"The Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation: Threatening Peace Prospects"

Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa

Michael Rubin, Ph.D. Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

February 5, 2013

Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member Deutch, Honorable Members, thank you for the opportunity to testify before this Subcommittee today on this important topic.

Far from advancing peace, to encourage Hamas-Fatah reconciliation and to subsidize any coalition government will accelerate conflict. At issue is not only the sanctity of diplomatic agreements which form the basis for Middle East peace efforts, but also the outcome of a battle between more secular movements struggling against a radical Islamist revival.

The Obama Administration's desire to fund the Palestinian government does more harm than good not only to moderate Palestinians who desire to live in peace with Israel, but also to U.S. regional interests and prospects for Arab-Israeli peace.

At its core, American opposition to Hamas rests on two interconnected issues: First is Hamas' embrace of terrorism and second is the movement's refusal to honor diplomatic agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority.

The current debate about how to approach Fatah-Hamas reconciliation falls into a decades-long pattern of shifting goals posts and diluting demands in order to keep diplomacy alive. The record of the State Department's failure to hold its Palestinian partners to their commitment to abandon terrorism is extensive, and its results clear: Absent a clear-cut, inalterable demand that the Palestinian groups first uphold their commitment to abandon terror, diplomacy will fail and the situation will worsen.

For decades, U.S. administrations considered the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a terrorist group and rogue entity, unworthy of serious policy consideration. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained, "Before 1973, the PLO rarely intruded into international negotiations. In the 1972 communique ending Nixon's Moscow summit, there was no reference to Palestinians, much less to the PLO... The idea of a Palestinian state run by the PLO was not a subject for serious discourse."¹ The reason for the PLO's lack of credibility among Western diplomats and policymakers was its refusal to abandon terrorism. While diplomats today insist it never hurts to talk, the damage from engaging an insincere partner can be huge. Throughout the PLO's early years, Chairman Yasser Arafat was explicit in his embrace of terrorism and his cynicism about the role of diplomacy. Addressing the United Nations, for example, he described

¹ Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval. (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1982), p. 625.

diplomacy as a corollary to armed struggle. "We are also expressing our faith in political and diplomatic struggle as complements, as enhancements of armed struggle," he declared.²

The PLO's unapologetic embrace of terrorism did not dissuade some within the State Department from arguing for direct relations with the PLO, even before the group ostensibly abandoned terrorism as a result of the Oslo Agreement. During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan swore he would not negotiate with terrorists. The State Department had other ideas, though. The fact that the PLO was a pariah, its influence had reached its nadir in the wake of its expulsion from Lebanon, and its execution of an elderly, wheelchair-bound American onboard the Achille Lauro had disgusted the international community, did not mean that diplomats were willing to give up its hope to find a partner in the group. In 1985, for example, U.S. diplomats were willing to accept the fiction of a joint Jordanian-PLO delegation comprised almost exclusively of PLO members so long as Arafat accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, renounced terror, and acknowledged Israel's right to exist. At the last minute, Arafat refused, and so talks were cancelled.⁴ That willingness to cancel talks and, in the post-Oslo era, assistance is a thing of the past.

Because of the State Department's unwillingness to hold firm to declared principles if such a stand prevented more immediate dialogue, it is often Congress which intercedes to ensure that U.S. national security interests are upheld. In 1987, Congress passed an Anti-Terrorism Act which formally declared the PLO to be a terrorist organization for the purposes of U.S. law, and reinforced the prohibition on U.S. dialogue with the group, forcing the State Department to close the PLO's offices in Washington.

The PLO got a new lease on life in December 1987 with the outbreak of the first Intifada. While the uprising was a largely grassroots affair, senior diplomats believed it better to negotiate with the PLO's exiled leaders than with local Palestinian activists accustomed to working with Israelis. When proxies for the PLO met with National Security Council official Robert Oakley to seek talks, Oakley repeated U.S. preconditions: the Palestinians first must accept Resolutions 242 and 338, renounce terrorism, and accept Israel's right to exist.⁵ While Fatah has, at various times, accepted such conditions rhetorically if not in reality, Hamas still refuses to do so.

The sanctity of agreements underscores Western diplomacy, but too often the State Department ignores their violation in order to keep dialogue alive. Arafat and the PLO never placed the same premium on honesty: In the run-up to the Oslo Agreement and, arguably in its aftermath as well, the pattern was constant. Because Arafat remained directly complicit in terror, Congress in 1989 passed the PLO Commitments Compliance Act (PLOCCA) which required the State Department to affirm that the PLO was abiding by its commitment to abandon terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist.⁶ If the PLO did not meet its commitments, dialogue would cease. To keep dialogue alive, however, diplomats simply omitted reporting episodes which might lead to the cessation of dialogue.

² Speech by Yasser Arafat to the United Nations General Assembly, November 13, 1974.

³ Allan Gerson, The Kirkpatrick Mission. (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 26, 42.

⁴ Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004), p.47.

⁵ Mohamed Rabie, U.S.-PLO Dialogue. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), p. 14.

⁶ Title VIII, P.L. 101-246, February 16, 1990.

The Oslo Accord changed U.S. engagement with the Palestinians forever. Rather than lead a terror group, Arafat would head a proto-government. In October 1993, Congress passed the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act, which waived prohibitions on contacts with the PLO, and allowed the organization to open its ds facto embassy in Washington so long as the PLO continued to abide by its commitments to cease terrorism and recognize Israel. Congress also enabled the president to waive legislation that prohibited U.S. government employees from

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negotiating with the PLO.

As implementation of the Declaration of Principles floundered, the State Department's instinct was to seek quiet rather than enforce the agreement. When Arafat adopted a bizarre interpretation of his commitments, diplomats scrambled to appease him. After Arafat returned to Gaza, he reversed course on commitments to ensure security and revoke portions of the PLO's Charter which called for Israel's destruction. Because the State Department wanted to press forward with talks regardless of Arafat's backpedaling, Congress again acted. On July 15, 1994, the Senate prohibited release of taxpayer funds to the Palestinian Authority unless the PLO complied with its commitments to renounce and control terrorism.⁹ Congressional action did not filter down to all diplomats in the region, though. "I took every opportunity I could to see Arafat," Edward Abington, Jr., the U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, recounted, "I just felt it was important to be seen as very active, as understanding Palestinian positions, showing sympathy and empathy."¹⁰

The same debates regarding the place of commitments and accountability in the peace process continued into the Bush administration. After a wave of terrorist attacks followed Palestinian assurances that terror would cease, President George W. Bush had had enough. Engagement for engagement's sake had failed. He decided to take a zero tolerance approach. "There is simply no way to achieve peace until all parties fight terror," he declared, adding, "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."¹¹ The State Department resisted Bush's new approach. "The Arabists in the State Department were appalled" by Bush's speech, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice recalled. Amidst international criticism and resistance from within his own administration, though, Bush abandoned his principled stand, and the State Department quickly reverted to business as usual. A no-nonsense demand to end terrorism before diplomacy gave way to the Road Map, whose own benchmarks soon fell victim to a desire to keep the Palestinians at the table.

Enthusiasm for direct talks with Hamas increased after the group's victory in January 2006 elections. A number of journalists and analysts argued that political power might moderate Hamas,¹³ and European officials urged Washington to forget Hamas' past.¹⁴ Optimists ignored

⁷ The Middle East Peace Facilitation Act of 1993, P.L. 103-125, October 28, 1993.

