As the Goldstone report on the Gaza war wends it way up the UN food chain, casting further opprobrium on Israel at each level, it is legitimate to question Israel’s handling of this challenge. Did the Israeli response lessen or aggravate the damage?

There are serious critiques that could have been levied against Goldstone’s mandate even before a single accusation was heard. UN investigations of wars, including this one, typically focus on jus in bello, on the laws of war on the battlefield, and ignore jus ad bellum, the justification for going to war in the first place. It can be argued with great cogency that it is unreasonable to judge the conduct of a war with little or no reference to its causes; echoes of this can be heard in Israeli complaints about the lack of attention to claims of self-defense.

A second critique is that international law has not kept pace with changes in warfare. Most contemporary armed conflicts involve what Rupert Smith has called “war amongst the people,” rather than classic set-piece battlefield scenarios from which laws on wartime conduct (jus in bello) were drawn. These laws seek, quite rightly, to minimize casualties among civilians, but how should they be applied when the very blurring of the military-civilian distinction is a basic strategic axiom of one party? Are insurgents entitled to more rather than less immunity if they refuse to wear uniforms (as required by conventional law)?

So Goldstone’s approach was already blinkered by the framework in which he, without audible complaint, was thrust. This was then compounded by the lack of an Israeli defense to the specific accusations that were brought. Having no “official” explanation that needed to be taken into account, as a straight-laced jurist he then not only accepted any claims of atrocities at face value but also attributed them to deliberate policy rather than the mistakes, negligence, and misconduct out of which most wartime violations are compounded.

Ruth Lapidoth, who has represented Israel in many international legal frameworks, and other leading Israeli jurists have argued that it was a mistake to leave Israel unrepresented in the presentation of evidence and argument before Goldstone. It may be that the final product would still not have been to Israel’s liking, but presenting one’s case in full force would make it more difficult to ignore the basic limitations of the framework (lack of attention to causes, unconventional warfare) and to assign to deliberate policy what could be attributed, in “the fog of war,” to deviations from the rules of engagement that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) had in fact set out.

A second effective means of damage control would be to address forthrightly the specific cases in the Goldstone report and to draw the necessary conclusions: a clear statement of the facts if the accusation is not warranted, and appropriate disciplinary action if it is. In fact, in international law, taking this step would remove the threat of prosecution abroad that now appears to hang over the head of top-level Israeli military commanders. The army that can fight a bloody conflict in an urban setting, without any cases of misconduct among its ranks, has yet to be created.

According to recent report, it was Defense Minister Ehud Barak who prevailed on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to boycott the UN inquiry. If so, it is further testimony to Barak’s inability to learn from experience, and it comes as no surprise that the latest poll predicts that, if elections were held now, his Labor Party, once the dominant force in Israel, would be reduced to an abysmal seven seats.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.

Palestinians have three official objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, as well as a fourth objection about which they do not speak openly, but which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The three official objections are as follows:

1. It is not the task of the Palestinians to determine the nature of the Israeli state, but that of the Israelis.
2. Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would jeopardize the position of the Israeli Arabs, who form 20 percent of the Israeli population.
3. Israel did not demand recognition as a “Jewish state” in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

The fourth Palestinian objection—which they do not assert openly lest it destroy the chances for a peace treaty with Israel—is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.

These attitudes, partially latent during the heyday of the Oslo peace process (1993-2000), were reinforced by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which transformed what had been a conflict between two peoples over the same piece of territory into a religious war between Muslims and Jews, and which greatly strengthened Hamas in the process. Indeed both Hamas and non-Hamas religious leaders stressed that the Palestinians were fighting the Jews, just as Muhammad had fought the Jews who they allied with his enemies as he sought to unite the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam.

What the Palestinians—and other Arabs—fail to understand is that Zionism arose as a national movement among Jews in Europe in the 19th century. Very much influenced by the national unification movements of Germany and Italy (as were the Arab nationalists of the time), as well as by the increasingly precarious position of the Jews in Eastern Europe who were beset by pogroms in Czarist Russia, Zionist thinkers such as Hess, Lilienblum and Herzl asserted that just as the French had France, the Germans had Germany and the Italians had Italy, the Jews deserved a state of their own where they could lead a “normal, national life,” and the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel, then occupied by the Ottoman Empire, was chosen as the site of the future Jewish state. To be sure, the land which the Zionists wanted was already populated by Arabs; however, the Arabs who lived there at the end of the 19th century had not yet developed a national identity (that was come during the British mandate of 1922-48), and at the time primary saw themselves as Muslims or Christians, or as “Southern Syrians” or as Ottoman subjects.

This being the case, one can respond to the Palestinian reasons for not recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” in the following manner:

1. While the Israelis alone can and should define the nature of their state, as the existential nature of the state is a central factor in the conflict (unlike, for example, the conflicts between France and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries), then Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish State becomes central to ending the conflict.
2. There are many minorities in the Middle East, and the often negative treatment of these minorities, whether religious (such as the Copts in Egypt and the Shi’a in Saudi Arabia) or national (such as the Kurds in Turkey and the Azeris) is, in fact, linked to the nature of the country in which they live. However these minorities could be protected by treaty arrangements (currently they are not, although Turkey has begun the process of trying to address its Kurds’ aspirations)—so long as they swear allegiance to the state. Indeed, should a Palestinian state which recognizes Israel as a “Jewish state” emerge, that could make it easier for Israeli Arabs to solve their own identity problems, which have become increasingly serious in recent years, as some Israeli Arab leaders have openly backed Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria in their conflicts with Israel. Thus, as part of a peace treaty between a Palestinian state and Israel, the protection of the rights, albeit not the national rights, of the Israeli Arabs could be stipulated.
3. While acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish state was not a component of Israel’s peace treaties with either Egypt or Jordan, in neither case was Israel involved in the type of existential conflict with these countries as it currently is with the Palestinians—a conflict in which it often appears that the assertion of one people’s national aspirations negates those of the other people. Thus it is necessary for both sides to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national aspirations. For the Palestinian side, this involves recognizing Israel as a Jewish State.
4. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, it is necessary for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state to replace the image of the Jew as dhimmi, or second class citizen, with the image of the Jew as a member of a national group exercising legitimate national rights, just as the Palestinians themselves do. Once this is done, the chances for a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state will be greatly enhanced.

   Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

In some respects, Ari Shavit’s widely-noted interview of Israel’s national security adviser, Uzi Arad, contained no great surprises. Arad’s insistence on “deep” acceptance of Israel (not just de facto acknowledgement of Israel’s existence) by Palestinians; leaving the door open, just by a crack, to a Palestinian state, while dismissing the possibility of any Palestinian leader rising to the occasion; closing the door entirely to a peace treaty with Syria by insisting that Israel remain on the Golan; the preference for the Road Map rather than disengagement and Annapolis—all of this has been in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hymnal since he took office, and it is clear who is composing the libretto.

Two elements are more striking. First, Arad’s proposal of eventual Israeli membership in NATO adds an oddly chimerical note to what could otherwise be described as an essay in cold-blooded and cynical realism. Arad doubts that the Palestinians will get their act together, or that the international community will act effectively on the Iranian nuclear issue, or that Arabs will ever “internalize” their acceptance of Israel. And he may be right on all counts; pessimists are often mistaken for prophets because they get it right all too often. But to imagine that risk-averse European states, which can barely be persuaded to allow their troops in Afghanistan to go near danger, will commit to meaningful defense of Israel—even in the context of a peace settlement—is fantasy.

