Reconsidering Israel's nuclear ambiguity.

 

by Louis Rene Beres -

Benjamin Netanyahu has already indicated that Iranian nuclearization is issue number one. Mr. Netanyahu also must understand that Israel's own nuclear doctrine will have to adapt. A core element of this adaptation should concern Israel's nuclear ambiguity. Jerusalem's nuclear policy has always been to keep Israel's presumed nuclear capabilities quietly in the "basement." Now, the new prime minister will have to decide if it may soon be time for some sort of disclosure. This is because an ambiguous nuclear deterrent may not work indefinitely.

Israel's nuclear ambiguity has done little to deter "ordinary" conventional enemy aggressions or acts of terror. It has succeeded in keeping the country's enemies from mounting existential attacks. But certain changes in strategic doctrine could be necessary.

Oblivious to the call for meaningful sanctions by a plainly impotent "international community," Tehran continues to "go nuclear." Unless there is a prompt, comprehensive and sustained preemptive strike against Iran's developing nuclear assets and infrastructures, an act of "anticipatory self-defense" under international law, Israel will face an openly genocidal nuclear Iran. Still, the prospect of such legally permissible defensive strikes is now very low, and Israel will likely have to prepare to secure itself against a nuclear Iran with both ballistic missile defense (Arrow/Hetz) and improved nuclear deterrence.

Prime Minister-designate Netanyahu will understand that adequate deterrence of Iran could soon require some release of pertinent Israeli nuclear details. Concerning these details, less rather than more Israeli nuclear secrecy could be required. What will now need to be determined is the precise extent and subtlety with which Israel should communicate its nuclear positions, intentions and capabilities to Iran, and certain others.

The rationale for any nuclear disclosure would not lie in expressing the obvious. Instead, it would rest on the presumption that nuclear weapons attributed to Israel can serve Israel's security by communicating certain military capabilities and intentions. The form and extent of any strategic disclosure could be more critical than before because the new president of the United States seems determined to proceed with a one-sided "peace process."

Israel's state enemies - especially Iran, Egypt and Syria - will likely continue to enlarge and refine both their conventional and unconventional military capabilities. In one case, Mr. Ahmadinejad could conceivably cast aside all of the usual considerations of rational behavior. Were this to happen, the Islamic Republic of Iran could effectively become a nuclear suicide-bomber in macrocosm.

To protect against enemy strikes, particularly those attacks that could carry intolerable costs, Mr. Netanyahu should exploit every relevant aspect and function of Israel's own presumed nuclear arsenal, if indeed it does have these weapons, and doctrine. The success of his efforts will depend not only on its particular choice of targeting doctrine ("counterforce" or "counter city"), but also upon the extent to which this key choice is made known in advance. Before enemies can be deterred from launching first strikes against Israel, and before they can be deterred from launching retaliatory attacks following any Israeli preemption, it may not be enough to assume only that Israel has the Bomb. These enemies may also need to recognize that nuclear weapons attributed to Israel are sufficiently invulnerable to such attacks, and that they are pointed directly at high-value population targets.

Removing the presumed bomb from Israel's basement could enhance Israel's nuclear deterrence to the extent that it would heighten enemy perceptions of secure and capable Israeli nuclear forces. Such a calculated end to deliberate ambiguity could also underscore Israel's willingness to use these nuclear forces in reprisal for certain enemy first-strike and retaliatory attacks.

For now, as Mr. Netanyahu surely knows, Israel's nuclear capabilities should remain ambiguous. But soon - at the very moment that Iran is discovered to be close to completing its own nuclear weapons capability - the Jewish State should put a prompt end to deliberate nuclear ambiguity.

Prime Minister-designate Netanyahu already understands that there could never be any reliable peace with a nuclear Iran. But if neither Israel nor the United States will undertake preemptive destruction of Iran's nearlycompleted nuclear program, Israel will have to take its own bomb out of the "basement." Such an essential end to deliberate nuclear ambiguity may still not be sufficient to save Israel from an eventual nuclear war with Iran, but it would surely be better than continuing with a no longer viable policy of protracted uncertainty.

 

 

Louis Rene Beres was chair of Project Daniel. He is Professor of International Law at Purdue University and the author of many major books and articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Open your eyes!

 

by N. Richard Greenfield

With each announcement of a new appointee to the Obama Middle East foreign policy team the tilt against Israel increases.

