WarSclerotic

Binyamin Netanyahu

As this issue closed, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources reported that President Barack Obama had reconsidered his position on the crisis with Israel and resolved to halt the downward spiral. The White House is working on a document for putting the friendly relations back on an even keel. Netanyahu has not yet decided whether to travel to Washington to address the AIPAC annual conference next Monday, March 22. But before he does, he will ascertain that the administration has withdrawn the threat to close its doors to him.
The White House also told the Palestinians it was time to stop their “over-the-top” utterances against Israel and street outbreaks and start cooperating with the US and Israel in their effort to restart peace talks.
Earlier, DEBKA-Net-Weekly ran the following Special Report:
For Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, two big bones of contention with the Obama administration have been blown up by Washington into matters of life or death. They are the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital and the vital need to eliminate Iran’s capacity for building a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu’s coalition government would not last long if he bent to Washington’s will on these two issues. Furthermore, his surrender would in itself spark a deadly chain of events.
Israeli intelligence chiefs put dire predictions of catastrophe before the seven members of Israel’s inner cabinet, which spent 96 hours this week reviewing the spiraling crisis in relations with Washington.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources, they warned that if Israel let itself be bullied into submission by the Obama administration, it would become fair game for its enemies.
Iranian-backed Hizballah and the Palestinian extremist Hamas would take Israel’s loss of its senior ally, the US under president Barack Obama, as an open an invitation for an ever-expanding campaign of terror, thereby laying the ground for Tehran to consolidate its proxy’s grip on Beirut, and move in on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad already jumped in this week with this comment: “The Islamic revolution of Iran is a humane revolution reaching beyond the geographic boundaries of Iran. Our existence and our breathing space require that we expand our borders of conflict even closer to the command centers of the enemy. One who sits and waits for the enemy to approach… will be dressed in the robe of misery.”

Ahmadinejad issues battle cry for Israel’s weakened state

This was the Iranian president’s battle cry, a call to exploit the friction between Washington and Jerusalem for “expanding our borders of conflict” and making Israel the one “who sits and waits for the enemy to approach.” It was the first time an Iranian leader had openly articulated a frankly aggressive doctrine beyond the familiar Islamic Republic’s goal to “export of revolution” through terrorist surrogates.If Obama aimed at deterring Israel from attacking Iran, he misfired and achieved the reverse effect. His policy has brought the Iranian peril out in the open and forces Israel to hurry up and pre-empt it.
“Obama has decided to break Israel and scrap it as a factor in US-Iranian diplomacy,” said a senior minister to DEBKA-Net-Weekly this week. He refused to speak openly because the ministers were under Netanyahu’s orders to refrain from commenting on the crisis with Washington.
Another Israeli official said: “President Obama denies there is a crisis in the relations. He said [n an interview to Fox on March 17]: ‘Israel is one of our closest allies and that will not go away.’
“But let’s put the facts on the table,” said the Israeli source: “Not only is the crisis there, but we are dealing with an administration whose behavior is irrational – or that’s how it looks from here. The US president is willing to bend facts for the sake of bringing the Israeli government to its knees. That, we cannot accept.”
This Israeli comment, say our sources, referred to Vice President Joe Biden‘s angry remark to Netanyahu in Jerusalem on March 8: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and Gen. David Petraeus‘ reply to a question from the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South California on the length of time available before Iran was able to build a nuclear weapon. The general said: “It has, thankfully, slid to the right a bit, and it is not this calendar year, I don’t think.”