The second note of importance is the continued building of infrastructure to prepare the ground for action to prevent Iranian acquisition of the bomb. Arad does not believe that the non-military options will work, and that a maritime blockade might escalate in any event. At the same time, he defines preventing an Iranian bomb as an existential imperative: we cannot live with a nuclear Iran because a nuclear Middle East would not be the same as the Cold War nuclear stalemate. A nuclear Middle East would become a multi-nuclear Middle East, with all that entails.

There is an ironic contradiction here. Arad puts great weight on preventing nuclearization of the region, but at the same time declares himself an acolyte of the late Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist who rejected the idea of mutual deterrence and insisted on “thinking about the unthinkable,” that is, the actual waging of war with nuclear weapons. Arad even mentions that he once wrote a paper on possible limited nuclear war in Central Europe. If it is so critical to prevent Iran emerging as the first declared nuclear-weapons state in the region, then why is Kahn, of all people, put forward as an icon for the new era?

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Some sixty years ago my mentor Hans J. Morgenthau posited as a cardinal rule of diplomacy that states should “give up the shadow of worthless rights for the substance of real advantage.” It is not clear whether Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ever read Morgenthau, but he seems attuned to this basic adage of statecraft.

In his much heralded June 14 foreign policy address, Netanyahu was clearly reacting to U.S. pressure focused on two matters: acceptance of a two-state model for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, and a freeze on further building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Acceptance of a two-state model is, under present circumstances, primarily a verbal act with no immediate operational implications. By conceding this point, Netanyahu was giving up a shadow in order to retain substance; Morgenthau would have approved.

This is not to say that Netanyahu’s concession was meaningless. Words do have consequences, and the fact that Netanyahu put the words “Palestinian” and “state” into the same sentence puts the seal on consensus within Israel on the preference for two states compared to other options. Predictably there have been vocal protests from within the Likud and elsewhere on the right, but nothing that Netanyahu cannot weather—especially given the perception that he has, in fact, given away little or nothing in substance.

The fact is that the speech included no immediate operational changes of importance. Before serious negotiations over two states get anywhere, Palestinians would have to satisfy a number of conditions with which Netanyahu’s version of two states is encumbered. First they must make their own verbal leap: explicit acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state, something much harder for them than Netanyahu’s terminological retrenchment was for him. They must somehow present a united front without Hamas, but including Gaza. They must come to terms with the reality that the refugee issue will be solved “outside the borders of the State of Israel.” And they must accept a draconian version of demilitarization surpassing any such measures on today’s world map. Not a single one of these eventualities is imminent, meaning that pressure on Netanyahu to negotiate the substance of a two-state solution is also, presumably, not imminent.

In this regard, the Netanyahu government is simply exploiting the biggest natural advantage that it has at the moment, which is that there is no Palestinian negotiating partner both able and willing to negotiate and to implement a final peace settlement in all the Palestinian territories. So long as this is the case, any Israeli government will be able, with minimal diplomatic skill, to deflect outside pressures to make major concessions in advance of negotiations. And for that matter, even a fervently dovish Israeli government would find itself unable to convert its support for two states into reality.

Netanyahu’s surrender of shadow also has to be seen in the context of Israel opinion, which has moved to overwhelming support of two states in principle, if only in reaction to the new prominence of much more ominous one-state proposals. Majorities of up to 78 percent, in one poll, express willingness to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel under the right conditions. Any Israeli government that rejected a realistic chance to negotiate a two-state solution would find itself replaced, as Netanyahu implicitly recognized even before his recent speech. In that case, as he has repeatedly stated, “the terminology will take care of itself.”

What remains to be seen is how far the Obama administration will take satisfaction in having the first of its demands met, on a verbal level, while nothing changes regarding the second demand, on settlements. The issue of “natural growth” in West Bank settlements remains contentious; Netanyahu’s pledge of no new settlements merely continues official policy set under Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, and changes nothing on the ground. As before, “outposts” are occasionally dismantled and then quickly rebuilt. Significantly, according to reports in the Israeli press, settlers in the territories have reacted to Netanyahu’s speech, by and large, with great equanimity.

.

MESH adds this: Click on the thumbnail on the right (or here) for a word cloud of Netanyahu’s speech, illustrating the frequency of the one hundred most-used words.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

.

On June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a much-anticipated address to the world’s Muslims, from a podium at Cairo University. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on the speech: Alan Dowty, Michele Dunne, Chuck Freilich, Bernard Heykal, Bruce Jentelson, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Mark T. Kimmitt, Martin Kramer, Walter Laqueur, Michael Mandelbaum, Michael Reynolds, Michael Rubin, Harvey Sicherman, Philip Carl Salzman, Raymond Tanter, and Michael Young.

.

Michele Dunne :: What President Obama had going for him in this speech was at least the appearance of frankness, laying on the table the areas of difference—terrorism (repackaged as “violent extremism”), Afghanistan, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear proliferation, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, economic development—and giving his view of each one. That approach, along with the requisite expressions of support for Islam as a religion and a civilization, will get him some points.

What the speech did not do was tell us anything much about how his administration will follow up on these issues. The list of deliverables was exceedingly short. The only firm promise was to a pursue a two-state solution to the Palestine issue—which will be extremely difficult to achieve. There were hints of a softer approach to Hamas (now it’s an organization with “support” and “responsibilities” instead of a terrorist group) and perhaps to Hezbollah (”we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments”), but it was unclear how serious that was and whether it would be sustainable in Washington.

If Obama considered “terrorism” a toxic word to be discarded, at least he did not do the same with “democracy.” He stayed on the plane of theory but addressed the issue squarely, not ducking its political aspects, and this was the part of the address that got the most positive reaction from the Egyptian audience. It was the only part of the speech where he actually lectured a bit, issuing a series of “you musts” when it came to what “government of the people and by the people” meant. Frankly it was more than I expected. It was a good start to articulate principles for which the United States stands, but then again, there was no promise of follow-up. What, if anything, will the Obama administration do when the Egyptian government excludes most of the opposition from the next parliamentary elections or when Syria throws a bunch of democracy activists in jail? Obama told us nothing about that. Privately, administration people are saying that Bush promised much on democracy and delivered little, and that Obama plans to do the reverse. Let’s see. We won’t have long to wait.

The women’s rights and economic development sections near the end had a cut-and-paste feel. These are Secretary Clinton’s pet issues, and apparently she is inclined to try to substitute them for democracy and human rights overall in policy and assistance programs. At least that didn’t happen in this speech. But the smallish economic and women’s rights initiatives mentioned created a sort of imbalance. It would have been better either to have Obama say what he was going to do in each of the major areas of the speech or none of them, perhaps saving the microloans for announcement in a fact sheet.

.

Bernard Haykel :: I am writing from Riyadh where President Obama was cordially received but has left a bitter aftertaste among many here. His visit is seen as an attempt to get, not to say bully, the Saudi leadership to make concrete and positive gestures toward Israel, over and above the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. Saudis have little desire or willingness to do this because of a widely held view that Israel, especially under its present Likud leadership and after the brutal war in Gaza earlier this year, does not deserve this. A number of Saudis have asked the following question: Why should the Kingdom reward an Israeli leadership that is not even willing to acknowledge the Palestinians’ right to a state? Granting something additional now to Israel for nothing can only help make the Saudi leadership look weak-kneed.

As for Obama’s speech in Cairo, all the Saudis I have spoken to have acknowledged its rhetorical power, but they insist that only facts will make a difference to their assessment of the President’s true intentions.

