WAR DRUMS IN THE NORTH

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[What happens to the truce between Assad & the Muslim Brotherhood if he makes real peace with the Jewish state?]


Frustration in Damascus


Israel has completed its withdrawal from the Golan Heights as stipulated in the Syria-Israel Treaty of Peace; ambassadors have been exchanged; embassies opened; direct flights established; an exhibit of ancient artifacts from Jerusalem's Bible Lands Museum has been loaned to the National Museum in Damascus. Asma Assad and Sarah Netanyahu are engaged in a series of collaborative civil society initiatives…

Bashar Assad understands the price he and the ruling Alawite minority would have to pay, in a country that is 74 percent Sunni, for a genuine peace with Israel. That is why in this week’s New Yorker, Assad frankly told Seymour Hersh that even if Syria regained the entire Golan, Israel, “cannot expect me to give them the peace they expect.”

Indeed, if Israel got the peace we expected, Assad’s de-facto truce with the Muslim Brotherhood would come undone. He’d have to expel Hamas leaders from Syria, a step the Brotherhood would find insufferable. A bad divorce with Teheran would ensue. Hizbullah would reorient Lebanon’s policies accordingly.

In short, Assad would be going down the path taken by the late Anwar Sadat: carving out a separate peace with Israel while the Palestinian issue festered, albeit due to the Palestinians’ own intransigence.

Naturally, if Assad got the Golan Heights on his terms, the legitimacy of his regime would be bolstered. But no Israeli government – not Yitzhak Rabin’s and not Binyamin Netanyahu’s – can come down from the Golan in return for a sham peace.

Assad will not risk a real peace that would force Syria to rethink its ideological identity in the absence of the Zionist bogeyman. How could he justify continued authoritarian rule?

Moreover, real peace would open Syria to progressive influences. The regime could come under pressure from now dormant liberal reformers. The 18,000 Druse and 2,000 Alawites on the Golan would be reunited with their co-religionists, but decades of life under the Zionists will have created social, economic and, yes, political expectations that could “contaminate” the larger Syrian polity.

So a strong argument can be made that the last thing Assad really wants is peace with Israel.

Yet if this assessment is excessively cynical and Assad is prepared to take major risks for peace – he needs to come to Jerusalem and ask for the Golan. His appearance at the Knesset podium would likely create an inexorable momentum for a total Israeli withdrawal.

REGRETTABLY, Assad cannot afford to make real peace. Worse still, through a series of military and rhetorical miscalculations – inspired, perhaps, by Iranian mischief-making – Assad is blundering toward a conflagration with Israel.

Assad’s brinkmanship has worn down his opponents in the Arab world and the West. The destabilizing policies that made Syria a charter member of the Axis of Evil since the early 2000s are unchanged, yet European leaders flock to meet with him, and Washington is fixing to return its ambassador to Damascus.

The dictator has reason to feel cocky.

Syria has lately supplied Hizbullah with weaponry that practically dares Israel to take action. Indeed, Arab press reports speculate that Assad may have made a strategic decision – no doubt egged-on by the mullahs in Iran – that his alliance with Hizbullah and Hamas is worth a confrontation with Israel.

IT’S IN this context that we read Assad’s remarks Wednesday to visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos that Israel is not serious about achieving peace and that Israel is pushing the region toward war. Clearly, Assad is attributing to Israeli decision-makers the very behavior that is motivating him. His foreign minister, Waleed Mouallem, accused Israel of “spreading an atmosphere of war.” He threatened that “a war at this time will be transferred to [Israeli] cities.”

And with that, this disciple of Gandhi invited the Jewish state to “follow the track of peace.”

Syrian bellicosity has caused some Israeli pundits to appeal to their own government to make a peacemaking “breakthrough.” And so the prime minister repeated that he’s ready to negotiate with Assad without preconditions, anywhere, any time, also through suitable third party mediation.

Assad is accustomed to getting his way – except with Israel. Frustration, however, is a poor excuse to set in motion a series of events that is bound to end in tears for both sides

A THESIS ABOUT ZERO-SUM GAME CONFLICTS

A new front?

Israelis were told yesterday that it was too dangerous to swim, sail or fish along the coast south of Ashdod.

Since Friday night, several explosives-laden barrels have either been heard detonating in the Mediterranean or have washed ashore in Ashdod and Ashkelon. It is not clear if these devices, originating in Gaza, were intended to be pre-positioned at sea for a terror attack against Israeli power stations or desalination plants, or if theycombat have been the exception.

