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The Ceasefire Holds But Israel’s Long War Is Far From Over: Lee Smith, Weekly Standard, Aug. 6, 2014— Now into its second day, the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions continues to hold.
ISIS Moves on Lebanon: Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JCPA, Aug. 7, 2014: By the end of July 2014, the much anticipated spillover of the civil war in Syria into Lebanon became a reality on the ground
Why Oppose an Independent Kurdistan?: William A. Galston, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 5, 2014 — The Obama administration continues to insist on maintaining the unity of Iraq.
Where are You Going, President Obama?: Prof. Shmuel Sandler, Besa, Aug. 5, 2013— American interventions in the Gaza conflict have been very difficult to understand.
1,500 Iraqi Civilians Were Slaughtered Yesterday by ISIS, and the Obama Administration Issued a Statement: Nina Shea, National Review, Aug. 6, 2014
Militant Slaughter Sparks Mass Exodus in Northern Iraq Mountains: Glen Carey & Ladane Nasseri, Bloomberg, Aug. 7, 2014
The Kurdish Forces Facing the Islamic State Need Help From the United States: Washington Post, Aug. 6, 2014
World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World: Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 6, 2014
While West Dithers, ISIS Creates Facts on the Ground: Max Boot, Commentary, Aug. 4, 2014
THE CEASEFIRE HOLDS BUT ISRAEL’S LONG WAR IS FAR FROM OVER
Lee Smith
Weekly Standard, Aug. 6, 2014
Now into its second day, the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions continues to hold. With Hamas’ missile arsenal depleted by roughly 50 percent and, according to Israeli assessments, 32 attack tunnels destroyed, Israeli officials are claiming a clear victory. “The IDF won big time in Gaza,” says one commander of an elite unit. “Stop staying we lost. We won.” Jerusalem’s efforts now will be focused on how to demilitarize the Gaza Strip and prevent Hamas and its allies, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, from rearming and rebuilding its attack tunnels. Neither will be easy.
While Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has demolished many of the smuggling tunnels leading from Sinai to Gaza, the reality is that smuggling is a central component not only of Gaza’s economy, but also Sinai’s. Unless Cairo can come to an accommodation with the Sinai Bedouins with whom it has frequently been at war over the last year, then a certain amount of weapons, if only a fraction, will get through. Iran will see to it. “The Muslim world has a duty to arm the Palestinian nation by all means,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said recently, underscoring the fact that Hamas’s most tangible victory over the last three weeks is to have repaired relations with the Islamic Republic. However, given the stunning success of Israel’s anti-missile defense system, the attack tunnels are an even more serious concern, demanding a sort of subterranean Iron Dome stopping Hamas fighters from entering Israel. To that end, Israel is developing various forms of tunnel detection technology, like one system that listens for digging. Another Israeli company proposes digging a long tunnel along the Israel-Gaza border. In effect, it’s an underground moat, according to the company’s CEO, that "will provide real-time alerts of any tunnel digging that crosses our tunnel, whether above or below it.”
If Israel won handily, the reality is that Hamas is still in place. As Jonathan Spyer, a frequent Weekly Standard contributor, explains in his recent article Netanyahu’s ‘Long War’ Doctrine, Jerusalem had only two choices. “The first involved seeking to inflict serious damage on Hamas’s military capabilities in an operation limited in scope,” writes Spyer. “The second, more ambitious option would have been to have pushed on into the Gaza Strip, and to have destroyed the Hamas authority there.” The problem with the second, Spyer explains, is that it would have “required Israel to re-establish the civil administration in Gaza, taking responsibility for the lives of the 1.8 million residents of the Strip. This is because it would be politically impossible for the Ramallah Palestinian Authority to receive the Gaza Strip on a silver platter, as it were, from the Golani Brigade and its sister units of the Israel Defense Forces.”