My own view is that the speech was remarkable for its relative candor on a number of important issues (and for some notable omissions), but I am troubled by its framing which juxtaposes the United States and Islam as two equivalent entities, which they are not. In doing this, Obama has adopted unwittingly the framing of Al Qaeda’s ideology, and this in turn might grant a degree of legitimacy to discussing Islam as a political reality rather than a faith. Surely, it is certain forms of Islamism and not Islam that pose the problem.

The second notable point in the speech is Obama’s analogy between the plight of Palestinians and that of African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow. The context here is Obama’s advice to Palestinians to adopt non-violent means in resisting Israeli occupation. As before, Obama has taken a page from Al Qaeda’s book, in which the alleged humiliation and oppression of Muslims are compared to the tribulations of African-Americans. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two leader, often invokes this same history by drawing on the examples of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to argue that only violence and rejection can lead to political change, and to convince African-American soldiers to desert the U.S. armed forces.

In short, the framing of the United States’ relationship with the Muslim world as one based on friendship rather than enmity, while superficially and rhetorically laudable, is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls, not least because it can unwittingly give credence to the idea that there might in fact be a clash between the United States and Islam. I can imagine a long-bearded man now smiling in a cave on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

.

Josef Joffe :: The problem laid out by President Obama in Cairo is an old one in America’s international relations. It is foreign policy as psychotherapy. The diplomatist/strategist deals with conflicts of interest and the “correlation of forces,” as our Soviet friends used to say. The therapist knows no such clashes, certainly no tragedies—only misunderstandings, fears, and neuroses. Obama-in-Cairo was Esalen-amidst-the-Pyramids. Or as he himself put it: “This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.” It is an imaginary conflict, in other words.

There are several issues here. The first is that the therapist does not speak truth but reassurance. Obama recounts how Morocco was the first to recognize the United States in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1796. Unfortunately, the larger, though unmentioned, truth is less reassuring: that the first wars America fought after independence were with the “Barbary Pirates,” the potentates of the Maghreb. To break their nasty habit of selling American hostages for money, the young republic fought intermittently from 1801 to 1815. No misunderstandings here, just the naked clash of our interests against theirs.

A larger untruth is the (implicit) idea that America is at war with Islam, as uttered in the e contrario phrase: “America is not—and never will be—at war with Islam.” Of course not. Who ever said so? Only Al Qaeda et al. did—copiously and tirelessly. These folks also keep saying as insistently that they are at war with the “Jews and crusaders,” with the West, and above all, America. Before the President reached Cairo, AQ’s No. 2, Aymal al-Zawahiri, let it be known that Obama’s speech would not at all change the “bloody messages” he was sending to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Therapists make no judgments on truth and falsehood; for them, the process is the purpose. But a process that does not correctly unearth the roots of conflict will invariably run afoul of the realities. Islamist terror will not go away because Obama softly, softly establishes a kind of moral equivalence between the Holocaust and what Palestinians call the Nakba, their loss and flight in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Nor will the Arab world flock to America’s cause because of all the niceties Obama has bestowed on it. Let it be said, though, that the harsh rhetoric on Israel plus slaps like no-state-dinner for Mr. Netanyahu at the White House have been replaced by the balanced cadences of the Cairo speech: The Israelis have to do this, the Palestinians and Arabs have to do that.

But the chickens have already come home to roost. The hope, a perennial one, obviously is that the Arabs will be so overjoyed by the U.S. manhandling Israel that they will rally to Old Glory en masse, doing America’s bidding throughout the Greater Middle East. This is not how the Mideast works. To make the point, the spokesman of the Egyptian foreign ministry told the New York Times: “We will judge everything by the degree of Israeli commitments, and measures that are taken.”

In so many words: “Mr. President, now that you have pressured the Israelis, we want to see more of it. And more. And then, perhaps, we’ll do you a favor on other matters.” We are back at the oldest game of the Middle East. It is called “Let the U.S. Deliver Israel, Then We Might Start Acting in Our Own Interest.” Obviously, if it were in the Arab interest to push the Palestinians toward peace, and to engage in an alliance of containment and deterrence against Iran, they would have done so. But for lots of reasons, good and bad, the Arabs are not interested. And so the United States will keep weakening its only true ally in the Middle East without reaping any geopolitical fruit from its courtship of Araby.

Alas, a lot of damage will have been done before the United States learns that therapy is not grand strategy and changes course. But one bit of therapeutic advice remains apropos: Never treat your opponents and detractors better than your friends.

.

Mark N. Katz :: President Obama gave a powerful speech in Cairo setting forth his vision of how the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world can be improved. In it, he called for change both in how the United States and its allies view and act toward the Muslim world. But he also called for change in how the Muslim world views and acts toward America and its allies.

Early on in the speech, he pledged “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” In the very next sentence, though, he insisted that, “the same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America.”

His remarks about how the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq began and about Guantanamo were obviously critical of Bush administration policies. His saying that, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements… It is time for these settlements to stop,” is an unmistakable call for change in Israeli policy. At the same time, however, Obama made clear that America’s bonds with Israel are “unbreakable.”

And in one of the most important passages of the speech, Obama called for a change in Palestinian behavior toward Israel. “Palestinians must abandon violence,” he stated bluntly. He noted that black people had suffered in America, but that, “it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.” He noted that non-violent resistance had overcome oppression elsewhere too. Non-violent resistance, he implied, would help the Palestinians achieve their goal of an independent state while violent resistance would not.

Later, Obama called for improved Iranian-American relations, but made clear that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.

Regarding the democratization of the Muslim world, Obama stated that this was not something that “can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” On the other hand, he made clear that America wants to see progress toward democracy in the Muslim world, and that this is in the interests of Muslim governments since “governments that protect…rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure.”

Those in the Muslim world who do not want to cooperate with the United States will find—indeed, have already found—reasons to dismiss Obama’s speech. Osama bin Laden dismissed it even before Obama gave it. However, those in the Muslim world who did not like American foreign policy in the past but would like to cooperate with America in the future can find in Obama’s speech an American president who acknowledges their concerns and is willing to work with them.

Obama’s Cairo speech represents a good faith effort to improve America’s relations with the Muslim world. If this does not occur, it will not be for lack of trying on Obama’s part.

.

Mark T. Kimmitt :: OK. The long-anticipated “major speech to the Muslim world” is over, and it is being parsed for messages, inferences, policy directions and reactions. The “let me tell you what the President should say next week” crowd is reviewing the text to see if their recommendations were embraced, rejected or reversed. The analysts and pundits on Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and a thousand broadsheets in the region are assessing it to see how it aligns with editorial policy. The President is moving on, rhetorically and physically, to the next key administration challenge, be it North Korea, the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, General Motors, Afghanistan-Pakistan or a host of other high-priority national security issues.

As for the speech, all the right messages were sent out. America is not at war with Islam, we have common interests in fighting violent extremism, Palestine is a problem, a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat, and democracy is a form of human rights. So, let’s push the reset button. Good, practical sound bites that reaffirm U.S. policy and increase our appeal on the street, but there was little in the way of tangible new initiatives or promises of outcomes. Perhaps it was too much to expect, but the speech seemed more of a conversation rather than a commitment.

