The same boring theater play repeats itself every year, as the Jewish American lobbying group AIPAC holds its annual conference: Benjamin Netanyahu, or any Prime Minister of Israel, expresses his resentment and indignation at the stifling role played by the United States to prevent the Hebrew State from directing a military strike against Iran; and Barack Obama, or any other US President, finds no way to appease his ally and ease the latter’s “frustration” but to offer Israel additional military and economic aid, renew his commitment to its “sacrosanct” security, and refrain from raising the topic of peace, the two-state solution and the rights of the Palestinian people.
This time exaggerations by the two sides have reached record levels, because this is a year of US presidential elections, in which any candidate will seek after the votes of the Jewish community and of supporters of Israel. Thus the two men tirelessly exchanged long-winded praise and acclaim, because Netanyahu wants us to believe that Iran represents a threat to the future of his state, and because Obama wants us to believe that he believes him.
Israel always needs enemies, because peace is not comfortable for it and is at odds with the nature of its existence. When the Arabs proclaimed their desire for peace and put forward the Arab Peace Initiative at the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002, it was imperative for the Israelis to search for someone who would break the embarrassing formula of land for peace. And the search was not a difficult one: Syria and Iran were ready and willing, under the banner of so-called “defiance”, to attack Arab consensus from within and from without, and to justify Israel’s rejection of it.
Of course, Israel returned the favor to the Syrian regime and continues to speak in its favor and urge that it be maintained. But it has also done Iran significant favors by exaggeratedly portraying the threat it represents to Israel’s security, and through its officials competing to express concern about Iran’s nuclear program, as if it were specifically aimed at Israel.
Tel Aviv has thereby fulfilled a number of goals, the first being to blackmail the United States and the world by presenting itself as a victim threatened with annihilation and in need of constant aid and advanced military technology; the second to reject any talk of a settlement with the Palestinians because its preoccupation with the Iranian threat does not allow it to offer any “concessions”; and the third to endorse Iran’s image vis-à-vis the Arabs by promoting the idea that Tehran’s growing military strength is a threat to Israel’s existence, rather than being aimed at taking control of the Arabian Gulf, terrorizing its nations and interfering in their affairs.
Israel fears that committing to actual peace with the Arabs would force it to recognize the rights of the Palestinians and to meet the requirements of living within safe borders, with what this means in terms of changing the structure of its economic and military system.
As for Iran, which has never been heard to have fired a single bullet against Israel, it suffices itself with fear-mongering and boastful statements against Israel, while it eyes the Gulf and constantly threatens to seal off the Strait of Hormuz and prevent international navigation through it.
And just as its ally Syria did by using some Palestinians as an instrument to cover up the true nature of its stances, Iran uses its military arm in Lebanon, Hezbollah, in the service of its blackmailing the Arab World and accusing it of “negligence”. Indeed, the war provoked by Hezbollah in 2006 was aimed at eluding the new situation that had arisen in Lebanon after the assassination of Rafic Hariri, and at pulling the rug from under the feet of the growing movement opposed to Syrian and Iranian influence there.
Iran is no more of a threat to Israel’s security than is its ally Syria, which has for decades made sure to relieve the “enemy’s” Northeastern flank in the occupied Golan, and Israel’s talk of it as an imminent threat is nothing but throwing dust in the eyes of the world.
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