Israel kept out of coalition against IS

Article from Al Monitor followed by one from Foreign Policy.

Some of the Iraqi security forces who helped free the town of Amerli at the end of August with help from U.S. air strikes. Photo by Reuters

Is Israel most important strategic US ally in the region?

US President Barack Obama might follow in the footsteps of Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush by forcing diplomatic concessions on Israel.

By Akiva Eldar, trans. Ruti Sinai, Al Monitor / Israel Pulse
September 17, 2014

Listening to US President Barack Obama’s Sept. 10 speech to the nation about the military campaign against the Islamic State (IS), it was hard not to recall the declaration of war by President George H.W. Bush against Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein. In the first Gulf War, just as today, the US administration enlisted a group of Western and Arab states to form an international and regional coalition. Then, too, the coalition faced a common enemy that sent violent tentacles from Iraq into its surroundings, near and far. What’s more, 23 years ago, Israel was left out of the military arena. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir responded to Bush’s pleas and reined in his government colleagues, who demanded a forceful Israeli response to the barrage of rockets fired from Iraq into the heart of Israel.

Today, too, while IS is advancing toward its borders, Israel, the closest US ally, is looking on from the sidelines as the superpower and its partners take action. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel both bypassed Jerusalem in their recent trips to the region. Once again it’s time to ask whether Israel is, in fact, the most important strategic US asset in the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leading advocate of this thesis, was forced to console himself with the front-page headline of his home-team newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, which quoted an anonymous “Western diplomat” as telling Reuters that Israel had provided the coalition with intelligence information and satellite photos.

Nonetheless, as far as the Israeli side is concerned, there’s a significant difference between the first Gulf war and the battle against IS. In the early 1990s, the leaders of the Arab states that were part of the coalition — headed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Gulf states — were unwilling to accept Israel into the club under any circumstances. But since the start of the millennium, these same states have not only been willing to recognize Israel and its right to exist securely within the 1967 borders — they propose establishing “normal” diplomatic and economic ties with it. If the option of partnership in a Middle Eastern coalition was not even an option for Israel then, since March 28, 2002, the day the Arab Peace Initiative was born, Israel has consistently been missing the opportunity to become a respected member of this club. Had it heeded the pleas of the Arab League to adopt the initiative as the basis for negotiations, it might have been awarded entry.

It’s too soon to foresee the outcome of the current campaign being waged by the United States in the region, but one can determine that just as Saddam dragged Bush into the Middle East in 1991, and a decade later al-Qaeda dragged his son to the region, so IS brought Obama into the same quagmire in September 2014. Bush Senior understood that ending the Israeli occupation of the territories and resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict were essential in keeping together the coalition’s Gulf war achievements and upgrading it. On the day after the war, the 41st president of the United States dragged Shamir to the Madrid Conference and sat him down next to the representatives of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf states. He forced Shamir to choose between advancing the Madrid process, getting economic aid and preserving Israel’s special relationship with the United States, and advancing the settlement enterprise, derailing the diplomatic process and hurting the ties with the United States and all that entailed.

President George W. Bush also understood that his vision of advancing democratization in the Muslim regimes in the Middle East required that he act against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. That was how his two-state vision came into the world, and a year later bore the road map that pushed late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of four settlements in the northern part of the West Bank. Sharon’s disengagement from the diplomatic process with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas drove Gaza straight into the arms of Hamas.

Now Netanyahu is taking advantage of the demonization of the Islamists to portray Hamas as a twin brother of the IS organization. Obviously, one doesn’t talk to IS. One simply shoots. By the same reasoning, Netanyahu believes that as long as IS’s “double” in Gaza rules a significant portion of the area designated as a Palestinian state in any permanent arrangement, one cannot demand that Israel renew negotiations. This rule, according to Netanyahu, is valid as long as Hamas is a member of the Palestinian Authority government.

The Obama administration has so far rejected Netanyahu’s formula whereby Hamas equals IS and is refusing to let Operation Protective Edge be an excuse for not resuming the diplomatic process. In her Sept. 12 daily briefing, State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said that there was a significant difference between the aims and capabilities of the two organizations. The Sept. 11 Washington visit by Israel’s Minister for Intelligence Affairs Yuval Steinitz provided the Obama administration with a wonderful opportunity to present its views and its current priorities, which are totally different from Israel’s. The State Department statement issued at the end of the visit read that the sides had discussed the need to help the residents of Gaza and to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and expressed concern over the continued Israeli construction in the West Bank. There was not a word about the Iranian nuclear program, Steinitz’ stated central goal on the eve of his trip.

It stands to reason that if Obama manages to stop IS, the Arab and European partners will demand that the president display the same kind of determination toward the Israeli occupation. Shamir once believed that he had it in his power to bring Bush to his knees and to have the best of all worlds. In the end, he lost his office and paved the way for the Labor Party, under the leadership of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and for the Oslo Accord. If Obama takes the same road as his predecessors on the day after the war and decides to pay his Arab partners in Israeli currency, the gains of the US coalition could be the loss of the Israeli coalition.