Pummeling Israel does not benefit the United States

This answer, which is not borne out by intelligence data, was seen in Jerusalem and most other Middle East capitals as another US attempt to dodge the sanctions option and play for time to engage in more fruitless negotiations with Iran.
How does this benefit the United States? It doesn’t. On March 18, the day US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Moscow, prime minister Vladimir Putin administered a slap in the face to Washington by announcing the first unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, constructed by Russian experts, might be put into operation this summer – in direct breach of his pledges to the US and Israel.
Our Jerusalem sources stress that no Israeli government, right, center or left, will ever accept Washington’s attempt to link Jewish settlements to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon. This false theory was drummed up by the most anti-Israel elements in the West.
Its aim is to tie Israel down and strip it of the motivation and resources for withstanding the very real threats to its existence which Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas do not trouble to conceal.
Binyamin Netanyahu feels he has leaned over backwards to meet Barack Obama’s demands and deeply resents the US president’s accusations of Israeli “unhelpfulness” to the peace process. He endorsed the US president’s two-state doctrine (Israel and Palestinian) living in peace and security, accepted a 10-month settlement construction moratorium and, in keeping with his Economic Peace Program, has made vital contributions to the West Bank’s current prosperity under the Palestinian Authority, as well as handing over West Bank cities to Palestinian rule.
Yet Washington insists that the improvements are solely due to Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad‘s successful leadership and ignore Israel’s initiative.

The bottomless pit of US demands

Now, Obama wants more Israeli incentives to coax the stubborn Mahmoud Abbas into gracing peace negotiations with his presence, while refusing to credit Israel with any previous contributions to the process. The feeling in Jerusalem is that Israel is being pushed toward a bottomless pit; Washington will not be satisfied until Israel unloads all its strategic assets to meet Obama’s insatiable demands.
This week, Israel’s leaders decided to draw the line, after he laid down three preconditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:
1. The 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction must include East Jerusalem;
2. It must be renewed after running out in September for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. More Israeli concessions are needed to tempt Mahmoud Abbas.
The Netanyahu government made the gesture of offering to halt Jewish purchases of land and property in, or add Jewish residents, to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem in the course of negotiations with the Palestinians.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources report that the White House rejected any form of compromise and wants Israel to comply with all three demands in full.

King Abdullah

In January 2010, one month after US president Barack Obama dismantled the Israeli Defense Forces special operation which US President George W. Bush established three years ago for training Gulf Emirates security, military and intelligence operatives (see first article in this issue), Washington leaked its own plan for defending those same Persian Gulf nations against Iran.
Select US newspapers reported: “The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran.”
The reports went on to quote officials as stating: “The initiatives, including a U.S.-backed plan to triple the size of a 10,000-man protection force in Saudi Arabia, are part of a broader push that includes unprecedented coordination of air defenses and expanded joint exercises between the U.S. and Arab militaries… All appear to be aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources noted certain omissions: There was no word of Saudi consent to the tripling of its protection force to 30,000 soldiers, how they would be raised, who would train and organize them and who supply the force with the necessary weaponry and technological gear.
Most critically, there was no word on the length of time allotted for creating the new force or when it would become operational.
Our Washington sources disclose that the leaked report was sketchy and its details left vague out of a lack of choice: Saudi King Abdullah and his top advisers, foreign minister Saud al-Faisal and interior minister Prince Nayef, are dead against any increase in the number of US military troops stationed in the oil kingdom and refused to make more bases available to them.

Riyadh is no rubber stamp for US policy

Both Riyadh and Washington keep the number of US servicemen currently serving in Saudi Arabia a close secret, but it is generally estimated at no more than 200 or 300. A 30,000-strong protection force to defend the kingdom and its oil resources and facilities against Iran would require several thousand US troops sent back to the kingdom seven years after Riyadh asked them to remove themselves for Saudi soil.
Then as now, there were deep-seated objections to a US military presence on the part of the strict Wahhabist clergy and on the grounds that al Qaeda would exploit it to stir up trouble against the royal house as it did in 2002 and 2003. But according to our sources, Riyadh’s more immediate objections are prompted rather by the absence of clear answers about the Obama administration’s Iran policy.
The Saudis will only open the door to thousands of American soldiers if they are there to support Saudi-US policy-sharing on Iran; Riyadh will not be a rubber-stamp for US strategy. Before going any further, they want to know unequivocally whether the Obama administration has taken America’s military option off the table – or not; if Washington is absolutely committed to preventing an Israeli attack on Iran – to which the Saudis are not averse; why the Americans are refraining from putting into effect stiff sanctions already drafted for Iran -, even unilaterally, without the Security Council; why they set deadlines for Iran’s compliance and turn a blind eye when they are ignored. And, if they are so determined to pre-empt Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb, why have they entered into secret talks with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the driving force of that program?

