Courcy's Intelligence Centre

The following key assumptions form the background to our analysis of Arab-Israeli conflict and the region's evolving position in global geostrategy.

1. There is nothing new about the strategic and political forces at work in the Levant today.  They have been faced by the inhabitants of Israel/Palestine throughout history.

2.  Israel occupies a thin slither of land at the juncture of Asia and Africa that has been subject throughout history to the ambitions of powerful neighbours.  From the north, the Hyksos, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, and Ottoman Turks had to pass through Palestine on their way to the conquest of Egypt and the extension of their empires into Africa.  From the east, the Arabs first had to cross Palestine on their way to conquests in North Africa and Spain.  And from the south, it was the Egyptians (many times) and (in the 20th century) the British to whom Palestine represented the first obstacle on the way from Africa to Asia.

3.  The inhabitants of Palestine have generally been able to establish their independence only when their neighbours have been weak, as for instance during the great days of Israel under Saul, David, and Solomon, when Egypt was in decline and Assyria and Babylon had yet to establish their ascendancy.

4.  In addition to weak neighbours, the influence of friendly superpowers has often been paramount.  In an echo of the post-1915 British and then American patronage of Zionism,  after the defeat of Babylon in 539 BC a friendly Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, to restore the temple, and to establish a national renascence centred around Judaism.

5.  Today, the Jewish state represents an affront both to Arab nationalists seeking unity of the Arab world and to Islamist fundamentalists seeking unity of the Islamic world.  For Egypt, the most-populous Arab nation, it is a barrier to exercising influence in the Arab heartland.

6.  Opposition to Israel provides Iran (which is a double outsider in the Middle East, being both Persian and Shia) with a means of courting street-level support throughout the Sunni Arab world.  Turkey under Prime Minister Erdogan is now also using the Palestinian cause to court Arab public opinion.

7.  US support for Israel could be undermined by Israeli intransigence and American economic weakness.  European support for Israel has long been undermined by the Jewish state's inability to reach a satisfactory accommodation with the Palestinians.  There are 60m Muslim voters in Europe.

8.  Nothing that Israel could conceivably give in peace negotiations (the Golan Heights, a full return of the West Bank to Palestinian control, even Jerusalem) would satisfy all Arab and Islamist demands.  The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964, to liberate territory held by the Jews before the Six-Day War.

9.  Jerusalem is a uniquely emotional issue for both Jews and Arabs.  As the Berlitz Pocket Guide to Jerusalem records: "This is sacred ground and has had more blood spilled on it for its own sake than any other place in the world".

10.  Israel, for the time being, remains capable of deterring, and, if deterrence fails, defeating any possible combination of Arab armies.  Nevertheless, it is not able to eliminate entirely the threat from terrorism against civilians or guerrilla-style attacks against military targets.

11.  Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would alter the strategic balance against Israel, effectively eliminating the theoretical option that Israel holds of using nuclear weapons in extremis to defeat a conventional attack.

Our evolving analysis can be tracked by viewing the Courcy's Intelligence Analysis link in this report.