the presence of US forces in Baghdad forced Syria to end its 15-year occupation of Lebanon. The regime faced a Kurdish uprising in the same period.

“Similar to 2005,” the Syrian president told his parliament, “there is chaos in the country under the pretext of reform, especially among sects.”

The reference to sects is perhaps evidence of Assad’s sense of irony, since his own regime rests on the support of the minority Alawi sect, who comprise 12% of the population.

The protesters, meanwhile, hail overwhelmingly from Syria’s 75% Sunni Muslim majority.

But Assad’s irony is no laughing matter. This reference, and the remark about an attempt to “divide” Syria, signal that the regime is accusing the protesters of two of the cardinal sins in the professed Arab nationalist viewpoint of the Baathist regime in Syria.

It matters little whether Assad himself takes seriously his own rhetoric. The point is that this type of terminology has the sound of a regime preparing for a long and ruthless fight against an internal enemy which it is seeking to characterize in the most negative terms at its disposal.

The reference to 2005 is instructive in another way. In that year, the Syrian regime was on the ropes, with some commentators predicting its imminent demise. By citing it, Assad is also reminding his listeners and the world of his staying power. By its favored methods of clandestine violence and intimidation, the Assad family dictatorship bounced back hard from the doldrums in the subsequent years. Bashar believes it can do so again.

Hence the tone of defiance that summed up the speech.

Here the dictator’s feline sense of humor was on display again. “We don’t seek battles,” said Bashar (an assertion which would come as news to the peoples of Israel, Lebanon and Iraq, frequent targets of the myriad proxy military groups maintained by the Syrian regime).

“But if a battle is imposed on us today – ahlan wasahlan – welcome.” Syria would fight the “domino project,” and make it fall.

So there it all was. Israeli plots, domino projects for fragmentation and division.

Armed gangs, chaos, and a welcoming of the battle by the Syrian dictator, casting himself in the nationalist-tragic mode which is the style of stifling rhetoric that he and other regional leaders of his stripe prefer. All by way of a not-soveiled threat.

This time against his own people.

This was the authentic voice of the Arab old order – or at least the military dictatorial part of it. Intoning its old certainties.

No mention of reform or change. “Stability” said Assad, was the number one interest.

The response was swift in coming, and suitably irreverent.

The Facebook page “Syrian Revolution 2011 against Bashar Assad,” a few minutes after the speech, carried a message beginning with the ringing call, “To the public squares, youth of Syria – grab freedom from these clowns, go down now to the streets.”

But if anyone among the Syrian opposition or elsewhere was still under the impression that the Assad family dictatorship would consent quietly to reforming itself out of existence, Wednesday’s speech should be sufficient to put them right.

Bashar Assad wants to keep his job. All the familiar and wearying clichés were on offer, beneath which he will prepare the violence and subterfuge he deems necessary to ensure his survival.

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Lebanon – a Return to Civil War?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 02/02/2008

The recent killing of Captain Wissam Eid of the Lebanese Internal Security Force, and the shooting deaths of eight Shi’ite rioters – including four Hizbullah supporters – at the Mar Mikhael intersection in southern Beirut last week offered the latest evidence of the potential of the political stalemate in Lebanon to spill over into renewed civil conflict. Substantive compromise on the issues dividing the country seems impossible. The overriding cause of the crisis is Syria’s determination to prevent political stability in its smaller neighbor on any but its own terms. The key issues lying behind the Lebanese political crisis are inseparable from the larger regional balance of power, and above all, the emergence of a new regional Cold War which places the United States and its allies against Iran and its clients – including Syria and the Lebanese Shi’ite Hizbullah.

The latest manifestation of the crisis concerns the issue of the successor to president Emil Lahoud, who stepped down last November. Since then, a deadlock has emerged over the succession. There is agreement that the successor should be General Michel Suleiman, chief of staff of the Lebanese army. But the precise terms of the succession remain under dispute. In January, 2008, the Arab League in Cairo claimed to have produced a compromise acceptable to both sides. At the conference, Syria declared its acceptance of a formula devised by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, heralding a breakthrough. According to this proposal, Suleiman would be appointed president, and a new national unity government would be formed, giving equal weight to the ruling March 14 Party and opposition ministers. Neither side would have veto power, and the balance was to be made up of minister appointed by the new president. It is now apparent, however, that the pro-Syrian opposition will not accept this arrangement.

