Israel -- the "Check Engine" Light is Flashing Again

By John Ballard

I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?

--Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof

I had not planned to post about Israel but this overview of Israel and her neighbors is too good to miss.The pseudonymous group blog Coming Anarchy is a low-key but accurate source of information and opinion. In real life, �Curzon� is a US citizen from the East Coast who has at various times been a financial analyst, freelance translator, practicing lawyer, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Dubai. 

Missing the Point on Israel

With US-Israel relations at the worst they�ve been in decades, relations appeared to go even further downhill when Israeli commandos stormed an �aid flotilla� sailing from Turkey towards the Gaza blockade, resulting in the deaths of several pro-Palestinian activists. The immediate consequences are unsurprising�international condemnation has been loud, particularly from Europe; there has been a collapse in Turkish-Israeli relations, a blow for Israel as Turkey has long been Israel�s silent ally in the region; and US relations have worsened further still. The Arab press and political leaders are as shrill as ever, and Iran is once again promising to wipe the nation from the map.

The major media outlets would have you believe that Israel will suffer major consequences from the flotilla fiasco. But they are missing the point�Israel today is more secure from outside threat than it has ever been in its history. Its enemies are divided, unable and unwilling to form any coalition that could actually threaten Israel.

The Palestinians: The Palestinians are fiercely divided�geographically and ideologically�between Fatah and Hamas, such that Fatah is essentially allied with Israel against Hamas in the present circumstances. Fatah has publicly said that it is opposed to lifting the blockade of Gaza, and this isn�t the first time it�s been targeting Hamas�indeed, Fatah may well have been involved in the assassination of the Hamas operative in Dubai earlier this year.

Jordan: Jordan has a tense relationship with Israel�yet maintains a highly functional bilateral relationship where there is heavy trade activity across the long and open border between the two states. And Jordan is strongly suspicious of both Fatah and Hamas. Arafat�s Fatah was involved in a coup attempt against King Hussein in the 1970s that resulted in the massacre of thousands of Palestinians, while Hamas is an Islamist organization that Jordan opposes ideologically. Jordan also quietly opposes the establishment of any independent Palestinian state, which could threaten its very existence, as so many Jordanians are themselves Palestinian�and despite neighboring so much of the West Bank, Jordan has relations with Israel, not the PLO, in managing this border.

Syria & Lebanon: In 1973, Syria was a major military threat to Israel. Today, despite being a vocal opponent of Israel and often on the brink of conflict with its southern neighbor, Damascus is ultimately focused on maintaining its influence in Lebanon, and does that primarily through the Shia organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an anti-Israeli force, but it is not Palestinian (Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunni), and Hezbollah is yet another world apart from Hamas and Fatah. Syria maintains ties with both Palestinian organizations, but is not interested in intervening on their behalf.

Egypt: It is not by chance that Israel can maintain its blockade of Gaza, and storm a non-military vessel approaching the blockade, without having to worry about a conflict with Egypt. Egypt has a border with Gaza that it keeps closed. Secular Egypt can claim the Fatah movement as a child, and therefore an ally, and has always opposed Hamas, which has its roots in Egypt�s Muslim Brotherhood, the main domestic threat of Egypt�s current government.

Saudi Arabia and the GCC: Saudi Arabia has tried to be a peacemaker in the region, seeking to act as a go-between for a unity Hamas-Fatah government. But despite noisy public condemnation, the Saudis, along with the rest of the Emirs of the Persian Gulf, are in no position to do anything beyond words. There is no appetite to interupt their place in the global economy with anything militarily, and and have little room to implement sanctions or hurt Israel financially because they are already half-hearted parties to the Israeli boycott and don�t trade with Israel to begin with. It is also reported that Saudi Arabia may be cooperating with Israel to allow them to attack Iran�a possible story, although the publication of this scoop makes it less likely to happen, and there would never be a public quid pro quo about this.

Turkey: Turkey has recently been more active in the Arab world�it is a major investor in post-war Iraq�and may be trying to use this event to increase its political capital in the Arab world. But this can only go so far�and for those who appreciate irony, there is much hypocrisy in Turkey�s stance if we wonder how the PM who recently threatened to expel all Armenians from Turkey would feel if �freedom flotillas� were sent to Turkish-occupied Cyprus or Kurdistan.

* * *

What should we expect from this? At the end of the day, Israel faces surprisingly few external threats. Ominously, Israel�s biggest dangers are enemies from within�a shrinking Jewish population when matched to the high Palestinian birth rate, and an increasingly powerful fringe extremist minority.

If nothing else the Jews are a case study in survival, self-reliance and the effective application of political leverage. Unlike other groups of tribal/ confessional origin, Jews are not evangelistic. Christians and Muslims openly seek to convert everyone else to their respective faiths but Jews, though open to the idea of conversion, merely tolerate the idea. Perhaps they know better than anyone how challenging it is to be a Jew and how crazy it is for anyone to want to become Jewish on purpose. 

A few takeaways from this summary.

• The complexity of conflicts in the Middle East lies in the fragmentation of everybody involved. And the fragmentation of Palestinians is central to everything. As I have noted repeatedly, the Palestinians are deeply divided among themselves to a self-destructive degree. Following the Hamas electoral victory in 2006 Hamas gunmen actually killed some members of Fatah and to this moment the two groups don't speak. I have the impression that Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon are "managed" by Hezbollah in a manner that makes the West Bank and even Gaza look like  tourist destinations and Jordan makes no secret of not wanting anything to do with the assimilation of Palestinians, even those who might have lived there for generations. And in the case of Egypt, Palestinian unity would be a disaster.


• "Christian" fragmentation is older and more complicated than that of the Palestinians. The split of Rome and Constantinople was just the most famous, but the closer one gets to ground zero the more splinter groups there are. Chaldeans, Maronites, Copts, and Assyrians come to mind, but Wikipedia says there are over 38,000 Christian denominations. And anyone who thinks all is comity and charity among them was never reared in one from childhood. It's not fashionable to say out loud but Christian fragmentation,  particularly between Zionist and non-Zionist groups, has a political component more divisive than historic antisemitism. (Like racial prejudice, it is easier to contend with old-fashioned antisemitism than more recent stripes of apocalyptic Christianity which carries a sheen of respectability in many quarters.)


• Not to be overlooked, Muslims compete with the other large groups for internal conflict. Beyond the famous Sunni-Shiite divide can be found a multitude of fragments. It is a universe about which I am too ignorant to make intelligent comments, but names like Sufi, Salafi and Druze come to mind. By now every schoolboy knows about extremist groups but among many Muslims I have known personally I have yet to encounter any. There are so many distinct groups in Lebanon that the Lebanese constitution is one of the few in the world called "consociational" which assures the legal survival of minority sects that otherwise might never have political representation. When I first encountered to word I thought it was a misprint. (I hope one day to meed someone who is Druze. They seem to be the Muslim equivalent of Unitarians... you know, one God at the most.)


• And finally the divisions among Jews themselves lays the final layer of this multi-dimensional matrix. A post a few weeks ago makes reference to these divisions and there is no way to summarize them quickly without misrepresenting one or the other.

Not knowing how to headline this post, I chose the dashboard image as one everyone can understand. Most drivers glance at the dashboard to make sure the gas is not low or check the speedometer when they see a cop. In older cars, however, a flashing light sometimes gets ignored. Time to change the oil or have the parking brake checked but nothing critical. And our old Middle East clunker has been flashing a light or two since before cars were invented. We cannot recall a moment, even before 1948, when there was not trouble over there. So this morning, take it for what it's worth. Just a summary of how things stand at the moment.