It’s fine to have a conversation. Perhaps it’s helpful to tell the Muslim world that we will get out of Afghanistan when the job is done, and get out of Iraq by 2012 regardless. Helpful to note that the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. Important to clarify that Iran should have nuclear power, but not nuclear weapons. But what is the administration going to do about this? The only tangible “we shalls” in the speech were easy and low-hanging fruit on education, science and technology, economic development and fighting violent extremists. No specific “we shalls” on Iran, on Palestine, on Gaza, on Syria. Only aspirations and “we seek.” Fine speech, but what’s next?

Was this a speech to guide U.S. policy or enhance U.S. popularity? Will the speech prove to be the catalyst for reform, for moderation, for diplomatic breakthrough or simply words to calm the street? If nothing else, the speech has built up expectations, and expectations are that the United States wants to reset the relationship—and that there will be tangible results from that new relationship. The Muslim world will be looking for outcomes, for a change to the status quo, for breakthroughs in long-standing grievances. The speech raised expectations and the street is looking for results.

Among the billion or so who listened carefully to a well-crafted speech, many are sitting in taxis, sipping coffee in cafes, praying in mosques and arguing in universities. Many if not all of them are applauding the speech and many (if not all) are asking the same question: what’s next?

So, congratulations on a great speech, well-written and well-delivered. It is certain to change more than a few minds about American intentions. But good words and good intentions have a rapidly depreciating value, and will make things worse if these words turn out to be false promises. Time will tell.

It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.

.

Martin Kramer :: “Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect more than the Mamluks God, His Prophet, and the Quran.” So spoke Bonaparte when he arrived in Egypt, in a proclamation of July 2, 1798. Substitute “Islam” for Egypt, “we Americans” for I, and “violent extremists” for the Mamluks, and you’ve got the core message of President Obama’s speech.

It’s a very old drill in the annals of “public diplomacy.” Supplementary gestures help. Obama was careful to pronounce the word Quran with the guttural qaf of the Arabic. (Too bad, though, he botched the word hijab.) Unless you’re converting, you can’t say Ich bin ein Muslim, so you come as close as you can. (Barack Hussein Obama—can we finally use his middle name now?—gets closer than most.) Some Muslims are wise to this, and so presumably they will discount it. But the great majority? Who doesn’t love pandering?

I leave it to others to parse the sparse policy pointers in the speech. (Rob Satloff does a nice job of it.) Some of the influences on Obama bubble to the surface. There is the Third Worldism: Muslims are victims of our colonialism (Obama has read Fanon) and the Cold War (has he been reading Khalidi again?) The primacy of the West is over: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” There is the implicit comparison of the Palestinians to black Americans during segregation, a familiar trope (Carter and Condi went for it too). Israel comes across as an anomaly. There is no appreciation of Israel as a strategic asset—its ties to the United States are “cultural and historical,” and thus not entirely rational. (That validates Obama’s other former Chicago colleague, Mearsheimer.) All of this has the ring of conviction—and of a Third Worldist sensibility.

Maybe the most disconcerting line is this one: “We can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism.” The pretense? This discrediting of liberalism and its universal humanism is the classic stance of the Third Worldist radical. And did you know that the job description of the nation’s leader now includes “my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”? Perhaps it’s possible to disband CAIR. America now has a president who knows “what Islam is, [and] what it isn’t,” and who even has a mandate to insist on closing “the divisions between Sunni and Shia.” Perhaps an emissary should be sent from Washington to the pertinent muftis and mullahs: the mission would certainly be more congenial than closing divisions of General Motors.

Indeed, not since Bonaparte has a foreigner landed on Egyptian soil and delivered a message of such overbearing hubris. Were I a Muslim, this 6,000-word manifesto would have me worried stiff. This man wants to be my president as much as he is America’s.

.

Walter Laqueur :: An excellent speech. Even before it was delivered, Wikipedia included it its list of the greatest speeches ever, a list beginning with the Pericles funeral oration. If a religion has 1.3 billion followers, it was only natural that the emphasis had to be on a new beginning, on mutual interest and mutual trust, on partnership, on peace, on not being prisoners of the past, on breaking the cycle of suspicion, on Muslims having enriched America, on doing away with crude stereotypes, on diplomacy and international consensus, on all of us sharing common aspirations, on listening and learning from each other, on Andalus, algebra and on the 1,200 mosques in America, on all of us being the children of Abraham, on “any world order that elevates one people over another will inevitably fail,” on education and innovation being the currency of the 21st century.

How much of this is genuinely believed? How candid can one (should one) be? I am sure that when the Prince of Wales said a few years ago that the Muslim critique of materialism helped him to rediscover sacred Islamic spirituality, he had never even heard about taqiya and kitman. I do not know the answer to the question; perhaps it was a mixture of the two.

Dissimulation may not be an admirable practice, but it could save lives. I recommend Macaulay’s 1850 essay on Machiavelli, a strong believer in Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare which, freely translated, means that he who does not know to dissimulate has no business to be in politics.

What of the impact of the speech? An unfair question: soft power, however desirable, has its limits. Pericles’ funeral oration did not lead to the resurrection of the dead and there is still much sin in the world despite the Sermon on the Mount.

.

Michael Mandelbaum :: President Obama’s Cairo speech continues two venerable traditions of American public life. One arises from the electoral politics of foreign policy. It is customary for the presidential candidate of the out-party to promise more skillful conduct of the country’s relations with the rest of the world, either by adopting different positions—as with candidate Barack Obama’s promise to end American participation in the Iraq war—or by doing better in pursuit of a goal on which all agree.

During the Cold War the standard version of this second tactic was the charge that the incumbent had, through crass insensitivity, botched relations with America’s European allies, which the challenger promised to repair with more adept diplomacy. America’s relations with Muslims served this electoral purpose in the 2008 presidential election, with the challenger promising to improve them by dint not so much of his policies as of his identity. The purpose of the Cairo speech was presumably to deliver on that promise.

Unfortunately, it will not do so. Muslims’ attitudes to the United States will depend on Obama’s policies—that is, on what he does—not on who his father was. Whatever the uses of identity politics within the United States, there is no good reason to suppose that they have any significant effect beyond the country’s borders. As Anne Mandelbaum has observed, Dwight Eisenhower’s German background did not win him approval among Germans during the years, from 1942 to 1945, when he had extensive dealings with them. Nor is it clear why people in Muslim-majority countries should be favorably impressed with the fact that the United States has a president one of whose parents shared their faith. They live, after all, in countries governed, for the most part, by men who by that standard qualify as twice as Islamic as Obama, and whose performances in office have been, to put it generously, unimpressive.

The second political tradition that the speech continues is the perennial overconfidence of all presidents of the United States in the power of their own oratory. Such overconfidence is not surprising. In the United States an individual becomes the most powerful person in the world through his speeches. It is one of the glories of the American political system that a presidential election is, in part, a debating contest. Foreign policy, however, is not. Here again, what is relevant is the fact that what Obama does will shape Muslims’ (and others’) opinion of him and his country, while what he says will not. His impact on Muslims and the countries in which they live will therefore come from the policies affecting them that he devises after words fail him.

.

Michael Rubin :: Obama is a gifted orator, one in a generation. By nature of Obama’s background—and the fact that he is not George W. Bush—he has a real chance to change the tone of discussion in the Middle East and among Islamic states. That said, rhetoric isn’t enough. Policy matters. Here, there is cause for concern. The Obama doctrine appears to rest on twin pillars: One is a decision to dispense with demands for accountability, and the second seems to be moral equivalency or cultural relativism.

Both Bush and Obama spoke of Palestine and their desire to see the creation of a state for Palestinian Arabs to live beside Israel. But Bush conditioned U.S. support for Palestine’s independence on a cessation of terrorism. Obama does not. And while he certainly condemned “violence” (perhaps terrorism is too loaded a term for Obama), he implied equivalence between this and the dislocation felt by some Palestinian Arabs.

