http://israel-commentary.org/?p=7541
BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
Americans watch our tragedy-of-errors
Syria policy from the safety of houses and apartments in suburbs and cities
5,000 miles from the conflict. Israelis are next door, and two weeks ago—when
an American strike and possible Syrian counterstrike at Israel seemed imminent—they
were lining up for gas masks. There are no such lines in Tel Aviv today. But
what can Israelis make of the Syria crisis now, after the Obama speech and with
action moving to Geneva and to the United Nations? What are the lessons they
may learn?
Russia
Israel has maintained decent relations
with Russia throughout the Putin years, under the Sharon, Olmert, and Netanyahu
governments, and the lesson here is that this was a smart move. It turns out
that Vladimir Putin and Russia remain important players in the region after
all, not just by selling arms to Syria but at the U.N. as well. Issues like
Iran and Syria can play out in part in Moscow and in part in Turtle Bay, and
being able to communicate directly with Putin and foreign minister Sergey
Lavrov—in a relationship separate and independent from that of the United
States—helps protect Israel’s interests. Watching
Obama and Kerry fumble and change positions as Putin and Lavrov seize
opportunities and play the game like professionals must teach Israelis that
keeping a line open to Russia is smart.
Iran
No
one in Israel has the slightest faith that President Obama means to bomb the
Iranian nuclear sites. His rhetoric on preventing Iran from
getting nuclear weapons has been very tough, including during his visit to
Israel in 2013. But the handling of Syria shows his aversion to using force and
potentially involving the United States in another Middle East war. Democratic
party loyalists who have hitherto advised Israel that Obama might act are, it
is said, no longer offering such assurances.
The Israeli conclusion will be that if
Iran is to be stopped they must do it themselves. The odds of an Israeli attack
over the coming year have risen, and the Israeli question about the United
States is whether the administration will reconcile itself to Israeli action or
even perhaps come to see it as a useful way to stop Iran without U.S. action.
But Israelis will also be more
concerned now about a Russian-led diplomatic offensive, some kind of clever
offer that does little to disarm Iran but whose wide international acclaim
makes an Israeli strike nearly impossible. The lessons here are to work hard
(sometimes along with the French) to toughen the American position in
negotiations with Iran, and keep honing their own strike plans. Israelis hope
for a diplomatic solution as much as the Obama administration does, but will
not kid themselves about the chances of a Western collapse that embraces a bad
deal.
United States
The
most sobering lesson for Israelis has been the unreliability of their own chief
ally and closest friend. They watched the administration
pressure Prime Minister David Cameron into a quick and risky parliamentary vote
and then change course—so that his defeat was entirely unnecessary. They
watched us turn President François Hollande from momentary hero into a butt of
jokes. They were stunned by the Obama reversals that led him to talk of strikes
at Syria, then demand a congressional vote, then postpone it when he saw he
would likely lose. And they saw Putin maneuver around these changes to a
proposal that could help keep his ally Assad in power and fend off American
strikes indefinitely.
As
with the pro-American Arab states (such as Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia),
these developments leave Israelis deeply nervous, but they realize American
policy is unlikely to change for the next three years.
What to do, then? First, keep humoring the Obama administration, seeking to
maximize influence in its counsels. That means verbally supporting Obama on
Syria even as his policy gyrates, and continuing negotiations with the
Palestinians despite near-universal skepticism about the talks among Israelis.
With policy changing by the day, who knows? Maybe those White House guys will
occasionally listen to advice; worth trying.
But Israelis should have learned that
advising and jollying up the administration does not mean intervening in
America’s domestic political disputes. According to press reports, the
president prevailed on Netanyahu to seek support in Congress for the Syria
resolution—the resolution the president has now said must be postponed and
may never come to a vote. So they wasted some credibility and angered some
Republicans; just how grateful is Obama? The lesson there is to stay out of our
partisan arguments unless they very directly affect Israel’s security.
Second, pursue your own relationships
with Russia, Europe, and the Arab states. Israel always does that, but with
American leadership now discounted, those direct relationships are more
important. Perhaps Israel and France can toughen the Western negotiating
position on Iran, or Israel and Egypt can work together to weaken Hamas in
Gaza, or Israel and the Gulf Arab states can talk together about how to handle
conflicts with Iran. Right now it is likely that Israeli-Egyptian,
Israeli-Jordanian, and perhaps Israeli-Gulf state conversations are especially
candid in reviewing shared challenges—not the least of which is dependence on
a power that appears to be choosing to diminish its influence in the region.
Israel
There is another, harsher lesson from
the developments in Syria. One-hundred-thousand Arabs, mostly Sunni, have been
killed there and millions driven from their homes, in a world where the Arab
League has 22 member states, the Islamic Conference has 57, and there are in
the world perhaps two billion Muslims. No one saved those Sunni, Arab, Muslim
Syrians, and no one is doing much now to prevent additional killing; the
reactions of their co-religionists and fellow Arabs have ranged from
ineffective to uninterested. Christian communities have for years been
threatened and attacked in Iraq, Lebanon, and most recently Syria and Egypt
with little reaction from the world’s two billion Christians. Who would
intervene to protect the Jews should they ever be in a similar situation?
Israelis know this; their view of their
neighborhood was (controversially, to be sure) summed up by Ehud Barak in 2006
when he called Israel “a villa in the jungle.” Israelis don’t believe they
survive because they are a democracy or a “startup nation” but because they are
strong—and willing to use their strength, as they proved yet again in
multiple attacks in Syria in the last two years. Their national experience as
Israelis parallels their history as Jews: The strong survive, and the weak may
well perish. And when the weak are attacked, there are some excellent speeches
made but precious little help is forthcoming.
So the fate of Syria’s dead and its
millions of refugees is but confirmation that Israel must in the end be able
and willing to defend itself, by itself. On September 11, Prime Minister
Netanyahu quoted the sage Hillel at an Israeli Navy graduation ceremony: “If I
am not for myself, who will be for me?” He then added that this saying “is more
relevant than ever these days in guiding me, in my key actions as prime
minister” and said the meaning “is that Israel will always be able to protect
itself, and will protect itself, with its own forces, against all threats.”
Elliott
Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations and author of Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
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