By David M Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM
I have just returned from 10 days in Washington, where I encountered administration officials, think tank analysts and Jewish community lobbyists who are profoundly misreading Israel and misunderstanding the changed Middle East.
Most of them think that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is without a grand plan and is just playing petty politics to survive. I tried to explain to them how wrong they were and to articulate a coherent Israeli strategic worldview.
To begin with, I found that senior Obama administration defense officials have convinced themselves that the Israeli security establishment has come around to a benign view of the Western nuclear accord with Iran. Netanyahu is an outlier in his continued negativity toward the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, they told me; he is isolated from his own military-intelligence establishment in this regard, they asserted with self-congratulatory smirks on their faces.
To prove their claim, these officials pointed to a series of anti-Netanyahu speeches given at the recent Herzliya Conference by Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya’alon, both former chiefs of staff and former defense ministers, among others.
Responding to this nonsense, I explained to my American interlocutors that they were deluding themselves. Now one year after the deal was signed, any serious person in Israel is certain that it was a mistake.
True, some Israeli analysts are now emphasizing the positives — that Iran’s nuclear program has been mothballed for a bit to repair ties with the U.S. But that’s like telling the boss a few nice things you know they want to hear. That doesn’t mean you think your boss is taking the company in the right direction. It simply means you want to maintain good relations.
In concrete terms, everyone in Israel sees that President Barack Obama’s capitulation to Iran has strengthened its hegemonic ambitions in this region, aided by tens of billions of dollars in blocked earnings and a sunset clause. Iran got to keep its nuclear enrichment program without confessing to its weaponization efforts. Obama has blown massive wind into Iran’s sails, with no pushback in sight as the ayatollahs march across multiple theaters.
Don’t be fooled by the left-of-center echo chamber in Herzliya, I warned my Washington colleagues. What was heard there was the usual cut-throat, internal Israeli political game being played out in a one-sided fashion. Personal attacks on Netanyahu by aggrieved politicians do not represent the sober professional analysis of Israelis engaged in defense and intelligence policy. In this regard, Netanyahu is well within the Israeli consensus: The JCPOA was and remains a wreck.
I also found a great deal of angst and misapprehension in Washington about Israel’s new regional diplomatic maneuvering. What the heck is Netanyahu doing pow-wowing with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the fourth time this year, they demanded to know. And what’s with all the talk about tacit Israeli alliances with leading Sunni states? Does Israel really think it can replace the U.S., its diplomatic and security anchor, with Egyptian dictators or Saudi sheikhs?
Here, too, I was forced to explain to my American interlocutors that they were out of synch with Middle East realities and failing to appreciate Israel’s strategic worldview.
Israel has no intention of shifting away from its alliance with the U.S., I told them. In fact, it wants and needs more U.S. engagement. Alas, Israel sees the U.S. withdrawing from commitments to its allies in the region and greasing the path to dominance for Israel’s biggest adversary. Israel recognizes that Washington is extraordinarily hesitant about investing more assets in the region, even when it comes to backing up Israel.
So Israel is joining the bandwagon of those who want to prevent Iranian hegemony and clamp down on Islamist insurgencies. This includes Russia, which is flying its air force along our borders. While Putin is partnered with Iran in Syria for the moment, he respects Israel’s role as a regional stabilizer and understands Israel’s red lines on security. Sometimes, that’s more than can be said for Obama.
In fact, there is an Israeli security understanding, and it is something like this: Many Arab states are melting down, with the region in the throes of civilizational chaos. The security environment is unstable and the future truly unknown. This situation could go on for decades. Stepping in to fill the vacuum are truly bad actors: radical non-state actors such as al-Qaida and Islamic State, and wannabe regional powers such as Iran.
The Palestinians, too, have been radicalized, and they suffer from a chronic and acute leadership deficit. Their cloying victimhood clogs their ability to think straight. Moreover, Gaza seems permanently locked in the jaws of Hamas. This makes neat territorial deals with the Palestinians nearly impossible and adds to the long-term fragility of Israel’s frontiers.
In this time of extreme uncertainty, Israel’s approach can be termed “caution with creativity”: Navigate warily and ride out the Middle Eastern storms by strictly securing Israel’s borders. Avoid grandiose and dicey diplomatic experiments, and refrain as much as possible from bloody wars. Ensure domestic government stability, improve Israel’s economy, and manage frictions with the Palestinians.
At the same time, keep all options open and maneuver innovatively. Share intelligence capabilities to help secure others, and develop new regional alliances. And yes, Israel would be thrilled to intensify and routinize security ties with the U.S. defense establishment in the long term, irrespective of the political winds in Washington, if possible.
The point missed in Washington is that the main game in the region is no longer Israel versus the Palestinians or the Arabs. It’s Israel and most of the Arabs versus the Iranians and the jihadis.
The “Palestinian problem” is no longer a priority issue for Arabs in the Middle East. In relative terms, when viewed in a broader context, Palestinian nationalism is one of the more controllable problems that Israel faces. The frictions can be managed.
By the way, Israelis overwhelmingly think Netanyahu is still the best man to manage all this. He may not be loved by the Israeli electorate, but his prudence and professionalism meet Israel’s needs.
So there is an Israeli “grand strategy” of sorts that Washington is missing, perhaps because Jerusalem is reticent about clearly articulating this, for fear of violating the codes of diplomatic political correctness.
But this is a mistake Israel continues to make. Israel should be expounding its worldview forthrightly. Its strategic posture makes a lot of sense in the totally transformed regional landscape.
The western antisemites are pissed off.