It’s hardly surprising then that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose the former. “This caution,” Spyer writes, “does not come from a temperamental inability to manage military action. Indeed, the Israeli prime minister’s performance in recent weeks may go some way to dispelling the image which his opponents have sought to disseminate in Israel in recent years. That is, Netanyahu is a man who buckles under pressure and is easily swayed from his course.” The common Israeli idea of Netanyahu is at odds with his image in the Western media, where he’s typically portrayed as a big-mouthed hawk with a temper. It’s worth noting then that Netanyahu’s successful management of his first ground campaign comes as a corrective to both views—he’s not timid and he’s not eager for military confrontation. Therefore, the message of Operation Protective Edge was most usefully directed to Tehran: Netanyahu enforces his red lines. It’s true, as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran boast, that Israelis love life while the resistance axis loves death. But in order to protect the tribe of life, Netanyahu will send Israeli men and women off to kill and die. Spyer argues that there’s a strategic rationale for Netanyahu’s caution. It derives, Spyer writes, from “[Netanyahu’s] perception that what Israel calls ‘wars’ or ‘operations’ are really only episodes in a long war in which the country is engaged against those who seek its destruction.” What matters, Spyer argues: “is not a quick and crushing perception of victory. Indeed, the search for a knockout, a final decision in this or that operation, given the underlying realities, is likely to end in overstretch, error and non-achievement. What matters is the ability to endure, conserve one’s forces — military and societal — and to work away on wearing down the enemy’s will. Military achievement, as well as economic and societal success, are all weapons in this war.”
It’s useful to see Netanyahu’s calculations in regards to what Israel still regards as its main strategic threat—Iran. Were Netanyahu to have made the decision to uproot Hamas once and for all, and thereby oblige Israel to manage the civilian authority while also fighting an inevitable insurgency, it would have consumed invaluable resources—men, money, and time—that might be needed at some point to tackle Iran. But if, as Spyer argues, Netanyahu sees Israel in the position of fighting a long war, with enemies over the last 60 plus ranging from secular Arab Nationalists like Gamal Abdel Nasser to fundamental Islamists like Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, it’s not obvious that Netanyahu sees Iran much differently than how he sees Hamas. That is, if he believes there is no knockout blow that will finish off Hamas once and for all, why wouldn’t he believe the same about Iran? Even if the clerical regime is toppled, what comes next? The likelihood of someone waiting in the wings who is willing to at least come to an accommodation with Israel is slight. There is no Persian Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and even if there was, sixty years of conflict in the Middle East is enough evidence that for some time yet to come Israel will be surrounded by enemies attacking it for one reason or another—Arab nationalism, Islamism, whatever comes next. Why roll the dice and risk a big war with Iran that Israel will almost surely win, but at the cost of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and an even more serious rupture in the U.S.-Israel alliance?
From this perspective, Operation Protective Edge is evidence of Netanyahu’s seriousness, and also perhaps how he sees the conflict with Iran, and had to date managed it. It’s a cold war in which Israel will take on Iran’s allies, like Hamas and Hezbollah, sabotage facilities, and assassinate key military and civilian officials. Seen in this light, the issue isn’t that Israel doesn’t have the ability to deliver a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear weapons facility. Rather, it’s that it would drain the resources of the Jewish state too severely, and there’s always another Haman rising to take Amalek’s place.
Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah
JCPA, Aug. 7, 2014
By the end of July 2014, the much anticipated spillover of the civil war in Syria into Lebanon became a reality on the ground when a coordinated coalition of the two biggest Jihadist insurgents active in Syria — Jabhat el Nusra and Da’esh (ISIS) — attacked a small village, Arsal, located in the Bekaa Valley bordering Syria, about 75 miles northeast of the Lebanese capital city, Beirut. The Jihadists succeeded first in taking over a Lebanese Army camp, killing dozens of soldiers and civilians, but under the pressure of the Lebanese army that intervened with tanks, artillery, ground forces and attack helicopters, some of the Jihadists left for the hills surrounding the village leaving behind executed prisoners, civilians and soldiers alike. Other Jihadists entered the local mosque with hostages and barricaded themselves inside, ready to engage in a long battle with the Lebanese Army.
