Courcy's Intelligence Brief

Israel facing strategic squeeze

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The Arab Spring, it is argued by many, demonstrates that for most Arabs the Palestinian cause is a red herring. What they most want is democracy and prosperity. There is some truth in this, but post-Mubarak Egypt is also demonstrating that the Palestinian cause is very far from dropping off the pan-Arab agenda.

Amongst the millions of words written about the slaying of Osama bin Laden and its significance, the comment that most caught our attention was made by Zakaria Mohammad on the Palestinian arabs48.com website. He said: “Bin Laden died notionally the day that Mubarak fell. The people in Tahrir Square pushed him aside before Obama announced his victory against him. Since January 25th he was no longer a necessity for ordinary Arabs. What he advocated was no longer a necessity.”

Zakaria Mohammed’s point was this: Bin Laden flourished because President Hosni Mubarak adhered to the Camp David treaty signed with Israel by his assassinated predecessor. Now, with the ouster of Mubarak, Egypt is reverting to its pre-Camp David anti-Israel orientation – and so the need for bin Laden has evaporated. We would not go so far as to agree with Mohammed’s implied assertion that al-Qaeda is finished, but we do agree that Egypt’s dramatic anti-Israel shift is of huge significance.

Almost from the first day of the post-Mubarak era, Cairo has been moving strongly away from Israel and the moderate Palestinian tendency towards Hamas. For instance, in March the new government immediately allowed a Gaza delegation led by the senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Zahar to travel from Gaza on a trip to Khartoum, Damascus, and Ankara. This would not have been allowed by the Mubarak regime. In a statement posted on the Hamas Government website, Youssef Rizqa, political advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said: "For the first time in the history of the relationship, Palestinian and Egyptian ministers are communicating. This is a substantial development that did not take place in Mubarak's era."

At a meeting on 30 March between al-Zahar and secular opposition figures in Egypt, strong support was expressed for the Palestinian cause. Egypt’s secular Al-Wafd Party leader Dr Al-Sayyid al-Badawi said that he was the first party leader to declare his party’s stance on the Camp David treaty. According to the Palestinian Information Centre, he said that Israel was violating its terms and that “treaties do not last forever”. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the 25th January Revolution movement who “affirmed that Egypt’s youth support the people of Gaza and the whole of Palestine with their entire hearts and souls, until liberation”.

Since then, the rapprochement has continued apace despite the strongly expressed concerns of Israel. Last month Zahar again visited Cairo for talks with Egyptian intelligence and military officials. And then on 28 April, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil Abdallah al-Araby announced that the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza would be reopened on a permanent basis.

Now Cairo’s latest move has been to engineer a rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas represents the Islamist trend in Palestinian affairs, and it controls the Gaza Strip. Fateh is the mainstream secular faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Hamas is supported by Syria and Iran and is treated as a terrorist organization by the United States. It is, of course, totally anathema to Israel.

In addition to the post-Mubarak reorientation of Egyptian policy, two other factors have been at work to bring about the Hamas-Fateh reconciliation. The first is the upcoming attempt in September to gain UN General Assembly recognition of a Palestinian state. The PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas knows that this attempt would be undermined if opponents were able to say that the PA is not in control of the Gaza Strip. The second is that Hamas may be feeling vulnerable because of events in Syria, where it is by no means certain that President Assad will survive.

The Egyptian-brokered Fateh-Hamas deal agrees to an interim unity government, combining security forces, and a general election to be held within a year. It does not include any provision for negotiations with Israel.

The immediate response of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was that the Palestinian Authority needed to chose between peace with Hamas or peace with Israel. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was even more forthright, saying: “This is the situation: Hundreds of armed terrorists will flood Judea and Samaria. I don’t think we need to go into details of what this means...Hamas is a terror group.”

In one sense, the move is a bonus to Israel as it can now resist pressure for an immediate restart of talks with the Palestinians on the grounds that it must wait at least until the outcome of the new Palestinian elections. In all other senses, however, it is a negative development – and the most worrying aspect for Israel is the confirmation it provides of Egypt’s new orientation.

The London-based pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi is in no doubt. Writing on 28 April, the paper’s editor-in-chief Abdelbari Atwan argued: “Egypt has returned forcefully to playing its leading role in the Arab region in support of the central Arab cause [Palestine]...The inter-Palestinian reconciliation agreement will stand its ground. This is not only because it embodies the Palestinian people’s aspirations; it is also because it relies on the solid ground provided by revolutionary Egypt, the new Egypt, the Egypt of dignity and honour, the Egypt of the youth of Tahrir Square for which we have waited for over 40 years. It is now returning to us, young and fit, rising like a giant from amidst the ruins of corruption and slavery to Israel and the US.”

