To return to the new Peace Now website click here.

Hard Questions and Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher- January 3, 2011

Alpher answers questions about the strategic outlook for Israel in 2011.

Q. The "Economist" is worried about a major new Middle East war in 2011? What in your view is the strategic outlook for Israel in the year ahead?

A. There are too many variables, regional and domestic, to make reliable predictions. Better to look back on the events and developments of 2010 and, where appropriate, try to extrapolate cautiously regarding 2011.


Q. And what were those events and developments? Let's begin with the peace process.

A. In 2010, the peace process seemingly failed in every way. The US administration relied mistakenly on a settlement freeze, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stalled his way through the year in order to hold his right-wing coalition together, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas misread US capabilities and was too worried about internal opposition from every corner to call Netanyahu's bluff. By year's end the administration, having suffered an electoral setback, seemed intent on pursuing "more of the same" in terms of the components of a peace process. 

Against this backdrop, it seemed likely that Defense Minister Ehud Barak's Labor party, disappointed with the absence of a peace process, would force him to leave Netanyahu's coalition sometime in 2011. This could precipitate the coalition's ultimate collapse, leading to new elections.

Netanyahu's relationship with US President Barack Obama became tense following the East Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood-construction fiasco with Vice-President Joe Biden in March. Nevertheless, and in keeping with tradition, US-Israel relations were characterized throughout the year by close security cooperation, particularly regarding Iran and its allies and proxies. 

Hamas continued to launch provocations from Gaza and to pose the threat of renewed major fighting with Israel, but without going too far. On the positive side, the Gaza issue occasioned enhanced Israeli-Egyptian security cooperation. On the negative side, it furnished the backdrop for a serious deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations and, indeed, a general escalation of the global de-legitimization campaign against Israel. The Gilad Shalit issue remained stuck, going into a fifth year. Whether any of these trends will lead in 2011 to resolution, escalation or simply more of the same is impossible to say.

Yet another victim of the overall lack of progress in the Palestinian sphere in 2010 was Jordan, where fears are growing regarding the spillover effect of the failed process. Toward year's end, King Abdullah initiated a "flirt" with Iran's President Mahmoud Amadinejad, normally considered his arch-enemy, that seemed to be a blunt signal of his sense of distress. 

In parallel, the opportunity of an Israeli-Syrian peace process was apparently neglected by all concerned. This merely heightens the dangers of escalation in 2011 on Israel's northern fronts with Syria and Hezbollah.

There was only one peace process-related success story in 2010, it is unilateral in nature, and it seemingly offers the only hope for a breakthrough--or, alternatively, poses the danger of a major crisis--in 2011. That is the dramatic progress made in the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority's state-building program: enhanced Palestinian security performance, strong economic growth, more and better civic institutions, more and more countries recognizing a Palestinian state. That program enters its diplomatic endgame in 2011, with the United Nations General Assembly meeting of September targeted for a major Arab League and PLO effort to achieve full UN recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This is almost certain to constitute a major challenge for Israel and the US this year in the Israeli-Palestinian and Middle East spheres.
 

Q. Turning to Iran, the militant Islamists and the broader Middle East. . . 

A. Iran's nuclear program appears to have been more seriously constrained in 2010 than in previous years, first by stronger economic sanctions with "bite", and secondly by a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and at least one major cyber warfare attack ("Stuxnet"), all of which are generally attributed to Israel or the United States. The fiasco in Dubai in January, when the assassination of a major Hamas liaison with Iran led to revelations of the perpetrators' modus operandi--this one unequivocally attributed to Israel--actually gave us a glimpse of the sophistication of the secret war against Iran and its allies, far more than any long-term damage it may have caused to the struggle against the militant Islamists.

That struggle will undoubtedly continue in 2011. This poses at least the possibility of "more of the same", meaning no major conflict, because the Iranian nuclear effort is further delayed. On the other hand, Iran always has the option of launching diversionary aggression in the Lebanon-Israel arena. And this could easily escalate, with the upcoming international judicial verdict on the 2005 Hariri assassination providing an obvious opportunity. 

One distressing background factor constraining the effort to blunt Iran and the militant Islamists is the ongoing weakness of the Sunni Arab state system: in 2010, Yemen was added to the list of dysfunctional Arab states. As Egyptian writer and academic Ezzedine Choukri Fishere wrote in al-Ahram Weekly's end of 2010 issue, "The Arab world did what it does best: waited to see what others would do, called on them to take action and to assume their responsibilities, and--when they failed to do so--pointed to their failure with innocent consternation."

An acknowledged setback to Israel's efforts to combat both radical Islam and the international de-legitimization campaign was the Mavi Marmari flotilla fiasco of May last year. Israel's relations with Turkey--increasingly a major Middle East power--were already in deep trouble, thanks in part to the incredibly inept humiliation of Turkey's ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in January (the low couch incident). The flotilla mess made things worse, where they have remained since then. In general--and without in any way justifying or exonerating the insulting behavior toward Israel of the Turkish prime minister--the way the Netanyahu-Lieberman-Barak trio dealt with Turkish-related issues in 2010 offers a telling commentary on their general incompetence in managing virtually all non-security-related issues in the neighborhood and pointed to a glaring leadership deficit in Jerusalem.

Finally, apropos the de-legitimization campaign, the Mt. Carmel forest fire in early December, when a broad spectrum of countries including Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority provided instant firefighting help, offered a striking reminder to Israelis that most of the world holds nothing against us beyond the failure to make peace with our neighbors.


Q. How about developments in 2010 in the Israeli domestic sphere?

A. Let's start with the good news: the economy grew by 4.5 percent last year. This is quite striking when viewed against the backdrop of economic woes elsewhere in the world. Both the Netanyahu economic team and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer deserve high marks for steering Israel clear of some of the pitfalls suffered by western economies. One possible negative complication is an increasingly strong shekel compared to the faltering dollar and euro.

Perhaps the low point of the year domestically came just two days before 2010 ended, when former president Moshe Katzav was found guilty on multiple counts of rape and sexual harassment. This may have seemed like a low point for Israeli society, but it was a high point for the judicial system, which has taken on corruption among the most senior officials with increasing regularity and without hesitation.

But the worst news domestically in 2010 was a growing trend toward worrisome reactionary tendencies of racism, xenophobia and McCarthyism. This culminated in anti-Arab and anti-migrant worker riots in December. The real cause was the extreme right-wing factions in the government, Shas and Yisrael Beitenu, their leaders Eli Yishai and Avigdor Lieberman, and their legislative initiatives regarding loyalty oaths, "who is a Jew", where non-Jews can't live, etc., which clearly set the tone for the public. Netanyahu sufficed with soft condemnations of the worst excesses. He preferred to placate his extremist ministers rather than fire them and form a more balanced government.

The broad demographic trend nourishing some of these excesses continued unabated in 2010 and is certain to be maintained in 2011: significant growth of the ultra-orthodox and Arab communities. Israelis are being told that within a few decades a large majority of schoolchildren will be from these two communities, with their low rate of employment, endemic poverty, poor education performance and absence of commitment to Zionism. Most youth will no longer be conscripted into the army.

Here and there, a few socio-economic initiatives were taken in 2010 to begin countering these trends, such as finding employment in the army for a handful of ultra-orthodox men, projecting a reduction in subsidies for ultra-orthodox yeshiva students, and bringing Arab women into the work force. But by and large, conditions in Israel in 2010--the absence of a peace process, the composition of the government and the way it spent taxpayer money--contributed to making matters worse.