The Lebanese people were appalled by the brutality of the Jihadists, and they united in their resolve to prevent them from infringing on Lebanese sovereignty. The Lebanese Army dispatched reinforcements to the area to seal it from potential incursions to Arsal by more Jihadists. Arsal appears to be nothing more than a small village with a Sunni majority population on the border with Syria. Arsal, however, is much more than that in military terms: it represents the northern entrance to the Bekaa Valley that allows a ground connection with Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli. A Sunni majority populates Tripoli, situated on the Mediterranean Sea south of Syria’s principal port Latakia, and is today a key logistics center for Syrian insurgents. By creating territorial contiguity between Arsal and Tripoli the Jihadists could isolate the Hizbullah-protected Shi’ite villages between Tripoli and the area of Homs, thus cutting the vital road used by the Syrian regime to link Alawite-dominated Latakia with the capital Damascus and Syria’s northern big cities Homs, Hamah and Aleppo. Latakia is considered the heartland of the Alawite-led Assad regime. Moreover, it seems that the initiative to attack Arsal came weeks after Hizbullah and the Syrian troops loyal to the Assad regime succeeded in cutting the lines that allowed the Jihadists and the Free Syrian Army free passage between Syria and Lebanon west of the Qalamoun mountains and near the Zabadani crossing point with Lebanon. By attacking Arsal, the Jihadists were also trying to compel Hizbullah and the Syrian regime to divert forces to the Arsal area in order to close the breach, thus allowing them to “return” to the southern penetration axis to Lebanon and Damascus.
This is the reason behind the unusual reaction of the Lebanese body politic and the urgency with which the army reacted to the attack. The incumbent Prime Minister Tammam Salam declared the country to be in a state of extreme alert and asked the army to deal with “the danger against the homeland.” Never in the modern history of independent Lebanon had a Chief of the Army (in this case General Jean Kahwaji) called a press conference to condemn the “Takfiris” (heretics), a term used by the Lebanese media to characterize the Jihadists as a whole. Kahwaji stated that the Jihadists aimed at destroying Lebanon’s unity, and therefore the Lebanese army would fight until they are repelled from Lebanon’s territory. Lebanon sees itself today at war with the Jihadists. Hizbullah has already declared that its forces will back the army in its battle against the Jihadists and all political factions have expressed their support to the army. Three years after the start of the civil war in Syria, it seems that Lebanon is about to experience a head-on confrontation with the Jihadi forces coming from Syria and Iraq. The danger is not only from within (Sunni Jihadists led by Lebanese Sheikh al-Assir), but from a Jihadist tidal wave that could split the country into two, just like Da’esh (ISIS) did in Iraq in the beginning of July.
The Lebanese Army is basically a sectarian army. The real threat could come from the army imploding into different sectarian brigades that could join the Jihadists in their battle against the loyal army. Unlike other Arab armies in the region, the Lebanese army lacks military experience. In the last decades the only confrontations the Lebanese Army took part in were against Palestinian refugee camps, mainly in Tripoli. This lack of experience could be detrimental to the ability of the Lebanese army to sustain a frontal assault by organized Jihadists toughened by years of urban warfare in Syria and Iraq.
WHY OPPOSE AN INDEPENDENT KURDISTAN?
William A. Galston
Wall Street Journal, Aug. 5, 2014
The Obama administration continues to insist on maintaining the unity of Iraq. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Sunni extremists of ISIS are on the march. On Sunday, ISIS seized three towns in northwest Iraq from the Kurds and threatened to overrun the Mosul Dam, a key source of electricity and water for much of the country. At the same time, ISIS forces crossed the border from Syria into Lebanon, taking control of the city of Arsal, blindsiding officials in Beirut. The three-year revolt against Bashar Assad in Syria has morphed into a regional crisis with sectarian conflict at its core. The political structure of Iraq has exacerbated that crisis.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is a Shiite chauvinist with close ties to Iran. In the six years of his rule, he has destroyed the fragile bonds of trust between Shiites and Sunnis that had developed during the Sunni-led effort in 2006 and 2007 to expel al Qaeda from Anbar Province. After ISIS routed the Iraqi army in June this year, Mr. Maliki unleased Shiite militias linked directly with Iran to stabilize the front line north of Baghdad. Beginning in 2011, Mr. Maliki attacked Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi. and the Sunni finance minister, Rafi al-Issawi, on unsubstantiated terrorism charges, driving Mr. Hashemi into exile and Mr. Issawi into hiding. Now Mr. Maliki's suspicion of the Sunnis has taken on clinical dimensions.
