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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher - January 29, 2007

Alpher deals with the recent major Bush & Olmert speeches, and on Ethiopia confronting militant Islamists reflecting broader developments.

Q. What can we learn from President Bush's State of the Union address and PM Olmert's annual Herzliya speech last week concerning the way the US and Israeli governments view Middle East issues?

A. Both speeches broke with the routine of recent years. Bush talked mainly about domestic issues and Olmert spoke only about Iran.

The State of the Union address needs no introduction. The annual Herzliya speech has in recent years become perhaps the most important address the Israeli prime minister delivers in the course of the year. Both Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert used it in previous years to make important pronouncements on the Palestinian issue, presenting plans for unilateral redeployment. Hence Olmert's decision to discuss only the Iranian issue and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict offers a clear reflection of his order of strategic priorities.

Bush, in turn, discussed Iraq and terrorism at some length. The terrorism mentioned was both Sunni and Shi'ite, reflecting the new American readiness to confront Shi'ite extremists in Iraq. But he devoted only a single sentence to the Palestinian issue, reiterating not his but the Quartet's commitment to "pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security". Nor did Bush dwell on Iran as Olmert did; the president mentioned it briefly in the context of Shi'ite extremism and (again) expressed not his but the United Nations' resolve "that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons".

Thus, Bush took a more internationalist approach to some Middle East issues than in previous years. He also sought to equate Iran, Shi'ite and Sunni terrorism in a single amorphous package and hinted at the more aggressive approach US forces in Iraq had adopted toward Iranian interference. In presenting his new plan for Iraq he placed most of the burden of success on the proactive cooperation of the al-Maliki government in Baghdad: "Iraq's leaders know that our commitment is not open-ended". He thereby continued to avoid discussion of the core dilemma: the "democracy" established by Washington in Iraq empowers militant Islamist extremists and, increasingly, Iran. Nothing substantive can change until and unless the US dares to change that system, but the closest the president came to admitting his mistakes in Iraq was when he said "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in."

By the same token, Bush addressed the need for a larger US military to deal with the growing number of challenges, mostly in the Middle East (and some, like Iraq, self-inflicted), by asking for more of the same system that doesn't work: increasing the size of the volunteer armed forces. This, even as the US Army and Marine Corps continue to drop their standards in order to recruit new manpower, and send reserves and National Guard troops for repeat duty in Iraq and as civilian contract soldiers (in effect, mercenaries) are increasingly involving in the fighting there (five died in a downed helicopter last week).

If Bush soft-pedaled the confrontation with Iran, Olmert was far more blunt. While he reassured Israelis that "there is no near-term threat to Israel of an attack with nuclear weapons" and "Iran is very vulnerable and sensitive to international pressures" and noted that a diplomatic solution was still preferable, he also warned the international community that "closing our eyes and trying to reach dangerous compromises will leave no alternative but to take hard steps in the future". Speculation regarding Olmert's motives for speaking out so bluntly about Iran ranged from anxiety over a softening of Bush's position to Olmert's need to improve his standing with the Israeli public by rallying it around a dramatic cause. Olmert also indirectly admonished Knesset opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been campaigning on his own internationally against Iran and arguing that the Olmert government was not doing enough, by noting that "on this issue it is preferable to speak with one responsible voice, not a confrontational voice but a clear and determined one".

If Olmert hoped to use the Herzliya speech to both reassure and alert the Israeli public, his effort was thwarted by President Moshe Katzav. The embattled Katzav, about to be indicted on multiple rape and molestation charges, convened a press conference an hour before Olmert's speech and nailed down record ratings on all three major channels with a rambling, highly emotional attempt to exonerate himself and pin charges of conspiring against him on every institution in the country--from the police and the attorney general to the media. So frantic was the media frenzy over Katzav that Olmert's speech was given barely five minutes of prime time before the networks returned to their replays of the president's charges and studio analysis of his motives. The media's decision may also have had something to do with Olmert's record low approval ratings and the growing assessment that he, like Katzav (though for different reasons), is a lame duck leader.

True, the next day's polls showed that two-thirds of the Israeli public continued to believe in Katzav's guilt. But Olmert's Herzliya speech was a non-event this year.

Q. Three weeks ago you discussed the Ethiopian occupation of large parts of Somalia within the context of American strategy targeting militant Islamists and terrorists. Does Ethiopia's aggressive new role in confronting militant Islamists also reflect broader developments in relations within the greater Middle East between Arabs and non-Arabs?

A. One of the striking aspects of the Ethiopian blitz into Somalia was that it constituted yet another assertion of regional power in the greater Middle East by a non-Arab country. In this sense, it dovetailed with the emerging new power reality in the Middle East, whereby the non-Arab powers on the "periphery"--Iran, Turkey and Israel--are increasingly dominant and the Arabs are incapable of exercising power in accordance with their numbers or even their wealth.

True, around half of Ethiopians are Muslim--the other half, Christian; and Somalis are not Arabs, though Somalia is a member of the Arab League and the Islamic Courts Union that briefly ruled Somalia invited in a variety of Arab jihadists and Iranians. Thus, in some ways the Arab/non-Arab lines are not clearly drawn in the Horn of Africa. Still, the evolution of this new periphery-center confrontation is striking.

Here a historical note is in order. From early in its sovereign life, modern Israel perceived itself confronting the forces of (Sunni) Arab nationalism, led initially by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties and financed by the Saudis and other oil-rich Arab countries like Libya. Recognizing that additional non-Arab and non-Muslim peoples in the region such as Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia and minorities like the Kurds, the southern Sudanese and the Lebanese Maronites all shared its apprehension of Arab hegemonic designs, Israel early on formed clandestine alliances with them, as well as with geographically peripheral and traditional regimes like Morocco.

Israel's "periphery doctrine" prevailed in Israeli strategic thinking into the late 1970s, when developments in the region turned it on its head: Egypt's Sadat, coming from the Sunni Arab heartland, sought peace, while Iran and Ethiopia fell under radical regimes (led by Khomeini and Mengistu, respectively). In the early 1980s, the Lebanese Maronites proved an unreliable partner. Since that time and during the past 25 years, Israel has found allies and encountered enemies with little regard for their "periphery" or "Arab center" status.

Now we confront yet another metamorphosis of periphery-center relations in the Middle East. The Arab states are in disarray. Three of them, Iraq, Sudan and Lebanon, are in danger of fragmenting into their ethnic components. Arab non-state actors like Hamas and Hizballah are able to dictate regional strategies, with the backing of a periphery power, Iran. Even Syria derives its regional clout to a large extent from its alliance with Iran.

Efforts by the traditional Arab powers, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, joined by Jordan and the Gulf emirates, to counter both the Iranian threat and the disintegration of Iraq have not gained momentum. Egypt, long the dominant Arab power by virtue of history and demography, is having difficulty dealing with terrorism on its own territory (Sinai) and, despite Israel's invitation, cannot significantly influence events in nearby Gaza. And Cairo virtually ignores developments in Sudan (Darfur, southern Sudan), which only 60 years ago it sought to annex. The Arab League, led by an Egyptian, Amr Moussa, has also failed to influence events in Lebanon and Iraq.

In parallel, and despite all their problems, the periphery states have become the region's dominant actors, while one periphery minority, the Iraqi Kurds, has achieved virtual independence. Yet politically, ethnically and from the standpoint of religion, neither the periphery nor the center is of one cloth. Shi'ite Iran is driving for regional hegemony to the distress of the Sunni Arabs and Turks as well as Israel. Similarly, militant Sunni movements, spirited by al-Qaeda with its Saudi and Egyptian leaders, strike at moderates of every sort.