Washington bombarded with unanswered questions

For the last two months, one American official after another has ducked these questions –
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and US CENTCOM commander for the Middle East and Central Asia, Gen. David Petraeus.
At a joint press conference with Clinton in Riyadh last month, the Saudi Foreign Minister referred skeptically to another round of international sanctions against Iran as a “long-term solution”, noting that “we see the issue in the shorter term because we are closer to the threat…We need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution.”
Washington’s evasiveness has planted the suspicion in royal Saudi minds that the purpose of deploying thousands of US troops in the kingdom is to force them to play ball with the Obama administration’s policy on Iran rather than shielding them from Iran.
Saudi officials therefore sidestep US requests for bases to accommodate a large influx of troops while letting their suspicions hang in the air between Riyadh and Washington. This lack of trust is holding up the Gulf defense plans the administration drew up in late January. It affects Obama’s next steps on Iran and bears heavily on the continued US withdrawal from Iraq.
The White House accordingly asked Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to fly into Riyadh from Kabul on March 10 for a last-ditch attempt to talk King Abdullah round. Appreciating the importance of this mission, the Saudi King invited Gates to a private dinner at his ranch outside Riyadh, attended only by two other Saudi official guests – Crown Prince Sultan and his son Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the defense minister and acting defense minister.
But instead of shedding clarity on Washington’s intentions and easing tensions with Riyadh, DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources in the Gulf report Gates exacerbated them. Sources in the Gulf familiar with the event reveal that the two sides failed to agree on a single issue; at times, tempers nearly got out of hand, especially when it came to Iran and Iraq. (Read item on Iranian and Saudi meddling in Iraq).

An unprecedented public disavowal

The next day, March 11, found Gates in Dubai addressing the troops of the 389 US Air Expeditionary Wing at a base described by his aides as “an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia,” because the United Arab Emirates are deeply reluctant to admit to a US military presence on their territory.
Gates was uncharacteristically expansive about his talks with Saudi leaders, describing them as a big success. America’s Persian Gulf allies, he said, understood that economic sanctions were unavoidable for dealing with the menace of a nuclear-armed Iran. He predicted they would work because they were supported by a broad international consensus that Iran was out of line.
The Saudis, he said, had come on board for a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. “I think there is an understanding that we have to do this, that this is the next step,” said Gates.
He added that he had persuaded the Saudis to take it upon themselves to convince China to support sanctions.
The reporters present took this as affirming that Riyadh had consented to offer to make up any oil shortfall Beijing might suffer from endorsing sanctions against Iran, a key fuel supplier. “It was our strong impression that this overall approach was one that the Saudis were supportive of,” said Gates.
But the next day, Friday, March 13, a Saudi official source dismissed this assumption. He was quoted by the official SPA news agency as saying that reports of Riyadh’s willingness to use its influence to get Beijing to support UN sanctions were false.
“This issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of the secretary of defense who was in the kingdom recently,” the source said.
Riyadh’s contradiction of the US defense secretary’s comments – and in such undiplomatic terms as “not true” and “false” – is symptomatic of the depth of the US-Saudi falling-out over Iran.

Israeli Special Forces

Three years ago, US President George W. Bush green-lighted a program for the deployment of an Israeli Defense Forces special unit to the Persian Gulf to train thousands of Arab Emirates security, military and intelligence operatives in tactics for protecting their regimes, oil facilities, sea and air ports and other strategic installations.
This program, revealed now exclusively for the first time by DEBKA-Net-Weekly, was worked out between the US president, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the two defense chiefs, Robert Gates and Ehud Barak (both of whom stayed on to serve the present administrations).
When the program took shape In March 2007, the Americans were still caught up in brutal confrontation with al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents in Iraq, the troop surge which turned the corner of the war was still in preparation; Taliban was going from strength to strength in Afghanistan against undermanned US-led NATO forces; and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states were bombarding the Bush administration with questions about how America proposed to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and rein in its expanding influence across the Middle East.
Their anxieties had deepened when the IDF came out of the Lebanon war six months earlier without mortally injuring Hizballah. Instead of being cut down in Lebanon, Hizballah’s sponsor Iran came out of that conflict more arrogant and capable of menacing its neighbors than ever before. .

