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Hard Questions and Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher- June 6, 2011

Alpher answers questions about this weekend's breach of the Golan border fence, and the recent public comments of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Q. On Sunday June 5, as on May 15 "Naqba Day", Syria-based Palestinian refugees sought to breach the Golan border fence with the apparent connivance of the beleaguered Assad regime in Damascus. Syria claims heavy casualties. What does this succession of events tell us?

A. June 5 was the forty-fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the Six-Day War. May 15 was the sixty-third anniversary of Israel's independence, when the 1948 war officially started. Both dates are significant not just for Palestinians, but for Arabs in general. 

What we witnessed twice in the past month on the Golan border was a confluence of three regional dynamics. One is the Arab revolutionary wave, which prominently features a "loss of fear" by young Arab men seeking liberation and confronting the guns of their own national police and army. In this particular case, they were prepared to confront the guns of the IDF. 

A second dynamic is the dilemma of the beleaguered Bashar Assad regime in Damascus as it fails to find ways to suppress widespread rebellion. There is strong evidence that it was the regime that encouraged the attempts to breach the border fence as a means of distracting public opinion from its own brutality and refusal to relax its grip on power. The regime may also have inflated casualty figures, or used the Golan events to explain casualties from its own actions elsewhere. Syrian opposition circles claimed that the Assad regime paid demonstrators to try to breach the border and promised compensation to families of casualties; it was impossible to verify this claim. Notably, on June 5 on Israel's other borders and in the West Bank and Gaza, there were few demonstrations and light Palestinian casualties.

This was the first time since 1974 that the Assad regime, first father then son, consciously encouraged a violation of the Syria-Israel ceasefire agreement. This tells us just how dire Bashar Assad's domestic situation is. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went so far as to state on June 5, "The events of today and of 15 May on the Golan put the long-held cease-fire in jeopardy."

The third dynamic is the ongoing search by Palestinians for ways to challenge and delegitimize Israel. Refugees marching "home" (to nonexistent dwellings abandoned 63 years ago by their grandparents) and being forcibly stopped by Israel make for emotive television and web coverage. This is particularly telling on the Golan Heights, where the border fence the refugees sought to breach is not (in the eyes of the world) Israel's legitimate international boundary but rather an obstacle separating two Syrian territories, one of which (the Golan) is occupied. 

In preventing a border breach on June 5 where it failed on May 15, the IDF displayed better intelligence and operational preparedness. But the casualty figures released by the Syrians--23 dead and hundreds wounded--are an embarrassment for Israel, which claimed its sharpshooters were firing only at the legs of those trying physically to breach the fence. If, indeed, the figures have been inflated by the Syrians, the latter achieved their objective.

In evaluating the events of May 15 and June 5, particularly on the Syrian border (on May 15 there were also attempts to breach the Lebanon border; on June 5, the Lebanese army prevented a repeat attempt), Israel's greatest concern is that they are a preview of a third intifada and could interact with the Arab revolutionary wave in unpredictable and potentially catastrophic ways. The best way to stop this dynamic at an early stage is to engage the Palestinians in a serious peace process.


Q. Is there a precedent for attempts by Palestinian refugees to march en masse toward Israel and breach border fences in an attempt at "return"?

A. One of my mentors in my career in intelligence and strategic affairs, the late Major General Aharon Yariv, used to relate how, as a young brigade commander in southern Israel in around 1950, he confronted a threat by tens of thousands of refugees in the Gaza Strip to launch a "green march" into Israel. Having no tear gas or other means of crowd control at his disposal, and in the absence of a border fence, he threatened to open fire on the marchers, who backed off.

A lot has changed since then, but some things have not. More than five decades and three generations later, the refugee issue, obstinately cultivated by the Arab world and nurtured or at least tolerated by the United Nations, is still alive. Israel has sophisticated border fences and abundant means of crowd control. Its soldiers--the children and grandchildren of Jewish refugees whose plight was never made either a casus belli or a peace "issue" by Israel and the Jewish people--now confront new waves of refugee marchers. Some of the refugees, inspired by the "Arab spring", may not be deterred any longer by the fear of loss of life.


Q. Ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan is speaking out very bluntly about the Netanyahu-Barak leadership team and its plans regarding Iran and other major strategic issues. Why is he so concerned?

A. Dagan has spoken publicly about these issues three times since leaving the Mossad some six months ago. He is concerned first and foremost about the possibility of an ill-considered Israeli military attack on Iran's nuclear program that could trigger a major new regional war in which Israel pays a high price. He fears the leadership team of PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak may launch such an attack because of poor judgment and in an attempt to distract attention from the expected recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN in September, which they seem powerless to prevent or channel to Israel's advantage. 

Dagan argues that as long as he ran the Mossad and his recently-retired colleagues Gabi Ashkenazi and Yuval Diskin ran the IDF and the General Security Service, respectively, they were able to prevent irresponsible adventures by Netanyahu and Barak. He fears that now that the three have retired, their successors are not well enough established to do that. Ashkenazi, incidentally, was forced into early retirement by Netanyahu and Barak; Diskin's preferred successor was ignored by Netanyahu in favor of an appointee considered possibly sympathetic to the religious settler movement. 

Dagan claims that his conscience dictates that he speak out and sound a warning so that Israel will not have to go through "another Yom Kippur" (the October 1973 war, in which Israel was caught by surprise by a major and very painful strategic event). Notably, Ashkenazi and Diskin have not explicitly backed Dagan, but nor have they contradicted him.

Dagan was appointed eight years ago to head the Mossad by PM Ariel Sharon. Prior to then, as a military man, he had long cultivated a reputation as a hawk and an extremely aggressive operative. At the Mossad, he is credited with significantly delaying the Iranian nuclear program, helping eliminate a nascent Syrian nuclear program, and eliminating leading Hamas and Hezbollah military operatives. He enjoys unusual credibility with the Israeli public. 

Now, not only does Dagan take a minimalist position regarding conflict with Iran, i.e., that Israel should attack only "if their sword is on our necks". He also advocates both a peace initiative toward the Palestinians and accepting the Saudi peace initiative. (It's not clear if he means the original Saudi initiative, which does not mention the refugee issue, or the ensuing Arab Peace Initiative, which does.) And he argues that Netanyahu and Barak are bereft of responsibility or vision, and don't communicate well with foreign leaders.

Coalition circles and a variety of government spokesmen accuse Dagan of violating secrecy rules by broadcasting the fact of Israeli intentions or preparations to attack Iran. Alternatively, he is blamed for weakening Israel's deterrence toward Iran and even weakening the international sanctions drive against Iran by downplaying the likelihood of an Israeli military initiative taking place if sanctions are not adopted or if they fail. Dagan is also accused by the political right of harboring political ambitions, violating some sort of "rules of democracy" or simply having delusions of grandeur.

There is undoubtedly some validity to the first two accusations. Dagan vehemently denies the third--in any case, he is legally forbidden to run for office for three years after leaving his Mossad position--and the rest is nonsense. All the accusations pale when placed alongside the credibility and urgency of Dagan's warnings regarding the weaknesses and failings of Israel's current leadership team in the context of both Iran and the Palestinian issue.