Obama also cast aside demands for accountability when discussing elections, declaring “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” This appears to be an allusion to the lack of U.S. support for the Hamas-led government in Gaza. The United States should be under no obligation, however, to befriend or assist governments which run counter to its interests. After all, U.S. foreign aid is not an entitlement. Hamas scrapped—and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt demands the scrapping of—agreements to which their entity and state have already obligated themselves. We should hold them accountable, not say we will embrace everyone.

As for cultural equivalency, I must object to his statement: “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” Time and time again, however, it has been the superpower status of the United States which has prevented a far worse world order from taking root, be it in Europe, Asia, or even Latin America. The United States is not equal to Libya, nor should it ever be.

The cultural equivalency also permeated Obama’s discussion of democracy. Backtracking away from democratization as a pillar of policy, Obama said: “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people.” But there are certain norms of good governance. On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, for example, we should not say, “Oh, well: That’s just the way Chinese democracy works.”

Let’s hope for the best but, absent a clear articulation of what the United States stands for and what our vision is, rhetoric will not be enough to make a better, more secure world or build a solid foundation for U.S. relations with Muslim-majority states.

.

Harvey Sicherman :: President Obama’s Cairo speech was Wilsonian. The lofty moral tone, keen detachment (all claims treated equally), and leap-of-faith rhetoric are all there. So is the religious overlay. And as befits the shorter attention span of the 21st century, Obama proposes to remake the world in seven points instead of fourteen, in 55 minutes instead of Wilson’s 99-plus.

As president of a secular democracy, Obama’s choice of location (Mubarak’s Egypt) and audience (a “world” identified only by religion) offered minefields aplenty. He negotiated most of these with admirable dexterity but not always. One paragraph invoked “a partnership between America and Islam,” and then declared that “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” This was a bit much. Probably, as Theodore Roosevelt once said about a Wilsonian elocution, “as a matter of fact, the words mean nothing whatsoever.”

Some of the other words do mean something. Obama vigorously asserted the dignity of America’s civil religion, especially freedom of speech, religion, democracy, and women’s rights. He refuted dangerous nonsense about 9/11 and the Holocaust; explained policy in Iraq and Afghanistan; and justified the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Coming from Saudi Arabia the day before, he instructed the Arab oil producers not to rely on “what comes out of the ground,” and instead educate their people. Good luck!

Obama’s “no sticks in sight” approach to Iran, including his apology on the Mossadegh affair (Madeleine Albright did this in 1998) was all open hand to which the Iranians thus far have responded with the middle finger. But the President’s framework ought to alarm the Israelis: will a U.S.-Iranian “dialogue” produce a demand that Israel yield its nuclear weapons in exchange for international guarantees that Iran, under international supervision, will not build one?

Obama, as he told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman before the speech, wanted to “speak directly” to the Arab street and persuade them of America’s “straightforward manner. Then at the margins, both they and their leadership are more inclined and able to work with us.” But this is more than a margin call. Obama has straightforwardly distanced himself from Israel, the better to cultivate the Arab coalition, whose leaders are his real target. Can they deliver the Palestinians to a compromise acceptable to Israel? Can they do much to alter the Iranian course? Or is the Arab coalition’s influence, like that of the Arab street, or the world of Islam, only a shadow of its reputation? A historian might say of the Cairo speech that it was a triumph—of hope over experience.

.

Philip Carl Salzman :: President Obama uses his bully pulpit in Cairo to urge his vision to the people of the Middle East. That vision is one of commonality based on common traditions and common humanity. The driving force that would motivate this commonality is teleological: a desire for progress. We all want the same things, he argues and urges: peace, prosperity, dignity, education, family, community. If we only look ahead, we shall get along with one another, and go along the path of progress. This is a remarkable post-postmodern rebirth of the 19th-century concept of progress.

But the President does not address the people of the Middle East, but instead addresses Muslims. In doing so, he validates the argument by Islamists that Islam should be the primary identity of the people of the Middle East, and implicitly validates the vision of a new Caliphate. And in focusing on Islam, he must over-communicate virtues and commonalities, and under-communicate problems and differences. Islam, he tells us, is a religion of “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” He goes on to say that “throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

This seems to me rather a whitewash of a dark history. Why, it’s déjà Bush, all over again: Islam is the religion of peace. Indeed, he argues that “one rule… lies at the heart of every religion—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” I suppose we should not be surprised that these formulations are geared to generate positive sentiments, rather than to summarize our knowledge of actual Islamic history, theology, or law.

Several times the President urges listeners to stop looking backward, to leave past grievances aside: “If we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward.” This is a difficult message for Muslims, given their understanding that the golden age of Islam was under Muhammad, who should for all eternity be the model for every believer. Islam under Muhammad is the life to be emulated. A good Muslim always looks back.

The specifics are mixed. The President is strong on “unbreakable” bonds with Israel, and that “Palestinians must abandon violence.” Definite on favoring two states. Strong on condemning Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, but in the abstract only. Strong on democracy generally speaking. Strong denouncing Iran’s bomb. Weak on Palestinians still in camps in Arab countries. Very mild on women’s rights. Ambiguous on Jerusalem. Wishes a nuclear-free world, but no special emphasis on a nuclear-free Middle East.

Shall the good intentions of the President pave the path to progress?

.

Raymond Tanter :: President Obama’s Cairo speech was replete with soaring rhetoric designed to reach out to Muslims around the globe, and particularly those in the Arab world. The President remarked that now is “a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but added:

We have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek. A world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God’s children are respected.

The President can certainly talk the talk regarding outreach to Muslims, but will he walk the walk that the Muslim street wishes to see?

Doing so would require a number of U.S. policy changes to appease the Muslim street, such as pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions, expanding engagement with Syria without preconditions, accepting an Iranian regime with a uranium enrichment capability, withdrawing forces more quickly from Iraq, halting drone attacks of Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan, and reversing U.S. escalation in Afghanistan.

President Obama was careful to signal that such unrealistic policies would not be forthcoming. He indicated an evenhanded policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute, reaffirmed his commitment to keep Iran from getting the bomb, held to his Iraq timetable, and justified escalation in Afghanistan.

The President’s indications that no major policy reversals would occur clashed with his eloquent rhetoric about a “new beginning” between Muslims and non-Muslims. Without any dramatic policy changes, President Obama’s speech is likely to unfairly raise expectations in the Muslim world, leading to inevitable disappointment.

.

Michael Young :: President Obama’s homily in Cairo had much that was interesting in it and much that was vague. That’s the nature of these communications, but several things suggested that Obama wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

In referring to the war in Iraq, the President remarked:

Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.

Indeed. But if Iraqis are better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, what does that tell us about U.S. policy when it comes to supporting democracy and human rights in the Middle East? After all, neither diplomacy nor an international consensus would have ever freed Iraqis from under Saddam’s thumb. So did the United States do the right thing in getting rid of the Baath regime by force? Obama didn’t address this prickly question.

That fuzziness, however, permeated his later discussion of democracy in the region. Obama pointed out: “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” But then he went on to say that this did not lessen his commitment to governments that reflect the will of the people. Except that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

But hadn’t Obama just presumed to know that the Iraq war was ultimately beneficial for the Iraqi people, since he felt that they were better off without Saddam? And weren’t they better off without Saddam because the new system they are living under was imposed on them? And weren’t Obama’s bromides in favor of democracy and democratization not also statements implying that he presumed to know what was best for everyone?