Interestingly, none of these struggles are zero-sum. The Irish did not seek to overthrow the British monarchy; the Basques do not want to dismantle Spain, and the Kurds do not crave control over all of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. They are not fighting about worldviews. And all three movements have shown a readiness for compromise.



IN CONTRAST, even comparatively moderate Palestinians affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas have staked out rigid negotiating positions underpinned by their commitment to zero-sum struggle. That is why Abbas has not compromised on recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or abandoned claims for the “right of return.”

Long before al-Qaida come on the scene, Palestinian terror groups specialized in airplane hijackings and other forms of anti-civilian warfare. Ideologically, a chauvinistic Palestinian nationalism has combined with Islamist fanaticism to oppose the right of Jews to enjoy sovereignty anywhere in this land.

This bleak picture will change only when the Palestinian leadership genuinely acknowledges and internalizes Israel’s legitimacy and re-educates its people toward the idea of coexistence – the sooner the better for their sake and ours.

PROVIDING HAMAS & HIZBULLAH WITH A 'LEGAL' ALIBI TO FIGHT FROM BEHIND WOMEN AND CHILDREN...

The ‘Goldstoning’ of Israel

The Goldstone Report was born in bias and matured into a full-fledged miscarriage of justice.

On Friday, Jerusalem presented UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with its initial rebuttal of Judge Richard Goldstone’s bill of particulars on the way Israel fought in Gaza between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009.

A more comprehensive, point-by-point refutation is in the works.

“Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update” acknowledges that Israeli shells unintentionally hit the UNRWA compound in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood while gunning for Hamas forces positioned alongside the facility.

The update revealed that the IDF had disciplined a brigadier-general and a colonel for exceeding their authority, because they employed white phosphorus shells in a comparatively confined area where civilians could be jeopardized. In fact, three innocent people were wounded.

Compiled by the Foreign Ministry, the update also debunks a number of scurrilous war crimes charges leveled by Goldstone, saying:

• Israel did not purposefully bomb wells in Jabalya to deprive the people there of fresh drinking water. In fact, the wells were situated within a Hamas compound.

• Israel did not deliberately attack the wastewater treatment plant in Gaza City. But there is a good chance the plant was damaged by Hamas to hamper the movement of IDF soldiers.

• Israel did not blow up the Bader flour factory to create a bread shortage in Gaza. But the site was a strategic high point in a Hamas-fortified zone. It was not the IDF that set the plant ablaze.

• The destroyed Abu Askar family house was used to store Grad rockets. The family was telephoned and urged to leave before the house was shelled.

These are just some of the findings in the Foreign Ministry report, which says that the army has investigated or is currently investigating more than 150 separate incidents – not easy considering that the forensic scene is in enemy hands.

So far, 36 files have been referred to the Military Advocate-General Corps for criminal investigation.

We do not assert that our army made no tragic mistakes; what we do emphatically reiterate – based on Israel’s initial submission to the UN – is that no army engaged on multiple fronts against irregular forces, embedded among a supportive enemy population, is more ethical or takes greater care to avoid harming innocents than the IDF.

THE Goldstone Report was born in bias and matured into a full-fledged miscarriage of justice. So the inclination of mainstream Israelis is to dismiss its author as man who, perhaps not unwittingly, allowed his Jewish ancestry to serve as a cloak for a UN body predisposed to besmirch Israel. Israelis further resent the report’s dammed-if-you-do-dammed-if-you-don’t stipulation for an Israeli commission to examine IDF behavior during the Gaza war: If Israel refuses, Goldstone threatens further “lawfare” at the International Court of Justice in The Hague; if Israel does establish an inquiry commission it might imply Goldstone’s complaints have validity.

One option being weighed is to impanel a judicial review board that would examine how well the army has done in policing itself. Alternatively, the government could establish a formal investigative body. Or, lastly, a commission of inquiry could be established headed perhaps by former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak.

We worry that the latter two approaches could undermine army morale and inhibit split-second tactical decision-making necessary to protect Israel’s home front and citizen army. Our preference is that the Foreign Ministry’s forthcoming comprehensive rebuttal serve as Israel’s official – “case closed” – response to the Goldstone Report.

If Goldstone’s parameters for fighting terrorism are affirmed by the civilized world, other democracies would also be severely constrained in defending themselves against terrorist organizations specializing in anti-civilian warfare. Quarantining enemy territory; imprisoning captured terrorists; using sophisticated weapons against a less well-armed terror infrastructure; and bringing non-lethal pressure to bear on non-military targets to hasten the end of a conflict would all be considered “war crimes.”