Samantha Powers and James Jones, both with long records of antagonism towards Israel, were followed by lesser-known names of the same persuasion. Fred Hof will deal with Syria and Susan Rice represents American interests at the United Nations. George Mitchell, who carries the flag for moral equivalence is directed to mediate the Arab-Israeli impasse and, if past experience is any guide, will call on Israel to sacrifice its security and safety in exchange for an Arab promise not to wantonly kill Israeli civilians. Isi Liebler describes Mitchell as a man whose "obsessive even-handedness resulted in an inability to distinguish between terrorists and victims."

But last week the administration did more than appoint. It shifted policy about 90 degrees towards Hamas in Gaza.

Secretary of State Clinton announced 300 to 900 million dollars in aid for Gaza, which is part of an almost 3 billion dollar EU package that makes the Israeli incursion into Gaza a joke. To underline the absurdity of this move, rockets again came down on southern Israel, hitting a school in Ashkelon that, fortunately, was not in session.

To believe that Hamas terrorists who control life and death in that forlorn sliver of land will not have access to those funds, as it has access to anything else that comes into that area, is naive.

Ed Lasky of the American Thinker warns that the removal of sanctions against Burma, one of the world's most odious regimes, presages a possible reversal of U.S. policy towards Iran.

In the meantime, Galid Shalit is in captivity in Gaza for nearly a thousand days. If he is alive, and the U.S. hands over that almost billion dollars without as much as mentioning his name, it can only be termed a studied indifference to Israel's well being. It's not naivete.

To top this all off, the appointment of Chas Freeman is the one move that is most problematical. One can grasp the problems with Freeman just by listening to him:

"The problem of terrorism that now bedevils us has its origins in.....the Middle East. To end this terrorism we must address the issues in the region that give rise to it. Principal among these is the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation. ....Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians..." Freeman, May 2007.

JWR columnist Frank Gaffney comments on this appointment as follows:

"It strains credulity that a man with such pronounced — and anti-American — policy views can serve effectively, let alone objectively, as the arbiter of National Intelligence Estimates. ..... The evidence suggests that he is what he appears to be: an aggressive partisan in the service of many of America's most dangerous actual or potential adversaries."

Freeman is a paid shill for both Saudi Arabia and China. His foundation just received a million dollar gift from a Saudi Prince. The Middle East Policy Forum, among other things, urges the inclusion of a sanitized version of Whahabbism in our school system's textbooks. A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman is the President's choice to head the National Intelligence Council. The facts tell us that he is an unlikely candidate for any vital planning position which requires a studied objectivity, as opposed to partisanship. As such he will help shape Middle East strategy for our President, instead of foreign policy for the princes of Saudi Arabia. Not only does Freeman's appointment endanger Israel, but his commercial ties to China also bring into question his views on Taiwan which, like Israel, he disdains and sees as an impediment to US interests.

JWR columnist Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post characterizes his appointment as such: "Freeman is an outspoken opponent of Israel. He has stated repeatedly that the source of Islamic and Arab hostility toward the U.S. and violence against Americans — including the September 11 attacks — is the American alliance with Israel. Were the U.S. to abandon Israel — which he believes is solely to blame for the Arab world's rejection of its right to exist and for Iran's stated intention to destroy it — then the U.S. would have no further difficulties with the Arabs or Iran."

Add to all of this an in-and-out re entry into the Durban process; Obama's team players who provide running commentary on Israel's election that can only be interpreted as meddling with Israeli democracy; and a European-style curtailment of arms shipments to Israel except for those deemed 'defensive only,' and one can't help but believe that the Obama Administration has traveled far in six short weeks.

For many who feel the jury is still out, the obeisance to the Arab world at the expense of Israel makes it clear that there is a verdict in the offing here.

One thing is clear: American Jews who supported and voted for change should open their eyes to this reality and rethink their blind allegiance to this administration in terms of its policy towards Israel. Congress, which has always been a bulwark of support for Israel in this country can take the lead in this initiative, and Americans would do well to be supportive of its efforts.

Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, has called for an investigation on the closeness of Freeman to the Saudis. Democrat Steve Israel of New York has also written a letter to the Investigator General of the National Security Council asking for an investigation of Chas Freeman's fitness for this appointment.

Americans did not vote in this last election for a major realignment to the historical alliance we have with Israel. Asking our senators and representatives to inject greater oversight of our newly appointed Middle East foreign policy team and Chas Freeman in particular is a constructive exercise. Supporting those who are making this inquiry is a good start.

N. Richard Greenfield

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

Was the Gaza Reconstruction Conference a Fraud?

 

by Daniel Pipes

I wrote an article three days ago, "That Surreal Gaza Reconstruction Conference," in which I condemned the Sharm El-Sheikh meeting on March 2 that was attended by 71 states and 16 organizations and raised $4.5 billion for Gaza and the Palestinian Authority. I noted that attacks from Gaza continued unabated and asked "What the hell are the donor countries doing, getting in the middle of an on-going war with their high-profile supposed reconstruction effort?"

