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Yossi Alpher, a well-known analyst of the Israeli-Arab conflict and, despite his left-wing orientation, someone who should know better, wrote this:

[R]enewal of the peace process between Israel and Syria deserves more and better attention from the US and the moderate Arab states. Unlike in the Palestinian arena, here the parameters of a process are clear, most of the negotiating has already been done and Syrian President Bashar Assad is able to deliver. Obviously, success in the Israeli-Syrian arena is not guaranteed. But if achieved it would reduce Iran’s regional influence and weaken Hamas, thereby improving the chances for fruitful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – when circumstances are more favorable than today.

Alpher correctly understands that while Hamas controls Gaza and while PA President Mahmoud Abbas is committed — by ideology and by fear of his constituency — to maximal demands on borders, refugees, Jerusalem, etc., there can be no secure peace agreement with the Palestinians. So, maybe for lack of anything else to do, he thinks Israel should pursue an agreement with Syria.

“if achieved it would reduce Iran’s regional influence and weaken Hamas”, he says. Well, if Bashar Assad would honestly make peace with Israel, then it might do these things. But that’s like saying that flying pigs would revolutionize air transport.

Here are some of the problems with the idea:

Syria today has a very close relationship with Iran, which provides weapons and economic benefits. It works closely with Iran’s proxy, Hizballah, in exploiting Lebanon. Recognition of the Jewish state would put Syria on the US/Israeli side of the struggle for control of the region, imperil all of this and make enemies out of Iran and Hizballah.

In addition, Syria uses the conflict with Israel for domestic political purposes. As Barry Rubin argued in his book “The Truth About Syria“, the continual state of war with Israel provides an excuse for the Syrian regime to suppress both reformist and Islamist opposition, as well as for the economic difficulties of the population.

But the Golan is extremely strategic, even in this day of missile warfare. If Israel had not controlled the Golan in 1973, there’s no doubt that Syrian tanks could have penetrated deeply into Israel’s heartland. And while the Assad regime would prefer not to make peace, it would very much want to get the Golan back. So the obvious danger is that there might be a peace agreement, one that Assad or a successor would renege on. Who would or could guarantee it? Israel’s experience with multinational or UN forces indicates that no one could.

As always, Israel is asked to make a concrete concession of a strategic asset in return for a promise. “Assad is able to deliver”, says Alpher. But would he really, and could he deliver a possibly Islamist successor in advance?

Technorati Tags: Yossi Alpher, Israel, Syria, Golan Heights

This is a delightful film, which I recommend to everyone.

Yes, it’s a Palestinian film, from the Palestinian perspective and where it touches on Israel it does not do so sympathetically. Palestinians are hassled at checkpoints, and ‘occupation’ is blamed, not terrorism. Americans for the most part come off cold, naive and xenophobic. But it is one of the most honest films that I’ve seen in a while.

The plot is simple. Muna, a divorced Christian Palestinian woman with a teenage son, Fadi, feels that he has no future in the territories and emigrates to a small Illinois town where her sister lives. Her encounter at the airport with US immigration personnel is priceless: “Occupation?” asks the official, and Muna replies “Yes, it is occupied, for forty years.”

The year is 2003, Americans are worried about terrorism and teenagers are …teenagers, which makes it hard for Fadi, whom they creatively call ‘Osama’. Muna’s sister Raghda and her doctor husband Nabeel have money and marital problems as Nabeel’s practice suffers when fearful or biased patients leave. And the educated Muna, a former bank employee, struggles to find a job, ultimately flipping burgers at White Castle.

There’s no sex, no violence more serious than kids punching each other, and only the barest whiff of the inevitable Hollywood ‘love interest’.

Here’s what I liked about it:

The Palestinian Arab actors. Americans do a bad job playing Arabs — what can I tell you?

Linguistic realism. They spoke Arabic (with subtitles), English, and a mixture of English and Arabic that reminded me of my own family’s mixed English and Hebrew.

