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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher- March 1, 2010

Thumbnail image for Yossi Alpher 186x140.jpgAlpher answers questions about Palestinian rioting in Hebron and the Syrian "resistance" summit. 


Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst, co-founder and co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian internet dialogue bitterlemons.org and Middle East roundtable bitterlemons-international.org. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a former senior official with the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for Peace Now or Peace Now.

Q. This past week has witnessed nascent intifada-type Palestinian rioting in Hebron that spread on Sunday to the Temple Mount, and an ominous "resistance" summit in Damascus bringing together the leaders of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Are these blips on the radar screen or a cause for serious alarm?

A. It's difficult to assess at this point whether these events are limited responses to the perception--or misperception--of threats and provocations by Israel and the United States or a reflection of more fundamental strategies. They are probably a combination of both.

Beginning with Hebron, rioting there was clearly a reaction to the untimely and ill-considered declaration by PM Binyamin Netanyahu that the Machpelah Cave in Hebron, tomb of the patriarchs (as well as Rachel's Tomb, both in the West Bank) are to be designated Israeli "heritage sites". Obviously, an Israeli leader really anxious to engage the PLO in renewed final status talks should avoid making a statement that is so easily interpreted by Palestinian leaders as asserting an Israeli claim to disputed and sacred real estate in the heart of the West Bank. Coming more or less on the sixteenth anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein Machpelah Cave massacre in Hebron, the angry response of Arab Hebronites was inevitable.

But not all is as it seems in this affair. Anyone with a good understanding of Israeli politics knows that Netanyahu's last-minute decision to attach two Jewish religious shrines in the West Bank to some 160 "heritage" sites inside Israel (virtually all secular and Zionist, from Ben Gurion's hut at Sde Boker to the site of Trumpeldor's last stand at Tel Chai) was little more than a sop to Likud's right-religious coalition partners. Indeed, Netanyahu's highly theatrical effort to "re-instill" Zionist and Jewish values in Israeli youth is probably a short-lived political gimmick. Certainly, Rachel's Tomb and the Machpelah Cave have been fixed up so frequently in recent years (including for Muslim worshippers in Hebron) that the authorities acknowledge there is nothing left to do there by way of "preservation".

So the Palestinian reaction in Hebron, though justified at the level of a response to Netanyahu's clueless confidence-destruction, must have other motives as well. Here we encounter two Palestinian tactical campaigns. One, led by Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), seeks to postpone the renewal of final status talks in the hope of generating ever greater American pressure on Israel. It was inevitable that Erekat would cite Netanyahu's "annexation" of Hebron (it was stupid, but it was hardly annexation, and the Israeli prime minister took pains to clarify that he meant no harm) as yet another reason why the Palestinians could not return to the negotiating table.

A second campaign is that spearheaded by PM Salam Fayyad to inject new energies into a passive resistance campaign against perceived Israeli territorial encroachments on the West Bank, for example at controversial locations of the security fence at the villages of Biliin and Naalin. Fayyad himself recently visited one of these sites to join a weekly demonstration. He apparently seeks to enhance his own (almost non-existent) grassroots political image and perhaps create a gradually escalating mass campaign to accompany his very successful state-building efforts. Stone-throwing and rioting in Hebron serve this campaign, too.

None of this looks like a new intifada, which would almost certainly not serve either Abbas' or Fayyad's purposes. But previous intifadas were also seemingly triggered by ostensibly innocuous events.

Q. Can the "resistance" summit in Syria also be explained with reference to tactical moves and misunderstandings?

A. It's much more difficult to say. One theory regarding the summit is that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is concerned over recent progress in restoring normal relations between Syria and the United States and perhaps the prospect of renewed Syrian-Israeli negotiations. So he's "rallying the troops" and, in particular, obliging the Syrians to pay lip service to their "strategic alliance" with Iran. Note, typically, the assertion by Samira al-Masalma in Syria's closely supervised Tishreen daily that "[A]ny talk. . . that aims at sowing the notion of discord with Iran is one that has no concern for the region's interests, security, stability and future". 