Well, good news: The whole exercise may have been a con job.

Adam Entous writes for Reuters in "Record donor pledges to Palestinians raise questions" that things are not what they seem. He steps back to note that the Palestinians have been pledged $14 billion at five Western-backed meetings donor and investor conferences since December 2007 ($12 billion from governments and $2 billion from investors). But look closer and you'll find that these monies "were counted more than once, have yet to materialise or were too vague to rely on."

In more detail:

Much of the money depends on Israel fully opening border crossings with Hamas-ruled Gaza, and lifting restrictions in the occupied West Bank where Abbas's Palestinian Authority holds sway, or has been linked to progress in stalled peace talks and Palestinian reconciliation, casting doubt on future payouts,

One senior Western diplomat criticised the pledging process as "smoke and mirrors" because of double-counting. Another said the big-figure headlines from donors eager to look forthcoming, combined with a lack of transparency, were "getting ridiculous", noting that despite the cascade of pledges, the Authority was still struggling to pay full wages to its workers on time.

Conference organisers have disclosed little about individual donor pledges or disbursement schedules, making it difficult to track how much money was really in the pipeline for Abbas.

Donors also differ over how to deliver their aid, underscoring divisions over isolating Hamas, which has decried the pledging process as financial "blackmail" to marginalise the group after its 2006 election victory. Israel and the United States say they want to prevent any money from going to the Islamists, who they consider "terrorists." …

Combined, the pledges would be the equivalent of $3,500 for every man, woman and child in the West Bank and Gaza, more than double per capita Palestinian GDP. Half of Gaza's 1.5 million population live on less than $3 a day, by Palestinian estimates.

Indeed, the whole thing may be a farce:

It is unclear how much of the $4.5 billion in "new commitments", announced at Monday's conference in Sharm to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after Israel's devastating offensive, were really new, said Western diplomats who took part. … Diplomats said some other donors in Sharm, including the European Commission, largely re-pledged commitments initially made at a donors' conference in Paris in December 2007. … "It is the same money," said a senior Western diplomat, whose government made a sizeable pledge at the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh. "It is getting ridiculous."

Comment: What a relief if it's true that Hamas is not getting paid to launch rockets at Israel nor the Palestinian Authority to engage in terrorism against Israelis.

 

Daniel Pipes
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

How Obama, Hillary and Kerry will, ultimately, bring peace to the Middle East.

 

by Caroline B. Glick

 

Compare and contrast the following three events:

At the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday, George Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA pointed an accusatory finger at Syria. Syria, Schulte said, has not come clean on its nuclear program. That program of course, was exposed in September 2007 when Israel reportedly destroyed Syria's North Korean built, Iranian financed al Kibar nuclear reactor.

In its report to its board of governors, the IAEA stated that in analyzing soil samples from the bombed installation, its inspectors discovered traces of uranium. The nuclear watchdog agency also noted that the Syrians have blocked UN nuclear inspectors from the site and from three other suspected nuclear sites.

Reacting to the IAEA report, Schulte said that it, "contributes to the growing evidence of clandestine nuclear activities in Syria." He added, "We must understand why such [uranium] material - material not previously declared to the IAEA - existed in Syria and this can only happen if Syria provides the cooperation requested."

On Tuesday, at a press conference in Jerusalem with outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the Obama administration is sending two senior envoys to Syria. Their job, as she put it, is to begin "preliminary conversations," on how to jumpstart US-Syrian bilateral ties.

Clinton's statement made good headlines, but she was light on details. On Wednesday, hours after Schulte accused Syria of covering up its illicit nuclear program, US Senator John Kerry helpfully filled in the blanks about the nature of the Obama administration's overtures to nuclear-proliferating Damascus. In an address before the left-leaning Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who just returned from a visit to Syria, Israel and the Palestinian Authority said that the purpose of US overtures to Syria is to appease Syrian President Bashar Assad.

If in the past, both American and Israeli policymakers interested in engaging Syria have made ending Syria's alliance with Iran a central goal of their proposed engagement, Kerry dismissed such an aim as unrealistic. In his words, "We should have no illusions that Syria will immediately end its ties with Iran."

Indeed, as far as Kerry is concerned, Syria's role in these talks is not to actually give the US anything of value. Rather, Syria's role is to take things of value from the US - and of course from Israel.

