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Worry lines in Israel over Middle East firestorm
Minhaz Merchant | Apr 24, 2011, 12.35am IST


The faces most creased with worry in the Middle East today are in Tel Aviv. Since winning the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars and signing the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt (and later Jordan), Israel has lived in relative security. A generation of Israelis has grown up since 1980 comforted by the two Washington-brokered peace accords. That era is over.

Violent pro-democracy movements across the Arabian Gulf and north Africa and the civil war in Libya have disrupted the region's equilibrium. But the most serious security threat to Israel is non-Arab, Shia-majority Iran with its incipient nuclear weapons capability. Israel's biggest Arab rivals in the region do not, despite growing peoples' anger against autocracy, yet pose a significant threat to the status quo: Syria is riven by internal political strife; Iraq operates under a US proxy government; Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait have quelled scattered protests; Yemen is too weak, Lebanon too embroiled in Christian-Muslim schisms and Algeria and Tunisia too distant to cause Israel immediate concern.

There are three powerful vested interests that benefit from status quo in the Middle East. The first is the Sunni and Wahhabi sheikhs who have, for decades, used Arab hostility against Israel as a smokescreen to deny democracy to their own people. The second vested interest is Israel, which has willingly played bogeyman to keep the sheikhdoms in power: Tel Aviv knows they are the best guarantors of Israel's security. Democratically elected Arab leaders would be less accommodating of Israel's occupation of Arab lands in Gaza and the West Bank. They would press far more vigorously for an independent Palestine state. The third vested interest is America. There are more Jews in the US (6.40 million) than in Israel (5.60 million) and with their talent and wealth they form the world's most powerful political lobby. No US president, Republican or Democratic, has dared toe anything but an uncompromisingly pro-Israel line since 1948 when the nation was created.

Between them, the status quoists control a majority of the world's oil (Saudi Arabia alone pumps 9.9 million barrels worth $1.2 billion every day), military firepower and diplomatic heft. Since 1948, the US has vetoed more than 50 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions condemning the use of force by Israel on Palestinians and other Arabs. The complicity between Washington and the dozen enormously wealthy Arab families that rule Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE has ensured that Palestinians have remained refugees in their own land for 63 years. The Palestinian leadership is divided. Since the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Palestinians have lacked a charismatic, centripetal figure. Their cause is just but is trapped in the complex political web woven by Arab dictators, Israel and the US.

Israel knows that at some stage it will have to live alongside an independent Palestinian state. This inevitable outcome is part of a tortuous diplomatic peace process stretching from the 1993 Oslo accord to the 2007 Annapolis conference. Israel has used this long period to build permanent settlements in the West Bank, which it seized during the six-day 1967 war. Despite worldwide condemnation of Israeli encroachments in the West Bank, where over two million Palestinians lead precarious lives, the steady spread of Jewish settlements continues. More than 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank. For Israel, the settlements serve two purposes: the creation of a security buffer zone and a future territorial bargaining chip in peace talks. Israel's hawkish prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like to delay the proposed creation of a Palestinian state under the terms of the Annapolis conference for as long as he can.

Cascading pro-democracy protests across the Arabian Gulf and the war in Libya could radically alter the timetable. Post-Mubarak Egypt will have a new democratically elected government by September. The first casualty could be the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. This possibility has sharpened Israel's paranoia. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the mercantile Sunni-led Gulf nations of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE (all with hostile Shia minorities) have paid little more than lip service to the Palestinian cause. That too will change when the Arab street's demand for democracy reaches their doorstep. How soon will this be? Conservative Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait have already experienced violent anti-government, pro-democracy demonstrations unthinkable even months ago. Feudal monarchies like Saudi Arabia with their vast oil wealth are likely to be the last to succumb to democracy – but succumb they eventually will. A worried Israel knows this. So does the extended al-Saud ruling family comprising over 250 cousin-princes.

The wisest strategy for Israel to secure its future is to accept the two-state formula articulated at the Annapolis conference for an independent Palestinian state. Most Israelis dread this. They are used to the unconditional backing of Washington and the tacit support of US-friendly Arab dictators to maintain the status quo.

That tacit support will dissipate in an increasingly democratic Arab world. Progress towards an independent Palestine will be slow but events unfolding in the Middle East have made the process irreversible. No one knows this better than the grim-faced men and women who run Israel.

The writer is chairman of a media group
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