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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alper - March 21, 2011

Yossi Alpher 186x140.jpgWhat are the ramifications...of the past week's turn of events in the Arab revolutionary wave, with Saudi troops entering Bahrain and the western powers attacking Libya on the basis of a UN mandate for international intervention? The "solution" for Libya seems radically different. Why?

Connection between new wave of Palestinian unity efforts and escalated mortar attacks from Gaza?


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Q. What are the ramifications for the Middle East of the past week's turn of events in the Arab revolutionary wave, with Saudi troops entering Bahrain and the western powers attacking Libya on the basis of a UN mandate for international intervention?

A. There are several fascinating and even perplexing aspects to both interventions. They touch on both inter-Arab strengths and weaknesses and international attitudes toward events in the Arab world.

In the case of Bahrain, we have Arab military forces (the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, led by Saudi Arabia) "invited" (presumably under Saudi pressure) by the regime to intervene in a fellow Arab country. This is the first, and thus far the only such case of an all-Arab intervention in the annals of the current revolutionary wave.

The Saudi-led expeditionary force cut short attempts by moderate circles in the Bahraini regime to negotiate an agreed set of democratic reforms. It apparently reflects a Saudi assessment that too much is at stake in Bahrain in terms of Saudi interests to leave the resolution of the unrest there to the shaky Sunni minority regime. Those interests include blocking Iranian influence via Bahrain's disadvantaged Shi'ite majority and preventing the spread of Shi'ite unrest to Saudi Arabia's eastern oil region, where some two million disadvantaged Saudi Shi'ites live. The Saudis appear to fear the advent of a local Shi'ite Hezbollah sitting atop Saudi oil, and they seem prepared to take far-reaching measures to prevent it.

The Saudi intervention reflects regime self-confidence in Riyadh: that the country's own affairs won't get out of hand, and that the rest of the Arab world, as well as the United States, will acquiesce in its show of force in Bahrain. Lebanese commentator Rami Khouri put it well last week: "An inner beast has awoken in Saudi Arabia, as sending Saudi troops to other lands is a sign of real concern and growing panic, but also of self-confidence and assertion in foreign policy."

Notably, the Saudis entered Bahrain scarcely a day after a visit there by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and western commentary since then on affairs in Bahrain (and Yemen, another critical and very troubled country on Saudi Arabia's borders) has been relatively muted, despite the scope of casualties among protesters in recent days. Yet we really don't know for sure if the Saudi move was fully coordinated with Washington, or merely tolerated.

Lest we forget, the regimes in both Bahrain and Yemen are very important strategically to US efforts to confront Iran and al-Qaeda. From Washington's (and, by the way, Jerusalem's) standpoint, a stronger Saudi stance in opposing Iran and its machinations (imagined or real) is positive. But are the aging Saudi rulers sufficiently in touch with regional realities, including the Arab pulse, to pull this off?

Apparently, Washington does not currently have radically different solutions to offer in these countries and does not want to get further involved itself. But this should not be construed to suggest that the Saudis necessarily have a viable exit strategy for Bahrain or that anyone knows what to do in Yemen. Bahrain, at least, is now a Saudi problem.


Q. The "solution" for Libya seems radically different. Why?

A. Why did the Arab League ask the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone in Libya, then refuse to participate? And why did a western coalition led by the US, France and Britain interpret the UN mandate to intervene there in such a far-reaching manner? The issues at stake pose more questions than answers.

The pure humanitarian explanation--that it was necessary to stop the attacks on rebel civilians--might be relevant for the Obama administration, but it stops there and hardly applies to Europe and the Arab League. Where is the humanitarian intervention in Yemen? And shouldn't Syria be next?

The more obvious explanation is that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi has badly alienated everyone in the world save a few supporters in the Sahel countries to the south (where Gaddafi has spread around Libyan largesse for years), and that the geography of Libya's revolt (rebels concentrated in the east, most likely targets on the coast) rendered armed intervention from the air relatively simple. The western powers presumably assessed that they had by now so badly burned their bridges with Gaddafi that they had little to lose by attacking him. His oil is in any case no longer flowing. And Libya, on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, is very much a European problem (refugees, terrorism, oil). Besides, Gaddafi's counterattack on Benghazi was about to finish off the rebels, so it was now or never.