Convinced that Baghdad is honeycombed with Sunni sleeper cells readying themselves to support an ISIS assault on the capital, he has empowered the Shiite militias to conduct security sweeps inside the city. The New York Times has reported that last Friday one of these militias abducted Riyadh al-Adhadh, an important Sunni politician who heads Baghdad's provincial council. The militiamen also seized and his bodyguards and beat them from midnight to sunrise in an unsuccessful effort to force them to admit that their boss was helping the insurgency. After being freed through the intervention of a militia leader, Mr. Adhadh declared that "we are living in a jungle." Reflecting on the chaos created by multiple militias, a young man in Mr. Adhadh's neighborhood told the New York Times that "Iraq requires another leader like Saddam Hussein, who's like an official murderer." One doubts that this young man was familiar with Max Weber's definition of the state as a human community that "successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory," but he certainly got the gist of it. By that standard, Iraq has ceased to be a state.
In the aftermath of April elections, the glacially slow Iraqi political process has finally produced a Kurdish choice for president (a largely ceremonial post) and a Sunni for speaker of Parliament. The Shiite parties are supposed to agree by Friday on a nominee for prime minister. That may not happen. Although reconciliation with the Sunnis is inconceivable if Mr. Maliki remains prime minister, it won't be easy to move him aside. His party constitutes more than one quarter of Iraq's Parliament and more than one half of the Shiite bloc. Unless he decides to stand down, the parliamentary stalemate will continue. Even if he can be persuaded to leave, recent history suggests that it will take months for party leaders to decide on the final shape of a new government. ISIS is unlikely to hit the pause button while the Iraqis haggle.
It is time for the Obama administration to ask itself some hard questions. The first question is immediate and urgent. Although Mr. Maliki has ordered the Iraqi air force to assist the Kurds in their battle against ISIS, he remains adamantly opposed to U.S. military assistance for the Kurdish government. If American arms could help the Kurds repel ISIS, does it make sense to hold these shipments hostage to Mr. Maliki's fears of Kurdish independence? More broadly, why should the U.S. continue to resist Kurdish independence—for example, by blocking their efforts to sell oil on the world markets? Even if another Shiite politician replaces Mr. Maliki, a Shiite-led Iraqi government will always be beholden to Iran for the sustained assistance it needs. It is hard to discern the justification for pressing the Kurds to maintain their allegiance to such a government. We are noticeably short of friends in the Middle East, and an independent Kurdistan in what is now the Kurdish part of Iraq would be a natural ally.
Finally, isn't it time to rethink our basic assumptions about the Middle East? Multiethnic democracy is a noble ideal, but it doesn't seem feasible in current circumstances. For the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, the real choice lies between large multiethnic countries or large countries devolved into smaller political entities, each dominated by a single group. The former seem more likely to yield either dictatorship or anarchy; the latter offer at least the possibility of non-oppressive self-government. There is nothing sacred about the post-Ottoman state system in the Middle East—and no good reason why the U.S. should continue worshiping at its altar.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING, PRESIDENT OBAMA?
Prof. Shmuel Sandler
Besa, Aug. 6, 2014
American interventions in the Gaza conflict have been very difficult to understand. Washington acted against its own strategic interests in prodding Israel to pull back from clubbing Hamas, and in involving Turkey and Qatar – the lawyers and financiers of Hamas – into the ceasefire negotiations, while snubbing Egypt. Some have attributed American actions to the clash of personalities between Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. But this is an insufficient and probably irrelevant explanation. States overcome personal feelings. The strength or weakness of personal relations between leaders cannot adequately explain the foreign policy of a world power.
Washington’s reluctance to involve itself more deeply in the Middle East has also been suggested as an explanation for Washington’s policies. But this too is an insufficient explanation, since the US played an active role in trying to mediate a ceasefire. Unfortunately, there is no choice but to conclude that Washington simply does not recognize the realities of today’s Middle East, and ignores potential opportunities. Its regional foreign policy has been based on serious errors of judgment. The Obama administration has failed to recognize the emergence, importance and opportunities presented by an axis of moderate pro-American Middle East states that developed during the recent crisis. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, many Gulf states (with the exception of Qatar), and Israel all shared similar interests in this conflict, as did Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. They all sought the dramatic weakening of the radical Islamic, Iranian-backed Hamas. In one way or another, they supported Israel’s military operation against Hamas. Washington declined to support this emerging bloc.