What Atwan didn’t mention, but is equally significant to Israel, is that Egypt is matching this strong move back into the Palestinian arena with a rapprochement with Iran.

Israel’s strategic squeeze

All of this confirms our view, most recently expressed in our Special Alert on the killing of Osama bin Laden, that Israel faces a strategic squeeze. Broadly speaking, the danger is that Egypt is turning hostile (or, at the very least, unfriendly) while the Iranian regime looks certain to survive the Arab Spring unscathed but with increased influence in the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Jordan could also be forced into a less friendly orientation by popular demand, while further afield post-bin Laden al-Qaeda could find space to regroup in Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan.

The old Middle East dictum is that the Arabs cannot make war without Egypt or peace without Syria. For the moment, whether Assad is ousted or not, it is a stretch of the imagination to see Damascus joining the peace camp. Egypt, on the other hand, is continuing to move away from its Camp David commitment to Israel. Much has been written about the threat of Egypt coming under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the notable point about the present shift in Cairo’s orientation is that it has taken place under an interim secular administration, before the transition from the Mubarak era is completed. It would seem that the peace treaty with Israel could be under threat with or without the Muslim Brotherhood – and if that is so, then Zakaria Mohammad is probably right: Osama bin Laden’s time had already passed and what really matters is what's happening in Cairo. JdeC.

Note: Commenting on the death of bin Laden, the head of the Hamas in Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood."

Saudi Arabia's triple disability

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Amidst the turmoil in the Arab world, Iraq has largely been ignored by the Western media. Not so by the media in Saudi Arabia. Writing in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on 27 April, Editor-in-Chief Tariq Homeid described the Iraqi regime as “worse and more dangerous than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq”.

The problem, argues Homeid, is that while the Saddam Hussein regime was dictatorial, the current Iraqi regime “is based on a detestable sectarianism and its export”. For Homeid, the Iraqi regime’s attitude towards events in Bahrain (where it has supported the Shia protesters) and Syria (where it opposes the Sunni demonstrators) have shown that it is working for “the establishment of Shiite rule”.

The Saudi-backed paper goes further and points out that voices can be heard in Iraq saying that if the Sunnis come to power in Syria it would be because of backing from Saudi Arabia – and “this makes it clear that the new Iraqis are playing the same role that Iran is playing in its attempt to target Saudi Arabia”.

The Saudi position is that the opposition in Syria is home grown and entirely legitimate while that in Bahrain is being stirred up by Iran and by Iran’s allies in Iraq and Lebanon.

The Iraqi pro-Shia media, naturally take the opposite view. Also writing on 27 April, Abdelwahid Nasser al-Bahrani railed against Saudi Arabia on the Iraqi website www.sotaliraq.com. He wrote: “Iraq is among the countries that have suffered most from the salafist thought that Saudi Arabia has embraced. It is Iraq’s right as a state and as a nation to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for every drop of blood that was and will be spilt because of schemes woven on Saudi territories and in the corridors of its intelligence apparatuses...It is not Saudi Arabia’s right or that of its media to accuse Iraq of sectarianism. After all, Iraq never sent terrorists to blow up civilians there. It has never severed the heads of innocent shepherds for sectarian reasons.”

The central allegation against Saudi Arabia is that it has tried to undermine the demands for reform by portraying them as sectarian revolutions and then presenting itself as the defender of the Sunni interest. There is enough truth in this to make life uncomfortable for Riyadh, but there is more than a touch of hypocrisy in the complaints.

During the height of the insurrection in Iraq, Syria and Iran worked a Machiavellian strategy of Syria covertly supporting (Sunni) al-Qaeda to make attacks on Iraqi Shias, which in turn pushed them towards Iran. Now Iran is happily supporting Sunni Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and it would happily support a secular regime in Egypt provided it was anti-US and anti-Israel.

For Iran and Syria, the key division is the Israeli question and relations with the US, not that between Sunni and Shia. During World War II, when deciding which of the resistance movements to support in Yugoslavia, Churchill asked only one question: “Who kills more Germans?” As a consequence the UK sided with the more-effective communist Partisans led by Tito rather than the ideologically safer royalist Chetniks led by Mihailovic. So it is with Tehran in the Arab Middle East; it’s only concern is: “Who is more anti-Israel?”