Availability, trust, and location

The thinking in Washington at the time was that, since the United States was hard-pressed on the three fronts of Iraq, Afghanistan and terror, with no military strength to spare for building up a Persian Gulf defense force, Israel’s military, using innovative combat techniques developed on the battlefields of Lebanon, was well qualified to bring the Gulf states’ armies up to scratch. This exercise would go far toward putting the Gulf rulers’ minds at rest on their vulnerability to Iran’s roving eye.
American strategists saw four benefits in the program:
1. It would put to good use Israel’s military, security and intelligence forces, freshly seasoned by the Lebanon war and available after the ceasefire in sufficient numbers to undertake a large-scale mission without strain.
2. By introducing Israeli security personnel to the Persian Gulf as trainers for the local elite units, the Bush administration would win kudos for encompassing the Jewish state’s biggest diplomatic breakthrough to the Arab world. True, this was only to be a covert operation, but establishing military-intelligence ties between Israeli and Gulf emirates would engender relations of trust and pave the way to solving the Middle East conflict by peace diplomacy.
3. Israel’s military role in Gulf defenses let President Bush off the hook of appealing to the Western Europe governments, with whom he was on bad terms, for military back-up strength. In any case, he did not trust their military and intelligence capabilities or credibility, unlike the faith he had in those of Israel.
4. The project would position hundreds of Israeli elite forces and field intelligence veterans a short distance from Iranian shores, a presence easily convertible into a forward position against Iran. This would partly compensate Israel for its failure to beat Iran’s Lebanese proxy into the ground. In other words, President Bush was willing to offer Israel the strategic-intelligence edge which eluded it in the Lebanon war.

Riyadh: No Israelis wanted – only their combat techniques

The Israeli teams started moving over to their new posts in May, 2007, after Washington obtained the consent of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE to the scheme, DEBKA-Net-Weekly military and intelligence sources report. Special new bases were established for the operation in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The instruction teams included commando unit veterans from Shaldag (equivalent to the US Delta Force), Flotilla 13, (the Israeli Navy’s version of the US Navy Seals), General Security Services special operations units (equivalent to CIA and FBI covert units) and elite units of the Israeli Police and Border Patrol.
Arriving in the Gulf (although not Saudi Arabia) disguised as Europeans, the Israeli instructors got straight down to their duties and set up three-month courses for local military, security and intelligence personnel with 300 men in each course. In their 30-month stay in the Gulf, the Israeli experts trained 10 classes, producing a total of 3,000 graduates who went on to form the UAE special operations outfit now known in Washington as the Gulf Protection Force.
According to our sources, the Saudis, while approving the operation in principle, declined to send their troops over for training with Israelis for two reasons: In the first place, it was – and still is – unthinkable for them to put their men in the hands of Israeli instructors and, in the second, sending them to the Arab emirates for training would be an affront to their dignity and undercut their standing as regional power.
Abu Dhabi, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain had no such inhibitions and welcomed high-prestige Israeli military assistance with a will.

Bush opens Gulf door to Israel, Obama pushes Israelis out

By the second half of 2008, Riyadh saw the first results of the Israeli training programs – and admitted to being impressed. Loath to fall behind their Arab neighbors in military skills, the Saudis asked President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to send American military instructors to the kingdom to teach Saudi units the same combat techniques as the Israelis were imparting to the emirate armies in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Washington was thunderstruck by this request. Five years earlier, the Saudi king had forced every last US solider to quit Saudi soil. Now they were asking for a small number, no more than a few dozen, US guerilla warfare experts, to return.
President Bush’s opening up of the Persian Gulf, a key strategic location for the US as a world superpower, to an Israeli military and intelligence presence, had more than one antagonist at home, DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources in Washington report. One of them was his own secretary of defense, Robert Gates. But the president was able to convince Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus of the military and intelligence benefits of the Israeli Gulf program and they signed off on it.
But then, even before Barack Obama was elected president at the end of 2008, many of his advisers began pushing for him to remove Israeli forces from the Gulf as a first priority. They maintained that no real and effective engagement with Iran would be possible as long as Israeli special forces were a three-hour ferry-boat journey from Revolutionary Guards Corps headquarters at Bandar Abbas.
The opposition to an Israeli presence in the Gulf gained traction from Obama’s decision to pull US forces out of Iraq by the summer of 2011. Replacing Israeli instructors with Americans would fill the military void left in the Gulf by the US departure from Iraq – so ran the argument – and install Washington up on a strategic Gulf perch for engaging Iran in negotiations from a position of strength.

