The Middle East is evolving into an ever more dangerous neighborhood largely due to Israel’s increasing belligerence and intransigence.
Rather than attempt to mend diplomatic fences with its former “friends” Egypt and Turkey it is using its cash and US leverage to make new regional alliances. Israel is also flexing its muscles and openly making threats toward Iran, Lebanon and Egypt.
At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu's government has not only dropped any pretense that it is interested in resuming peace talks with the Palestinians, it is pouring fuel on an already tense situation with new settlement expansion plans. Israel’s foolhardy game-playing in an already volatile region is akin to turning up the heat on a boiling pot.
Tel Aviv’s relationship with Cairo is particularly strained on several fronts. A few weeks ago, Egypt permitted to Israeli military airplanes to land so that they could fly off with the Israeli embassy’s entire contents, including furniture, equipment and paperwork. Israel announced that its ambassador would work from his residence until a new embassy premises could be found; understandable, perhaps, when the old premises had been ransacked by Egyptian protesters. However, this year, for the first time in 30 years, the ambassador declined to host a Passover meal for the diplomatic and business community, which speaks volumes as to the deterioration of the bilateral atmosphere.
More worrying was a threatening Israeli message sent to Egypt Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) last week to the effect that if Egypt couldn’t prevent Grad rockets being fired from the Sinai Peninsula targeting Eilat (which Cairo has denied), then Israel will be obliged to take action itself within Egyptian territory. Ratcheting up the ante, Israel that is constructing yet another separation wall, this time snaking along its entire Sinai frontier, is reported to have massed troops close to that border. Among Egyptians, the fear is that Israel could come up with a security pretext — such as a purported Al-Qaeda presence that’s being hyped by Israel’s media — to enter Sinai with a view to reoccupying the area for its oil and gas reserves. For the moment, Egypt has decided to cooperate but might not do so if and when voters choose a president from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Israel’s northern border with Lebanon is equally fraught. According to recent reports in Israeli dailies, Israel’s military is currently preparing for a major ground offensive into Lebanon in the event of conflict with Hezbollah, which could, indeed, occur as a by-product of a mulled Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has accused Hezbollah of sending its fighters to Syria and Iran to train in the use of advanced anti-aircraft weapons to weaken Israel’s supremacy in the skies and of receiving chemical weapons shipments.
There is currently an icy wind between Tel Aviv and Ankara which has negatively impacted Turkish-US links. The freeze began with Israel’s refusal to apologize for its commando assault on the Turkish vessel the MV Mavi Marmara that killed nine Turkish civilians, prompting Turkey to pull its ambassador.
In retaliation, Israel has been wooing an unlikely new ally cash-strapped Greece, a historic friend of the Arabs that is in urgent need of investors and trade partners. Following the cancellation of annual joint naval exercise conducted by Turkey, Israel and the US, the American and Israeli navies have partnered with Greece and are currently holding a joint naval drill in the Mediterranean, which many are interpreting as a poke in Ankara’s eye. Greece, Israel and Cyprus are also in the process of cementing an energy cooperation involving the exploitation of natural gas with a view to using it to produce electricity and eventually to cultivate exports. The flashpoint here is that Turkey is eying those same hydrocarbon reserves.
Another of Israel’s unlikely allies could be Azerbaijan as there are various leaked reports from senior US administration and intelligence officials published in Foreign Policy magazine indicating that Israel may have been granted access to Azerbaijani air bases close to the Iranian border. The two countries have enjoyed significant trade ties for many years and given that a leaked WikiLeaks document quotes the Azerbaijani president likening his country’s relationship with Israel to an iceberg “with nine-tenths of it below the surface” it’s conceivable that those reports have substance despite Azerbaijan’s vehement denials.
It’s no secret that the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is leading President Obama by the nose on Iran at a moment in time when the US leader cannot afford to upset the pro-Israel lobby if he wants another term in office. Obama has been advised by America’s intelligence community that Tehran is not developing a nuclear weapons capability and is in no mood to thrust his country into yet another war but he’s constantly being driven in that direction by fiery statements from Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu is going out of his way to thwart any attempts by the international community to find a diplomatic solution. He was frustrated with a message on the Iranian president’s website that read his country “is ready for negotiations” and had “practical suggestions for the upcoming meeting” with the five permanent UN Security Council member countries plus Germany. Netanyahu ordered the P5 + 1 negotiators to get tough with Iran which they did by setting harsh preconditions for the resolution of the dispute, such as the immediate dismantling of Iran’s facility in Qom and end to Iran’s enrichment of medium-grade uranium. When Tehran refused those demands, Netanyahu said he was “satisfied”. What does that mean? He’s clearly delighted that there’s no non-military solution in sight which indicates he’s still salivating for a fight regardless of the devastation to the area and its peoples such strikes would elicit.
Lastly Israel’s unwillingness to compromise over the international community’s demands to halt settlement expansion allowing talks to resume has engendered fears that the Palestinians will have nowhere to turn apart from launching a third intifada. Fatah’s popular and influential former Secretary-General Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life-sentences in an Israeli prison, has asked the Palestinian Authority “to end all forms of coordination, security and economic, with the occupation. He urges Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to “stop marketing the illusion that it is possible to end the occupation through these negotiations” and to once again engage in a policy of resistance.
When will Israel stop erecting walls, threatening neighbors and actively cultivating enemies in the name of security? Hostility cannot delivery security. It has a nasty habit of boomeranging and biting its initiator. When will Netanyahu and his hawkish entourage understand that the only route to Israel’s longevity is peace, the kind of initiative that was proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 that was accepted by all 22 members of the Arab League? The road he is bent on taking not only endangers Israelis but everyone else. With Russia and China facing off against the US and its Western allies over Iran and Syria, Netanyahu’s arrogance and paranoia is pushing the Doomsday Clock perilously close to midnight.
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