Syria is expressing its opposition through the activation of client organizations within Lebanon. Hizbullah has threatened to escalate street protests in the next few weeks if the opposition’s demand for a blocking capability in a new cabinet is not accepted. Many analysts consider that the spate of recent terror attacks, one of which killed Eid, are part of Hizbullah’s effort to inflame tensions in the interest of its Syrian patron. The January 15 bombing at the US embassy in Beirut – in which four people died, and the violent, tire-burning Shi’ite protests of the last days all fit into this pattern. It is worth noting that during the protests on January 27, an RPG 7 shell was fired by unknown persons in the Mar Mikhael area. Lebanon has been struck by an ongoing series of assassinations of anti-Syrian political figures in Lebanon over the last two years. Eid’s killing was the latest of these, following on from the murder of Deputy Chief of Staff Francois al-Haj in December. Eid was involved in the investigation into the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in April, 2005. He was also responsible for monitoring Hizballah activity in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The force of which he was a member, the Internal Security Force, has been seen as staunchly loyal to the Saniora government, and its commander, Ashraf Rifi, is a known critic of the Damascus regime.

The Syrian regime is trying, above all else, to prevent the formation of a proposed international tribunal into the Hariri’s murder. Preliminary UN investigations centered on possible Syrian involvement in the killing. The nightmare scenario for Damascus would be for the tribunal to request the transfer of senior regime figures for trial in the Hague. Syria is determined to prevent this at all costs. This fact, above all others, appears to be driving the current Hizballah escalation of violence. Iran, the other international backer of the Lebanese opposition, is understood to be playing a longer game in the Lebanese context. Iran’s key asset in Lebanon is Hizballah, which it helped found and which it finances and trains.

The Iranians have no direct interest in an immediate political escalation in Lebanon. Rather, they need time for Hizballah to recoup the losses and damage it suffered in Second Lebanon War. Teheran’s key concern is that Hizballah rebuild its strength as an Iranian regional military asset – a process which is now proceeding apace. Iran is also understood to wish to avoid open sectarian conflict between Shi’ites and Sunnis, since such a conflict would undermine its desire to project its power throughout the region, and to claim the mantle of the key anti-Western force in the Middle East. However, it appears to be Syria’s more urgent agenda that is now dictating events, and which may yet take Lebanon to the abyss and beyond it. A new Arab League attempt to resolve the situation is under way, and Moussa is on his way back to Beirut. Given the underlying realities of the situation described above, this attempt will almost certainly be added to the list of failures.

The current signs indicate that this failure may herald increased destabilizing activity by opposition forces – in the main Hizbullah, which remains by far the best-organized and most capable political-military force among the opposition. Thus, more attacks of the type that took place on January 15 may be expected, along with increased street activities similar to those witnessed early last year, and in recent days at Mar Mikhael. The government, meanwhile, shows no sign of backing down, and has proved able to marshal forces of its own. The prospect is one of increased strife, with the specter of civil war perhaps closer than at any time in recent memory.

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Why might Syria wish to sow Chaos in Lebanon Now?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 20/05/2007

Thirty eight people lost their lives on Sunday in fierce fighting between the Lebanese military and Sunni jihadist operatives near the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, close to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This outbreak of violence represents the heaviest toll in intra-Lebanese violence since the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90. The events in Nahr al-Bared cast light on a side of the Lebanese crisis which has until now been largely ignored by the international media. This is the emergence in recent months of an organization of armed Sunni Islamist operatives in the largely-Sunni north of the country. So far, much of the coverage has suggested that the group in question, known as Fatah al-Islam, may be linked to the al-Qaida network. Nevertheless, informed opinion suggests caution before drawing the simple conclusion that Fatah al-Islam is merely Osama bin-Laden’s latest local franchise. Fatah al-Islam is a breakaway of a Syrian-backed Palestinian organization called Fatah-intifada, which itself split from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah group in 1983. Fatah-intifada has little presence outside of the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria, and is widely regarded as a tool of the Syrian regime with little popular support.

The group, led by a Palestinian called Shakir al-Abssi, surfaced in the Nahr al-Bared camp last November and is thought to contain around 100 fighters from the camp. The group includes Sunni Islamists of a variety of nationalities, about half of whom are drawn from the Sunni Lebanese community. Apart from Palestinians, there are also said to be Syrian and Saudi citizens among its ranks. While Syrian officials have been keen from the outset to describe al-Abssi and his group as operating “in favor of al-Qaida,” Lebanese authorities suspect that the group may in fact be a client of the Syrian authorities themselves, established to act as an instrument of policy in Lebanon, fomenting disorder.