The view of America — good and bad — from the ‘outside’. Anyone who’s been unemployed will recognize Muna’s experiences looking for a job. When I came back to the US after almost a decade in Israel, I felt a similar disconnect, despite my good English and cultural understanding. There is a warmth about Middle Eastern people that came through clearly.

The de-emphasis of politics. It’s not a Zionist film, I didn’t expect one, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with Palestinian victimhood.

There’s nothing deep about it, but it’s well-done and entertaining.

Netflix subscribers can watch Amreeka here, and you can read Roger Ebert’s review here. Here’s the trailer:

[myspace] http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=60258244 [/myspace]

Technorati Tags: Amreeka, Movies

News item:

Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas, current chairman of the Palestinian Authority, claims that Israel is trying to assassinate him. Abbas told an Egyptian news agency this week that Israel had murdered his predecessor,Yasser Arafat – despite Arafat’s commitment to peace – and that he is afraid of suffering the same fate.

The man is beyond belief, and the US keeps paying him!

The implication is that he is for peace and a two-state solution, and Israel, which does not want peace, might kill him for his courageous stance, like his mentor Arafat.

In the real world the PA is doing its best to avoid negotiations with Israel, because it knows that its bottom lines — strict 1949 borders, return of ‘refugees’ to Israel, no recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, etc. — are unacceptable to either Israel or the US.

This is because they do not represent a compromise; they represent the whole ball game. Even Barack Obama has ruled out a right of return, has called for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and has favored land swaps.

So Abbas insists that the fact that Israel will not extend its building freeze to East Jerusalem means that it is impossible to talk. Of course, extending the ill-considered freeze would prejudge the status of East Jerusalem, something which is theoretically part of the theoretical negotiations. It’s bad enough that a cloud has been cast over all the rest of Judea and Samaria.

In any event, Israel is not building new settlements and there’s no connection between construction anywhere and the possibility of holding negotiations.

Israel understands quite well that neither Abbas or anyone else associated with the PA wants a ‘peace’ agreement that would be anything other than a complete capitulation to all of their demands. Even if someone did, he would receive no backing and probably be in physical danger from more extremist elements.

So killing Abbas would get Israel exactly nothing, just as killing Arafat in 2004 would not have. Israel could have and should have killed Arafat in 1982, but that’s another story.

The legend about Israel having poisoned Arafat — most authorities think it more likely that he died from complications of AIDS or was poisoned by Palestinian rivals — has joined Arab mythology along with the one about the Mossad’s responsibility for 9/11. It’s a good story, though, and Abbas used his interview to get in another lick at Israel.

The so-called ‘peace process’ which the US is bound and determined to ‘restart’ yet again is a diversion from more serious issues — Iran — as well as an excuse for the US and Europe to slice bits off of Israel in pursuit of their real policy goal. That is to shrink Israel as close to the 1949 lines as possible in order to appease Saudi Arabia, which has been pressuring the US to oppose a Jewish state in Palestine at least since Ibn Saud met with Roosevelt in February of 1945.

Apparently the plan goes just this far, with a sort of hazy idea that security problems will be ironed out after the main goal has been attained. This is the same kind of reasoning, by the way, that brought us the disaster in Iraq.

How to make the tiny Palestinian state viable, how to defuse the terrorists in Judea and Samaria when the IDF pulls out, what to do about Hamas, what about the crime and corruption-ridden Palestinian society and politics, what about the influence of Iran by way of its proxies Hamas and Hizbullah, etc. — all of these issues are ‘handled’ by wishful thinking, just like the problems of post-Saddam Iraq.

