A new US-staffed radar base on Israeli soil may indicate that
Israel is shifting from an American ally to an American protectorate.
By Jonathan Cook
Adbusters Magazine
November 2008
Almost unnoticed, Israel and the White House signed a deal over
the summer to station an early-warning missile radar system, staffed with US
military personnel, in Israel’s Negev desert. The media here described the Joint
Tactical Ground Station, which brings Israel under the US protective umbrella
against missile attack, as a “parting gift” from President Bush as he prepared
to leave office.
The siting of what is likely to become America’s first permanent
base on Israeli soil was apparently not easily agreed by local defense
officials. Aware of the country’s vulnerability to missile strikes, they have
been trying to develop their own defenses – so far without success – against the
varying threats posed by Palestinian Qassam rockets, Hizbullah’s Katyushas, and
Iran and Syria’s more sophisticated arsenal.
In finally accepting that it must rely on the US shield, Israel
may have answered the Middle East’s biggest question of 2008: will it launch a
go-it-alone strike against Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons program?
The local media reported that the early-warning station would
limit Israel’s freedom to attack Iran since it would be the prime target for a
retaliatory strike, endangering the lives of US personnel. Or as the Haaretz
newspaper noted, Israeli officials viewed the radar system “as a signal of
Washington’s opposition to an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program”.
Although ostensibly the warm relations between Israel and the US
are unchanged, in reality recent events are forcing a reluctant Israel to submit
to the increasingly smothering embrace of Washington.
Tel Aviv has long seen itself as a military ally of the US,
largely sharing and assisting in the realization of Washington’s strategic
objectives. But it has also prized a degree of independence, especially the
right to pursue its own agenda in the Middle East.
For some time, the key point of difference between the two has
been over the benefits of “stability.” US planners have promoted regional calm
as a way of maintaining American control over the flow of oil. In practice, this
has meant keeping the Arab peoples, and Arab nationalism, in check by bolstering
reliable dictators.
In contrast, Israel has preferred instability, believing that
weak and fractious neighbours can be more easily manipulated. A series of
invasions of Lebanon to accentuate ethnic divisions there and the fueling of
civil war in the occupied Palestinian territories have been the template for
Israel’s wider regional vision.
The implicit tension in the Israeli-US alliance surfaced with the
ascendance under President George W. Bush of the neocons, who argued that
Washington’s agenda should be synonymous with Israel’s. The US occupation and
dismemberment of Iraq was the apotheosis of the White House’s application of the
Israeli doctrine.
The neocons’ partial fall from grace began with Israel’s failure
to crush Hizbullah in Lebanon more than two years ago. All the evidence suggests
that both Israel and the neocons regarded Hizbullah’s defeat as the necessary
prelude to a US attack on Tehran. Israel’s loss of nerve during the month-long
war – attributed by critics like the former defense minister, Moshe Arens, to
the general softening and feminisation of Israeli society – proved the country’s
once-celebrated martial talents were on the decline.
In the war’s immediate wake, there was much discussion in Israel
about how such a high-profile failure might damage the country’s standing in the
eyes of its US sponsor. Penance arrived in the form of the exculpations of the
Winograd post-mortem – and with it the inevitable undoing of Ehud Olmert as
prime minister. Washington’s stables, meanwhile, were cleaned out less
ostentatiously.
But where does this leave Israel? Certainly not friendless in
Washington, as cheerleaders like AIPAC and the fawning of US presidential
candidates amply demonstrate. But the relationship is changing: it looks
increasingly as though Israel is turning from US ally to protectorate.
The consequences are already visible in the buckling of Israel’s
commitment to launch a unilateral attack on Iran. Months of bellicose talk have
been mostly stilled. A few believe this is the quiet before the storm of a joint
US and Israeli strike. More likely it is the sign of an Israeli-fueled war
agenda running out of steam.
Washington, already overstretched in the Middle East and facing
concerted opposition to its policies from China and Russia, seems resigned to
living with an Iranian nuclear bomb. In the new climate that means Israel will
have to accept that it is no longer the only bully on the Middle East block.
Israel is on the verge of its very own regional Cold War.
As in the earlier Cold War, this one will be played out through
alliances and proxies. But there the similarity ends. Iran is emerging as a
regional superpower, quickly developing the financial and military clout to
sponsor other actors in the region, most obviously Hamas and Hizbullah. Israel,
on the other hand, is losing ground – quite literally, as the radar base
reveals. It can no longer impose its own agenda or build alliances on its own
terms. Its strength is becoming increasingly, and transparently, dependent on US
approval.
The most immediate and tangible effects will be felt by the
Palestinians, though their plight is not likely to let up any time soon. Just as
before, Israel needs a long-term solution to the Palestinian problem, but cannot
concede on the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Now, however, it no
longer has the luxury of biding its time as it dispossesses the Palestinians. It
needs to find a solution before an Iranian bomb – and an ever-more confident
Hamas and Hizbullah – force a settlement on Palestine not to its liking.
Israel is therefore engaging in a frenzy of West Bank settlement
building – up six times on a year ago – not seen since Oslo. It only appears
paradoxical that, just as Israel’s leadership is intoning the end of a Greater
Israel, the most influential and optimistic supporters of a two-state solution
on both sides – including Sari Nusseibeh and Shlomo Ben Ami – have been reading
the last rites of Palestinian statehood.
This disillusionment, it might be expected, would provoke a new
resolution towards a one-state solution among Israeli and Palestinian peace
activists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the Palestinian
leadership’s growing threats that it might adopt a one-state campaign are little
more than that: blackmail designed to galvanize Israeli public opinion behind
two states.
Instead of a fledgling state, however, Israel is creating a
series of holding pens for the Palestinians – or “warehouses,” as the Israeli
peace activist Jeff Halper has referred to them – on the last vestiges of the
occupied territories. For Halper, warehousing means containing the Palestinians
at minimal economic and political cost to Israel as it steals more territory.
But is the warehousing of the Palestinians intended by Israel to
be the equivalent of storing unwanted books? Or, to continue this disturbing
metaphor, are the Palestinians being warehoused so that at a later date they can
be given away – or, worse still, pulped?
The answer again suggests Israel’s growing dependence on the US.
Washington has for some time been strong-arming the Sunni Arab world, especially
loyal regimes like Egypt and Jordan, against Shia Iran. With its back to the
wall, Israel appears willing to use this leverage to its own advantage.
Its leaders are increasingly thinking of “peace” terms that,
passing over the heads of the Palestinians, will be directed at their neighbours
in Jordan and Egypt. A regional solution requires a further entrenchment of the
physical and political divisions between the two “halves” of the occupied
territories, with control over the Palestinian parts of the West Bank handed to
Jordan and Gaza to Egypt.
It is a sign of the terminal loss of faith in their leaders and
Israeli good faith that the latest poll of Palestinians shows 42 percent want
their government-in-waiting, the Palestinian Authority, dismantled. More than a
quarter are ready to abandon the dream of independent nationhood, preferring
instead the establishment of a joint state with Jordan.
Palestine’s fate, it seems, rests on the resolve of the Arab
world. It is not a reassuring prospect.
Jonathan Cook is a journalist living in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest book is, Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair
(Zed Books).
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