Israel believed the Americans had bigger fish to fry

Binyamin Netanyahu took up his post as Israeli premier in March 2009, two months after Obama was sworn in as president. The new president thereupon launched his campaign for Israel to abandon its training programs for the Gulf armies. The demand was raised at the very first encounters between the incoming US and Israeli leaders’ advisers and was pressed again at their first face-to-face meetings.
But Netanyahu, who appreciated the immense intelligence value of Israel’s Gulf presence against Iran, dug in his heels and insisted that the program was an integral part of the broad US-Israeli understandings on a joint effort to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He argued that for Jerusalem to continue to trust in US policy on Iran and other matters, the Obama administration must uphold the Bush administration’s strategic commitments to Israel.
From the second half of July to early September 2009, Washington stopped badgering Jerusalem on the subject. And it was not raised when Obama and Netanyahu met in Washington on Nov. 9.
The next day, the US and Israel launched Juniper Cobra 10, their biggest joint military exercise ever, for drilling their defenses against synchronized missile attacks by Iran and its three allies.
Jerusalem assumed the Americans, with bigger fish to fry, had dropped their demand for Israel to quit its Gulf training program.
But the Israelis were wrong. The Obama administration had gone to work at the other end of the scheme.
And indeed, in early December 2009, the UAE ruler, Emir Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, notified Israel that the program’s current course would be the last one. Its instructors would be asked to leave after graduation a few days hence.

Many find second ulterior motive in Mabhouh killing

At first al-Nahyan evaded explanations, but as the last week of December and exit time neared, he admitted he had been coerced by the Americans to send the Israelis home and replace them with Americans.
It was then that the penny dropped, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources report: Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak and Chief of staff Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi got the message that the Obama administration would go out of its way and do whatever necessary to hold Israel back from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
When Minister Barak went to Washington on February 25, he asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gates how Israel was expected to defend itself in the face of a hostile Iran now that the US had dismantled its first line of defense against the Islamic Republic.
Barak received no answer. The anger and concern rankled in Jerusalem and reached-boiling point when Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel last week, especially when he accompanied avowals of the Obama administration’s undying commitment to Israel’s security with heavy-handed pressure away from the public eye against an Israeli attack on Iran. In the circumstances, the announcement of a long-term 1,600-unit housing scheme of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem may have looked to the Netanyahu government as no more than a mild gesture of protest.
Washington’s action also drew a response in another unexpected quarter, Riyadh – more about which in the next article.
Some intelligence mavens in Washington speculate that the assassination of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on Jan. 19 was motivated by more than the obvious wish to sever a Hamas-arms supply link with Iran. It may have been meant to demonstrate that Israeli instructors did not waste their two years in Dubai and, even after being pushed out, can find their way back to this stamping ground when needs must.

ADL: Petraeus wrong to link anti-U.S. attitude to Mideast peace – Haaretz – Israel News.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized as “dangerous and counterproductive” the Senate testimony of General David Petraeus in which he blamed “insufficient progress” in resolving the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict as a significant impediment to achieving U.S. goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran, and for encouraging “anti-American sentiment.”

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement in response to the general’s March 16 testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee:

“The assumptions Gen. Petraeus presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee wrongly attribute ‘insufficient progress’ in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and ‘a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel’ as significantly impeding the U.S. military mission in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and in dealing with the Iranian influences in the region. It is that much more of a concern to hear this coming from such a great American patriot and hero.”

The ADL chief added that the “General’s assertions lead to the illusory conclusion that if only there was a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. could successfully complete its mission in the region.”

“Gen. Petraeus has simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived U.S. favoritism for Israel,” Foxman wrote, adding that “this linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.”