In truth, the US and Europe care as little for Israel and the Palestinians as they did for the Iraqis. Peace can come only when the outside forces — in this case the West, Iran and Saudi Arabia leave the area alone. Without the ‘encouragement’ that today leads Palestinian Arabs to believe that they will succeed in getting the Jews out of the region,  perhaps a realistic  leadership could arise that will accept the idea of a state alongside Israel. But I’m not holding my breath.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas

Following the disaster in Haiti, China, the US, Canada, Britain, Spain, Iceland, Portugal, Russia, Taiwan, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and of course Israel all have medical or rescue personnel on the ground there, or on the way. IDF medical teams who will set up a field hospital are already in the air.

The nations listed above and many others as well as international organizations, India, Australia, Norway, Italy, the EU, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, and South Korea have all pledged tens of millions of dollars and Euros (the US is tied for the biggest pledge with the World Bank at $100 million each).

But what’s missing? How about the countries swimming in our petrodollars, Saudi Arabia, Iran? The UAE has promised fifty tons of supplies. Nothing so far from any other Arab or Muslim nations. Where is that great humanitarian Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, who was so concerned about the ‘disaster’ in Gaza, now that a real disaster has occurred? Oh, he’s sent Turkey’s ‘condolences’! Does he remember that after a deadly earthquake in 1999, Israel sent its rescue and medical teams to Turkey as well?

It is ironic that Israel, almost universally vilified on ‘humanitarian’ grounds, and despite its small size and lack of resources, is in fact always among the first to help in natural disasters worldwide!

Update [18 Jan 1931 PST] Various Turkish news sources now state that the government of Turkey has decided to send significant aid to Haiti.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Haiti

A few days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, on July 14, 2006, Hizballah fired an Iranian copy of the Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile, making a direct hit on the Israeli Navy’s corvette Hanit. The ship was seriously damaged; four sailors were killed and several others injured.  It was remarkable that the Hanit managed to stay afloat, and even returned to Ashdod under its own power. Although the ship had sophisticated anti-missile capabilities, the systems were turned off, either because the crew did not believe that Hizballah had such a missile, or because they wanted to reduce the chance of accidentally firing at nearby Israeli aircraft. Several officers were disciplined as a result of the affair.

The damaged INS Hanit, at Ashdod.

A short time later, the IAF bombed several coastal radar stations belonging to the Lebanese army. It’s thought that they provided tracking data to Hizballah. In 2006, Hizballah had far less power and control in Lebanon than it does today. Nevertheless, probably one-third of the Lebanese Army in 2006 consisted of Shiites who might be sympathetic at least to Hizballah.

Today Hizballah has complete freedom of action in Lebanon, and all but controls the government — and the army. It is hard to believe that arms supplied to the Lebanese army could be kept from Hizballah:

In early December, the Lebanese parliament gave a vote of confidence to the government of Saad Hariri and approved a government platform that allowed Hizbullah to maintain its arms in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

From that time, which also included a declaration that Hizbullah had a mandate to defend Lebanon from Israel, “there has been a great deal of concern here,” one [Israeli] official said.

The main concern, the official said, is weaponry being provided or pledged by the US. The issue is likely to be raised during the expected meetings here Tuesday with US National Security Advisor James Jones.

The US has long provided military assistance to Lebanon. Over the past years this military assistance has included aircraft, tanks, artillery, small boats, infantry weapons, ammunition, Humvees and cargo trucks. The US is expected to provide the Lebanese army with 12 Raven unmanned reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft in the coming months. — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

Since 2006, under the worthless nose of the UN, Hizballah has been rebuilding and rearming with weapons supplied by Iran through Syria. Most analysts believe that Hizballah is far stronger, both in its short, medium and long-range rocket forces and in its ground fortifications, than it was in 2006 (of course Israel has learned lessons from that conflict too).

Barring an unforeseen stroke of luck, like a revolution in Iran which would pull the rug out from under her proxies, a further conflict between Israel and Hizballah is inevitable (if you think Hizballah will become moderate in middle age, see Barry Rubin’s argument to the contrary here).

So it would behoove the US administration, if its protestations about caring for Israel’s security are actually meaningful, to find another market for military hardware than Lebanon.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Hizballah, American weapons