⁸ Clyde Mark, "Palestinians and Middle East Peace: Issues for the United States," CRS Issue Brief for Congress,
October 10, 2003. No. IB92052.

⁹ H.R. 4426, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1995, Public Law
No: 103-306.

¹⁰ Jonathan Broder, "The American Diplomat in Arafat's Corner," The Jerusalem Report, April 10, 2000.

¹¹ George Bush, "Rose Garden Speech on Israel-Palestine Two-State Solution," White House, June 24, 2002.

¹² Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2011), p. 145.

¹³ See, for example, Marina Ottaway, "Islamists and Democracy: Keep the Faith," The New Republic, June 6 and 13,
2005; and Claude Salhani, "Politics & Policies: U.S. Must Engage Hamas," United Press International, January 23,
2006.

Hamas co-founder Mahmoud az-Zahar promise: "We will join the Legislative Council with our weapons in our hands."¹⁵ After more than seven years, there can no longer be any debate: Power has not moderated Hamas.

When Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, the United States and its Quartet partners agreed diplomatic recognition of Hamas would be premature because of the group's refusal to recognize Israel, accept previous agreements, and foreswear terror,¹⁶ it was not long before first Turkey and then European foreign ministries began to shift their tune. When Hamas staged a violent putsch against Fatah in July 2007 to consolidate control over Gaza, European diplomats argued they had no choice but to engage Hamas since there was no longer

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any pretext of a Palestinian coalition. Dialogue rather than peace had once again become diplomacy's goal.

Too often, be it with the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah, the passage of time rather than reform legitimizes dialogue in diplomats' eyes. It is a pattern which discourages reform and compromise: Engaging and legitimizing the most violent factions incentivizes terrorism and disadvantages groups which play by the rules. Diplomacy with terrorist groups can also throw a lifeline to movements which otherwise might peak and collapse.

***

It is impossible to consider today's reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas without reference to the broader context of the so-called Arab Spring. While the uprisings which sparked the Arab Spring had their roots in a desire among ordinary people for government accountability, it was not long before the Muslim Brotherhood and even more radical Islamist groups and Salafi movements hijacked the revolutions. These Islamist groups had two distinct advantages:

First, the Muslim Brotherhood had been in opposition for almost eight decades, during which time they could promise the world, without ever having to prove the efficacy of their ideas.

Second, Islamist movements did not have to operate on an even playing field: Not only rich Persian Gulf emirates like Qatar, but also nominal republics like Turkey lent considerable wealth to subsidizing the most radical Islamist groups. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made little secret of his ideological and religious affinity for both the Muslim Brotherhood and, in the context of Palestinian politics, Hamas as well.

¹⁴ Chris Patten, "Time to judge Palestine on its results," Financial Times, March 13, 2007.

¹⁵ Michael Herzog, "Can Hamas Be Tamed?" Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006.

¹⁶ David Welch, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
September 25, 2008.

¹⁷ Maurizio Caprara, "Non regaliamo Hamas ad Al Qaeda," Corriere delta Sera (Milan), July 17, 2007; Mark
Heller, "Should the European Union talk to Hamas?" Transatlantic Issues, No. 32, June 25, 2008; Carolin Goerzig,
"Engaging Hamas: Rethinking the Quartet Principles," ISS Opinion, March 2010.

Analysts often bifurcate the Middle East into competing groups: Sunnis versus Shi'ites, republics versus monarchies; dictatorships versus democracies; and Arabs versus non-Arabs. The overriding competition at present is between Islamists versus secular regimes. Iran may be largely Shi'ite and Egypt overwhelmingly Sunni, for example, but Tehran sees Cairo as a new ally in its fight against secularist regimes. Hamas' renewed empowerment comes not autonomously, but against the backdrop of Muhammad Morsi's rise in Egypt and Hamas' growing relations with Iran.

Fatah may not be moderate, but it is not Islamist and relative to Hamas it is restrained. Rather than see Hamas moderate in order to join a coalition with Fatah, the opposite will become true: Hamas will have doubled down on its rejectionism, while forcing Fatah to radicalize. To promote the two movements' reconciliation would effectively enable Hamas to subsume Fatah.

The results would be grave for the region: Should Hamas establish its dominance on the West Bank in addition to Gaza, not only would Israel face a growing threat, but Hamas and its allies would also move to destabilize the Kingdom of Jordan, perhaps America's chief Arab partner. Second and third order effects will severely undermine both prospects for peace and broader American interests in the region. Chaos and Syria and the radicalization of the Syrian opposition will only compound the problems.

Because money is fungible, it is impossible for the United States to support only Fatah elements should Fatah and Hamas govern together. U.S. foreign assistance should never be an entitlement, and it should never benefit groups which are endemically and inalterably hostile to the United States. The Oslo process established the Palestinian Authority on the basis of its recognition of Israel and the agreement to negotiate statehood and other issues at the diplomatic table. That conditionality infuses the Palestinian Authority's presence in the West Bank and Gaza. In theory, the Palestinian Authority has no right to exist should it obviate the Oslo Accord.

Diplomacy will fail when any figure, be it Mahmoud Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh, or Khalid Mishaal treats diplomatic commitments not as sacrosanct but as an a la Carte menu from which to pick and choose. It will be hard to expect any government to place its security on the line for diplomatic assurances which in practice expire in less than two decades.

The Obama administration and American diplomats may believe they are charting a path to peace, but by turning a blind eye to accountability and treating U.S. assistance to Palestinian government as an entitlement, they are committing a grave strategic error which could permanently handicap prospects for peace and instead encourage a more devastating conflict. Thank you.

Sleepy Chuck Hagel Has Some Bigger Questions to Answer

By Jeffrey Goldberg Jan 31, 2013 

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, I interviewed then-Senator Barack Obama on the subject of the Middle East. Much of our discussion was pro forma -- he was trying to convince certain hawkish elements of the American Jewish community that he wasn’t Yasser Arafat in mufti -- and so he expressed, at some length, his appreciation for Israel as a haven for Jews and as a friend of the U.S.

When I asked him whether he thought Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas, however, he gave an interesting answer. He said no, Israel wasn’t a drag, but then he added: “What I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.”

Almost immediately after this interview was published, the Republican Party’s Center for the Exploitation of Misplaced Pronouns rushed to the ramparts. Representatives John Boehner and Eric Cantor denounced Obama. Cantor issued a statement saying, “It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel ‘a constant wound,’ ‘a constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect(s) all of our foreign policy.’”

Obama’s “this” wasn’t referring to Israel, of course, but to the Middle East conflict. We were in the middle of a campaign, so the truth didn’t matter, and the “this” became the subject of an enervating, days-long dust-up. The squabbling kept me from recognizing that Obama had, in fact, argued for something that even at the time seemed empirically insupportable.

‘Linkage’ View

It is an article of faith among so-called foreign-policy realists -- and Obama definitely is one -- that the key to American happiness in the Middle East is a resolution to the Israeli-Arab conflict. “Linkage” is the shorthand for this view.