The most bewildering American action was Secretary of State John Kerry’s support for the Hamas-friendly Turkish-Qatari ceasefire proposal, which undercut a much more strategically sound Egyptian-Israeli ceasefire proposal. Moreover, Turkey and Qatar are promoting the subversive Islamist forces in the Middle East, including Hamas. How can this be in America’s interests? Kerry’s failed ceasefire foray also suggests that he simply refused to understand the power politics of the region. Turkey and Qatar indeed have close relations to Hamas, but in final analysis it is Egypt that has the leverage on Hamas because it holds the keys to the Rafah crossing. Only Egypt and Israel can give the people of Gaza access to the outside world. And yet Kerry did not invite Egypt to the negotiations he was holding in Paris. Ignoring Egypt in this way makes no sense whatsoever. Moreover, as it turns out, Qatar and Turkey could not deliver Hamas; the organization violated all ceasefires negotiated by its two lawyer-states. Ultimately, Hamas had to accept the original Egyptian proposal of an unconditional ceasefire.
US behavior towards Egypt is worrying. The Obama administration seems incapable of dealing squarely with the newly elected Egyptian President Al-Sisi, because he deposed the Muslim Brotherhood government. The US even suspended part of its foreign aid to the most important Arab state, risking an Egyptian realignment with Russia, which is folly. Perhaps Washington was seized with the thesis, advanced by certain American thinkers, that views the Muslim Brotherhood as a pragmatic actor and a potential ally against more extreme iterations of Islam. This could also explain the Obama administration’s misperception of the AKP, Turkey’s ruling party. Turkey’s leader Erdogan heads a party that is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan is driving a foreign policy that distances his country from the West – a policy fueled by Islamist and neo-Ottoman impulses. Yet Erdogan remains Obama’s best friend. Strangely, Obama befriends a rabidly anti-Western and openly anti-Semitic leader. Many Arab states fear this neo-Ottoman ambitious foreign policy.
The Obama administration naively welcomed the so-called Arab Spring, without understanding its destructive effects. The biggest threat to Middle Eastern stability is the current collapse of states. The Islamist movements that have become more powerful in the region have a transnational agenda which seeks to undermine the current state structure, hoping to build an Islamist Caliphate. By contrast, the leadership of Egypt, as embodied in President Al-Sisi, is a force for stability, as it holds an Egypt-first foreign policy. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, they are motivated primarily by Egyptian interests. They are not lovers of Zion; but they understand the threat of Hamas to Egypt. Other Arab states in the region understood the Muslim Brotherhood threat and joined the newly-elected regime in Egypt in opposing Hamas.
Washington mistakenly viewed the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt as legitimate because it was elected in democratic elections. The US traditionally promotes democracy in the world. Obama abandoned President Mubarak in 2011, and still is hesitant to accept the Al-Sisi regime that removed the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, Obama should be reminded that democracy is sustained by an appropriate political culture and cannot spring over night as a result of democratic elections. Several authoritarian regimes came to power via the ballot – including the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazis in Germany. The dilemma between idealism and self-interest is ever present in American foreign policy. However, idealists who ignore reality bring chaos instead of stability. Shallow realism mixed with misguided idealism is the worst possible combination for American foreign policy.
1,500 Iraqi Civilians Were Slaughtered Yesterday by ISIS, and the Obama Administration Issued a Statement: Nina Shea, National Review, Aug. 6, 2014
Militant Slaughter Sparks Mass Exodus in Northern Iraq Mountains: Glen Carey & Ladane Nasseri, Bloomberg, Aug. 7, 2014
The Kurdish Forces Facing the Islamic State Need Help From the United States: Washington Post, Aug. 6, 2014
World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World: Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 6, 2014
While West Dithers, ISIS Creates Facts on the Ground: Max Boot, Commentary, Aug. 4, 2014
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