Unlike Iraq’s immediate neighbors, Israel is not directly tied to recent events in that country. Nevertheless, U.S. withdrawal would create additional threats to Israeli security. Both Iran and the Islamic State would have a freer hand to operate inside Iraq, likely spreading across the porous border into Syria and ultimately to Israel’s own frontiers. American credibility would also suffer a new setback.
The announcement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law” is in line with Israel’s official position, and its inherent message – that preoccupation with the question of the legality of the settlements narrows Palestinian flexibility and discourages the achievement of a negotiated resolution to the conflict – is correct. However, the announcement’s practical value is minor, and there are even potential risks and costs for Israel.
The idea that has arisen recently of holding elections in the Palestinian Authority appears more serious at this stage than in the past. The main promoter of the idea is Abu Mazen, who advocates separate elections: first for the parliament, and only later for the presidency. Although Hamas has long demanded that the two elections be held simultaneously, a change in Hamas’s stance is evident, following its declaration that it is willing to proceed with the elections, while hinting that it might consent to Abu Mazen’s plan. Yet despite the positive attitude that the PA and Hamas are currently displaying toward elections, it appears that there are still many other barriers to overcome.
Watch as two pioneers of Israeli-Jordanian peace assess the state of their countries’ relations on the 25th anniversary of their historic 1994 peace treaty.
Hezbollah responded with restraint to Israel’s three-pronged attacks over the past two weeks in Syria, Iraq, and, above all, a neighborhood in Dahiya, the vast Shiite area in Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered. The organization’s effort to avoid escalation reflects its demographic problem in Lebanon.
The considerations that have so far guided Hezbollah’s calculated retaliation on September 1, 2019 following Israel’s strikes, and the August 25 drone strike in Beirut in particular, reflect its character as an organization with multiple identities – all of which influence its decision making. Hezbollah simultaneously constitutes a pivotal link in the regional “resistance axis” led by Iran; a Lebanese “resistance” movement and “defender of Lebanon”; and an organization within Lebanon that preserves its independent identity and autonomous decision making. Even as Hezbollah is involved in the overarching “resistance axis” against Israel, its commitment to the Lebanese state serves as a restraint. In its brief round of fighting with Israel, Hezbollah, which seeks to avoid broadening the confrontation to a war ruinous for both Lebanon and itself, behaved like a careful state-like actor.
Until a political plan is announced the economic one is unlikely to progress. Two key issues are whether Israel will cooperate in the creation of a Palestinian state, and can the Palestinians create a unified, democratic and effective government within such a state. These remain very open questions.
The economic workshop in Bahrain is the first part of the “deal of the century”; the political portion will apparently be presented only after the Israeli elections in September. The workshop in Bahrain leans heavily on Donald Trump’s political doctrine, whereby the economic power of the United States is the key to resolve economic, political, and social issues. However, a review of peace treaties that Israel has signed shows that the economy has consistently played only a secondary role, behind significant political solutions. The economic incentives were not the main channel of Israel’s peace treaties, but rather, a complement to the political channel. Therefore, despite the American desire to present a chiefly economic agenda for the Middle East, the success of the plans presented at the conference are tightly tied to the forthcoming political portion of the “deal of the century.”
Twenty-five years after the signing of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty, the bilateral relationship is in a challenging phase, but nothing should obscure the crucial benefits strategic and security cooperation affords to both sides, and the centrality of the relations to each side’s national security.
Ziv Rubinovitz and Gerald Steinberg provide an incisive summary of their larger work on Menachem Begin for Fathom in June 2019. Reprinted with permission of the authors.
Demographic pressures lie behind much of what is happening in Gaza. In 1948, 250,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Gaza, where the existing population was 80,000. Today, the population of Gaza is about 1.9 million of whom 1.3 million (68%) are refugees. Palestinians are the only people to retain refugee status generation after generation as a result of United Nations support.
March 25, 2019 Kenneth Stein, the founding president of the Center for Israel Education, has taught Middle Eastern history and politics at Emory for 43 years. He spent more than half that time serving as…
On October 21, 2018, Jordan’s King Abdullah II informed Israel that he would not renew two annexes of the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan that leased the territory of Naharayim and Zofar to Israel. Many factors contributed to this decision, including Jordan’s anger over its exclusion from issues related to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the recent diplomatic talks with the Palestinians. The single most significant factor that led to this decision, however, was Abdullah’s need to shore up his legitimacy in the aftermath of the protests and social unrest that erupted in Jordan over the summer.
The Oslo process – started between Israel and the Palestinians 25 years ago – clearly failed to bring a resolution to the conflict and did not result in peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. The nearly 1,600 Israeli casualties and many more thousands of wounded during this period by Palestinian terrorist and rocket attacks testify to this failure. Yitzhak Rabin’s land-for-security formula did not work.
When a leader of one country considers whether the time is ripe to commence peace negotiations with the leader of an enemy, there are two important questions that the leader must consider: Is the other leader willing to make the sacrifices necessary to attain peace? Is that leader strong enough to make those sacrifices and enforce the deal internally, that is, is he capable? The answer to both of these questions must be ‘yes.’ A willing but incapable leader is as bad for reaching a peace treaty as a capable but unwilling leader.
The month of May was fraught with turbulent events that began with the disclosure of Iranian nuclear documents by Israel, and continued with an Israeli air strike against Iranian missile bases in Syria, the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, and the riots at the border fence with Gaza. The discourse involving users from the Arab world on social media illustrates their contradictory attitudes towards Israel, which are influenced by the respective interests guiding various groups.
Forty years ago this month, President Jimmy Carter convened the Camp David summit between Israeli and Egyptian leaders to push Arab-Israeli negotiations forward in an unprecedented and intensive manner.
The current Palestinian political economy, influenced far too greatly by the BDS and anti-normalization campaigns, amounts to a corrupt, unsustainable, terror-supporting regime that is disinterested in the economic well-being of its own people and the development of a new state.
In January this year, the veteran Arab journalist Rami Khouri made this assessment of the Middle East as a region, “Never before has the Arab region been so fractured, violent, volatile and vulnerable to the…
By Bernard Wasserstein Included as a 15-page chapter in the 2019 book Serendipitous Adventures With Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, edited by Wm. Roger Louis and used with permission, this overview of the…
The notion of a two-state solution remains front and center as the most often discussed and endorsed solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dimension of the conflict in the Middle East. So why has it not happened?
An easy way to learn Israel’s history for personal use and the classroom. Our CIE source and document compilation, is easily searchable, an ebook. Highly praised by teachers at all levels, practitioners and casual users.
Abba Eban, writing in The Israel Yearbook in 1977, recounted what a British official, Sir Reginald Coupland said about how to end or wind down political conflict in Palestine.
Ken Stein’s Third Edition of most “comprehensive” document compilation available on Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Ebook and kindle versions