That statement of Obama’s came to mind recently as I read a convincing article by the Middle East scholar Martin Kramer about the views of Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense, Senator Chuck Hagel, whose Senate confirmation hearing began this morning. The hearing didn’t go well for Hagel (he could’ve used a dose of whatever it was Alex Rodriguez may or may not have been taking). In it, members of the Armed Services Committee questioned him sharply on Israel, Hezbollah and Iran, but didn’t ask him to expand on his long-standing theory of Middle East interconnectedness.

“The core of all challenges in the Middle East remains the underlying Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hagel said in 2006. “The failure to address this root cause will allow Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists to continue to sustain popular Muslim and Arab support -- a dynamic that continues to undermine America’s standing in the region and the Governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, whose support is critical for any Middle East resolution.”

As Kramer wrote: “The vocabulary here -- ‘core,’ ‘root cause,’ ‘underlying’ -- is taken from the standard linkage lexicon, which elevates the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a preeminent status.” He continued: “It is this conflict, practically alone, that prompts the rise of terrorists, weakens friendly governments, and makes it impossible for the United States to win Arabs and Muslims over to the good cause.”

‘Placid Lake’

In his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” Hagel wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “cannot be looked at in isolation. Like a stone dropped into a placid lake, its ripples extend out farther and farther. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon feel the effects most noticeably. Farther still, Afghanistan and Pakistan; anything that impacts their political stability also affects the two emerging economic superpowers, India and China.”

I would love to hear Hagel’s views on this subject today, because his theory of linkage -- and his belief that a Middle East freed from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would be a “placid lake” -- has been utterly discredited by events. It is, of course, vital to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it is true that some Islamist terrorist groups exploit the conflict as a recruiting tool. But these same terrorists are unalterably opposed to a compromise that would allow two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side, because they are opposed to the very existence of Israel. They try to subvert the peace process because they fear it will legitimize the existence of a country they hate.

Never mind this technical detail. The past two years have proved the theory of linkage to be comprehensively false anyway.

Come with me on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The Syrian civil war? Unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The slow disintegration of Yemen? Unrelated. Chaos and violence in Libya? Unrelated. Chaos and fundamentalism in Egypt? The creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would not have stopped the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, nor would it have stopped the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism in Algeria? Unrelated. The Iranian nuclear program? How would the creation of a Palestinian state have persuaded the Iranian regime to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Someone please explain. Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq? The unrest in Bahrain? Pakistani havens for al-Qaeda affiliates? All unrelated.

Why does this matter? Because our leaders should have a realistic -- as opposed to a “realist” -- understanding of the root causes of Middle East strife. How can they protect us from threats if they don’t understand the causes of these threats? Decades of dictatorship (with the acquiescence, in many cases, of the U.S. government and the realists who guided its foreign policy) brought the Middle East to its current condition, along with misogyny, poor education, corruption, the politicizing of Islam and sectarian hatred.

Hagel wants to lead the U.S. Defense Department. I would like to know if he still believes in linkage. More important, I would like to know if Obama is still captive to this same, flawed concept.

AIPAC on UNHRC report on settlements 

Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz  2-3-13

AIPAC

Briefing on the Problematic UN Human Rights Council Report on Israeli Settlements

Earlier today, this blog noted that Israel has been boycotting the United Nations Human Rights Council due to the Council’s habitual singling-out of Israel for unfair, unwarranted, and utterly biased criticism.

A report on settlements in the West Bank, the commission of which spurred Israel’s decision to cease cooperation with the Council, has just been released. Sadly, the Report entirely vindicates Israel’s position on the matter. Its three authors began by determining Israel’s guilt, then conducted an investigation into why it was, in fact, guilty. The research was lazy at best – with numerous unreferenced assertions and many very basic factual errors.

Most importantly, they made no effort whatsoever to provide any form of context or balance, or even to acknowledge that some of the allegations they were making were in any way controversial. They simply re-hashed a series of tired and repeatedly debunked accusations against Israel. Whatever legitimate criticisms were made in the report are buried so far down amid layers of unfounded invective as to make them near impossible to find, let-alone act on.

Below is an itemised critique of the Report, highlighting numerous examples of errors and misinformation.

1. Terms of reference

The Report was commissioned by Human Rights Council Resolution 17/19 of 2012. The Resolution had already judged Israel to be guilty. It provided, inter alia, that:

1. the Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law and constitute very serious violations of international humanitarian law and of the human rights of the Palestinian people therein, and undermine international efforts, including the Annapolis Peace Conference of 27 November 2007 and the Paris International Donors’ Conference for the Palestinian State of 17 December 2007, aimed at invigorating the peace process and establishing a viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent Palestinian State by the end of 2008.

The Resolution expressed ‘grave concern’ at:

1. The continuing Israeli settlement and related activities, in violation of international law, including the expansion of settlements, the expropriation of land, the demolition of houses, the confiscation and destruction of property, the expulsion of Palestinians and the construction of bypass roads, which change the physical character and demographic composition of the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, and constitute a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and in particular article 49 of that Convention, and recalls that settlements are a major obstacle to the establishment of a just and comprehensive peace and to the creation of an independent, viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian State;

It then provided that the Council:

1. Decides to dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, with a mandate ending on submission of a report to the Council, and calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, not to obstruct the process of investigation and to cooperate fully with the mission;

This Report was submitted on 30 January 2013, entitled: ‘Report of the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’.

2. Definition of ‘settlements’

At the outset, the Report defines ‘settlements’ as:

1. all physical and non-physical structures and processes that constitute, enable and support the establishment, expansion and maintenance of Israeli residential communities beyond the 1949 Green Line in the OPT. The Mission does not differentiate between “settlements”, “settlement blocks”, “outposts”, or any other structures that have been erected, established, expanded and/or appropriated or any land or natural resources appropriated (at [4], emphasis added).

This is the broadest possible interpretation of the term, and is far broader than anything contemplated by the ICJ.

Consistent with its terms of reference, the sum total of the Mission’s consideration of the legality of these settlements was contained in one paragraph, on the fifth of 37 pages, providing that:

1. Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits an occupying Power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory that it occupies. This prohibition has attained the status of customary international law. The Mission notes that the Israeli settlements in the OPT, including East Jerusalem, violate this provision and are thus, illegal under international law (at [16]).

The Report did not mention the controversy over that interpretation of the GCIV. It also failed to confront  Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which should in principle mean that the Geneva Convention ceased to apply.

The breadth of the application of this definition can be seen when the Report identifies ‘a number of business activities and related issues that raise particular human rights violations concerns’, including such heinous crimes as ‘[t]he supply of security services, equipment and materials to businesses operating in settlements;’ ‘[t]he provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements, including transport; [b]anking and financial operations helping to develop, expand or maintain settlements and their activities, including loans for housing and development of businesses;’ and ‘[t]he use of natural resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes’ (at [96]).

3. Occupation

Regarding ‘occupation’, the Report provides that:

1. A situation of military occupation prevails in the OPT. As the occupying Power, Israel is bound under international humanitarian law by a set of obligations which are provided for in the Hague Regulations 1907, annexed to the Hague Convention IV respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land 1907, which are recognised as forming part of customary international law, and Geneva Convention IV relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 1949 (“Fourth Geneva Convention”), to which Israel is a High Contracting Party (at [13], emphasis added).

The term ‘military occupation’ is distinct from the Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention (‘GCIV’), which refer to ‘belligerent occupation’. This is a subtle point, but it makes all the difference in terms of appliying the law. For a panel of supposed ‘legal experts’, this is sloppy research at best.