As is Goldstone provides Hamas and Hizbullah with a legal alibi to fight from behind civilian populations.

WHILE Israel has been forced to justify what should be its inalienable right to stop Hamas from hurling thousands of flying bombs into its territory and traumatizing its civilian population, no UN-body has called to investigate the Palestinian leadership for culpability in the murders of 1,184 Israelis and the wounding of 8,000 others since September 2000.

Strange that.

CHINA DOES NOT WANT TO SEE DEFENSIVE WEAPONS REACH TAIWAN BUT IS NOT BOTHERED IF IRAN HAS ATOMIC BOMBS

China endangered?


China is never happy when weapons are sold to Taiwan, but this time Beijing threatened to boycott American companies, including Boeing and Raytheon, involved in the deal.

The People’s Republic of China reacted to Washington’s announcement on Friday that it will sell defensive weapons to Taiwan worth $6.4 billion with customary bluster. The Foreign Ministry protested to Jon Huntsman, the American ambassador, and announced that a range of military and economic programs between the two countries would be placed in abeyance.

China is never happy when weapons are sold to Taiwan, but this time Beijing threatened to boycott American companies, including Boeing and Raytheon, involved in the deal.

Since its 1949 civil war and the Communist takeover of the mainland, China has regarded Taiwan as a breakaway island. Beijing asserts that the arms sale “seriously endangers China’s national security.”

In fact, the Obama administration held back on selling fighter jets and submarines precisely because they could be construed as offensive weapons.

When the US broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan – the price of establishing ties with Beijing in 1979 – it assuaged its conscience by insisting that Taiwan’s future had to be decided by peaceful means. To that end, the US sells Taipei defensive military hardware.

Still, relations between the mainland and Taiwan have never been better, according to The Economist , with annual bilateral trade exceeding $100 billion. The Taiwanese argue that the sense of security which comes from having defensive weapons actually encourages them to move forward in developing relations with Beijing. Yet the fundamental issue of sovereignty remains unresolved.



ONE AREA where the Chinese say they will scale back cooperation with the US involves nuclear anti-proliferation. That would be shocking if China were not already playing the vanguard role in protecting Teheran from UN sanctions intended to pressure the mullahs into abandoning their drive for nuclear weapons. The reason for the Chinese policy is obvious: Trade with Iran stands at $25 billion; and Iran supplies 13 percent of China’s oil imports fueling its insatiable economy.

But for a superpower-in-waiting, China is conducting itself with unbecoming irresponsibility, not just on Iran but also on human rights, climate change and Internet freedom. (Google may be forced to reduce its presence in China due to government-orchestrated cyber-attacks.)

Nor does Beijing show concern that many of the weapons making their way into Hamas-controlled Gaza are of Chinese manufacture.

China’s leaders have become accustomed to getting what they want. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Beijing successfully kept Internet freedom off the conference agenda. And when China is challenged over, say, Tibet or human rights, it tends to respond uncompromisingly, using business and aid to reward those who kowtow, and haranguing those with the effrontery to challenge its policies.



OVER THE weekend, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined those who have been urging the Chinese to think less shortsightedly. A nuclear-armed imperial Iran will sooner or later insinuate itself in China’s own internal affairs by aligning with the country’s Muslim population.

Permitting nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of the mullahs will produce precisely the kind of unstable conditions in the Mideast the Chinese say they seek to avoid. A scenario in which a politically chaotic Iran has the capacity to intimidate its nervous neighbors could create a situation in which the flow of petroleum would be interrupted and commerce throughout the Gulf inhibited.

Following Washington’s lead on relations with China, Jerusalem abandoned principle for realpolitik. Today, the PRC has an embassy in Tel Aviv while Taipei has only an Economic and Cultural Office. In return, trade between Israel and China (a good deal of it reportedly in the military sphere) is a substantial $5b.-$7b. a year. Parenthetically, Jerusalem’s military ties to Beijing have been a source of tension with Washington, which now has a veto over that aspect of Israel’s China relationship.

Diplomatically, as a permanent Security Council member, China can invariably be counted on to vote the interests of the Arab and Muslim bloc. Plainly, the Israel-China relationship is strategically important, but Beijing’s insensitivity to core Israeli concerns does not fail to disappoint.



IS IT not absurd that China feels threatened because the US is selling Taiwan weapons that pose no threat to mainland security, while it shamelessly blocks international pressure aimed at keeping the atomic bomb away from Muslim fanatics?