Kerry proposed that in exchange for Syrian acceptance the US's offer of friendship and Assad's willingness to negotiate an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights, the US should consider "loosening certain sanctions" against Syria. Doing so, he claimed will also be good for the US economy because it will open new opportunities for US businesses.

On the surface, the disparate statements by Schulte, Clinton and Kerry present us with a puzzle. In Geneva, Schulte noted that Syria is a nuclear proliferating rogue state that has refused to cooperate with UN nuclear inspectors. And in Jerusalem and Washington, Clinton and Kerry ignored Syria's dangerous actions, and advocated a policy of appeasement.

At the same IAEA Board of Governors meeting this week, the agency reported that Iran has produced more than a thousand kilograms of low enriched uranium - enough to build a bomb after further enrichment. That enrichment can be completed by year's end with Iran's 5,600 centrifuges. Moreover, between the Russian-built, soon to be opened nuclear reactor in Bushehr and Iran' illicit heavy water reactor in Arak, Iran will have the capacity to build plutonium-based bombs within two years.

Commenting on the IAEA's report on Iran, US Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged that Iran has enough uranium for a bomb. Seemingly contradicting Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed that there is no reason to worry about all that uranium because Iran won't have a bomb for some time given that the uranium it possesses is not sufficiently enriched to make a bomb.

For his part, US President Barack Obama is receiving guidance on contending with Iran from former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who co-authored the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report published in December 2006. That report called for the US to coordinate the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq with Iran and Syria - the principal sponsors of both the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies in the country. It recommended that the US purchase Syria's good will by pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Damascus and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Hamas. It recommended that the US win Iran's trust by accepting it as a nuclear power and pledging not to overthrow the regime.

In an interview last month with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Hamilton reiterated those recommendations. He claimed that the starting point for US-Iran discussions is for the US to "state our respect for the Iranian people, renounce regime change as an instrument of US policy, seek opportunities for a range of dialogue across a range of issues, and acknowledge Iran's security concerns and its right to civilian nuclear power."

Hamilton assured Ignatius that these recommendations have been adopted by the White House.

All of the above show that there is no contradiction between what the Obama administration understands about Iran and Syria and the policy it has adopted towards them. Specifically, as Schulte's and Mullen's statements make clear, the administration is aware of the dangers that both Iran and Syria constitute to global security. And as Clinton, Kerry, Gates and Hamilton all make clear, the administration's policy for dealing with those dangers is to change the subject and hope the American public won't notice or mind.

To this end, the administration is now asserting that Iran and Syria - the two most active agents of regional instability - share the US's interest in a stable, democratic Iraq. And owing to their sudden devotion to stability, Obama's surrogates tell us the Syrians and Iranians will support the new anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian Iraqi democracy and even protect it after the US withdraws its forces from the country.

Then too, as both Kerry and Clinton made clear, the administration plans to ignore Syria's support for Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese terrorism, its nuclear proliferation activities and its massive ballistic missile arsenal as well as its strategic alliance with Iran. Rather than confront Syria about its bad behavior, the administration favors a policy based on making believe that in his heart of hearts, Assad is a liberal democrat who aspires to peace, and hope, and change.

But the core of the administration's campaign to ignore Iran's nuclear program - as well as Syria's - is its unrelenting quest for the big payoff: Palestinian statehood.

This week Iran staged yet another "Destroy Israel" conference in Teheran, replete with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trademark Holocaust denial, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's ritual castigation of the Jewish state as a "cancerous tumor," and the US as a treacherous enemy, and Ali Larijani's threat to attack Israel's suspected nuclear sites. The conference enjoyed a newfound sense of international legitimacy taking place as it did just after burka-clad Annette Benning's goodwill Hollywood celebrity visit to the mullocracy.

The genocidal pageantry in Teheran, elicited no significant response from Clinton and Kerry. They had bigger fish to fry. While the administration and its supporters seem to believe that the US has no right to make demands on Iran and Syria which, they assert, are both just advancing their national interests, for them Israel is a completely different story. As Clinton and Kerry demonstrated this week, the administration and its supporters will not stop making demands on Israel.

Kerry justified Syria's continued alliance with Iran by saying that Syria should be expected to "play both sides of the fence [with the US and Iran] as other nations do when they believe it is in their interests."

But Israel has no right to similarly take what action it deems necessary to secure its interests. In Kerry's view, the time has come for the US to show that it is serious about Palestinian statehood and the way to do that is to force Israel to block all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria.

In his words, "On the Israeli side, nothing will do more to make clear our seriousness about turning the page than demonstrating - with actions rather than words - that we are serious about Israel freezing settlement activity in the West Bank."