4. Significant omissions

4.1. Security measures

The Report discusses at length the impact of various measures, such as movement restrictions and the construction of the security barrier in the West Bank. These measures are in place to prevent terrorist attacks against Israelis - a fact that the Report utterly failed to note. In fact, that Israel has been subject to attacks by Palestinians is not mentioned once in the entire document.

4.2. West Bank legal system

A substantial amount of the alleged human rights abuses in the Report are due to the application of the Jordanian legal system in the West Bank, largely as it existed when Israel took control in 1967. The Report does not at any stage explain why Israel is implementing that system - which is in fact required under the laws of belligerent occupation.

Were Israel to cease implementing that system, it would be in breach of its obligations under international humanitarian law. Furthermore, whenever the possibility of Israel substantially amending that system is raised, Israel is condemned for attempting to annex the West Bank by imposing its own legal system. If continuing to apply the Jordanian legal system is against international law, Israel is caught in a Hellerian Catch-22.

5. Direct inconsistencies

5.1. Location of settlements

In some instances, the Report directly contradicts its own findings. For example, at one stage, the Report states that:

1. ‘Settlements are generally located amongst the more vulnerable sections of Palestinian society, predominantly agrarian villages’ (at [18]).

Then in the next paragraph, the Report notes that:

1. The Mission heard that settlers can broadly be divided into three categories. Those who have moved on quality of life grounds and live in settlements close to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who constitute over 25 per cent of the settler population … are generally found in settlements closer to the Green Line. A third group seems to be motivated by political and religious ideologies; they live in the central part of the West Bank, often very close to Palestinian communities (at [19], emphasis added).

The Report later notes that there are 520,000 settlers – 200,000 in East Jerusalem and 320,000 the rest of the West Bank (at [37]). This implies, correctly, that the vast majority of ‘settlements’ as the Report defines them are located either in East Jerusalem, or close to the Green line. They are plainly not, therefore, generally located amongst ‘the more vulnerable sections of Palestinian society, predominantly agrarian villages’.

5.2. Price tags

When discussing the so-called ‘price tag’ attacks, the Report recognises that ‘the intention is to deter Israeli authorities from taking any action perceived to be against settlers’ interests while at the same time to provoke Palestinians into a response’ (at [55]). This clearly acknowledges that these attacks are, in effect, attempts to intimidate the Israeli government. Later, the Report implies that the attacks can be imputed to the Israeli government (at [60]).

6. Inclusion of antisemitic conspiracies

Regarding access to holy sights, the Report states that:

1. The Mission was also informed about archaeological excavations being conducted in and around the Old City of Jerusalem and the building there of a network of underground tunnels, including those connecting settlement installations in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan with the Old City. It has been alleged that these archaeological excavations intend to emphasise the Jewish cultural heritage while disregarding – or worse undermining – the rich heritage of other cultures that have contributed to the millenary history of the city (at [59]).

The allegations referred to are essentially the argument put forward by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and others, in order to prevent any archeological investigation of the holy sites in Jerusalem. This serves primarily to assist the position of these bodies that there is no historical Jewish link to Jerusalem.

7. Reliance on second-hand sources

At one stage, the Report discusses Israeli government Reports on settlements:

1. Studies on settlements commissioned by the Office of the Prime Minister in 2005 (Sason report) and 2012 (Levy report) document the Government’s authorization in the establishment and expansion of settlements up to 1992 and indicate that settlements built afterwards with no Government authorization (“outposts”) were established with the “full knowledge of all [authorities], starting with the government ministers and prime minister, and until the lowest enforcing agencies (…) the denial had but one goal only: to withstand criticism by various factors, mostly international”. Sason concluded that “unauthorized outposts violate[s] standard procedure, good governing rules (…) endanger the principal of the rule of law [and thus] urgent measures must be taken to change [this] reality” . In contrast the findings of the Levy report suggested the retroactive authorization of “outposts” (at [26]).

The references provided are: Haaretz “A Harsh Indictment”, 21 November 2012; Talya Sason, “Summary of the Opinion Concerning Unauthorized Outposts”, 8 March 2005. This implies that the Mission did not actually read either report in full, and did not even read the Levy report in part. The Mission apparently deemed it sufficient to rely on journalists’ interpretations of the content of the report, without reading the report itself.

8. Incorrect or unverified research

8.1. Water resources

The Report alleges that:

1. The settlements, including the associated restrictions, impede Palestinian access to and control over their natural resources. The Secretary General has noted that “Palestinians have virtually no control over the water resources in the West Bank” (at [36]).

The reference given for this is a 2012 report by the Secretary-General of the UN, which in turn referred to a 2004 report by the Economic and Social Council. The exact wording of the Secretary-General’s report was:

1. Palestinians have virtually no control over the water resources in the West Bank. The route of the wall, which renders 9.4 per cent of West Bank territory inaccessible to Palestinians, except for those who receive a permit, has severe impacts on the control of Palestinians over water resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by effectively annexing 51 per cent of the water resources in the West Bank (UN Doc A/67/375, [14], emphasis added).

The Wording in the document to which this refers is:

1. By constructing the fence Israel will also effectively annex most of the western aquifer system (which provides 51 per cent of the West Bank’s water resources) (UN Doc E/CN.4/2004/10/Add.2, [51], emphasis added).

So in a nine year game of “Chinese Whispers” at the UN, Israel planning to build a barrier in a route incorporating most of an aquifer system that provides 51% of the West Bank’s water became the Palestinians having ‘virtually no control over the water resources in the West Bank’.

Additionally, the route of the barrier as it currently stands has been substantially altered since the 2004 plan, but the Mission apparently did not think that it was worth checking if the actual route incorporated the same land.

8.2. Population growth

At one stage, the report asserts that ‘Over the past decade the settler population has grown at a much higher rate than the population in Israel itself with a yearly average growth of 5.3 per cent (excluding East Jerusalem), compared to 1.8 per cent in Israel.’ It cites just ‘Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics’, without mentioning either a specific report by that Bureau, or how these numbers were calculated (at [28]).

8.3. Israel’s establishment

The Report claims that:

1. The “Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” is issued. It equates Eretz-Israel (in Hebrew “the Land of Israel”) to the territory of British Mandate Palestine, in contrast to the provisions of 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two Independent Arab and Jewish States (at p23).

This allegation is unfounded and entirely incorrect. In fact, the Declaration specifically provides that:

1. THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947.

9. Complete failure to contextualise

9.1. Bedouins

When lamenting the situation of Bedouins in Israel, the Report notes that:

Many are food insecure, do not have access to basic services, and are connected neither to the electricity grid, the road network or water systems. Over 90 per cent face water scarcity, living with less than one-quarter of the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum standards (at [66]).

The Report does not include the very simple explanation for this lack of electricity and water: the Bedouin are traditionally a nomadic people, and many continue to live a nomadic lifestyle. As their homes are not permanent, they are not linked to any permanent source of electricity or water.

9.2. East Jerusalem

Regarding the Arabs in East Jerusalem, the Report states that:

1. Palestinians are excluded from consultative decision-making processes and are not represented in the Special Planning Committees, which consist of settlers and are enabled to issue and enforce building permits (at [69])

This entirely mischaracterises the situation. The Arabs of East Jerusalem deliberately boycott the local municipal process, in which they are  fully entitled to participate under Israeli law. That is why they do not sit on these committees.