Non-Arab Shia Iran has only two means of exercising influence in the Middle East. The first is indeed through support for the Shia. The second, though, is by leading the rejectionist front against Israel. As the Sunni Arab street is more anti-Israel (and anti-US) than its leaders, the Arab Spring is playing into Tehran’s hands to the acute discomfort, most particularly, of the regime in Saudi Arabia which suffers a treble disability. It is anti-Shia (which opens it up to Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian machinations), it is pro-US (which makes it unpopular with Arab public opinion), and it is authoritarian (and therefore cannot rely on unlimited and uncritical Western support).

Russia-China competition in arms market

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In our 20-27 April issue we focused on the strength of Russia-China relations, but we also noted that not all is perfect between China and Russia (China has not recognized the pro-Moscow breakaway mini-states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the Caucasus, for instance), and the possibility of a divergence between Russia and China remains. It has been interesting, therefore, to see Russia expressing concerns about Chinese competition in the global arms market. Chinese dependence on Russian weapons was at one stage a key driver in their relationship. That has been changing, and now they are in increasing competition in the export field.

According to Ruslan Pukhov, director of Russia’s Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), the problem is that Russia and China are focused on the same regional markets, that is large emerging markets that are keen to pursue a military-political line that is relatively independent of the West.

The problem for Russia is not so much in the quality of China’s weapons but in the fact that China’s economy is complementary to those of many of the countries to which it is seeking to export. Essentially, it buys raw materials from the countries to which it wishes to sell arms. Russia, on the other hand, is an exporter of raw materials. As Pukhov puts it: “China is becoming one of the main buyers of raw materials from the countries of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, and it is constantly boosting its investment in these countries.”

The exception to this is Asia. According to Pukhov: “Chinese policy is giving rise to increasing fears among neighbouring states in Southeast Asia, which provides Russian exporters with new opportunities.” Vietnam, for instance, is one of Russia’s key partners in “military-technical cooperation”. Strengthening military-technical cooperation between China and Pakistan also helps the Russian cause in India.

Pukhov also sees some benefit to Russia in the fact that China’s military exports will more and more reflect China’s foreign policy priorities, thus reducing its flexibility and willingness to supply.

Risk pointers

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*** Russia again warns Nato about Libyan action. Dmitriy Rogozin, Russia’s permanent representative to Nato, has once again warned against Nato’s intervention in Libya. Speaking on 2 May, he warned: “I think what the Western coalition is doing in Libya [is] launching strikes that go well beyond the mandate they was given by the UN Security Council – I think that this will create much more evil for them than Bin Laden represented.”

The previous week, on 25 April, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had warned that by supporting the rebels Nato was encouraging further rebellions elsewhere. He said: “Unfortunately it is probably contagious and is developing in other countries in the region in the hope that, if the situation escalates, the international community will come to help. It is in fact an invitation to a whole series of civil wars.”

On 29 April, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin added his strong condemnation, saying that he was “dumfounded” by how easily decisions to use force were being taken. He said that there was an imbalance between the human-rights justifications being given for action and the consequences of the action taken. He said: “Everything must be done to remove this imbalance.”

*** More Russian fears. Adding to Russia’s concerns about Nato actions in Libya (see above), the general secretary of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has warned that future conflicts might not always remain purely local or regional. Speaking at a round-table conference in Moscow on 27 April, Nikolay Bordyuzha said: “As regards the challenges and threats to CSTO member states, it is very difficult to presume that future conflicts will be only regional and local given the existing alignment of forces.” Bordyuzha pointed to Nato’s expansion, tensions in the Caucasus, and instability caused by extremism and terrorism in Central Asia.

These comments reflect fears that are frequently being heard from Russian policymakers and commentators. In March, for instance, General Makhmud Gareyev, president of the Military Sciences Academy, warned that Russia’s geopolitical position is as bad as it has ever been in its history. He noted that US military forces “are present in any strategic direction – west, south, east, and north”.

A few weeks later, in early April, President Medvedev revealed his own similar anxieties, saying in an address to senior army officers: “We cannot leave our country without the sufficient development of the armed forces and law-enforcement bodies. We shall simply be torn to pieces.”

*** Georgian obstacle to Russia’s WTO accession. Grigol Vashadze, the foreign miniser of Georgia, which is in dispute with Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, said on 28 April that Russia will not be able to join the World Trade Organization without Georgian consent.

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