The Assad regime has a long history of utilizing terrorist and paramilitary groups for such a purpose. Fatah-intifada itself was used by Hafez Assad in a power struggle with Yassir Arafat in the Lebanon refugee camps between 1985-88. The regime is known also to have engaged operatives of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party to carry out assassinations in Lebanon during the civil war period. Suspicions regarding Fatah al-Islam center on the fact that Shakir al-Abssi was sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison in Syria after being convicted of plotting attacks inside the country. This was an unusually lenient sentence.

By comparison, for example, Syrians suspected of involvement in the Muslim Brotherhood are routinely given 12-year terms. Al-Abssi, after his release, turned up among pro-Syrian Fatah-intifada circles in Nahr al-Bared and shortly afterward emerged as the leader of the new group, Fatah al-Islam. These facts have led General Ashraf Rifi, head of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (FSI), to conclude that “this is a Syrian creation to sow chaos.” Which raises the question, why might the Syrians wish to sow chaos in Lebanon, and why now? A draft resolution for the unilateral establishment of an international tribunal on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was circulated in the UN Security Council by the US, France and Britain last week.

It is known that the Syrian regime is determined to prevent this tribunal at all costs, since it is believed that senior Syrian officials may be found to have been involved in the Hariri killing. Could it be that the regime in Damascus might see an escalation of tension in Lebanon as currently helpful – as a tacit reminder to the international community of what Damascus is capable of when put in a corner? This is the view of senior officials in Lebanese government, and is in keeping with earlier practices of the Damascus regime.

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Nasrallah’s Existential Dilemmas

Posted on March 29, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 25/02/2008

In a speech last week broadcast at the Sayed al-Shohada Mosque in south Beirut, Hizbullah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah promised his supporters that Israel’s ‘disappearance’ was an ‘established fact.’ The Hizbullah leader railed from his unknown hiding place against the ‘robbing and murdering Zionists’, whom he accused of killing prominent Hizbullah official Imad Mughniyeh. Behind the Hizbullah leader’s customary defiant rhetoric, however, his movement currently faces a series of dilemmas. Firstly, the movement’s attempt to bring down the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, launched in late 2006, has gone nowhere. A few Hizbullah supporters (and a lot of tents) remain at the movement’s ‘permanent demonstration’ in downtown Beirut. But the Saniora government has stood firm. The constitutional crisis over the presidency is dragging on.

There is a growing sense that Hizbullah’s only non-Shi’a ally, the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun (Christian Maronite), is becoming an irrelevancy, because of the failure of Aoun to emerge as a realistic presidential candidate. The result of this is to make Hizbullah’s camp look more and more like a narrow, sectarian Shi’a force. The movement has spent the last decade and a half cultivating an image of itself as a ‘patriotic’ Lebanese and pan-Arab movement, rather than a sectarian, Iran-sponsored militia. This image is now looking increasingly frayed. The recent clashes at Mar Mikhael in southern Beirut, in which Hizbullah and Amal demonstrators clashed with the army, has served to reinforce this sense. The Army remains one of the few national institutions generally trusted by the Lebanese. The events since the killing of Imad Mughniyeh have further entrenched the sense of Hizbullah as a Shi’ite militia, operating on behalf of Iran. Mughniyeh was associated with the movement’s first phase, in the 1980s, when it had openly engaged in attacks on US and French forces, and acts of international terror such as the hijacking of TWA flight 847.

In subsequent years, Hizbullah leaders had denied any connection with Mughniyeh. This fiction had been faithfully re-produced by journalists and analysts close to the movement, and contributed to the carefully-cultivated sense Hizbullah wished to convey of a Lebanese and pan-Arab, rather than narrow Shi’ite force. The open embrace afforded Mughniyeh by the movement following his killing of course put paid to this image. Revelations of Mughniyeh’s activities on behalf of Hizbullah and Iran over the years have subsequently emerged in the Arabic media. Most recently, it has been reported that Mughniyeh was involved in bringing members of the Iraqi Shi’ite Mahdi Army to the Lebanese Beqa’a valley, where they trained in paramilitary methods. Mughniyeh is also reported to have been involved with a Kuwaiti Shi’a opposition group, the ‘Tharallah’ organization. This activity was conducted in cooperation with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. As Nasrallah swears revenge on Israel from his place of hiding, meanwhile, there is growing evidence of the war-weariness of ordinary Shi’ite Lebanese.