He also called for the US to compel Israel to open its borders with Gaza. And he said that from his perspective, it is unacceptable for the incoming Netanyahu government not to embrace establishing a Palestinian state as its most urgent goal.

Clinton joined Kerry his efforts to compel the Jewish state to ignore its national interests in the cause of the higher goal of Palestinian statehood. Like him, she attacked Israel for not handing control over its borders with Gaza to Hamas. And like Kerry, she stated repeatedly that her greatest goal is to establish a Palestinian state.

Clinton's unique contribution to that great "pro-peace" endeavor this week was her outspoken criticism on Wednesday of the Jerusalem municipality's decision to enforce the city's building and planning ordinances equally towards both Jews and Arabs. That policy was made clear this week when city inspectors destroyed illegal buildings in both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods.

Since as far as Clinton is concerned, Israel will one day be required to throw all the Jews out of East, South and North Jerusalem to make room forwhat she believes is the "inevitable" Palestinian state, Israel has no right to treat Arabs and Jews equally in its soon-to-be-inevitably divided capital city. Arabs should be allowed to break the law at will. When Israel insists on enforcing its laws without prejudice, Clinton condemns it for being anti-peace.

Kerry argues that by forcing Israel to give its land to the Palestinians the US will be promoting regional stability by doing the bidding of anti-Iranian Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But even if putting the screws to Israel makes Cairo and Riyadh happy, their happiness will have no impact whatsoever on Iran's nuclear weapons programs or on Syria's proliferation activities. That is, Israeli land giveaways will have no impact on regional stability.

And that's precisely the point. The Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power or Syria from maintaining its alliance with the mullahs. The White House seeks far more modest ends.

Through its policies towards Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other, the Obama administration demonstrates that it has already accepted a nuclear Iran. Its chief concern today is to avoid being blamed when the mushroom clouds appear in the sky. And it may well achieve that aim. After all, how could the administration be blamed for a nuclear Iran when it has wholly devoted its efforts to advancing the righteous cause of peace?

 

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Aid for sale in Hamas' Gaza.

by Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman

There was a bit of head-scratching going on recently in the hallowed halls of the UN.

After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid into the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders.

Israeli officials have been saying all along that Hamas routinely diverts humanitarian aid. In April, fuel trucks destined for UNRWA warehouses were overtaken. It was reported in August that Hamas gunmen had hijacked more than 10 trucks destined for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society full of food and medical supplies.

All that is only more ironic given the worldwide castigation of Israel for allegedly preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the military operation.

And the criticism wasn't limited to the issue of aid. The UN (and the international community) was quick to condemn Israel for allegedly targeting an UNRWA-run school, despite widespread acknowledgement that Hamas routinely employs such facilities as "civilian shields" in an attempt to draw Israeli fire.

The incident where IDF fire hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is indeed tragic. At the time, UNRWA insisted there were no terrorists in the school compound and the Israelis were "careless," with UNRWA Operations Director John Ging claiming that mortars had hit the school, killing dozens and wounding more.

Just days ago, though, UN officials admitted that Israel had not hit the school at all, but an area outside it. Ging admitted that his original claims were wrong.

It may have taken the embarrassment over such a glaring error to get the UN to acknowledge what the Israelis have been saying all along: that Hamas' callous use of civilians as shields is itself a humanitarian crisis.

Despite the new information, it's worth taking a close look at the historical ties between UNRWA and Hamas. UNRWA has long been a major employer for Hamas members, and has lent its facilities to Hamas and other terror organizations for weapons-related purposes.

For example, in May, we learned that Awad al-Qiq, who was targeted by the Israeli military, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. Al-Qiq, a science teacher, was also in the rocket business while at the same time educating Palestinian youth.

Since Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2006 after Israel's unilateral withdrawal in August 2005, UNRWA hasn't raised explicit objections to the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force.

UNRWA appears to be chiefly concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As Karen AbuZayd, the commissioner general of UNRWA, said after the Hamas takeover, "We are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA.

"On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

To be perfectly blunt, the theft of humanitarian aid by Hamas (not to mention its ruthless use of its own people as targets as well as shields) only proves the point: Dead civilians are not Israel's goal but Hamas'.

According to Hamas' thinking, the more Palestinian victims there are, the more the international community will try to pressure Israel to avoid any further military operations.

Now that the shooting has stopped, the Obama administration has pledged to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza. Governments and NGOs serious about assisting Palestinian Gazan society must insist on accountability whereby that reconstruction funding is allocated independently and transparently.

When it comes to doling out the money, UNRWA and Hamas - both of whom seem to be more focused on empty rhetoric rather than working towards a peaceful Palestinian civil society - should be bypassed.