9.3. Labour conditions

The Report provides that:

1. The inability for the Palestinian economy to expand and offer opportunities, high unemployment rates and falling wages in the Palestinian labour market, inflation and increasing poverty are factors that drive Palestinians to seek employment in the settlements and in Israel, where wages are about twice as high as in the Palestinian private sector (at [93]).

This entirely ignores the fact that Palestinians working for Israelis are represented by Israeli trade unions and are subject to Israeli labour laws - which are far more generous than the draconian system run by the Palestinian Authority.

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The Region: A deliberate campaign to bash Israel

 BARRY RUBIN    02/03/2013 

Not a mistake, misunderstanding, or well-intended criticism.

The first, most important thing to understand about the Western and especially American debate on Israel is this: Never before in history has there been such a concerted, systematic and vicious campaign to discredit and demonize Israel, and especially to undermine its support in the Jewish community. Without comprehending this fact, the massive attacks from academia, mass media, organizations and even in mainstream political and intellectual debate cannot be understood.

In other words, we aren’t dealing with lots of mistakes, but with the mass-production of hate speech.

These assaults cannot be taken as isolated incidents. While some are obviously outrageous – the British politician accusing Israel of genocide; a cartoon showing Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian children; Egypt’s president calling Jews sub-humans; the Swedish newspaper claiming Israel murders Palestinians to steal their organs – even the better-constructed items are equally fallacious.

Not all are aware, of course, of what they are doing. There are dupes as well as demonizers, but the dupes often seem all too credulous to be wholly innocent.

Equally, there are so many lies – new ones appear each day – and so many facts to counter them with that it is partly a waste of time to counter each offensive in itself.

What’s necessary is to understand that this is all based on lies, ignorance and conscious bad faith.

THE CATEGORIES include, but are not limited to: falsification of photographs and fabrication of events; distortion of history; invention of quotes; publishing disproportionate numbers of anti-Israel books and articles; indoctrination in schools; refusal to mainstream Israeli views and placing an overwhelming emphasis on radical, critical ones; giving excessive credibility to hostile sources’ outlandish tales (a worldwide story on an alleged, since proven false massacre in Jenin based on a single mysterious informant is just one example).

There is also the creation of new categories of sin designed specifically as part of the anti- Israel campaign and applied only to Israel, i.e., “pinkwashing” (mistreatment of gays in a country that is among the world’s most open), or disproportionate use of force in wartime.

Besides the obsession and double standards are the eagerness, uncontrollable hatred, self-righteousness, unconcern for fairness or balance, and passion that reveal the hidden agenda of those involved. They are indifferent to real war crimes, intolerance and oppression by others in the world. Their behavior should have destroyed their credibility, but they are protected instead.

Some details of interest:

• This campaign’s intensity and one-sidedness has relatively little effect on the actual Middle East situation or on Western government policies.

• The main goal is to portray Israel as responsible for the lack of peace, just as Jews were historically blamed by those hostile to them for anti-Semitism. Since the experience of the 1993-2000 “peace process” era, the fact that the conflict continues because of the intransigence of Israel’s enemies should have been obvious. Yet this history has been forgotten and its impact on Israeli thinking buried or censored.

• Much of the new antagonism stems from Western intelligentsia’s sharp turn to the Left. The question, of course, is why Israel in particular is such a prominent issue among the many causes available to them.

• What is important is not so much to define specific things as “anti-Semitic” – which generates distracting debates – but to explicate the creation of a situation equivalent in effect to pre-1945 anti-Semitism. Since about 40 percent of the world’s Jews live in Israel and most of the rest support Israel, the resulting slander and demonization is also a slur and hatred against the vast majority of Jews. The irrationality, obsession, intimidation and slander are quite equivalent to what Jews suffered under historic anti-Semitism.

• Israel, Israelis and their supporters are portrayed – as in classical anti-Semitism – as irrational creatures involved in incomprehensible behavior. Removing from public consciousness their experiences, attitudes and sufferings leaves the conclusion that their behavior is evil, racist, bloodthirsty and power-hungry.

For example, as a country under assault, Israel has to act militarily at times. The army and government have no interest in wasting credibility and resources by injuring Palestinians for fun or out of pure meanness. Yet this is how Israeli behavior is often portrayed.

Similarly, Israel has lots to gain from peace since, if secure and lasting, it would provide such benefits as fewer deaths, less time and money going to the military, beneficial trade with neighbors and higher living standards, etc. To believe Israel doesn’t want peace is to believe it is aggressive and has devious ends.

And again, if Israel really doesn’t face an existential threat – or only an easily defused one – then its acting otherwise constitutes psychotic behavior.

A MAJOR and new theme of this campaign is to convince American Jews that either Israel has become illegitimate or must be bashed for its own good. Undeniably, this campaign has enjoyed success on that front. Others are temporarily taken in by nonsense like the Western expert/media spin on the recent Israeli elections heading the country toward fascism.

While what we have here on the surface seems like disproportionate insanity, it is actually ideologically consistent and politically motivated. The result is an environment in which the virulently anti-Semitic, genocidal, anti-Christian, anti-American and pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood is the beneficiary of apologetics while Israel is “bad.”

A nut from an extremist cult spit on a teenage Jewish girl in a small town in Israel and the next thing you know there is a serious Western debate over Israel losing its soul.

A few fans from Israel’s most nationalist football team don’t want Muslim players – Arabs already play for all the other teams and are never harassed – and the next thing you know the New York Times compares Israel to Nazi Germany.

One comforting thing about this campaign is that its activists so often having to resort to lies and exaggeration shows how little genuine material they possess.

How much effect is this all having in the real world? Ironically, it is less damaging to Israel itself (attempts at economic boycotts, for example, have yielded no real damage) than to Western Jews who live in the societies so affected. The growing pressure will result in some running for cover – or even joining the assailants – but far more will ultimately wake up.

Bombing the Syrian Reactor: The Untold Story

Elliott Abrams — February 2013

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regime’s chemical weapons and whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after Assad’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on Syria’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not.

Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believed the Israelis had mishandled both the military and the diplomatic sides of the conflict. While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s personal relations with President George W. Bush were excellent, those with Rice were sometimes confrontational—especially when Rice worked at the United Nations to bring the war to a close while Olmert sought more time to attack Hezbollah. Olmert always seemed to ask for 10 days more, while Rice believed the war was not going well and that more time was unlikely to turn the tables.

By the war’s end on August 14, 2006, Olmert’s political status had been diminished and his ability to negotiate any sort of peace agreement with the Palestinians was in doubt. The autumn of 2006 and winter of 2007 saw no movement on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and all the Israeli analysts we consulted said there would be none. We were stuck. And there was another surprise in store. 

In the middle of May 2007, we received an urgent request to receive Mossad chief Meir Dagan at the White House. Olmert asked that he be allowed to show some material to Bush personally. We headed that off with a suggestion that he first reveal whatever he had to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and to me; I was then the deputy national-security adviser in charge of the Middle East portfolio on the National Security Council. Vice President Dick Cheney joined us in Hadley’s office for Dagan’s presentation. What Dagan had was astonishing and explosive: He showed us intelligence demonstrating that Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor whose design was supplied by North Korea, and doing so with North Korean technical assistance. Dagan left us with one stark message: All Israeli policymakers who saw the evidence agreed that the reactor had to go away.