Many inhabitants of southern Lebanon have not yet recovered from the damage inflicted by Israel in the Second Lebanon War. A year and a half after the war, the destruction it wrought is still very apparent in the border towns of the south. A section of Maroun a Ras, for example, remains in rubble and uninhabited. Shi’ite civilians interviewed recently by Agence France Presse sounded far from enthusiastic at Nasrallah’s latest speeches. One border villager asked reporters “Why must we pay the price every four years or so,” adding that “They should leave us to live in peace, wars are no longer acceptable.” Another said “That war took us 100 years back. It’s enough.” So Hizbullah currently faces growing political isolation in Lebanon, an increasing sense of the return of the movement’s original image as a Shi’a agent of Iran, and a populace weary of war and longing for a chance to return to normality. Nasrallah may well conclude that the quickest way to escape isolation, once again re-brand the movement as the defender of Lebanese and Arabs, and re-galvanise its core supporters would be to seek another round of fighting against Israel.

Certainly, all estimates indicate that while the rubble may remain in the border towns, the movement has successfully recuperated the losses in arms and equipment sustained in the 2006 war. The killing of Mughniyeh makes some form of retaliation inevitable. But here the Hizbullah leadership faces the final item in the list of dilemmas. In 2006, the movement encountered an Israeli government and military caught off guard, confused and under-prepared. If pulled once again into confrontation, Israel will be concerned above all to commit all necessary force to reversing the ambiguous, troubling result of July-August 2006. The Hizbullah leader and his backers in Teheran will no doubt be weighing the odds and their options carefully in the weeks and months to come.

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A Question of Power

Posted on March 29, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 10/05/2008

The recent events in Beirut pose a simple, fundamental question: Who rules in Lebanon? The answer proposed by Hizbullah last week is that the government of Fuad Saniora and Saad Hariri is to be permitted to hold the formal reins of administration – on condition that they well understand the inherent limits of their position. Most important, any attempt to interfere with the Iranian-created and Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored military infrastructure in the country will result in a swift, disproportionate and bloody response. Hizbullah and its backers have made clear that if the choice is between civil war and accepting limitations on the autonomy of their military infrastructure, they will choose the former. At the same time, their actions in Beirut last week made clear that as long as this point is accepted by the March 14 government, they will permit a return to the former stalemate.

Recall the sequence of events: Lebanon has been locked in a standoff between the pro-US March 14 Movement and the pro-Iran and pro-Syria opposition ever since the latter launched a campaign to achieve veto power over government decisions, in the months following the war of 2006. The Saniora government refused to bow to the opposition’s demands. The result has been ongoing political tension punctuated by periodic flare-ups, such as that of January 2007, which have brought the country to the brink of civil war. The latest tension emerged from a Hizbullah-sponsored series of labor union protests. But the key event precipitating Hizbullah’s military takeover of West Beirut was the decision by the government to act against Hizbullah’s independent military infrastructure through two bold moves: First, the government sought to dismiss the security chief at Rafik Hariri International Airport, Wafiq Choukair, who is known to be close to Hizbullah.

This move came after prominent March 14 leader and Druse strongman Walid Jumblatt revealed that Hizbullah had installed surveillance cameras at the airport’s Runway 17. The runway overlooks the hangars containing private jets, an air force base, and the VIP visitors building. Jumblatt further argued that Iranian flights to Beirut should be stopped, as they could be carrying equipment for Hizbullah, and called for the Iranian ambassador to be expelled. In a second, related move, the government launched a judicial investigation into the Iranian-built independent telecommunications network maintained by Hizbullah. This network is thought to extend from Beirut across the south of the country, and into the Bekaa. For Hizbullah, these actions by the government clearly trespassed beyond a red line: namely, the tacit acceptance by the Saniora government that the means by which Hizbullah and its backers conduct their activities in Lebanon are off-limits to the organs of the Lebanese state. The response was swift and furious. Hizbullah gunmen poured onto the streets of West Beirut and engaged the untrained pro-government Sunnis who sought to oppose them. Eleven people were killed and 30 were wounded in the subsequent fighting, which ended with the surrender or flight of the pro-government elements.

Hizbullah simultaneously carried out a series of acts designed to humiliate the government and to demonstrate its ineffectiveness. Hizbullah men blocked the roads to and from the airport, cutting Lebanon off from the outside world, forced the pro-government Al-Mustaqbal TV station and other pro-government news outlets off the air, and burned the offices of the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper. The headquarters of Saniora and Saad Hariri was besieged. Following this demonstration of strength, Hizbullah expressed its willingness to hand all captured areas over to the Lebanese army. The message was clear.