Yet the Arab League's extraordinary decision to invite armed western (colonialist! imperialist!) intervention in a member state can only be explained in terms of the growing dis-functionality of most Arab states, the detachment of their autocratic leaders from any popular mandate, and their sense of dependency on the West . The quick about-face on Sunday by League Secretary General Amr Moussa--we didn't mean "that kind" of intervention--underlined the Arab dilemma of confusion and powerlessness. So did the fact that no Arab air forces have thus far joined the attacks--something the West had been counting on to ensure the international legitimacy of its imposition of a no-fly zone.

But is a no-fly zone the real objective of the attacking powers? The scope of attacks seemingly points to a more far-reaching objective, i.e., regime change, which, after all, the Obama administration has endorsed in Libya by demanding that Gaddafi leave. But regime change by whom? The Libyan rebels seem a nebulous and fairly leaderless bunch. Here again, as in Bahrain but in very different circumstances, the questions of mission objective and exit strategy cannot be ignored. It was Gates who warned, just a few weeks ago, that anyone dragging the US into yet another Middle East war should have his head examined. Or her head: it was reportedly an active lobby by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council official Samantha Powers that pushed hardest for the Libya intervention on humanitarian grounds.

One thing is for sure: an air campaign cannot deliver a decisive victory over Gaddafi. So if the idea is to get rid of him, the western powers will need to manifest a far more controversial presence on the ground--by themselves, by Egyptian forces, or by a much more effective rebel force. Precisely because that issue is so controversial, one possible outcome in the near term is a pre-2003 Iraq-type situation, with a long-term no-fly zone and de facto partition but the dictator still in place.

Beyond this exploration of western and Arab motives and actions, are there specific ramifications for Israel? Do the Bahrain and Libya interventions render more likely some sort of future Arab or western attempt to intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well? I doubt it. Both the Arab states and the West are basically too confused by events to warrant even engaging in such an assessment.


Q. Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian front, we confront both a new wave of Palestinian unity efforts and escalated mortar attacks from Gaza. Is there a connection?

A. The unity efforts have been catalyzed by youth demonstrations in Ramallah and Gaza, calling for a new drive by Fateh and Hamas to reconcile. The demonstrations followed the pattern of other Arab countries in the sense that youth were calling for reform, but in the specific Palestinian case the demonstrations were not so much against a regime as in favor of, in effect, combining the two regimes in order to further Palestinian interests.

Both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Ismail Haniyeh Hamas-led government in Gaza endorsed the demonstrators' goal. Palestinian unity, after all, is like motherhood and apple pie. Indeed, Abbas had endorsed unity earlier as a condition for holding the new elections he proposed. Arrangements are underway for Abbas to visit Gaza to discuss the issue; he proposes establishing a joint non-partisan interim government of technocrats.

But it's very likely that not everyone in Hamas supports this direction of events. Last Friday's 50 or so mortar shells fired by Hamas from Gaza at surrounding Israeli communities--the worst ceasefire violation in more than two years since Operation Cast Lead--could well have been a warning signal by the Hamas military wing, which takes a more militant line than Haniyeh and is usually closely aligned with the Hamas ideological leadership in Damascus. The murderous attack at the Itamar settlement near Nablus ten days ago could conceivably also have been intended to generate an armed escalation that could thwart the unity dynamic.

On the other hand, violence may not be necessary to prevent unity. The political and ideological obstacles are huge; they have not been overcome in years of Egyptian-sponsored negotiations. PM Netanyahu's warning last week that a Palestinian unity government would not qualify for peace negotiations because of Hamas' ideology may have seemed comical insofar as Netanyahu and his coalition are in fact the primary obstacle to forward movement. But at the substantive level, Netanyahu has a point regarding Hamas' potential negative influence, not only on Palestinian negotiating positions but on Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation as well. That is why both he and the US administration pressured Egypt in the past not to facilitate an unfriendly unity agreement.

Now, whether the removal of the Mubarak government in Cairo will make a difference in unity talks is an issue of interest. So is the Hamas leadership's apparent assessment that the political changes in Egypt strengthen its bargaining position over unity. Abbas apparently doesn't think so; Fateh has consistently outpaced Hamas in recent polls.

Unless Abbas is simply going through the motions. Israel, if it can succeed in avoiding serious escalation with Hamas in response to the mortar attack, will enable him to do so.