There then began a four-month process of extremely close cooperation with Israel about the reactor, called al-Kibar. As soon as our own intelligence had confirmed the Israeli information and we all agreed on what we were dealing with, Hadley established a process for gathering further information, considering our options, and sharing our thinking with Israel. This process was run entirely out of the White House, with extremely limited participation to maintain secrecy. The effort at secrecy succeeded and there were no leaks—an amazing feat in Washington, especially when the information being held so tightly was as startling and sexy as this.

Initially, there were doubts that Bashar al-Assad could be so stupid as to try this stunt of building a nuclear reactor with North Korean help. Did he really think he would get away with it—that Israel would permit it? But he nearly did; had the reactor been activated, striking it militarily could have strewn radioactive material into the wind and into the nearby Euphrates River, which was the reactor’s source of water needed for cooling. When we found out about the reactor, it was at an advanced construction stage, just a few months from being “hot.”

The consideration of what to do about the reactor continued alongside tense meetings between Rice and Israel on how to proceed with the Palestinians, but the two initiatives did not collide. For the most part, this was because different people were involved. Military and intelligence personnel uninvolved in peace negotiations were the key interlocutors for Israel in considering the al-Kibar reactor, as were individuals on the vice president’s staff who were sympathetic to Israel’s position. The work on al-Kibar was a model both of U.S.-Israel collaboration and of interagency cooperation without leaks. Papers I circulated to the group were returned to me when meetings ended or were kept under lock and key; secretaries and executive assistants were kept out of the loop; meetings were called under vague names such as “the study group.”

The debates were vigorous in our secret meetings in the White House Situation Room. The role of those in the Situation Room was not to decide what was to be done about the reactor; it was merely to be sure every issue had been thoroughly debated and was covered in the memos we drafted for the administration’s principal officials on foreign-policy matters and for the president. This was an excellent example of how policy should be made. Several times, principals—Rice and Hadley, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace and Vice President Cheney—trooped over to the president’s living room in the residence section of the White House to have it out before him, answer his questions, and see what additional information he sought.

I attended all these meetings as note taker, and the notes are under lock and key at the National Archives.

From above: A satellite image of the Syrian reactor site one month after it was bombed by Israeli forces in September 2007.

The day I left those notes on the floor under my chair in the president’s living room, and discovered when back at the NSC that I no longer had them, remains emblazoned in my mind. These were among the most sensitive notes then existing in the U.S. government, amazing precautions for secrecy had been taken, and I had simply left them on the floor. Pale and drenched with sweat, I ran back to the residence, where the butler graciously let me back in and accompanied me to the Yellow Oval Room where we had met. There was my portfolio, under the chair, untouched. Well, I thought, if the butler keeps his mouth shut, I may actually not be shot after all.

The facts about al-Kibar were soon clear, and about those facts there was no debate: It was a nuclear reactor that was almost an exact copy of the Yongbyon reactor in North Korea, and North Koreans had been involved with Syria’s development of the site. Given its location and its lack of connection to any electrical grid, this reactor was part of a nuclear-weapons program rather than intended to produce electric power.

The array of options was clear as well: overt or covert, Israel or United States, military or diplomatic. The United States and Israel both had an obvious military option: Bomb the site and destroy the reactor. This was not much of a military challenge, General Pace assured the president. Whether anything short of a military strike could destroy the reactor was another question, and the difficulties with such an option were obvious: Just how would you get the needed explosives to the site except through a military attack? It was soon agreed that a covert option did not exist, and military options were quickly designed to make the reactor disappear; as Dagan had said when he first visited us, the Israelis clearly believed it had to go away. We developed elaborate scenarios for U.S. and Israeli military action addressing these issues: Whom would you inform when, what would you announce and what would you keep secret, and what if anything would you say to the Syrians?

But a diplomatic option existed as well, and we did draw up elaborate scenarios for it. We would begin by informing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the facts and making them public in a dramatic session before the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna. We would demand immediate inspections and that Syria halt work on the reactor. If Syria refused, we would go to the UN Security Council and demand action. If there was no action, the military option in theory remained open.

However, this diplomatic option seemed faintly ridiculous to me. For one thing, it would never be acceptable to Israel, whose experience with the United Nations was uniformly bad. The Jewish state would never trust its national security to the UN. For another, it would not work; Syria’s friends in the UN, especially Russia, would protect it. At the IAEA, we had plenty of experience with Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian. He was redefining the director general’s role from that of inspector and cop to that of peacemaker and diplomat; he would seek a deal with Syria rather than concerted action against it. Moreover, taking the reactor issue to the UN and the IAEA meant handing it over to the State Department, and I thought an issue of this importance should be handled in the White House.

Finally, the argument that there would always remain a military option as a last resort was misleading at best. Once we made public our knowledge of the site, Syria could put a kindergarten right next to it or take some similar move using human shields. Military action required secrecy, and once we made any kind of public statement about al-Kibar, that option would be gone.

The vice president thought the United States should bomb the site. Given our troubles in Iraq and the growing confrontation with Iran, this would be a useful assertion of power and would help restore our credibility. As he later wrote: 

I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor. Not only would it make the region and the world safer, but it would also demonstrate our seriousness with respect to non-proliferation….But I was the lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, “Does anyone here agree with the vice president?” Not a single hand went up around the room.

My hand did not go up (and as we left the president’s living room that day, June 17, I apologized to the vice president for leaving him isolated) because I thought the Israelis should bomb the reactor, restoring their credibility after the annus horribilis of 2006 with the Second Lebanon War and then the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza. It seemed to me that Israel would suffer if we bombed it, because analysts would point out that Israel had acted against the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 but had become paralyzed when it came to Syria. Such an analysis might embolden Iran and Hamas, a development that would be greatly against American interests. Moreover, hostile reactions in the Islamic world against the bombing strike might hurt us at a time when we were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq—another argument for letting Israel do the job. (I did not think there would be any such reactions, but this was an argument worth deploying in our internal debate.)

Secretaries Gates and Rice argued strenuously for the diplomatic option. Gates also argued for preventing Israel from bombing the reactor and urged putting the whole relationship between the United States and Israel on the line. His language recalled the “agonizing reappraisal” of relations Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had threatened for Europe in 1953 if the Europeans failed to take certain defense measures: They simply had to do what we demanded or there would be hell to pay.

I thought I understood why Gates did not want the United States to bomb Syria: America was a steward of wars in two Islamic countries already, so striking a third one seemed terribly unattractive to him. Why he was almost equally insistent that we prevent Israel from bombing it was never comprehensible to me, nor was Rice’s similar position. It seemed clear to me that if we could not prevent Syria from undertaking a nuclear-weapons program, our entire position in the Middle East would be weakened, just as it was being weakened by our inability to stop the Iranian program. If there were too many risks and potential complications from striking Syria ourselves, we should not only allow but encourage Israel to do it; a Syrian nuclear program in addition to Iran’s should be flatly unacceptable to the United States.

I tried to think my way through Rice’s reasoning, but came up with only one theory. She had simultaneously been expressing opposition to a new program of increased military aid to Israel. This indicated to me that she had an underlying strategy: She did not want Israel feeling stronger. Rather, she wanted Israel, and especially Prime Minister Olmert, to feel more dependent on the United States. That way she would be able to push forward with plans for an international conference on Israeli-Palestinian issues and for final-status talks leading to the creation of a Palestinian state before the end of the second Bush term.