The events of the past days are an attempt by the pro-Iranian regional alliance to guard the perimeters of its main asset in Lebanon – namely, the well financed and trained Hizbullah military infrastructure. Iran wishes to maintain this structure, but not to seize formal power in Lebanon. Rather, it is an instrument to be activated against Israel, at the appropriate moment. In the meantime, Teheran and Hizbullah are content to leave the Saniora government to continue the administration of Lebanon’s internal affairs, on condition it understands its limits. The first question now is whether the Saniora government is prepared to accept this situation. (The original dispute over the dismissal of Choukair and the closing of the telecommunications network remains unresolved.) The second question is whether, if it is not, March 14 possesses the will and the tools to mount an effective opposition to the Hizbullah state within a state. Hizbullah’s latest action brings the movement closer to openly pitting Lebanon’s Shi’ites against its Druse, Christian and Sunni communities.

The opposition’s Christian component – the Free Patriotic Movement of Gen. Michel Aoun – appears largely an irrelevance in the developing dynamic. Instead, the allies that matter to Hizbullah now are the Shi’ite Amal movement and the small pro-Syrian and Palestinian militias that have mobilized to support the opposition in the past days. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have expressed support for the Saniora government. The Sunni mufti of Lebanon has harshly condemned Hizbullah’s actions. But it appears that Hizbullah feels strong enough to contemplate such a situation, and to dismiss the possibility of the coalition of communities backing the government mounting an effective response. The coming weeks will show if Hizbullah’s confidence in this regard was misplaced.

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How UNRWA became a Barrier to Peace

Posted on March 29, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 27/05/2008

The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) was created under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with the unique responsibility of solely aiding the Palestinians. Due to this special status, the UNRWA perpetuates, rather than resolves, the Palestinian refugee issue, and therefore serves as a major obstacle toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like no other UN body, UNRWA’s definition of refugees includes not only the refugees themselves, but also their descendents. Moreover, refugees keep their status even if they have gained citizenship. UNRWA employs teachers affiliated with Hamas and allows the dissemination of Hamas messages in its schools.

The Hamas coup in Gaza of July 2007 has resulted in a Hamas takeover of UNRWA facilities there. Therefore, UNRWA’s activities require urgent action. The Agency should be dissolved and its services transferred to more appropriate administering organizations. MILLIONS OF refugees worldwide – over 130 million since the end of World War II – have come under the responsibility of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which aims to resettle and rehabilitate refugees. On December 8, 1949, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 302, establishing an agency dedicated solely to “direct relief and works programs” for the Palestinian Arab refugees – UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency) – making it a unique body. UNRWA exists in order to perpetuate, rather than to resolve, the Palestinian refugee issue. No Palestinian has ever lost his or her refugee status. There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who are citizens of Jordan, for example – yet as far as UNRWA is concerned they are still refugees, eligible for aid.

UNRWA, over the past 60 years, has transformed itself into a central vehicle for the perpetuation of the refugee problem, and into a major obstacle for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. WHEN UNRWA first began counting refugees in 1948, it did so in a way without precedent – seeking to maximize the number of those defined as refugees. UNRWA counts every descendant of the original refugees as a refugee themselves – leading to an increase of 400 percent in the number since 1948. This was a politically motivated definition to imply that either Palestinians would remain refugees forever or until the day that they returned in a triumph to a Palestinian Arab state that included the territory where Israel existed. If they built lives elsewhere, even after many generations – decades or centuries – they still remained officially refugees. In contrast to other situations around the world, other refugees only retained that status until they found permanent homes elsewhere, presumably as citizens of other countries. Moreover, refugee status was based solely on the applicant’s word. Even UNRWA admitted its figures were inflated in a 1998 Report of the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (July 1997-30 June 1998): “UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data.”

In October 2004, then UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen publicly admitted for the first time that Hamas members were on the UNWRA payroll, adding, “I don’t see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.” Consequently, taxpayers’ money in countries where Hamas was legally defined as a terrorist organization, like the United States and Canada, was being illegally used to fund Hamas-controlled activities. Hanson’s view that Hamas was a normal political organization whose doctrines did not interfere with the governance and education of Palestinians remains the position of UNRWA. This has been so even when Hamas has committed violence against other Palestinians. After the organization seized Gaza by force in July 2007, UNRWA immediately indicated to Hamas that it was eager to get back to providing its services. Nothing was changed in its procedure or performance after the takeover.