If so, then why did he not just come out and state the obvious: that democracy, openness and pluralism are indeed better for all states, as is respect for human rights. Why did Obama prefer to avoid rocking the boat when it came to autocratic regimes in the region? Not a word was uttered on actual cases of human rights abuses, whether in Egypt, which was hosting him, or in any other part of the Middle East. Clearly, the realist aversion to involving the United States in the domestic policy of the region’s states was on display.

Finally, I was interested in what Obama had to say about the Maronites and the Copts, given my weakness for minorities in the region: “Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of another’s. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld—whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt.”

Yet this advice Obama placed under the rubric of “religious freedom.” Odd, because the problem of minorities in the Middle East is usually more political than religious. What the Copts would like more of is political power, not the freedom to exercise their religion. As for the Maronites, their sense of decline is attached not to the fact that they cannot practice their religion, which they can do without any objection from their Muslim compatriots, but that they feel political power is escaping them.

What do these issues have in common? They lead me to a disconcerting conclusion that Obama has no coherent view of political freedom in the Middle East. He tended to overemphasize religion, while underemphasizing how the United States might address political matters, such as what to do about dictatorial regimes, the major cause of the great trauma he described, namely 9/11; or how to reverse the absence of democracy in the Middle East, in illegitimate states that fail to fulfill the aspirations of their citizens; or what to do about minorities denied political power, Muslim and non-Muslim.

Obama submerged his speech in the holy water of religion, but it is freedom, the failure of the Arab state, and the lack of accountability of regional regimes that are far more central to the dilemmas the Middle East face today. In one word, it is mostly about politics, and on this Obama was too busy being polite to his listeners to raise the difficult questions he promised to raise.

Go to the comments for more from Alan Dowty, Chuck Freilich, Bruce Jentleson, and Michael Reynolds.

The meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu has triggered a stampede of soothsayers. Every aspect of their encounter is scrutinized for clues to their personal chemistry and, by extension, the future course of U.S.-Israeli relations. But these relations are rooted in forces more fundamental than personalities, intriguing as these two iconic figures may be.

Predictably, the meeting produced no crisis and no breakthrough. It marked the beginning of a new phase in the relationship, one that will take time to play out. Two clocks have been started: one marks the passage of time before Iran unveils its first nuclear weapon, and the other measures progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations before the next explosion on that front. Indications are that Netanyahu has succeeded in gaining priority for the first clock, not because of any cleverness on his part but because of the simple fact the Iranian issue has a time-urgency that, in Samuel Johnson’s words, “doth wonderfully concentrate the mind.”

The Israeli estimate of the Iranian nuclear timeline was revealed two weeks ago by Gen. Michael Herzog, chief of staff to the defense minister, speaking at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (surely the timing was not accidental). The estimate is that Iran now has about 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, which is about two-thirds of what would be needed for a first nuclear explosive, following further enrichment to bomb-grade level. There are various opinions about how long this further enrichment would take, and presumably it could not be done in the Natanz enrichment facility without attracting the notice of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Israel, according to Herzog, disagrees with the U.S. assessment that Iran has suspended weaponization efforts for now. Consequently, he projects completion of the first Iranian nuclear device by late 2010 or early 2011.

The dominant view in Israel, clearly shared by Netanyahu and all elements of the current government, is that an Iranian bomb would be an existential threat to Israel and accordingly must be prevented by all possible means. Diplomacy and sanctions would be preferred if they work, and U.S. military action would be preferable to an Israeli military operation. But there is readiness for Israeli action as a last resort, the main hesitation being its military feasibility. There is recognition that such an attack would exact a high price in Iranian retaliation on a number of fronts, and that it would at best delay the Iranian program by a few years, but that it might still be a necessary choice. A delay of a few years proved to be enough in the Iraqi case.

This is the message that Netanyahu undoubtedly delivered in Washington, but it is the same message that any Israeli Prime Minister would have delivered, whatever the “personal chemistry” of the interlocutors. Israel will allow time for the new U.S. approach, of diplomacy combined with (intensified) sanctions, to be tried, in hopes of avoiding harder choices. To give this approach the best chance of success, any Israeli government will try to make a last-resort attack look as inevitable as possible, whatever its ultimate intentions. This is reflected in the series of signals sent by the Israeli government before Netanyahu assumed office: air exercises in the Mediterranean, attacks in Syria and Sudan, requests for particularly relevant munitions.

Netanyahu obviously pressed for a deadline in the diplomatic channel. Obama’s public response was to reject the idea of a precise deadline, but to indicate that there should be a clear sense of success or failure by the end of the year. The clock will probably run, then, until sometime in mid-2010. By this time it will be clear whether Iran’s enrichment program has been contained, and in particular whether any of the low-enriched uranium has been upgraded or not (one possible outcome is that Iran would remain in possession of low-enriched uranium, which is not illegal in itself and which fits the Iranian fiction that it is destined for use as fuel). If there is evidence of production of high-enriched uranium or active weaponization efforts, there would still be time before the first usable device could be tested. And, as it happens, the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense, against short-range rockets, is also scheduled for first deployment in mid-2010.

This, and not the Palestinian issue, is the more likely source of crisis in the U.S.-Israel relationship. It appears extremely unlikely that the United States would use military force, at least within this time frame—although recent statements by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and President Shimon Peres, minimizing the likelihood of Israeli action, seem to be part of an effort to encourage U.S. action. It is also clear from recent statements by Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the United States currently opposes Israeli action. As in the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi reactor, an Israeli attack would probably evoke condemnation from all sides, including the United States, even though many would privately welcome the action—even more than in 1981.

The Palestinian clock, on the other hand, moves at a less harried pace and is much less likely to rock U.S.-Israeli relations. The Palestinian question, after all, has been “urgent” for decades. The central reality is that there is no Palestinian partner able and willing to conclude and implement a two-state solution in both the West Bank and Gaza. It is doubtful that the Palestinian Authority (PA) could even implement an agreement limited to the West Bank.

Once again, the fact that Israel is represented by Netanyahu is less critical than imagined. Even a left-wing Israeli government, continuously chanting the mantra of a two-state solution, would not be able under current conditions to achieve a final settlement, despite hyperactive support from the United States and moderate Arab regimes. Thus negotiators during the post-Annapolis round of talks floated the novel notion of a “shelf agreement” that would be negotiated then but implemented only at an undetermined future date.

Netanyahu’s visit was marked by much unintentional comedy over the question of whether or not he would utter the two magic syllables “two-state.” But clearly he will not speak these words and upset many members of his own Likud party, when there is no serious negotiation in the offing and thus nothing to be gained. On the other hand, it is clear that an overwhelming majority of Israelis are willing to accept a two-state solution in principle: 74 percent in one poll, 78 percent in another. Even the platform of Likud in the recent election did not explicitly reject—nor endorse—the two-state formula, while Likud’s right-wing governing partner, Yisrael Beitenu, not only leaves room for a Palestinian state but would even add Arab-inhabited areas of Israel proper to it. In fact only two small parties on the right, which between them won a total of seven seats, explicitly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state.

If a two-state solution becomes a realistic possibility at any point, any Israeli government will either sit at the table or be replaced. For that matter, during his first term of office Netanyahu himself negotiated the Hebron and Wye agreements in the framework of the Oslo process, which was clearly (if not explicitly) premised on creation of a Palestinian state. As Netanyahu said in his joint press conference Monday, if satisfactory conditions for Palestinian self-government could be worked out, “the terminology will take care of itself.”