Asaf Romirowsky is an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum and manager of Israel and Middle East affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Nicole Brackman is a former Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Bringing Hamas Into the Fold.

 

 

by Lee Underwood

 

Reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah began Thursday morning (February 26, 2009/2 Adar 5769) in Cairo, Egypt. The negotiations are being handled by Egypt. In addition, just as Israel does before it seeks concessions by the PA/PLO, Fatah released 42 Hamas prisoners in Judea and Samaria on Tuesday.

 

What exactly is the goal of these talks? According to the politicians involved, the intended goal is to form a unity government. In the end, that means it would end up being like the one that was formed by the democratically-held Palestinian Authority (PA/PLO) elections in 2006. The problem at that time, however, was that Hamas won that election by a landslide and, despite its demands for the election, the leaders of world would not stand for a Hamas-led government. Despite the fact that no one disputed that the elections were held democratically, the nations of the world, led by US President George W. Bush, voided Hamas' victory and placed the Fatah terrorist organization in charge of the PA/PLO. It was thought at that time that Fatah could lead the Arab people in Israel and successfully negotiate a 'peace' agreement with Israel. However, as time as shown, that was not to be. Despite massive amounts of monetary aid from many different nations, and the physical training and arming of Fatah-led PA/PLO troops by the United States military, Hamas proved to be a much more formidable foe than was previous thought. In the end, Hamas drove the PA/PLO 'military' out of Gaza and took away their US-supplied weapons. (It has been feared that Hamas would eventually do the same thing to Fatah in Judea and Samaria.) Since then, Hamas has continued its rocket attacks on Israel, even in spite of the recent IDF defensive actions in Gaza. Although the IDF have crippled Hamas to some degree, the terrorist organization continues to launch missile attacks on Israel on a daily basis.

 

Hamas has a large following in Gaza, due to its implementation of social programs, schools and other government-related activities. The Hamas terrorist organization funds schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues. In regards to these type of government-related activities, Hamas is much better at it than Fatah. In addition, although it is a terrorist group, the Islamic beliefs of Hamas cause it to look unfavorably towards government corruption, in contrast to Fatah, helping to increase its popularity among the Arab population in Israel. As the nations have finally learned, these facts make it hard to ignore Hamas in any kind of solution to divide Israel.

Over time, the nations of the world have come to discover that they must also bring Hamas "into the fold" in order to take land away from Israel to form another Arab terrorist state. Hamas is being drawn into the fold of the peace process because the US, EU and Israel falsely believe they will never be able to divide Israel without it. These nations won't do it directly because negotiating with Hamas is against the law in those countries. Instead, they choose to let Egypt handle it. That way, in the end everyone is happy and gets what they want: Egypt gets the glory and the nations get a divided Israel with its sworn enemies in its midst.

In order to appease those Arabs that support Hamas, the US (and other nations will soon follow) recently announced it is providing $900 million in aid to rebuild Gaza after the recent defensive actions of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to protect Israeli citizens. The money is supposed to flow through the Fatah-led PA/PLO but given the reconciliation talks that just started, Hamas will also become part of the PA/PLO, if not its ruling party.

 

That's $900 million from a nation who recently suffered the worst economic diaster since the 1930s (if not even worse than that). Millions of people in the United States have lost their jobs and their homes, public schools are being forced to close their doors, state and local governments are seeking ways to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from their respective budgets, yet the US government feels it is more important to support a failed 'peace' process than to help its own citizens. Some people may say it's not about the 'peace' process; rather it's about helping the people of Gaza. If that were true, then why hasn't the US "helped" other nations rebuild on that scale? It does help in diaster situations but generally not when the destruction has come by war, unless it caused the destruction itself, and certainly not on that grand of a scale.

 

So, as was done back in the early 1990s with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas will soon become a respectable, peace-loving humanitarian organization. Sounds a bit crazy, doesn't it? I have stated several times over the past years that this would eventually happen. Unfortunately, it seemed too far-fetched for most people, even though the same exact thing happened with the PLO. Let's not forget that master terrorist Yasser Arafat even won a Noble peace prize! Perhaps one of Hamas' leaders will soon follow his terrorist brother in that reward. Who knows, in this world today, if he plays his cards right, Osama bin Laden may even be able to make Al-Qaeda look respectable.

 

Sounds crazy? Yeah, right.

 

Lee Underwood

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Change has come.

 

by Caroline B. Glick

Provoked by the Palestinians' escalating missile campaign, on Sunday evening the Ashkelon Parents Association voted not to send their children to school on Monday.