A graphic demonstration of this issue was the death of Awad al-Qiq in May 2008. Qiq had a long career as a science teacher in an UNRWA school and had been promoted to run its Rafah Prep Boys School. He was also the leading bombmaker for Islamic Jihad. He was killed while supervising a factory to make rockets and other weapons for use against Israel, located a short distance from the school. Qiq was thus simultaneously building weapons for attacking Israeli civilians while indoctrinating his students to do the same. Islamic Jihad did not need to pay him a salary for his terrorist activities. The UN and the American taxpayer were already doing so. The increasing numbers of UNRWA teachers who openly identify with radical groups have created a teachers’ bloc that ensures the election of members of Hamas and individuals committed to Islamist ideologies. Using classrooms as a place to spread their radical messages, these teachers have also gravitated to local Palestinian elections. Thus, UNRWA’s education system has become a springboard for the political activities of Hamas. For example, Minister of Interior and Civil Affairs Minister Saeed Siyam of Hamas, was a teacher in UNRWA schools in Gaza from 1980 to 2003. He then became a member of UNRWA’s Arab Employees Union, and has headed the Teachers Sector Committee. Other notable Hamas graduates of the UNRWA education system include Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, the former Hamas chief. UNRWA’S BUDGET has been supported by many countries of which the United States and Western countries have been the largest contributors. In 1990, UNRWA’s annual budget was over $292 million, and by 2000 it had increased to $365 million. Despite this seemingly significant rise, however, actual allocations among the various refugee camps has decreased – compounded by a very high birth rate and burgeoning camp populations. Refugees were discouraged from moving out and had the incentive of being on welfare if they remained. Per capita spending among refugees in camps thus declined from $200 in services per year per refugee in the 1970s to about $70 currently. This situation has been most evident in Lebanon, where the government provides little if any additional assistance to the Palestinians.

UNRWA provides jobs to a large number of Palestinians (it has a full time staff of 23,000). While the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction. UNRWA thus keeps a large population of refugees and their descendants in a permanent state of welfare dependency, financed by the Western taxpayer. In so doing, it acts as a barrier to attempts to make the refugees into productive citizens. Bureaucracies have a tendency to become self-perpetuating. In the case of UNRWA, this tendency is exacerbated by the fact that the organization’s raison d’etre is the preserving of a refugee problem, rather than finding a solution for it.

THE UN erred when it created a UN body devoted exclusively to one refugee population and with a modus operandi contradicting that of all other relief institutions. Four steps are required to bring the international approach to the Palestinian refugee issue in line with standard practice on similar situations. First, UNRWA itself should be dissolved. Second, the services UNRWA currently provides should be transferred to other UN agencies, notably the UNHCR, which have a long experience with such programs. Third, responsibility for normal social services should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. A large portion of the UNRWA staff should be transferred to that governmental authority. Fourth, donors should use the maximum amount of oversight to ensure transparency and accountability.

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Review: Jonathan Spyer’s The Transforming Fire: The Best Book on Israel in Thirty Years

Posted on March 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Barry Rubin- 05/01/2011

In my opinion, this is probably the best book on Israel to be published in 30 years. But it is even more than that, since it is also the story of the rise of revolutionary Islamism–and the struggle against it–as the most important issue in the Middle East and very possibly the world.

Dr. Spyer’s participation in the 2006 war with Hizballah as a tank driver, intimate experience with Israeli society, role as a researcher, and participation in international diplomacy has given him a viewpoint unmatched by any other analyst.

Trust me on this one–as several friends already have and agreed with my assessment–this is a book you will want to read and be better for having read.

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Interview: The Transforming Fire

Posted on March 28, 2011 by jonathanspyer

FrontPageMac.com- 29/12/2010

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Jonathan Spyer, a researcher at the Gobal Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, and a columnist at the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of the new book, The Transforming Fire – The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict.

FP: Jonathan Spyer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

JS: Thanks, Jamie. Good to be here.

FP: Tell us about your book and its main argument.

Spyer: The book is concerned with the emergence over the last decade of a new conflict, or rather a new mutation of an old conflict.

I suggest that the old Arab-Israeli conflict has been in a long process of winding down since the mid-1970s, as the Arab states that once led it gradually leave the field of engagement. However, the combination of popular Islamist movements in Arab countries and the state interest of the Islamic Republic of Iran is producing a new alliance which is committed to the destruction of Jewish sovereignty. So the book describes the emergence of this alliance, the basis of its strategic optimism and its belief system, the response of the Israeli society and state to the challenge posed by this new alliance, and the main engagements between the two sides so far, with a particular focus on the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

The book is a combination of analysis, interview, reportage and personal experience. So I draw examples from my experience in the 2006 war, and in earlier experiences in the West Bank, alongside broader political analysis and the experiences and perspectives of others who I interviewed.

