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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher- August 30, 2010

This week marks the 400th edition of Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher.

Q. This Q & A marks your four hundredth weekly edition over a period of more than eight years. What have you learned?

A. First and foremost, that Israel-related security issues are constantly changing and shifting, providing new challenges and, by the by, new material for this column. The changes over the past eight years are really quite profound, even by Israeli and Middle East standards.

Eight years ago, Israel's immediate security problem was the second intifada and suicide bombings. Led by a veteran warrior, Ariel Sharon, Israel was essentially at war with the Arafat-led Palestinian Authority. In the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration basically lined up with Israel in dealing with terrorism.

Back then, attempts to renew a peace process crashed before they took off. The withdrawal from southern Lebanon (May 2000) still looked successful. The Iranian nuclear issue was a threat, but not a dire or immediate threat. The United States had not yet occupied an Arab country, deployed 200,000 troops in the region and become a regional military land power. And since Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq, Israel still faced the danger of an "eastern front". The Arab Peace Initiative (March 2002) was just emerging, without much fanfare. Turkey and Israel were military allies.

Since that time, Israel has built a controversial West Bank security fence, withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, fought wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and witnessed a dramatic improvement in Palestinian governance and security in the West Bank. Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, renewed in late 2007 in Annapolis, ended a year later in failure and are now about to resume in Washington. Illegal migration to Israel from Africa, via Egypt, now presents a growing security challenge. The de-legitimization campaign against Israel is fired up, severely damaging Israel-Turkey ties and challenging Israel's relations with many other countries.

Iran is now the major long-term security preoccupation for Israel and, to a growing extent, for the US in the Middle East. In close conjunction, the threat of massive attack by tens of thousands of rockets and missiles fired from Lebanon and Gaza is now the immediate security threat--indeed, one of growing strategic dimensions. 

Seven years ago, the US occupied Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power in Baghdad. Now it is leaving behind a shattered country that is liable to fall under Iranian sway, thereby recreating the threat of an eastern front. The American military deployment in the Greater Middle East region is increasingly understood to constitute as much a burden as an asset in Israeli-American affairs. President Obama has a new Middle East agenda that emphasizes the interrelationship among the region's crisis zones.

Yet alongside these dynamic changes, there are strategic constants that I find myself constantly returning to in the Q & A. One is the toxic interaction between the Palestinian issue and Israel's problematic electoral/coalition system, with nearly every government in Jerusalem brought down by the resultant complications, thereby feeding Israel's negative image abroad. This is closely related to the inability or unwillingness of successive Israeli governments for nearly 40 years to deal with the settlements question. 

Yet another apparent constant is the ups and downs of Israel's relations with Egypt and Jordan and their interaction with the Palestinian issue and Israeli-American relations. And of course, Israel's relationship with the American Jewish community remains a constant.

In summing up 400 issues of the Q & A, I think it is the interplay between the constants and the continually changing strategic dynamics that provides the raw material for the questions in the Q & A.
 

Q. Where do you get your information and insights?

A. From over 40 years of intelligence and security work, travel and contacts, but also, insofar as I've been a "civilian" for years, from the media. Back when I was an intelligence analyst, I always began the day by reading the newspapers--a habit (increasingly unknown to the younger generation) that I maintain to this day. But of course, knowing how to read the news in the paper, filter it and integrate it with insights, is something of an acquired talent.

Information also arrives sometimes from the most unlikely sources. For example, the other day, by chance, I heard a fascinating explanation by a Brazilian diplomat as to why Brazil is increasingly interested in the Middle East (and increasingly influential, as reflected in its recent intervention, together with Turkey, in the Iran nuclear issue). I filed that presentation away, to be integrated into this column next time Brazil makes waves in the region.


Q. So, who writes the questions?

A. Occasionally APN headquarters in Washington suggests a topic or relays a reader's request. But for the most part, I write both the questions and the answers.

 
Q. Sounds fishy. . . 

A. Not at all. Developing the questions captures the essence of analyzing the issues. The ability to carefully and coherently describe what you need to know, but don't know, is the vital first step in understanding and interpreting events. (Incidentally, much maligned then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld got it exactly right in his famous "there are things we know we don't know. . ." statement. It is indeed the things you don't know you don't know that are the most dangerous.)

Accordingly, formulating the question is, at the intellectual level, fully half the work. It's also a way of directing the reader's attention to what I believe to be the strategic dynamics at work behind the news--the ones to look for. It works a lot better than the kind of question I am often confronted with by journalists: "So what do you think of the situation? . . ."
 

Q. By way of concluding, can you give examples of the strategic dynamics behind the scenes of this week's launching of peace negotiations in Washington that we should be looking for?

A. One is the inter-Arab and international dynamic. Other than the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, neither the Arab world nor the remainder of the Quartet (which comprises the US, UN, EU and Russia) will be represented at the September 2 summit. Contrast this with the launching in late November 2007 of the Annapolis process in the presence of more than 40 heads of state and senior diplomats. Is the Obama administration downplaying the international and broader Arab angle out of concern to save face if this process quickly fizzles out? Do Egypt and Jordan have specific tasks to fulfill in relation to this peace process? Or will they be present merely as "spear-holders" because they are the two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel?
 
Those are all questions I would ask. They are particularly relevant because two very prominent Arab commentators have in recent days published appeals for much more far-reaching Arab involvement in this process, citing it as a necessity in view of Israeli, Palestinian and even American constraints, weaknesses and limitations. Marwan Muasher, former Jordanian foreign minister, wrote about this at the Carnegie Endowment. So did Abdel Monem Said Aly, head of the powerful Egyptian al-Ahram media conglomerate, writing in Asharq Alawsat. The contrast between their recommendations and the Obama approach to Sept. 2 is striking. But so is Muasher and Said Aly's seeming readiness to ignore the current weakness of the Arab state system and the consequent broad Arab inability to do very much to prop up this peace process.

A second key dynamic will undoubtedly be attempts by the radical Arab and Islamic camp to sabotage the renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks if and when they appear to be gaining traction. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement ruling the Gaza Strip, is the obvious candidate, with Iranian, Hezbollah and possibly Syrian backing, to thwart peace talks by firing rockets deep into Israel or even activating terrorist sleeper cells in the West Bank. Not coincidentally, Egyptian security forces in Sinai just uncovered stockpiles of hundreds of anti-aircraft missiles bound for Gaza, for deployment by Hamas against Israeli planes and possibly drones. So the radical and militant Islamist "envelope" surrounding these peace talks is worthy of our close attention.

But radical Islamists aren't the only ones who will target this peace process. So will the settlers and their political supporters on Netanyahu's side, and Fateh hardliners in the camp of President Mahmoud Abbas on the Palestinian side. Here the conventional wisdom has it right: the first test of the home-grown extremists' capacity to derail the talks--indeed, the first test overall of the reconvened direct talks, the readiness of the two leaders to overcome obstacles and move forward and the determination of the Obama administration that they do so--will be the September 26 end-of-settlement-freeze deadline.