Since 1948, Israel has nurtured an ethos according to which its very existence is imperiled. Even before it was born, the country was in danger of extinction because Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan rose up to annihilate it.  Since then, a new oppressor has risen periodically, threatening to “throw us into the sea.” Once upon a time it was ‘Abd al-Nasser, and when he disappeared, it was Saddam Hussein. After Saddam was defeated with American help, it has become the turn of the Iranian tyrant, who is developing nuclear weapons to eliminate us and proclaim a Shiite victory throughout the Middle East.

In the past, however, it turned out that things were not quite as they were mooted. The monarchical and backward Arab regimes which invaded in 1948 did not truly intend to conquer Palestine, and their armies mirrored the weakness and decay of their regimes. In 1967, ‘Abd al-Nasser entered the war in an ill-conceived way and was utterly defeated. The “existential threat” turned out to have been imaginary, while Israel expanded its territory threefold. The bluff of Saddam Hussein was revealed when the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, claiming he had “weapons of mass destruction.” What he had, it turned out, was a factory for cap pistols. This adventure cost the Americans many billions, with thousands of soldiers killed and wounded, and it took away their desire to continue fighting in the name of an “existential danger” to Israel.

Yes, the world is fed up with Israel’s “existential danger,” so Barack Obama decided to reach an agreement with Iran and limit its ability to develop nuclear weapons. Israel stomped its feet in anger. Netanyahu went all the way to the US Congress to incite against Obama, but in vain. Nothing helped until Donald Trump came on the scene, and Israel breathed a sigh of relief. The agreement with Iran was rescinded, Trump imposed severe sanctions on the Iranians, and the Mossad did in Iran as it pleased, from the assassination of scientists, through cyberattacks, to the theft of the nuclear archive.

The end is known – Trump was defeated by Biden, in Iran an even more radical president was elected, the centrifuges work overtime, and all parties to the original nuclear deal have returned to the table in Vienna. Once again, Israel is alone, and once again it is trying to convince the world that an “existential danger” is at its door.

But the world has moved on, and Iran’s existential threat to Israel has given way to more tangible existential threats. The Biden administration has set new priorities for the world, with three existential threats that demand vigorous, global action. The first is the climate crisis, which threatens the existence of life on earth. The second is the pandemic. And the third is the threat to democracy from totalitarian regimes like China and Russia, not to mention the neo-fascist currents headed by Donald Trump.

Iran’s place in the range of threats is marginal, and the new Israeli government’s cries of “existential danger” fall on deaf ears. For Israel, climate change is an anecdote, the pandemic is something we can live with, and there is no concern about totalitarianism. Israel’s conciliatory attitude toward the Chinese, its warm relationship with Putin, its longing for Trump, and its alliances with Bin Salman, al-Sisi, Abdullah, and the Emirates show where its heart is.

In fact, the “Abraham Accords” with the Gulf States tell the whole story. While Iran is verbally threatening Israel, in practice its eyes are fixed on the Arab regimes, led by Saudi Arabia, for which Iran really does pose an “existential danger.” It was this threat that threw them into the arms of Israel, with the generous assistance of Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Iran has managed to undermine Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, all on the pretext of liberating Jerusalem. To judge from its actions on the ground, it poses an existential danger not to Israel, but to millions of Arab citizens who are forced to leave their countries and become refugees. Israel is not a target and never was. It is and was a pretext. Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon are the real targets, and they are paying the price for Iran’s expansionist aspirations.

At the same time, while the Iranian regime is playing the Israeli card to make gains abroad and suppress domestic opposition, in Israel the word “Iran” has become a code to continue inflating the defense budget at the expense of the resource-hungry sectors that are needed to reduce social gaps. However, the world is no longer buying the security bluff, and many Israelis are fed up with it too.

In an opinion piece against raising the budgetary pension for members of the standing army (Haaretz, November 28), Iris Leal writes: “In a land beset by enemies, everyone gripes about the cost of living, the labor market, wage gaps and the housing market, yet time and time again we vote on one issue along: security. Existential dread drives most of Israel’s citizenry, and the people’s army is the apple of their eye.”