FP: Illuminate for us the belief system of the new alliance bent on annihilating Israel.

Spyer: The alliance committed to Israel’s destruction contains within it many forces, with quite disparate ideological and belief systems. There are Iranian or pro-Iranian Shia Islamists, of course, but there are also fanatically anti-Shia Sunni salafis within the ranks of Hamas. There are also ostensibly secular nationalists, exemplified by the Syrian regime and by the less important remnants of secular Arab nationalism who place themselves under this banner. Yet despite their disparities, they share certain defining common features. All are anti-American and anti-western, believing themselves to represent the ‘authentic’ regional currents, challenging the West and its local hirelings.

All believe that, as such, they represent the rising force in the region, and that the US and its allies are demonstrably in decline. All are anti-Jewish and anti-Israel, and portray Israel as a product of western domination of the region. All are committed to a militarist and politicidal, somewhat social darwinist view of politics as endless struggle (or ‘resistance’), in which the side with the greater will and faith (in their view, themselves) will ultimately win total victory.

So this is not a particularly complex or sophisticated belief system, which contains clear contradictions and fault-lines, but it enjoys the passionate commitment of those engaged on its behalf.

FP: The book includes details of a trip you made to Lebanon. Tell us about the trip.

Spyer: Lebanon is one of my central research interests, and with the Israel-Islamist conflict, as with so many earlier regional conflicts and processes, the country is an ideal setting for observing and considering the phenomenon. I have a lot of friends and contacts in the country with whom I communicate regularly. A couple of years back, the chance emerged for me to visit Lebanon in the company of a journalist colleague. Of course, I was happy to take up this opportunity. In the course of the visit, I met with a large number of analysts, activists and ordinary Lebanese, and also had the chance to travel to south Lebanon and spend a day in the openly Hezbollah-controlled area of the country. It was fascinating, and deeply informative.

FP: Can you describe your day in the openly Hezbollah-controlled area of Lebanon? Share some of your observations and experiences.

Spyer: Well we spent the day travelling through the villages and towns of southern Lebanon, sometimes stopping to take a closer look in a number of places. I was able to get a sense of the strength of the Iranian allegiance in the area – we saw a number of Iranian flags, and of course posters, pictures and improvised statues of Khomeini, Khamanei and other leaders. This very pronounced aspect of southern Lebanon was striking, given Hezbollah’s insistence to the outside world at the time (in 2007) of its status as an independent Lebanese actor.

I was also able to observe close up the destruction that still remained from the 2006 war, with large areas of Ait a Shaab and Maroun a Ras and Bint Jbeil still completely in rubble at that time. We were able to get a sense of the inefficacy of UNIFIL, which was entirely absent from the populated areas. And of course through talking to people, I also got a general though inevitably superficial sense of the sentiments of some of the inhabitants of the area. I also managed to revisit Marj Ayoun and El Khiam, which were of particular interest to me because of certain experiences during the 2006 war.

In general, it was a fascinating experience, confirming for me the absolute importance for serious analysts and researchers of getting out in the field and taking a look around, if you really want to gain an understanding – this remains a central professional axiom for me.

FP: Who is currently winning the Israel-Islamist conflict?

Spyer: Despite some significant setbacks, and with some qualifications, I would say that the Iranian/Islamist side is currently making gains, not only or primarily in its fight with Israel, but across the region. This side has just demonstrated that it gets to decide who can form a government in Iraq, it effectively dominates Lebanon through Hezbollah, and it has succeeded in planting what looks more and more like a permanent split in the Palestinian national movement, giving itself a veto on any diplomatic progress between Israelis and Palestinians. These gains have been made not because of any great skill on the part of the Iranians and their Islamist allies, but rather because of the weakness and confusion of the West.

But the gains are only relative. It is worth noting that where this alliance comes up against strong and determined opposition, it tends to be stopped in its tracks. I would cite Israel and Egypt as two examples of strong states that each in its own way has stood its ground and faced down this alliance. Operation Cast Lead is a good example of what can be achieved in this regard, in a war which in essence saw Israel and Egypt combine to face down a local member of the Iranian-led alliance. Egypt’s efforts to repress domestic manifestations of this alliance, and the ongoing strength and buoyancy of Israeli society and economy are further proof of the limited strength of the Iran-led alliance. It is worth remembering that Iran in the final analysis is a third world country, and its allies are terror groups, capable of and willing to commit acts of great violence, and also willing to die in the pursuit of their goals. This gives them a certain strength, but it is ultimately a brittle strength, unlike the strength which derives from a strong, powerful state and economy.