The major source of friction on the Palestinian track is likely to be the issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, to which Obama added a new emphasis in his own remarks. The issue of a freeze on settlements could become contentious, given that Israeli governments have frozen the creation of new settlements but not the expansion of existing ones. Pressure to freeze all settlement growth would add a new dimension to the latent U.S.-Israeli disagreement (going back to 1967) on this issue.

In the meantime, is it possible that frustration over lack of progress toward two states will generate emergence of a “three-state” solution? Given the deadlock between Hamas and Fatah in talks to reunify Palestinian territories, will there be a move to focus on nation-building in the West Bank with the prospect of a settlement limited to that area? Is this any less realistic than other options on the table? Time will tell.

Israeli public discourse over Iran’s nuclear weapons program is dominated by two analogies: the Holocaust and the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.

The prominence of the Holocaust—the most horrific genocide in human history—should be no surprise. Jewish history seen through the Zionist lens is a chronicle of powerlessness and tragedy, embodying a “gevalt syndrome”: if things can get worse, they will. Gloomy premonitions are extracted from even the most propitious turn of events—and recent developments in Iran are far from propitious.

This tragic history culminates in the Holocaust, which continues to be ever-present in Israeli public life. It was a central element in Israel’s critical decisions on its own nuclear weapons program, in the 1950s and 1960s. As recounted in Avner Cohen’s authoritative Israel and the Bomb, David Ben-Gurion’s private communications on this issue returned to the Holocaust, then only a few years in the past, again and again. In the current debate, the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier serves to strengthen the hold of the analogy.

To take a sampling of the most recent statements:

• Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: “We will not allow Holocaust deniers to carry out another Jewish Holocaust. This is… my supreme commitment as Prime Minister of Israel.”
• Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin: “This time [Hitler] has a beard and speaks Persian…. But the words are the same words and the aspirations are the same aspirations and the determination to find the weapons to achieve those aspirations is the same menacing determination.”
• President Shimon Peres: “As Jews, after being subjected to the Holocaust, we cannot close our eyes in light of the grave danger emerging from Iran…. If Europe had dealt seriously with Hitler at that time, the terrible Holocaust and the loss of millions of people could have been avoided. We can’t help but make the comparison.”

In this light, a nuclearized Iran is regarded by both policymakers and the public as an existential threat to Israel, as an ideologically-driven state capable of irrationality and suicidal behavior—an image strengthened by the incidence of suicide bombings. Poll data show that Israelis believe, by overwhelming majorities ranging from 66 to 82 percent, that Iran would use the bomb to try to destroy Israel. Frequent reference is made to the 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Rafsanjani that “if one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

The second major analogy in the debate, the 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear plant, seems obvious since it involves a neighboring state, with a similar threat, similar conditions, and (so far) a similar failure of the international community to stop the program. It is also noted that while the 1981 attack was almost universally condemned by other governments, no effective sanctions against Israel resulted, and it was clear that many states privately welcomed the action. The analogy also lowers expectations, in that the Iraqi nuclear weapons program was not ended but only delayed for several years (which turned out to be adequate).

At the same time, some participants in the debate underline differences: an attack on Iranian facilities would be much more difficult militarily, and the Iranians, unlike Iraq, would be ready and able to retaliate on a number of fronts. But some differences, others point out, would work in the other direction: offensive capabilities have also improved considerably over the last three decades, and there is considerably more international attention and support directed toward blocking an Iranian bomb than was the case with Iraq.

It is also important to note some analogies that are not featured in this debate, but are either ignored or downplayed by Israeli policymakers and analysts. For example, little mention is made of the fact that Saddam Hussein did not use the weapons of mass destruction (chemicals) at his disposal in 1991, during the SCUD attacks on Israel, despite his earlier use of such weapons against Iran. Likewise, the Cold War model of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance is not a major focus, and when discussed it is often with the focus on the differences that would obtain in a Middle East context: the lack of invulnerable second-strike capability, shortcomings in command and control, and above all the lack of any clear “rules of the game.”

Some of the analysts in academia—particularly from the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, including Ephraim Kam and Yair Evron—have, along these lines, examined the consequences of an Iranian bomb in terms of deterrent theory and the requirements of a stable balance. But even in these analyses, the emphasis remains on preventing the Iranian program from coming to fruition. And elsewhere, in the public debate and in the utterances of policymakers, attention is focused almost entirely on prevention.

Israeli policymakers obviously have a strong incentive to make an Israeli attack appear inevitable if sanctions fail to stop Iran, since it strengthens the chance for these sanctions to succeed. But a close reading of policymakers and press in Israel today leads clearly to the conclusion that Israel will in fact act if the sanctions fail.

Alan Dowty delivered these remarks at a symposium on “Iran: Threat, Challenge, or Opportunity?” convened by MESH at Harvard University on April 30.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Having induced the Labor party to enter his coalition, Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to present his new government on Tuesday. The unwieldy result of his labors is a coalition of five parties with 69 seats, or 74 if he succeeds in adding the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Jewry between now and then.

Netanyahu will thus become the fifth prime minister in Israel’s history to make a comeback after having lost the office or left it under duress. The persistence of familiar faces in Israeli politics may say something about the stability of the political order—or the way in which the system stifles the emergence of new leaders.

Netanyahu bought Labor support by, among other things, offering no fewer than five ministries to a party that holds only 13 seats in the Knesset, setting a new standard for the ratio of ministers to seats. Applying the same arithmetic to his deals with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu and the Sephardi ultra-orthodox Shas party, he now faces the impossible task of finding available chairs at the cabinet table for all of the Likud worthies who deem themselves deserving of the honor. Consequently this may be the most bloated government ever, with as many as 28 ministers and seven deputy ministers; in other words, nearly one of every three Knesset members may be in the government.

Even after splitting existing ministries in two, for the sole purpose of creating new posts in the cabinet, and appointing ministers without portfolio, some key Likud figures will be left out in the game of musical chairs. Netanyahu’s first distraction, therefore, will be possible major defections in his own party. He may, as he did in 1996, delay delivering the bad news to those being left out until an hour or two before presenting his government.

But that will not be the last coalition crisis. As many as five or six of the Labor members of Knesset might defect from the coalition, and in any event the by-laws of the Labor party require a new primary election for party leadership within 14 months of losing in a general election. Given the discontent within the party against Ehud Barak’s leadership, his tenure as defense minister could easily be cut short a little over a year from now, and in that case Netanyahu would need either Kadima or United Torah Jewry in order to retain a majority.

But that will not be the last crisis. By some accounts, the long-pending investigation of Avigdor Lieberman for corruption may soon come to a head, and if he is indicted he would be forced to resign from his promised position as foreign minister. Without Lieberman, it is unclear whether Yisrael Beitenu would hold together or remain as the second party in the government.

Nor is that the last likely crisis. The militantly secular Yisrael Beitenu and Shas are miles apart on many issues, but especially on the issue of conversions and civil marriage. Reportedly a committee will be appointed to find a compromise acceptable to both sides—an unlikely proposition by all accounts. If it does not achieve this goal in 15 months, Yisrael Beitenu will be free to pursue its own program. So expect fireworks in a year or so.