To this Leal adds, “The overwhelming rage at Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s decision to raise the budgetary pension of already retired standing-army personnel surprised even him. Gantz is still living in times when every word uttered by the Israel Defense Forces is accepted as true by definition, every demand met, and every hint of resistance quelled through emotional blackmail and unsubtle warnings of the military catastrophe on the horizon.”

And what would the Israeli army have done if the sanctions imposed by Trump on the Iranian regime had indeed achieved their goal? What would have happened if a new Iranian “green revolution,” like the one suppressed by the regime in 2009, had established democracy there? There is one answer: the Arab Spring would have returned in full force. And what would have happened if the second revolutionary wave had overthrown al-Sisi’s regime while eliminating Iranian militias in Iraq and Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon? The answer is clear:  all of Israel’s autocratic allies in the region would have fallen, one after the other, starting with the Saudis. Democracy is the real existential threat to the Saudis and the Emirates, who supported all the coups to quell the Arab Spring. In the end, it is not the Iranian regime that poses an existential danger, but the possibility of a democratic revolution, which will raise the Arab world from its ruins, the same ruins that Israel and its accomplices thrive on.

The overthrow of the Iranian regime is an existential interest first and foremost for the Iranian people themselves, who suffer from political and cultural oppression, as well as deep poverty. It is also in the interest of the Arab peoples whose countries were destroyed by Iranian intervention. It is in the interest of the Palestinian people, who are groaning and fighting against Israel’s denial of their basic rights. In contrast, the Israeli interest is to keep the Middle East devastated, backward, poor and oppressed, in order to continue maintaining its schizophrenic regime, which ranges from democracy for Jews to apartheid for Palestinians. The world has already moved on to another era while Israel continues to educate itself from faded pages written during the Cold War, which depict it as the bulwark of the democratic West in a totalitarian sea. The world is changing, but Israel and its partners in the region, and with them the Iranian regime, remain mired in the past.

The post “Wolf! Wolf! Iran! Iran!“ first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

He spoke before Congress for 40 minutes, sweeping it off its feet. It was, without doubt, the speech of his lifetime, although according to Israeli pollsters it added merely one Knesset seat to his shrinking tally of votes. He did the unthinkable by by passing Barack Obama and turning directly to the American people from the congressional podium, pummeling their president with hard truths.

He showed daring and pluck, as if he himself were the American president, explaining with didactic patience the questions that stand at the basis of the agreement that is shaping up with Iran.

Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democratic minority, wept tears of frustration and rage and humiliation, while John Boehner, leader of the Republican majority, claimed that no current member of Congress could have done a better job than Netanyahu in showing why the agreement must be rejected. As for Obama, he said that Netanyahu had offered no new alternative, using this point as a blind to avoid hard truths in the speech that should not be ignored.

Obama’s weakness

Netanyahu focused on the fact that Iran has a dictatorial, theocratic regime whose goal is to spread the Shiite revolution. He pointed out that Iran already controls much of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. He added that the prospective agreement will only last 10 years, and that after the lifting of the sanctions Iran will have legitimacy for going ahead with its nuclear program and exerting itself as a regional power. The agreement, he said, will grant the Ayatollahs a long stretch of time in which to entrench their regime.     

In relation to the White House, which seeks Iran’s help in fighting ISIS in Iraq, Netanyahu said: “Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.” In this case, he memorably said, “the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.”

The power of the speech came mainly from the weakness of Obama, that is, from his wrong-headed policy in the Middle East, the roots of which can be seen especially in his approach (or lack thereof) to the Syrian conflict. His attitude toward the Assad regime has been, in effect, conciliatory. When his “red line” was crossed in the use of chemical weapons, he planned a massive bombardment of Assad’s military infrastructure but called it off at the last minute, instead making an agreement through Putin on the withdrawal of chemical weapons from Syria. This lack of support had the effect of debilitating the moderate liberal opposition, the Left, and the Muslim Brotherhood, so that the door was open for ISIS. Only after ISIS took over swathes of Iraq, captured Mosul, and established the “Islamic State,” did Obama take action. Even so, he has been careful not to harm Assad, for he needs the Iranians in order to restore the rule of the Iraqi Shiite government over the Sunni areas that ISIS conquered.

