Another Middle East War?
Aikman surveys the many tangles of the current situation.
Most Americans numbed by daily casualty reports coming out of the war in Iraq—the drip-drip-drip of American fatalities and the veritable torrent of deaths of Iraqi civilians murdered as they shop for groceries—probably just wish the Middle East as a whole would disappear.
Unfortunately for weary Americans, it won’t. The most war-prone region on the planet won’t go anywhere just yet, and there is a strong probability that, before the end of this year, it may have exploded yet again into a cross-border conflagration.
The recent bloody and brutal seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza evoked among many observers a shrug of resignation, as if nothing but murder and chaos could be expected from any Islamic group in power among Palestinians. Lebanon experienced a terrible bloodletting in May when a Palestinian Islamic group with suspected links to al-Qaeda, the Fatah al-Islam, started attacking Lebanese army units from the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in the north of Lebanon. Lebanese army combat deaths from that conflict now number in the several score.
But in the Middle East region, very few events are isolated from each other. In Lebanon, the pro-Western government of Fouad Siniora has been trying to cope with persistent rumors that the Hezbollah Shiite political party in Lebanon is eager to create a parallel, Islamist state within Lebanon. Hezbollah was responsible for provoking the destructive war with Israel a year ago after kidnapping two Israeli soldiers from Israeli soil. Although battered by Israel, it emerged from the conflict with increased prestige, and indeed popularity. With financial backing from Iran, Hezbollah handed out cash to any Lebanese who could prove that their house was damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombing in the war.
Hezbollah has been backed by both Iran and Syria in the form of training, supplies, and an overall strategy to weaken the influence of the U.S. and Israel in not just the Middle East, but also the world as a whole. The Syrian government in early July broadcast a call for all of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian workers currently in Lebanon to leave the country by July 15. That was the day, according to the Syrians, when a new civil war could erupt in Lebanon. More precisely, it refers to two UN Security Council-related events scheduled to take place around or about July 15. One is a UN Security Council special session to determine whether international observers should be assigned to monitor the Syrian-Lebanese border because of continuing complaints of arms smuggling from Syria. Another is the delivery of a UN report investigating possible Syrian involvement in the murder two and a half years ago of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Ever since Hariri’s death—which has been followed by additional assassinations of Lebanese politicians critical of Syria—there has been growing suspicion that Syria was itself complicit in the assassinations.
A renewed Lebanese civil war would be a nightmare for everyone, and not only the Lebanese. It could escalate into a war involving Iran, Syria, and Israel. Israeli intelligence has warned that there has been significant Syrian military build-up on the Golan Heights opposite positions held by Syria. The Syrian president Basha al-Assad has himself warned of the danger of a Syrian-Israeli war by September. Assad has also threatened that, if Israel does not agree by late this summer to negotiate a complete withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights, the Syrians will encourage guerrilla attacks on the settlers there. This would almost certainly provoke an Israeli military response against Syria proper.
Alarm about the dangers of a Shiite “Axis” of power from Iran, to Lebanon, to Hamas-controlled Gaza endangering the Sunni Arab governments of the Middle East has stirred traditionally anti-Israeli Arab governments to seek Israeli backing—or at least tacit approval—of Sunni Arab states to prop up the beleaguered governments of their co-religionists. For the first time ever, representatives of the Arab League are due to meet with Israeli officials in Israel to discuss the growing regional instability and—privately—the Shiite threat.
Adding to Israel’s dilemma is the fact that the Palestinian political entity with which it now has to deal is divided into two groups: the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Should Hamas succeed in gaining the upper hand on the West Bank, the whole of Israel’s densely populated coastal strip—from south of Tel Aviv north to Haifa, would be within range of Kassem or other rockets deployed by Hamas. Worries about this possibility have caused some Israeli politicians and analysts to dust off a decades-old proposal for what to do about the West Bank. They would prefer, they say, a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation to rule the area. But the Jordanians, who remember the bloody conflict with Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970, say that they will not even discuss this until the Palestinians have an internationally recognized independent state.