Ever since the outgoing Kadima government ended Operation Cast Lead in Gaza on January 20, the Palestinians have steadily stepped-up their missile war against Israel. Over the weekend the IDF acknowledged that six weeks later, daily Palestinian missile barrages against Israel have returned to pre-Operation Cast Lead levels. Moreover, the IDF warned that over the past six weeks, Hamas and its sister terror groups have rebuilt their missile arsenals both through imports of Iranian arms from Egypt and through local production lines. They have also brought in fairly advanced anti-aircraft missiles capable of shooting down IAF helicopters.

The proximate cause for the decision to close down schools was the weekend missile strike against a high school in Ashkelon. The direct hit caused massive damage both to the school and to surrounding apartments. IDF inspectors assessed that the Grad missile the Palestinians used in the attack had been locally upgraded. Its warhead was two and a half times bigger than usual.

As Ashkelon's children settled into their living rooms instead of their classrooms on Monday morning, a few hundred kilometers to the south representatives from 80 countries and international organizations convened in Sharm el-Sheikh to pledge billions of dollars in aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza. The US, represented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pledged $900 million in assistance.

Also on Monday, The Jerusalem Post reported that the US is curtailing its military aid to Israel. Under new Pentagon guidelines, the Ministry of Defense must give a detailed accounting of how it uses every item it purchases with US aid money. As a consequence, the Defense Ministry issued new instructions to the IDF that from now Israel's purchases from the US will be limited to defensive armaments and systems aimed at preserving its "qualitative edge" against its enemies.

******

 

TO UNDERSTAND HOW it came to pass that six weeks after Operation Cast Lead, the US has joined the nations of the world in funding Hamas and is curtailing its military assistance to Israel, it is necessary to understand Israel's domestic politics. Specifically, since as Israel's leaders during Operation Cast Lead Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are responsible for Israel's current predicament, it is necessary to understand their Kadima party's operating rationale.

The main rule of politics that has guided Kadima since its founding in November 2005 is never be perceived as failing. For the past three years, with the active collusion of the local media, Kadima has managed to control the flow of information to the public and so successfully covered up the abject failures of its strategic policies. Its success in last month's elections is testament to its extraordinary capacity to spin and obfuscate information.

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THIS KADIMA PRACTICE was first implemented in the lead-up to the 2006 elections. At the time, the media worked with Kadima to suppress information about the strategic significance of Hamas's electoral victory in the January 2006 Palestinian Authority elections. They also blocked reportage and public discussion of the massive build-up of Iranian-supplied arms in Gaza following Israel's withdrawal from the area in September 2005, and the transformation of Gaza's disparate terror cells into Hizbullah-trained and styled paramilitary brigades.

The need for the cover-up was obvious: An open discussion of post-withdrawal developments in Gaza would have demonstrated to the public that Kadima's signature policy of unconditionally surrendering land to the Palestinians was, to put it mildly, insane.

Both the Palestinian cross-border operation in June 2006 that led to the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Schalit to Gaza, and Hizbullah's similar raid in July 2006 that fomented the summer war in Lebanon demonstrated the dire consequences of Israeli land giveaways. Neither the onslaught from Gaza nor the war from Lebanon would have happened if Israel hadn't left Gaza in 2005 and Lebanon in 2000.

For Kadima it was clear that to survive the events of the summer of 2006, it needed to develop a story line to hide the truth. In Lebanon, hiding the truth meant choosing defeat over victory.

For anyone with even a vague notion about strategy, it was clear at the time that the only way to protect northern Israel from Hizbullah was to deny Hizbullah the use of southern Lebanon as a base of operations. To do that, Israel needed to conquer and maintain control over southern Lebanon. Nothing else could end the Iranian proxy's ability to rain its missiles down on Israel. And given the jihadist nature and foreign command of Hizbullah, Israel has no capacity to deter the paramilitary force.

For Kadima's leaders however, a reconquest of south Lebanon would involve recognizing that their land surrender strategy was wrong. Their governing rationale would be discredited.

So instead they opted for defeat. Rather than fight Hizbullah to victory, they attacked their domestic political opponents by claiming that only warmongers would support a reconquest of south Lebanon. In so doing, they discredited the only viable strategy for victory while sending IDF forces to Lebanon to fight battles whose sole purpose was to run down the clock until the US stepped in and negotiated a truce with the terror army.

The US-mediated ceasefire, which legitimized Hizbullah as a political force and paved the way for its rearmament and takeover of the Lebanese government, was a disaster for Israel. But for Kadima it was a great success. Livni spun the ceasefire as a massive diplomatic accomplishment for herself and Kadima. The willing media went along with the fiction.