Israel Wants to Join the Coalition Against the Islamic State

But is this just Bibi playing politics?

By Amos Harel, Foreign Policy
September 15, 2014

TEL AVIV, Israel — On Sept. 10, just before Israel’s three TV networks began broadcasting the evening news, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an urgent security meeting. The meeting’s purpose, according to the premier’s office, was to prepare for the possible danger that the Islamic State (IS) would advance closer to the Israeli border.

In truth, as most of Israel’s intelligence community has been quick to point out, there are no signs that anything of the sort is actually happening. The jihadist organization’s fighters have not been spotted close to Israel’s border with Syria, while support for IS among Palestinians in the territories and among Arab citizens of Israel is thought to be rather low. The announcement, which predictably became the first item on the news for all three networks that evening, served another purpose: It was designed to prove that Israel is part of a broader U.S.-led coalition against Islamist terrorism and to divert attention from economic worries toward security threats — probably the oldest trick in the Israeli political playbook, and one that Netanyahu has used quite effectively in the past.

During the 50 days of Israel’s latest military conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli TV devoted blanket coverage to almost every rocket launched, every successful rocket interception by the Iron Dome system, and every soldier’s death in Gaza.

As the war wound down, it seemed that IS stepped right into the news vacuum — the video documenting American journalist James Foley’s execution was published two days before the last Gaza cease-fire. Since then, hardly a day has passed without extensive coverage of the jihadist group in the Israeli media: A series of special reports on Israel’s Channel 10 increased the station’s ratings during the evening news edition by nearly 50 percent.

The Islamic State’s “snuff” films — beheadings, prisoners being humiliated, and long, frightening speeches by bearded terrorists — resonate with Israeli TV viewers, just as they did with Western crowds. Still, it seems that the Israeli media’s response borders on an obsession with horrors, and interprets them through the country’s own experience with Islamist extremism. Channel 10 runs a weekly feature that includes interviews with a group of 7-year-olds regarding current events. One of the questions discussed last Friday: Which is worse, the Islamic State or Hamas? The kids held a short but comprehensive discussion about the differences between death by beheadings, guns, and rockets.

There shouldn’t be, of course, any reason to underestimate the potential threats of IS to the region at large. But the immediate danger for Israel does not seem to be significant. Most of the organization’s presence in Syria is currently centered in the country’s northeast, the farthest area from the Israeli border. Other jihadist groups pose a more immediate threat: IS’s advances have pushed other rebel groups, such as the al Qaeda-affiliate al-Nusra Front, toward the Israeli border. And Sinai-based jihadists have encroached on Israel’s border with Egypt, but they’re mostly yesterday’s news. Today, the bogeyman du jour is the Islamic State. Israeli security agencies are now apparently worried that a few dozen Israeli Arab citizens might have traveled to Syria to help the rebels, but it remains to be seen whether more than a couple actually joined IS.

Despite the growing concern, it should not come as a surprise that the Netanyahu government has not yet taken any immediate steps against IS. The government has only announced that the organization would be considered illegal in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and decided to focus intelligence-gathering on the group’s activities in Syria and Lebanon.

But while IS might not present an imminent threat at home, Netanyahu has been extremely eager to aid the Arab world in the battle against the group. Last week, the prime minister confirmed media reports that Israel was supplying intelligence to the new anti-IS international coalition. Jerusalem no doubt has useful information to contribute: For decades, it focused on acquiring first-rate intelligence about events in Syria, which it considered its toughest enemy.

President Barack Obama thus may face a problem similar to the one George H. W. Bush encountered before the 1991 Gulf War: Israeli participation risks alienating critical members of the coalition, such as the Saudis (and in this case, in a limited way, perhaps even Iran). For that reason, the United States may seek to keep Israel’s participation as low profile as possible.

The benefits Netanyahu receives by securing himself a place in Obama’s new coalition are equally clear: He is looking to position Israel at the vanguard of the Western fight against terrorism, not as some archaic relic of colonialist occupation, as Israel is sometimes described in European circles.

The prime minister regularly emphasizes the similarities between IS and Hamas, portraying both organizations as part of the same continuum of Islamist extremism. Hamas played into his hands by panicking and publicly executing — albeit by a simple shot to the head and not by beheading — about 20 Gaza residents it accused of being Israeli collaborators. The images from Gaza and Syria, shown within 48 hours of each other, looked strikingly similar; you could hardly separate one hooded executioner from the other.

At the same time, Netanyahu finds it useful to encourage an Israeli political debate regarding the possible threats in the region. The prime minister wants “billions more” shekels for defense, locking him in a feud with Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who wants to curtail the Israel Defense Forces’ financial expectations in order to avoid tax increases. If security threats are seen as Israel’s paramount concern, then Israelis would likely still consider Netanyahu the right leader to deal with the situation — and he could continue focusing on defense, while blocking demands for major economic changes.

The Islamic State, then, is essentially the proof of Netanyahu’s argument that danger is lurking everywhere for Israel. After all, who would have guessed that an organization so large and brutal would appear out of nowhere within such a short time? Netanyahu is convinced that this could happen again — and that, a bit like the case of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects the Islamic State.