“Whenever the Israeli-Arab conflict is made a focal point, Israel comes to be seen as the problem. If only Israel would stop settlements, if only Israel would talk with Hamas, if only Israel would make concessions on refugees, if only it would share Jerusalem, everything in the region would then fall into line.

Diana West : So Israel’s the Bad Guy Here? Really? – Townhall.com.

Phew. We can breathe easier now that the Obama administration has taken a tough-as-scimitars line with Israel, whose existentially threatening architectural blueprints for new housing, the administration says, pose a dire threat to U.S. troops and interests. Or, as Vice President Joseph Biden put it, referring to a new housing project in Jerusalem, as reported by Yedioth Ahronoth: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In other words, maybe it’s not the Muslim-made IED planted in the roads of Helmand Province that’s the problem; maybe it’s the Jewish-built condo in Jerusalem. Such is the babble of the jihad-blackmailed. And the problem with giving in to blackmail is that it never ends.

The effects are as palpable as they are shameful. The same week the Israeli housing project launched diplomatic fireworks and blaring world headlines, the White House and most media ignored the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) official commemoration of Dalal Mughrabi, a mass murderess who led an attack killing 38 Israelis in 1978. She now has a PA public square named in her honor (joining two PA girls high schools, two summer camps and other institutions so named). In its silence on this calumny, the U.S. government has acquiesced to the jihadist narrative that Jews building homes in Israel’s capital is incitement; and Muslims naming public squares for killers of Jews in the PA is just peace-process-as-usual.

This is the policy of appeasement, Islamic appeasement, and, under the constant drip, drip, drip of oil dependence, it has been eroding our national security posture since long before 9/11, reshaping a world perspective that conforms with that of the Islamic world. This eruption over housing in Jerusalem — an “insult,” an “affront,” said White House adviser David Axelrod, strangely using the language of offended Islam — is just its most vivid political manifestation to date.

Gen. David Petraeus put a military gloss on this same policy in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate. Setting up a discussion of what he called “root causes of instability” or “obstacles to security,” he led off with “insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace,” meaning the open-ended jihad against Israel (not that he put it that way). This, he went on to say, presents “distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the (region).”

Why? “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” he said. “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the (region) … and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaida and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

Subtext: If Israel would shrink into nothingness, everything would be beautiful.

Petraeus’ testimony about “Arab anger” echoes his concerns, as reported by Foreign Policy online this week, about Arab complaints on “the Palestinian issue,” as a senior military officer put it to the blog. Petraeus, Foreign Policy writes, believes this anger is “jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.” Indeed, hoping “to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged,” Petraeus sought to place Israel under his command purview. (Request denied.)

Q: Since when is assuaging “Arab anger” and demonstrating “engagement” to Arab leaders the concern of U.S. war planners? A: Since U.S. war planners became U.S. counter-insurgency (COIN) planners — and Petraeus helped write the book on COIN. Playing to Arab demands, Muslim demands, generally, is the heart of “hearts and minds” in CENTCOM land.

No wonder the general talks about “Arab anger” caused by Arab “perception” over “the Palestinian question” as hindering U.S. objectives. He is using the classic buzz terms for the Arab-ist slant on the jihad (not “Arab anger”) against Israel. This jihad is now picking up a terrifying speed, particularly as the Obama administration, fresh from an apology to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, “outreach” to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, “population protection” at the expense of force protection in Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan (don’t forget President Obama’s bow last year to Saudi’s King Abdullah), assists by bringing the hammer down on Israel.

What makes the blackmail unbearable is that the hammer is coming down on something all too symbolically close to Israel’s very existence: building houses.

‘Any attacker on Iran will pay heavy price’.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem

‘Israel will defend itself from Gaza rockets, regardless of Goldstone’ – Haaretz – Israel News.

| // // Last update – 18:04 18/03/2010

Israel will defend its citizens against Gaza attacks regardless of the Goldstone report, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said on Thursday, adding that he did not see the recent tension with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama as inhibiting the ability to protect Israeli towns.

Gaza militans fired a Qassam rocket into the western Negev earlier Thursday, killing a Thai foreign worker in nearby Netiv Ha’asara, in the rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours.