Israel, meanwhile, has been negotiating with the Egyptians over a prisoner release that might spring from his captivity in Gaza the Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped and held there for more than a year. The Israeli cabinet has released the list of 250 names of Palestinian prisoners it proposes to release. It hopes, by this gesture, to strengthen the hand of the Palestinian Authority’s beleaguered Fatah president Mahmoud Abbas. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose political popularity has been in the single digits during the past few months, hopes also to gain some political points if his negotiations can bring Shalit home. Olmert has been pilloried in the Israeli domestic press for serious mistakes made by both the Israeli government and Israel’s military leadership during the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer. His defense minister at the time of the war, Amir Peretz, recently resigned and was replaced as Defense Minister by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak, who negotiated intensively—but ultimately unsuccessfully—with the Palestinian Authority’s Yassir Arafat in the summer of 2000 for a final Israel-Palestinian settlement, is respected as an authority on military affairs. He is one of the most highly decorated combat veterans in the Israeli army.
Then, of course, there is Iraq, which is trying to survive not only the ongoing sectarian strife and anti-U.S. activity but the threat of an imminent incursion by the Turkish army, who want to end the Kurdish terrorist movement against their own country.
Keep your eyes on the Middle East. Not only will it not go away, it may bounce back yet again and bite us all with its endemic capacity for strife.
Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.
2 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, War and Peace, Fri 20 Jul 2007
Americans may be “numbed” and “weary” of the rather depressing news they hear from the Middle East, but this gives the misleading impression that they are passive observers rather than implicated participants. It is their democratically-elected representatives who have authorised and directed the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; their government’s policies that have been instrumental in the “tangle” the author seeks to unravel.
Missing threads in the tangle:
1. Hamas and Gaza. The only sense in which Hamas ‘seized power’ in Gaza is that they thoroughly routed rival armed factions to become the sole authority. That, one might suggest, is what an elected government is entitled to. Missing from this account is the alliance between the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan that was created after the PNA elections designed to run roughshod over the democratically-expressed will of the Palestinian people. Arms were shipped to the collaborating faction within Fatah, Fatah-affiliated forces were to have training in Jordan and Egypt. We want to export democracy, sure, but only when you vote for the right guys.
2. Lebanon. Fatah al-Islam, the group which gave the Lebanese army the excuse to bombard a Palestinian refugee camp, has more links to the US than it does to ‘al-Qaeda’. The US, together with their best buddies, the Saudis, have been sponsoring radical Salafi jihadists in Lebanon in an effort to destabilise the Shi’ite Hezbollah. So Fatah al-Islam can be added to the long list of ‘reaping what you sow’ in the Middle East.
Sao Paulo, Brazil
on 2007 07 27
3. Hezbollah. Well, let’s clear up a few things here. The Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon had been planned for some time. Moreover, the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah did not come out of the blue. Israeli war planes regularly invaded Lebanese air space, as well as conducting cross-border kidnapping raids. Not to mention the fact that the Sheba’ Farms continues to be occupied by Israel. So Hezbollah’s capture of Israeli soldiers was not a rupture of peaceful relations. Secondly, it is surely amiss to go to great lengths to discuss Syria and Iran’s interference in Lebanese affairs (which is true), while omitting the interference of Israel and the US. All parties concerned have engaged in assassinations, though only Israel has the distinction of carpet bombing Lebanon twice. Again, if one is seeking to ‘untangle’ this complex situation, why only mention the arms Hezbollah receives from Syria and Iraq? What about those parties bankrolled by the US and Israel?
4. Maybe it was a typo, or perhaps a desire to have something more resembling a traditional axis, but Sunni Hamas can not be included on the so-called axis of Shiite powers alongside Iran and Lebanon. Moreover, this apparent ‘threat’ is not about religion (as the divide-and-conquerors would have it) but about resistance to or collaboration with US empire; the Arab ‘governments’ (monarchs and dictators) who are hot under the collar at the success of resistance groups across the region are not ‘traditionally’ anti-Israeli (except in rhetoric only). Most of them have been Israel’s strongest friends for some time.
Quite a tangle!
(part 2/2)