To keep "all options on the table" in the U.S.
Israel plans to change the incumbent Syrian and
Iranian regimes and neutralize what both countries
perceive as an imminent "threat" is a formula missing
the only feasible option to defuse their perceived
threat peacefully, which is obviously much cheaper in
money and human souls.
On August 19, Israeli former head of the Operations
Directorate of the Israeli military, Maj. Gen. (res.)
Uri Saguy, wrote in Haaretz that late Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak "Rabin strove to achieve agreements
with our neighbors before the Iranians got a bomb. If
we had peace accords today with the Arab countries and
with the Palestinians, what exactly would the
Iranians' conflict with us be about?"
Giving priority to making peace with Syria, Lebanon
and the Palestinian people on the land for peace
basis, which is the essence of the Arab Peace
Initiative proposed by the 22 member states of the
Arab League in 2002, would disarm Iran of its Arab,
Palestinian credentials and create a new regional
environment that would in turn render any Arab
alliance with Iran unnecessary and would uncover
Iranian regional expansion as an endeavor sought per
se by Tehran.
Instead, Israel is running away from peace making to
warmongering, risking embroilment of the United States
in a war on Iran that Washington does not want, at
least for now.
Four-star chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
Martin Dempsey said on August 19 that he has been
conferring with his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz on
a regular "bi-weekly" basis and "we've admitted to
each other that our clocks are turning at different
rates." Israel's envoy to Washington, Michael Oren,
acknowledged in a CNN interview the following day that
Israel 's clock was ticking faster than Washington 's.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali "Khamenei has not
["probably"] given orders to start building a
[nuclear] weapon," according to Israeli defense
minister Ehud Barak in a CNN interview on April 20;
His Iranian counterpart Ahmad Vahidi this week
dismissed Israeli warmongering as "psychological war;"
General Martin Dempsey cautioned against an Israeli
strike saying it would not destroy Iran's nuclear
program; President Shimon Peres last week joined
senior security, military and political experts to
warn against a unilateral Israeli strike not
coordinated with the U.S.
In the RAND Review for spring this year, Ambassador
James Dobbins, who directs RAND's international
security and defense policy center, and three expert
analysts argued that "an Israeli or American attack on
Iranian nuclear facilities would make it more, not
less, likely that the Iranian regime would decide to
produce and deploy nuclear weapons. Such an attack
would also make it more, not less, difficult to
contain Iranian influence."
Nonetheless, Benjamin Netanyahu's government has been
beating the drums of war, linking the Iranian "threat"
to a second holocaust (a comparison dismissed by Nobel
Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel). His
newly appointed home front defense minister, Avi
Dichter, says, " Israel 's existence is threatened."
Israel 's top-tier missile defense system was
announced upgraded and missile alert system tested. In
a nationwide experiment to continue through Thursday,
text messages warning of incoming missiles are being
sent to cellphone users. Gas mask centers have already
distributed more than four million masks.
Israeli warmongering is creating, in Saguy's words, an
"orchestrated and purposely timed hysteria" in Israel
as if "someone is lighting a fire, then yelling that
it has to put out."
Financial markets are shivering, foreign investors are
on guard, Israeli new shekel is growing increasingly
weaker against the dollar and Pnina Grinbaum, a
55-year-old government clerk in Jerusalem , was quoted
by the Associated Press on August 16 as saying: "I'm
very afraid. I want peace, not war."
The international stand off on Iran 's nuclear
program as well as on the Syrian crisis is very
tightly linked to the impasse, which saw the Arab and
Palestinian Israeli peace process reach a dead end.
The Syrian crisis in particular is more closely tied
to the impasse in the Arab Israeli conflict.
De-linked from this conflict, it would boil down to an
internal crisis that could be easily solved by Syrians
themselves.
Regional and international involvement in the Syrian
crisis has nothing to do with the internal crisis per
se, but has exploited the internal crisis because it
has a lot to do with the U.S. Israel plans to
isolate and contain what both countries perceive as an
Iranian regional threat to their interests.
To this end, Israel and U.S. are now doing all what
they can to break the alliance between Iran and Syria
and the Syrian bridge linking Iran to Lebanese and
Palestinian movements resisting Israeli military
occupation, thus cutting off Iran from the
Mediterranean, as well as depriving these movements
from their Syrian support, by coordinating a regime
change" in Damascus.
For four years since Benyamin Netanyahu came to power,
Israel risked a confrontation with the U.S.
administration of President Barak Obama over his order
of priorities in the Middle East, which gave
precedence to reaching a negotiated political
settlement for the Palestinian Israeli conflict as a
precondition to building up a U.S. , Arab and Israeli
front against Iran .
Netanyahu advocated a reversed order of priorities and
has succeeded in pushing the Palestinian Israeli
conflict down from the top of U.S. regional agenda in
favor of solving the U.S. Israeli Iranian debacle
first.
This rearrangement of Israel U.S. priorities has
marginalized the Arab Israeli "peace process" to the
extent that both countries feel relaxed enough now to
feel free from any serious commitment to resume it.
However, developments prove this rearrangement of
priorities counterproductive and playing in Iranian
hands, making the regional Iranian alliances stronger,
perpetuating the Syrian crisis, around which a new
multi-polar world is emerging, and sidelining the
Palestinian peace partners, leaving them with no other
option but to take their deadlocked peace process to
the United Nations, to bring back on track the
Palestinian Israeli conflict to the top of the
international agenda in the Middle East, thus creating
a fait accompli that will make impossible the Arab
Israeli U.S. front against Iran that Washington has
been trying to build up over the past few years.
Cornering the Palestinians longer in their United
Nations option, similarly changing nothing on the
ground to end the Israeli military occupation, would
in no time see them loosing faith in peace making to
be pushed involuntarily to realign regionally to the
other side, which would exacerbate the Iran "threat"
rather than containing it.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based
in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied
Palestinian territories. He can be contacted at
nassernicola@ymail.com.
Add Comments