Given this tricky agenda, it is not surprising that Tzipi Livni has predicted that the government will last no more than a year, and on that basis has confidently led the Kadima party into expectant opposition. What may be surprising is the nature of the challenges that Netanyahu must overcome in order to stabilize his government: domestic and political rather than foreign and security-related. Since there is no Palestinian partner at present with whom a credible settlement could be negotiated and, more importantly, implemented, the new government will not have to contend with the kind of fierce international (especially U.S.) pressure that some have naively predicted.

Instead, Netanyahu will probably push the Syrian channel as a substitute to deflect what pressure there is. The Syrian option has much going for it, so much so that the last six Israeli prime ministers (including Netanyahu in his first incarnation) have all given it a try. The main obstacle is that Likud’s platform rejects withdrawal from the Golan Heights, without which there is no point talking with Syria. But Netanyahu proved to be an opportunist the first time around, so who knows?

In any event, the foreign priority for any Israeli government will be the Iranian nuclear issue, not the Palestinians or Syria.

And almost lost in the shuffle is the announcement that Israel has carried out a successful test of its Iron Dome defense system against short- and medium-range missiles, a system projected to offer 95-percent protection of areas bordering Gaza. This is potentially of much greater significance than any of the current political horseplay.

In the week since Israelis went to the polls, the operative word in the media seems to be “inconclusive,” based on the near-tie between the two largest parties and the prospect of bone-wearying bargaining before a government emerges. Both observations are true, but nevertheless the election did register a sharp and significant shift in the Israeli body politic.

Tzipi Livni managed to hold Kadima together and lose only one seat, against expectations, even managing to beat Likud by one seat. For the first time in Israeli political history, a strong centrist party has actually lasted for more than one election; this is a personal achievement of great note and possibly the harbinger of a long-term structural change of major significance. But having said that, the real import of the election was the clear victory of the right.

Only in 2003 have the right and religious parties, as a bloc, achieved such success; in essence, the 2009 election has erased the impact of the 2006 election that followed Ariel Sharon’s defection from Likud and the establishment of Kadima. We are back in 2003, when the second intifada produced the most hawkish Knesset ever. Israel’s turn to the right is a long-term development set in motion by the second intifada, the rise of Hamas as the pivotal Palestinian player, the intrusion of Iran, and what is seen by many Israelis as the failure of unilateral disengagement in Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. In this context, the 2006 election was a transitory fluke.

In 2006, center and left parties won 70 seats, while right and religious parties held the remaining 50. Now the center and left are reduced to 55, including 11 seats held by Arab parties, while right and religious parties hold a combined 65. The Jewish left was devastated, dropping from 24 seats to 16, as many of its voters moved rightward to Kadima, replacing voters who moved rightward from that party back to Likud, their original home. Thus Kadima maintained its strength while Likud more than doubled its numbers.

Religious parties considered separately did not actually gain; ultra-orthodox (haredi) parties lost a couple of seats, while the remnant of the old National Religious Party appeared in a new guise as “The Jewish Home” and emerged with only three seats. For the first time in Israel’s history, the religious camp in the Knesset will be dominated almost entirely by the haredim; the national religious camp, long a fixture of the Israeli scene, has practically disappeared.

The other winner on the right, apart from Likud, is Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which has outgrown its Soviet immigrant base and has managed to attract a growing clientele with its unique mixture of secularism and a new model of hawkishness based more on ethnicity than on territoriality. This is not the old right wing of “Eretz Yisrael Hashlema” (The Entire Land of Israel); Lieberman is ready to reduce the Arab presence in Israel not only by surrendering Arab population centers on the West Bank and Gaza, but even by ceding Arab-inhabited areas of Israel itself.

Israel’s turn to the right does not mean the end of the two-state solution as the dominant model for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apart from Lieberman’s heterodoxy, Likud’s platform neither endorses nor rules out a two-state solution, but simply condemns any further unilateral withdrawals on the model of Lebanon in 2000 or Gaza in 2005. Thus the differences between the parties are less far-reaching than differences that have sometimes existed between parties joined in the same government. Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can therefore pursue his announced goal of a National Unity government, knowing that in any event there will not be serious peace negotiations over basic final status issues so long as there as no unified Palestinian negotiator in control of all Palestinian territories and able to implement a final agreement.

For the same reason, the formation of a government dominated by the right, with or without Kadima as a junior partner, will not stir up any untoward clashes with the new U.S. administration. With no serious peace talks in the offing, efforts will focus on stability and conflict management rather than a final resolution. A hawkish Israeli government can still work on strengthening the viability of the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and otherwise working toward the day when Hamas can no longer cast an effective veto over an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And in any event, all Israeli parties as well as the United States are likely to be more focused in the near future on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

There seems to be a general sense that the Gaza war is over. The shooting has stopped, at least for the most part, at least for now. The pundits, not excluding this one, are lining up to declaim. But in some respects all this is a bit premature; the outcome is not yet totally clear. This is not over yet.

Consider the perspective of the simple central question: has Israel achieved the aims for which its campaign was presumably waged? There is the obvious problem that these aims were stated in various and even conflicting ways, but leave that aside for the moment. What would an interim assessment say about what Israel has gained or not gained?

• Stopping the rockets. For the moment the hail of rockets on Israel’s bordering areas—now extending to Beer-Sheva and Ashkelon—has ceased, and it can reasonably be claimed that a measure of deterrence has been established. (It might be pointed out that the much-criticized 2006 war on Hezbollah also achieved this.) Hamas will probably be much more hesitant to provoke another such response in the near future.
• Shutting down weapons smuggling. This is where the dust has not settled, and it will be critical to history’s judgment about whether the campaign was a success for Israel, or a victory for Hamas. The campaign ended only after Israel had obtained important agreements and assurances on precisely this issue from the United States, Europe, and above all from Egypt. But it remains to be seen whether the border with Egypt will be sealed to illicit traffic in arms; on the basis of past experience and the latest reports, one is permitted to be skeptical. The task is doable; nations that have shut down thousands of miles of international frontiers could surely cope with an eight-mile corridor. But some doubt the seriousness of Egypt in addressing the flow of weapons that come through Egyptian ports and territory. We will see.
• Weakening Hamas. This, too, remains to be seen. Obviously Hamas is significantly weakened militarily in Gaza, at least for now. We do not yet know if it is significantly weakened politically there, despite loud claims on both sides of the issue. Time will tell. We do know that Hamas appears to have been strengthened politically elsewhere and most critically in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has been significantly undercut. By all accounts, it would be extremely foolish to encourage the holding of new West Bank elections anytime soon.
• Overthrowing Hamas. There is already the predictable refrain from some on the Israeli right: we didn’t go far enough. Critics claim that having invested so much in blood, treasure, and international standing, Israel again failed to complete the job by totally humiliating Hamas or by ejecting it from power. Total humiliation of a movement that defines simple survival as a victory is highly problematic, but “regime change” in Gaza, by military means, was and is a phantasm. It could be achieved only by total Israel reoccupation of Gaza, which few advocated, even among the most pedigreed hawks. No regime installed in Gaza by Israel would be tenable.

So the jury is still out. Much depends on whether the weapons trade can in fact be stifled, and the Egyptian-Gaza border re-established. To achieve this end, Israel may have to concede more than it would like on the issue of an open flow of legitimate goods across the border crossings—given the centrality of a partial blockade to the long-term aim of weakening Hamas economically and thus politically. But limiting the rearming of Hamas should, and probably will, have priority.

The long-term strategy for fostering the re-emergence of a credible Palestinian peace partner will have to revolve around the strengthening of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. This idea is featured in the Likud platform (not that other parties oppose it)—and this fact will probably be of increased relevance after the Israeli election on February 10.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.