Obama’s desire for an agreement with Iran derives from strategic considerations; above all he does not want to send his soldiers back into Iraq. Iran has been transformed from a bitter enemy to a partner in the war against ISIS. The price is the fall of Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Sana’a into Iran’s hands.

Bibi’s contribution to the regional chaos

Obama’s weakness is Netanyahu’s too. Since the Arab Spring, the Arab world has splintered, and the US is left without a firm Arab basis to lean on in its confrontation with Iran.

Israel and the benighted Sunni regimes—namely, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco—share a common hostility toward the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Americans saw the Arab Spring as a historical necessity which threw out the rotten regimes that had reduced their countries to destitution. The Americans were even ready to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood if it was willing to abide by the rules of democracy. Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, saw the fall of Mubarak in Egypt as a strategic catastrophe; they fumed at the White House when it cooperated with the elected Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The latter was overthrown, as we know, in a military coup that was funded by the Saudis. The war against the Muslim Brotherhood became a cornerstone of Saudi foreign policy, which was seconded by Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. It was Saudi foreign policy that sparked civil wars not only in Egypt, but in Libya and Yemen as well, and it has spread throughout the region, bringing chaos.

Thus Saudi Arabia and Israel refused to adjust their policies to the deep changes signified by the Arab Spring. Their unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, while spreading the chaos into which ISIS would enter, compelled Obama to transform Iran into the strategic lynchpin of a new regional cooperation. Bibi’s contribution to this development should not be underestimated. The clash between the White House and the Israeli government is by no means limited to the prospective agreement with Iran; it began, we recall, over the Palestinian issue.

During Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Gaza, the American Secretary of State John Kerry supported a Qatari-Turkish proposal for a cease fire, whereas the Israeli cabinet, vilifying Kerry, opted for the “Egyptian” proposal. This position lengthened the war by several long days, until Hamas surrendered. The Egyptians are seeking to strangle Hamas and Gaza without offering a solution to the people living in the Strip. Meanwhile General Sisi is becoming entangled in Sinai, he is trying without success to put together a military force to intervene in Libya, and conditions inside Egypt are deteriorating. Sisi is a worse dictator than Mubarak, and his fate will be no different.

Bibi can preach morality to Obama about appeasing Iran, but what about his own conciliatory approach toward the murderous dictatorship of General Sisi, or toward the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia? How exactly are the regimes of these three countries better than the one in Tehran? Netanyahu is using the chaos that he himself helped sow in the Middle East in order to get re-elected, claiming that with ISIS in the neighborhood there’s no point in making peace with the Palestinians.

The chaos serves the Israeli right wing, to be sure, but it severely damages American strategic interests in Libya, Yemen, and Iraq. Given the weakness of the leading Arab nations, Obama turns to the Iranians in order to stabilize the region and obviate the need for a new American conquest of Iraq. And so, irony of ironies, it turns out that Netanyahu contributed with his own hands to the agreement with Iran. Obama asks him correctly, “What is your alternative? What are you willing to offer so that Iran won’t spread its influence?” The answer is—nothing.

Signs of change

While Netanyahu shoots barbs at the American regime without offering a real alternative, the death of the Saudi king Abdullah and his replacement by Salman bin Abdulaziz have created an opportunity for a change in Saudi policy. There are rumors of warmer ties with Turkey. The Saudis, it is also rumored, now recognize that the Muslim Brothers are not the problem in the region, rather they are an essential part of the solution against both ISIS and Iran. General Sisi is losing altitude, and for the first time the Saudis are calling what happened in Egypt “a military coup.” This shows that they want to close ranks with the Americans on the issue.

And what about Bibi Netanyahu? He insists on running with his head against the wall. He collides with America, he collides with Turkey, he apparently balks at the new Saudi position, he erases Abu Mazen, and he remains faithful to General Sisi. Bibi, Sisi, and Assad stand against the world. That isolates Israel, of course, but Bibi seems to think it will help him get elected.