I hoped this was not her intention, because it seemed to me that such designs were sure to fail. An Israel that was facing Hamas in Gaza and now two hostile nuclear programs, in Iran and just across the border in Syria, would never take the risks she was asking it to take. I thought we had learned that lesson with Ariel Sharon as Bill Clinton had learned it with Yitzhak Rabin: Wrap your arms around Israel if you want it to take more risks, so it feels more secure, not less.

The arguments for going to the IAEA and UN seemed so flimsy to me, despite the length and detail of the planning memos and scenarios to which they gave rise, that I did not much worry about them. Who could believe these organizations would act effectively? Who could believe we would not be sitting there five years later entangled in the same diplomatic dance over the Syrian program that we were in with respect to Iran?

In the end, our near-perfect policy process produced the wrong result. At a final session in the gracious Yellow Oval Room at the Residence, Bush came down on Rice’s side. We would go to Vienna, to the IAEA; he would call Olmert and tell him what the decision was. I was astounded and realized I had underestimated Rice’s influence even after all this time. The president had gone with Condi.

I tried to figure this one out and could not. Perhaps it was the same worry that Gates had about making another American military strike in the Islamic world. But that would not explain why he bought the IAEA/UN strategy lock, stock, and barrel; instead, he could have said, “Let the Israelis do what they want; let’s just tell them we will not do it.” Years later I asked him if he thought he had been wrong; he said no. It was then, and is still, baffling. In his memoir, Bush explains one key consideration: The CIA told him it had “high confidence” that the facility in Syria was a nuclear reactor but “low confidence” that Syria had a nuclear-weapons program, because it could not locate the other components of the program. The president thought that the “low confidence” judgment would leak, as it surely would have, and the United States would have been attacked for conducting the bombing raid despite the “low confidence” report. That is a reasonable argument, but it explains only why we did not bomb—it does not explain why he urged the Israelis not to do so.

On July 10, I gave Hadley a memo explaining my views on where we stood with the Israelis. First, we were on the verge of telling the Israelis that we had considered which of us should act against the reactor and had decided that neither of us should use force. Moreover, we were going to say we would pressure them not to do so even if they disagreed. And we would be saying all this after Hamas had just taken over Gaza (which it did, in a coup against the Palestinian Authority, in June 2007). Hezbollah was back fully rearmed in Lebanon despite all those UN Security Council resolutions we had told the Israelis would work. Iran was moving toward nuclear capability. Syria was building a reactor that could only be part of a nuclear-weapons program.

It also looked as if we would be telling them we were about to call for an international meeting on the Palestinians that Israelis did not want and that they feared—and would be doing so in a presidential speech that talked about negotiations for Palestinian statehood “soon” (the word was in the speech drafts). Such a big international conference was the State Department’s answer to unsticking a “peace process” that was stuck.

The editorial comment from our friends on the right, I told Hadley, will be that we have taken leave of our senses: Hamas takes over Gaza, Syria and Iran build nukes, and we are handing things over to the UN and then pushing final-status talks? I still did not think there was a need for any presidential speech, but if there were to be one, I wrote that it should be sober about the situation and supportive of the new Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad.

At that point, Fayyad had been prime minister for about a month, and already the PA was changing. It now had a serious, talented, incorruptible executive at the top of the government. This had never been tried before. The least we could do was to back him, firmly and fully, and not spend all our political capital on great conferences. It was, as I recall it, a terrific memo, yet like all the wonderful memos about the Syrian reactor, it had no impact whatsoever. On July 16, the speech that Condi had sought was given. “Bush Calls for Middle East Peace Conference,” the headlines read.

Three days earlier, on July 13, President Bush had called Prime Minister Olmert from his desk in the Oval Office and explained his view. I have gone over this in great detail, Bush explained on the secure phone to the Israeli prime minister, looking at every possible scenario and its likely aftermath. We have looked at overt and covert options, and I have made a decision. We are not going to take the military path; we are instead going to the UN. Bush recounts in his memoir that he told Olmert, “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program” and that “I had decided on the diplomatic option backed by the threat of force.” We will announce this approach soon, Bush said on the secure line, and we will then launch a major diplomatic campaign, starting at the IAEA and then the UN Security Council. And of course a military option always remains available down the line.

I wondered how Olmert would react and believed I could predict his response: He would say, “Wait, give me some time to think about this, to consult my team, to reflect, and I will call you tomorrow.” I was quite wrong. He reacted immediately and forcefully. George, he said, this leaves me surprised and disappointed. And I cannot accept it. We told you from the first day, when Dagan came to Washington, and I’ve told you since then whenever we discussed it, that the reactor had to go away. Israel cannot live with a Syrian nuclear reactor; we will not accept it. It would change the entire region and our national security cannot accept it. You are telling me you will not act; so, we will act. The timing is another matter, and we will not do anything precipitous.

This is not the account President Bush gives in his memoir, in which he writes that Olmert initially said, “George, I’m asking you to bomb the compound.” Someday transcripts of their conversation will be available, but Bush’s recollection does not comport with mine.

After that conversation, there was a nearly two-month gap, from July 13 to September 6. We now know the time was filled with Israeli military calculations—watching the weather and Syrian movements on the ground—with the aim of being sure that Israel could act before the reactor went “critical” or “hot.” We knew the Israelis would strike sooner or later. They acted, in the end, when a leak about the reactor’s existence was imminent and Syria might then have gotten notice that Israel knew of its existence. That would have given Assad time to put civilians or nuclear fuel near the site. The Israelis did not seek, nor did they get, a green or red light from us. Nor did they announce their timing in advance; they told us as they were blowing up the site. Olmert called the president on September 6 with the news.

As I had sat in the Oval Office on July 13, listening to his conversation with Olmert, I had wondered how the president would react to the Israeli action. With anger? Or more pressure? None of it. He heard Olmert out calmly and acknowledged that Israel had a right to protect its national security. After hanging up, the president said something like “that guy has guts,” in an admiring tone. The incident was over; the differences over al-Kibar would obviously not affect Bush’s relationship with Olmert or his view of Israel.

So quickly did he accept the Olmert decision that I wondered then, and do still, if the president did not at some level anticipate and desire this result. He had sided with Condi and shown that she was still in charge of Middle East policy, but her “take it to the UN” plan had been blown up along with the reactor. He did not seem very regretful. What is more, he instructed us all to abandon the diplomatic plans and maintain absolute silence, ensuring that Israel could carry out its plan.

The Israeli assessment of Syria’s likely reaction was correct. The Israelis believed that if they and we spoke about the strike, Assad might be forced to react to this humiliation by trying to attack Israel. If, however, we all shut up, he might do nothing—nothing at all. He might try to hide the fact that anything had happened. And with every day that passed, the possibility that he would acknowledge the event and fight back diminished. That had been the Israeli theory, and the Israelis knew their man. We maintained silence and so did Israel—no leaks. As the weeks went by, the chances of an Israeli-Syrian confrontation grew slim and then disappeared. Syria has never admitted that there was a reactor at the site. Soon after the bombing, the Syrians bulldozed the reactor site, but the only way they could be sure their lies about it were not contradicted was to prevent a full examination. When a 2008 site visit by IAEA inspectors found some uranium traces, Syria made sure never to permit a return visit.