An alternative take on the radical summit is that Ahmadinezhad, under pressure from internal Iranian dissent as well as Washington's campaign to organize serious sanctions, is up to genuine mischief in the Levant: trying to provoke new fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as a diversion. Even if this is indeed the Iranian leader's intention, most Israeli analysts doubt Hezbollah is in any mood to take the bait and launch an attack against Israel. Still, accusations by both Israel and the US that Syria is supplying ever more advanced weaponry to Hezbollah tend to feed into this assessment.

Yet another explanation assumes that Syria and Hezbollah are genuinely afraid Israel will launch a new war, hence feel the need to stage a summit with their Iranian ally as a deterrent. The Syrians in particular cite recent statements by Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, Minister without Portfolio Yossi Peled and of course Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to back up their fears.

Q. Israel has threatened to attack Syria?

A. Peled, a former IDF Northern Command commander, did about a month ago, in an ill-considered interview. Lieberman is always unhappy unless he's threatening someone. But Barak tried to state exactly the opposite. So here we enter again into the realm of real or deliberate misunderstanding of the way Israel works on the part of its Arab neighbors.

First, with regard to Peled, a quick look at the structure of Netanyahu's coalition indicates that Peled has no ministerial authority at all--only a title. He has never distinguished himself at politics or strategy. His threat against Syria was basically a desperate attempt to grab some attention and was treated as such by the Israeli media.

As for Lieberman, he's a dangerous loose cannon. But precisely for that reason no one, at least in Israel, takes seriously his policy pronouncements.

Turning to Barak, in a statement just over a month ago to a military audience he said essentially what the entire Israeli security establishment has been saying for years: that Israel should seek peace talks with Syria precisely in order to avoid escalation toward a new war. Barak made a similar statement just last week in Washington. Israel's neighbors presumably understand that he is the ultimate authority in Israel on security-related issues. Yet the Syrians chose to focus on the "threat" of escalation rather than the appeal for peace talks. They accused Barak of warmongering. It doesn't help that PM Netanyahu is not heeding Barak's appeal regarding talks with Syria.

Q. So is Syrian and Palestinian hearing deliberately selective, or is this the effect of genuine misunderstanding and poor communications?

A. It's simply not clear. Another recent incident of a similar nature is illustrative. In early February, at the tree-planting holiday of Tu BeShvat, Netanyahu planted seedlings at the Etzion Bloc, Maaleh Adumim and Ariel. All three are large settlements or settlement blocs in the West Bank that are understood by many to become part of Israel in any final status border agreement. Nearly all final status negotiations held so far, including "virtual" negotiations like the Geneva accords, drew the final border to the east of these areas (Geneva did not include Ariel on the Israeli side of the map), with Palestinian consent.

I understood Netanyahu's tree-planting exercise to be a signal from him that these settlements would become part of Israel but that, by default, other settlements located deep inside the West Bank, where he avoided planting trees, would not. Of course the prime minister could have planted trees in Tel Aviv and Beersheva, or could not have planted trees at all--no one would have held it against him. But being Netanyahu, he had to do something to cheer on his own right-wing camp, even at the risk of upsetting the Palestinians.

And upset they were, describing his tree planting expedition as a "deal-breaker" provocation because it took place somewhere in the West Bank. They could have read the prime minister's act the way I did and understood him to be ready to give up more or less as much of the West Bank as Barak and Olmert were before him, which for Netanyahu is quite a step forward. But because he is Netanyahu and because they are looking for reasons to castigate him in American eyes, the Palestinians were primed to lash out at a provocation.

Whether or not Palestinian and Syrian misinterpretation is deliberate remains unclear. But two related problems are more easily definable. One is Netanyahu's proclivity, as a right-wing leader of a right-wing coalition, to make gestures designed to please or placate his partners in government without giving consideration to their effect on Israel's Arab neighbors. 

His more hawkish ministers follow suit. Lieberman and Peled are two examples. Another is Minister of Information Yuli Edelstein's ridiculous new "masbirim" campaign to instruct Israelis how to counter misinformation about the country. Rather than confronting the evils of occupation that nurture current international attempts to delegitimize Israel, it gives Israel's citizen diplomats instructions about how to take credit for Israeli high-tech innovations and justify Israel's claims to the Golan, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (By Monday it had been hacked, with links going to BeTselem and other more critical websites.)

A second related problem is simply poor communications between the Netanyahu government and Israel's neighbors. Here both sides may be at fault, but the situation has worsened considerably since Netanyahu took office a year ago.