The prospective agreement with Iran is no solution to the chaos in the Middle East. Instead, because it will strengthen Iran, which exacerbates ethnic rifts, the agreement is likely to heighten the crisis that is working in favor of ISIS. It isn’t all that bad for Israel, but it is very bad indeed for the Iranian people, who have suffered oppression for 36 years. It is also very bad for the Iraqi people, because it will deepen the war between Shiites and Sunnis. It is very bad for the Syrians, because it will leave Assad in power. And it is very bad for the Yemenites, which have split into two countries, the pro-Iranian north and the pro-Saudi south.

Iran is the enemy of the Arab Spring, just as the Saudi kingdom is. Bibi, Sisi, Assad, Salman, and Khamenei—all are enemies of democracy and social justice. The agreement with Iran will not advance these causes either. The Iranian regime is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The best alternative to the agreement, for those who love freedom, is to depose Assad in Syria. That would be a major blow to Iran and a boost for democracy in the Middle East—against the will of Bibi.

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In March, after Bibi Netanyahu forms Israel’s new government, U.S. President Barack Obama intends to arrive for a first historic visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Obama wants to talk with the Israeli people, but has nothing of note to tell them. First on the American president’s crowded agenda will be Iran, and then Syria. Last will be the Palestinian issue, concerning which he has no new initiative.

That Obama is distancing himself from the Palestinian question is unsurprising. He has already crashed and burned on that one, when he named George Mitchell his special envoy, in vain. In response to Obama’s demand, Netanyahu did freeze settlement construction for ten months, but then he renewed it with greater vigor. Meantime another term in office has passed, both in Israel and in the United States, without even the semblance of an Israeli-Palestinian political process, and four more arid years lie ahead. Netanyahu committed himself to the principle of two states, but his actions belied it – the settlements expanded and the would-be Palestinian state continued to shrink.

Economically bankrupt

On the Palestinian side of the Separation Barrier, senior members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are running around as if trapped in a maze, looking for any way out. Whether in the West Bank areas under PA control, or in Gaza under Hamas, a catastrophe is unfolding, in the fullest sense of the word. Yet this subject is absent from Israeli public discourse. Periodically we hear about what goes on in the West Bank, the account buried on an inside page of the newspaper, when some young Palestinian man or woman is killed by IDF fire under murky circumstances and an investigation is opened into the matter. The issue at the top of today’s agenda is “equal sharing of the burden” by the Ultraorthodox in Israel’s military and economy; no one is interested in “the conflict.” The Israeli middle class has wearied of funding the Ultraorthodox, and people are pleased to see Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid joining forces to make life easier.

Doubtless it will not be long until the unrest in the West Bank becomes palpable to the Israeli public on its side of the wall. The economic situation is bad. The PA is not paying salaries because its coffers are empty; since it employs 16% of the Palestinian workforce, the entire local economy is paralyzed. A Palestinian teacher earns NIS 3000 a month, and a laborer not more than NIS 87 a day. (Compare that to Israel’s minimum wage of NIS 182 per day.) According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unemployment stands at 20%, reaching 34% among young people aged 15–25. What we’ve got is an active volcano, with the lava boiling over. Rather than do anything, Israeli leaders apparently prefer to hope that the lava won’t flow past the Separation Barrier.

What is causing the economic crisis in the West Bank? The EU and the Arab countries provide billions to the Palestinian Authority, hoping that the conflict will be resolved and the Palestinian State achieve economic independence. This arrangement has been around for 22 years now, and instead of serving the Palestinian people, it serves the Israeli occupation, which uses the time to expand the settlements. The Europeans respond to the stalemate by delaying grants and preparing a blacklist of settlement exports. The goal is to force the Israeli government to stop investing in the settlements and start resolving the conflict.

Israel for its part “punishes” the Palestinian Authority, holding up payments of tax money it has collected at customs points on imported goods entering PA territory. This further empties the already strained Palestinian treasury. One of the absurd outcomes of this mode of economic punishment concerns the supply of electricity to the PA, still provided by the Israel Electric Company (IEC). Without work and salaries, residents of the territories cannot pay their electric bills to the PA, so its debt to the IEC keeps growing. The Israeli government pays what the PA owes to the IEC and recoups those funds from the tax money the government is supposed to transfer to the PA. Thus the Palestinian economy is stuck, with no way out of these vicious cycles of the Occupation.