FP: Shed some light for us on the weakness and confusion of the West. What is causing it?

Spyer: My sense is that large parts of the populations of the western democracies have lost a vivid sense of the worthiness of their own societies and the very great virtues of the western democratic system.

In western Europe especially, one has a sense of societal fatigue, cynicism, lack of direction, even decadence. This absence among large numbers of people of an active faith in the rightness of the free way of life they enjoy I think produces a certain moral and subsequently political flabbiness. This makes it a difficult and slow process to identify obvious and real threats and enemies.

The threat of Islamism, both domestically and internationally for these countries, is perhaps the classic example of this. For those of us, like Israelis, who come from the ‘frontiers’ of the democratic world, from the points where that world intersects with rival and hostile systems, this easy, blurred outlook is a luxury we can’t afford. We aren’t the only ones to feel that way. Other ‘frontier democracies’ like Poland and in a different way India share a similar outlook to Israel in this regard, and this makes for the very easy communication and friendship which we have with these countries. But in the western heartland there has been a fading of this energy, and it needs to be won back. That’s the real fight, in a way. Once this energy and commitment returns, I think support for and solidarity with Israel tend to accompany it as a matter of course. Where this commitment is absent, there you find the unreasoning hostility to Israel and sometimes the desire to see it thrown to the wolves.

FP: How will this conflict end do you think?

Spyer: The conflict will end in one of two ways – either in the destruction of Jewish statehood, or in the defeat and decline of Iran, and the fading of Islamist movements and ideologies into irrelevance. I think it will be the latter. As I said, the Iran/Islamist alliance is ultimately an alliance of backward states and movements whose only currency is the uncompromising practice of political violence. This can get you only so far. As the alliance suffers blows from determined Israeli and Arab resistance to it, as its promises of building successful powerful countries recedes – with its rule producing only brutally repressive regimes such as the Hamas enclave in Gaza, so its luster will gradually fade.

There may be decisive military engagements along the way. This is impossible to predict. But the Iran/Islamist alliance commits the fatal error of a massive underestimation of its enemy. It knows nothing of the reality of Israel, and imagines it to be a lost, artificial country whose citizens have little commitment to it. This is a fundamental misunderstanding, and as the hubris of this alliance is worn away by defeat, setback and lack of achievement, so the masses currently excited by it will turn away in disappointment.

FP: Expand for us on the strengths of Israel and also why the Iran/Islamist alliance so profoundly underestimates it.

Spyer: The Iran/Islamist alliance underestimates Israel for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a traditional Islamic contempt for the Jews, which sees them as a naturally weak and subaltern people, not fitted for the bearing of sovereignty. This view is deeply rooted, and seen from it, Israel looks like an absurd pretension and a surely temporary anomaly. Secondly, strategic optimism of a sometimes unreasoning variety has been a very characteristic element of Arab ideological movements in modern times. They are always able to convince themselves that they are on the road to victory, even when to the rest of us, they seem to be in tatters. In this regard, as in many others, the current Iranian regime has imbibed a great deal of Arab political culture. Some Iranian friends of mine regard Ahmedinejad and the Revolutionary Guards element as representing a quite alien political pattern, taken from the Arab world and grafted onto Iran. I don’t have sufficient expertise in Iran to know if that’s true. But certainly the extreme self belief, hubris and arrogance of this regime and its various clients is very familiar to any student of modern Arab political culture.

Regarding Israel’s strengths, well, the country’s economic achievements and so on are not news to anybody. I think there is a deeper element at work, though. Israel is a very powerfully rooted country, whose people have a vivid sense of who they are, rooted in Jewish history. This is not a case of people recruited for service by some brittle modern ideology. Rather, Israel is built ultimately on a profoundly powerful, pre-modern, even primordial sense of Jewish identity which modern Zionism has, so to speak, carried into modern political form. This is a very potent element. It is still in the process of coming to fruition in myriad ways, but it has already created a very strong core.

Of course, one could argue that there are still profound contradictions to be worked out in Israel regarding making this core loyalty work properly in a democratic setting, and regarding the correct balance between tradition and modernity. Israel has not yet answered many questions relating to this. But the root identity of the country is firm and strong. This is something which Israel’s many adversaries – and here one must include the ‘moderate’ Palestinians of the West Bank Palestinian Authority as well as the Iran/Islamist alliance – are absolutely determined not to accept. Yet it remains the case.

FP: Jonathan Spyer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

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