Two final points are worth noting. First, in May 2008, Turkish-mediated peace talks between Israel and Syria were publicly announced in Istanbul. The discussions had begun secretly in February 2007, and obviously had continued after the Israeli strike on al-Kibar. It would appear that the strike on al-Kibar made the Syrians more, not less, desirous of talking to the Israelis because it made them afraid of Israeli power. It also made them more afraid of American power until we undermined our own position, which is the second point.

A very well-placed Arab diplomat later told us that the strike had left Assad deeply worried as to what was coming next. He had turned Syria into the main transit route for jihadis going to Iraq to kill American soldiers. From Libya or Indonesia, Pakistan or Egypt, they would fly to Damascus International Airport and be shepherded into Iraq. Assad was afraid that on the heels of the Israeli strike would come American action to punish him for all this involvement. But just weeks later, Assad received his invitation to send a Syrian delegation to that big international confab of Condi’s, the Annapolis Conference, and according to the Arab envoy, Assad relaxed immediately; he knew he would be OK. I had not wanted Syria invited to Annapolis because of its involvement in killing Americans in Iraq, but Condi had wanted complete Arab representation as a sign that comprehensive peace might be possible. It was only years later that I learned that Assad had instead interpreted the invitation just as I had: as a sign that the United States would not seriously threaten or punish him for what Syria was doing in Iraq.

Since the day the Israelis struck the Syrian reactor in September 2007, much has changed in the neighborhood: Assad faces a civil war he cannot win, the “Arab Spring” has replaced Hosni Mubarak with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and Israel has now fought two wars with the Hamas statelet in Gaza, in December 2008/January 2009 and in November 2012. Yet there are three lessons from this incident that still bear noting.

First, good “process” and good policy are related but distinct. In the end what counts is output, not input: the foreign policy we adopt, not the proposals that are advanced. And that output depends, when it comes to foreign policy, mostly on one man: the president. That’s the second lesson. Advisers advise; the president decides. All the books about how rival bureaucracies or powerful lobbies determine policy are off the mark; the simpler and truer conclusion is that at any given moment our foreign policy reflects the views of the president.

Finally, this incident is a reminder that there is no substitute for military strength and the will to use it. Think of how much more dangerous to the entire region the Syrian civil war would be today if Assad had a nuclear reactor, and even perhaps nuclear weapons, in hand. Israel was right to bomb that reactor before construction was completed, and President Bush was right to support its decision to do so. Israel was also right in rejecting fears that the incident would lead to a larger war and in believing that it, and the United States, would be better off after this assertion of leadership and determination. That lesson must be on the minds of Israeli, and American, leaders in 2013.

About the Author

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow in Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This article is taken from his new book, just published by Cambridge University Press, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a memoir of his service at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.

Hagel’s misreading of how to treat an ally

By Michael Doran, 

 

January 31, 2013

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is writing a book on President Eisenhower and the Middle East.

Chuck Hagel likes Ike. That much has been apparent for some time. But thanks to David Ignatius’s Jan. 27 op-ed column, “Reviving Eisenhower’s doctrine,” we now know what he likes best: Eisenhower’s management of the Suez crisis. For Hagel, it is more than a shining example of past American leadership. It is a guide for future presidential behavior.

Dwight D. Eisenhower is certainly worthy of emulation, but Hagel has unfortunately learned precisely the wrong lessons. In 1956, Britain, France and Israel launched coordinated invasions of Egypt. To say that Eisenhower disapproved would be an understatement. He directed at his allies a level of hostility typically reserved for worst enemies. After demanding that the attacking forces evacuate Egypt immediately, he imposed crippling economic sanctions on France and Britain. Against Israel, he threatened sanctions while engaging in bare-knuckle diplomacy.

All three powers buckled under the pressure, which was particularly damaging to Britain. Although Prime Minister Anthony Eden was America’s closest ally, Eisenhower brought his economy to the verge of collapse. The pressure destroyed Eden’s career and drove the final nail in the coffin of the British empire.

Realists in the Hagel mold find this episode exhilarating. Eisenhower, they say, pursued the national interest without concern for “sentimental” attachments, to say nothing of domestic lobbies. When applied to the present, the analogy calls for dealing sharply with Israel. The United States, the implication goes, must not allow its client to drag it into conflict with Iran. Instead, Obama must treat Benjamin Netanyahu with the same grit that Ike flashed at Eden.

But this analogy omits a key fact: Ike came to regret those policies. “Years later,” Richard Nixon wrote in the 1980s, “I talked to Eisenhower about Suez; he told me it was his major foreign policy mistake.” By 1958, Ike himself had realized his error and reversed course.

Two primary considerations prompted Eisenhower’s reevaluation. First, the Suez policy simply did not work. By distancing the United States from Israel and the Europeans, Eisenhower believed he was stabilizing the region and laying the foundation for a strategic accommodation between the Arabs, as a bloc, and the United States.

But the anticipated benefit never materialized. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged from the conflict much stronger and more adversarial to U.S. interests. The Soviet penetration of the Middle East deepened considerably. These trends had catastrophic consequences, chief among them the 1958 revolution in Iraq, which replaced the most pro-Western Arab government with a junta that migrated into the Soviet orbit.

The United States, Ike realized, was paying a heavy price for having broken the only immutable rule of a realist foreign policy: Support your friends and punish your enemies. It would continue to pay for years, and not just in the Middle East. When the United States became mired in Vietnam, Britain and France refused to help. Why should they? Eisenhower had taught them that membership in the NATO alliance imposed no binding obligations outside Europe.

As he contemplated these unintended consequences, Ike concluded that he had based his strategy on a false premise. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles expressed it with admirable clarity in the midst of the crisis. U.S. failure to compel Israel to withdraw its forces from Egypt, he remarked to an agreeing Eisenhower, would lead to a catastrophic defeat in the Cold War. It would, Dulles said, “make it almost certain that virtually all of the Middle East countries would feel that United States policy toward the area was . . . controlled by the Jewish influence in the United States and that accordingly the only hope of the Arab countries was in association with the Soviet Union.”

Eisenhower assumed that the Arabs behaved as a unified bloc, especially with respect to Israel. The fallout from Suez, however, taught him otherwise. The upheavals that accompanied Nasser’s rise shared one factor: They had no connection whatsoever to Israel. From this, Eisenhower learned that the alignment of the Arab states in the Cold War was a function of their own internecine conflicts.

This realization led to a paradigm shift. During Suez, Eisenhower had envisioned the United States as an honest broker, shuttling between the Arab world and the alliance of Britain, France and Israel. By 1958, he defined the American role in an entirely new way. The job of the United States, he now realized, was to balance the status-quo Arab powers against a set of revisionists, who were aligned with the Soviet Union. In that context, Israel was more an asset than a liability. Historians typically ascribe this intellectual innovation to Nixon and Henry Kissinger. They were the first to publicly articulate the perspective, but Nixon had absorbed it while serving at Eisenhower’s side.

Today, another revolutionary wave is sweeping the Arab world, driven once again by internal factors. Meanwhile, Hagel remains fixated on a U.S.-Arab-Israeli dynamic. This magical triangle has never had the all-pervasive influence ascribed to it. As long as Hagel remains in its thrall, Eisenhower’s true realism will elude him.