Abu Mazen and Hamas, politically bankrupt

Given this warped reality, Abu Mazen has struck out in every direction. First, he turned to the UN General Assembly seeking recognition of Palestine as an observer state. This was granted but, in the event, it only made things worse. As punishment for his UN initiative, the US Congress decided to delay financial aid to the PA. Once again, it became clear that the PA is totally dependent on Israel. Abu Mazen learned the hard way that declaring a state isn’t enough; one must also establish it – and without territory, without money and without an economy, the prospects for a sustainable regime are nil. Abu

Mazen’s UN initiative turned out to be no more than a political exercise, intended to show Palestinians that the PA is not sitting and twiddling its thumbs.

Meanwhile, Abu Mazen also turned to Hamas. This move was intended to display a united front and undermine Israel’s claim that, because of a rift between the PA and Hamas, it has no partner for peace. On February 8, Abu Mazen met with Khaled Mashal in Cairo, and they made the heads of all the Palestinian factions come along to Cairo too — to draw up a memorandum of understanding to end the divisions. At the conclusion of the talks they parted friends. No agreement resulted, however, and it’s doubtful one ever will.

Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist and is not interested in new elections. Hamas fears, not without justification, that if it were to win the elections, neither Fatah nor the rest of the world would recognize the outcome. On the other hand, if Fatah were to win, Hamas would lose control of Gaza. Thus elections are not an option now, and without elections there is no way to overcome the internal Palestinian split.

The split arises from an absence of strategy about the way to establish a Palestinian state. On the one hand, after 22 years of futile talks, clearly the path of negotiation has been exhausted. On the other hand, the armed struggle by Hamas has also been exhausted, given that in the wake of Israel’s recent “Operation Pillar of Defense,” aka “Pillar of Cloud,” the Hamas government reached an agreement with Israel. The agreement included three points: an end to targeted assassinations by Israel, an easing of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, and an end to Gazan attacks on Israel.

This arrangement gives Hamas breathing room but it doesn’t solve the real problem: the continuing Occupation. Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi promised Obama to insure quiet in Gaza, in return for financial aid. But in order to enforce quiet, he needs conciliation between Fatah and Hamas, and as long as that is impossible, Gaza will continue to bleed.

To reach economic stability, Gaza must be liberated from dependence on Israel and have an open crossing between Rafah and Egypt. Control of the Rafah crossing, however, is mired in disagreement. Egypt made a commitment to the international community that the crossing into its territory would be under PA control with Israeli supervision. Hamas of course refuses to let Abu Mazen set foot in Gaza. Hence, without the presence of Abu Mazen, Egypt cannot open the Rafah crossing, and Gaza remains tied to the Israeli umbilical cord.

In despair, the Egyptians decided to flood the tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza, to send a message to the Hamas leadership that they must be more flexible toward Fatah. Abu Mazen, for his part, began arresting Hamas members in the West Bank. This led Mousa Abu Marzook, Deputy Chief of the Hamas political bureau, to complain that the arrests are damaging Palestinian reconciliation and constitute proof that elections cannot be held (Al Hayat, February 14).

What Obama will discover on his visit

When Obama reaches PA territory, he will see that his policy of appeasing the Israeli right has nearly killed the PA. Perhaps he understands that his policy of appeasing the Mubarak regime in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia eventually led to the Arab Spring. This script may be repeated in the PA territories: when the young people, the university graduates, do not find work, they will take to the streets in protest, and their anger will be directed above all at the PA, which is directly responsible for their situation. At the end of the day, it is the PA that is late in paying salaries, that is not creating jobs, and that cannot persuade Israel to negotiate.

One may reasonably assume that Obama also knows what the entire world knows: the new Israeli consensus, encompassing all the Zionist parties, accepts the doctrine formulated by Avigdor Lieberman, holding that the conflict cannot be resolved. What’s left, then, is to manage the conflict through negotiations, the declared goal of which is the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders. Having already experienced the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have already seen how the temporary becomes permanent, and there is no way they will accept this.

Obama is going to miss another chance to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anyone surprised by this ought to remember that we have here the same Obama who missed a historic chance to repair American society, when he caved in repeatedly to the extreme right.

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