Although all the spinning in the world couldn't convince the public to support Kadima's planned unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, Kadima was able to salvage the gist of its defeatist strategy. By pretending that Israel hadn't failed in Lebanon, and defending the view that victory isn't an option, Kadima deftly replaced its unilateral surrender strategy with as strategy of surrendering land in the framework of a "peace process" with the pro-terror, corrupt, unpopular, and anti-Israel Fatah-led PA in Ramallah. That "peace process" in turn kept the land surrender policy on the table by asserting that the main obstacle to peace is Israel's unwillingness to give its land to the Palestinians.

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A SIMILAR PATTERN unfolded with Kadima's handling of Operation Cast Lead. Here too it was clear to any semi-sentient observer that the only way to defend southern Israel is to reconquer Gaza. For as long as Hamas controls territory it will use it to fight Israel. And given Hamas's subservience to Iran, its jihadist ideology and its Syrian-based leadership's distance from the front, it is obvious that Israel has no capacity to deter Hamas.

But for Kadima, which owes its existence to its leaders' execution of Israel's 2005 pullout from Gaza, acknowledging that Israel has no option other than reasserting control over Gaza was not an option. Then too, a reconquest of Gaza would discredit Kadima's new-old signature issue of giving away Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

And so, rather than fight to win, Kadima again fought for US intervention. Livni and Olmert claimed again that only warmongering extremists supported reconquering Gaza, and announced that Israel's goal was to deter Hamas. For its part, the media blocked all discussion of whether or not it is possible for Israel to deter Hamas and cooperated in demonizing anyone with the temerity to note that the only way to secure southern Israel is to control Gaza.

Then, as elections approached, Kadima declared that deterrence had been achieved and pulled IDF forces from Gaza. They told us that the continued Palestinian missile offensive against the south was nothing more than the last gasps of a defeated foe. And the media went along with them.

In the lead-up to the elections, the international diplomatic backlash against Israel was underplayed and the strategic meaning of Hamas's continued missile war was widely ignored by both Kadima and the media.

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NOW, AS THE LIKUD-LED rightist bloc is forming the next government, information about Israel's actual situation is finally being reported. Not only did Israel not deter Hamas, the inconclusive end of the campaign has paved the way for a massive diplomatic onslaught against Israel and a diplomatic campaign to legitimize Hamas.

Today Israel is being blamed for Hamas's war against it.

Kadima's favorite Palestinian "peace" partners in Fatah are leading an international campaign to indict IDF commanders as war criminals.

While last weekend's bombing of yet another Israeli school was met with international indifference, international leaders lined up to have their photographs taken outside the UNRWA school in Gaza that the IDF attacked in January after Hamas combatants used the building as a missile launching pad against Israeli civilians.

Then there is the US-backed international campaign to force Israel to surrender control over its borders with Gaza to Hamas. Last week Clinton joined her European counterparts in demanding that Israel permit cement, aluminum tubes and other missile components to enter Gaza in order to alleviate the "humanitarian suffering" of the poor Gazans. Furthermore, like Europe, the Obama administration supports the establishment of a Hamas-Fatah government.

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IN THE MEANTIME, Kadima pretends that there is nothing to worry about. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday, both Livni and Olmert refuse to actively oppose the international campaign to criminalize IDF commanders because doing so would involve criticizing Fatah leaders with whom they claim to have such wonderful ties. Similarly, the Obama administration cannot be criticized because that would mean that Kadima has failed to maintain US support for Israel.

And that's the point. With its policy of never acknowledging failure, Kadima's strategy for dealing with the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead has been on the one hand to ignore what has happened, and on the other hand, to blame Likud for what is transpiring.

Rather than attack Hamas and Fatah in international forums and so defend Ashkelon's schoolchildren at least diplomatically, Livni devotes herself to attacking Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu for refusing to back Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu's view is clear. Surrendering control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians will endanger Israel. For as long as that remains the case, it is impossible to support Palestinian statehood.

Likud's position is indisputable. But it is also a denunciation of Kadima's governing strategy. So Livni denies the truth to advance her party's interests and condemns Likud for recognizing reality.

In so doing, she has paved the way for an international boycott of the Likud-led government. The Palestinians and their allies throughout the world are already arguing that there is no difference between Likud and Hamas since both of them reject the so-called "two-state solution." Clinton is expected to demand that Netanyahu publically endorse Palestinian statehood during her visit here.

As we absorb the spectacle of world leaders lining up to give their money to Gaza while Israeli schoolchildren are forced to stay home from school, we must understand how we got here. We are here because Kadima has placed its political success above Israel's security.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.