Speaking to reporters near the impact site, Ayalon said that Israel would not let the Goldstone report, which blamed both Israel and Hamas for alleged war crimes during last years bout of fighting, to affect Israel’s defense strategy, saying that “with or without Goldstone, Israel will defend its citizens. Today we see how absurd the Goldstone report was.”

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Asked whether recent tensions with the U.S. over East Jerusalem construction could limit Israel’s ability to respond, Ayalon said that “we have never asked the permission of anyone to defend ourselves, and we will proceed in a similar fashion.”

Referring to the stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinains, Aylon said that he hoped “quiet and security will return, but it just can’t be that while we for a year wait and extend our hands toward peace the Palestinians avoid coming to the negotiations table with excuses and preconditions.”

“It just can’t be that incitement is being advocated in Jerusalem and in the Temple Mount, and today we see that has manifested itself with a terrorist act,” the deputy FM said.

Earlier Thursday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai declared Hamas responsible for the rocket that hit Moshav Nativ Ha’asara, even though it was not launched by militants from the ruling movement.

Deputy Premier Silvan Shalon vowed that “the Israeli response will be appropriate. It will be strong,” adding: “This is a crossing of the red line, which Israel cannot accept.

Britain, the United Nations secretary general and the European Union foreign policy chief were quick on Thursday to condemn the attack.

The EU’s top diplomat, Lady Catherine Ashton, had crossed into Gaza Strip from Israel just an hour before militants in the Hamas-ruled territory launched the rocket.

At a Gaza news conference after the attack, Ashton said: “I condemn any kind of violence, we have got to find a peaceful solution to the issues and problems.”

“I’m extremely shocked by the rocket attack and the tragic loss of life. I said when I came to Israel that part of the reason for my trip to this region is to express my concern that we move as quickly as we can to proximity talks,” Ashton said.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy added that she urged “everyone to continue to work in that direction and to make sure these incidents cannot deter us from finding a lasting peace for this region.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also expressed his condemnation, saying in a statement: “All such acts of terror and violence against civilians are totally unacceptable and contrary to international law.”

More than 100 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel since Operation Cast Lead ended in January 2009, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel has responsed to strikes since the war with air raids, targeting militants and suspected weapons-manufacturing facilities in the territory.

Hamas Islamists, who seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 in fighting with forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have been urging other militant groups not to mount attacks on Israel, voicing concern about retaliation.

An unknown Gaza group, Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility for the attack, launched a day before the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators was to meet in Moscow to discuss ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The incident could have more of an impact on internal Palestinian politics than on the Middle East peace process, which Hamas has refused to join and which is at an impasse over Israeli settlement policy on land Palestinians want for a state.

Hamas Islamists, who seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, had been urging other militant groups not to mount attacks on Israel, voicing concern about retaliation.

But it has been faced with a mounting security challenge – including bombings against Hamas officials and facilities – by Gaza militant groups sharing the hardline ideology of Al-Qaida.

A known figure in the hardline Salafist movement, whose agenda of “jihad”, or holy war, against the West is contrary to Hamas’s nationalist goals, said Ansar al-Sunna was a newly established group.

“The Jihadist mission came in response to the Zionist assaults against the Ibrahimi and al-Aqsa mosques and the continued Zionist aggression against our people in Jerusalem,” Ansar al-Sunna said in a statement.

It appeared to be referring to Israel’s national heritage plan to renovate holy sites, including the West Bank town of Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs that is revered by Muslims and Jews, and the rededication this week of an 18th-century synagogue in Jerusalem, some 400 meters from al-Aqsa.

In a statement on the rocket firing, Hamas steered clear of comments that could be seen by Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip as disapproving of a strike against its enemy, even an attack that strained an informal truce.

“The government of the Zionist enemy, which has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy sites and al-Aqsa mosque, bears the responsibility for all the escalation,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said

Allan Gerson: Tripping in Jerusalem: The Biden-Israel “Flap” – Huntington Post.

Allan Gerson

Lawyer and former Counsel to the US Delegation to the United Nations

Posted: March 17, 2010 04:38 PM

Conventional wisdom has it – if you aggregate the views of pundits, columnists, and State Department pronouncements – that the current downward spiral in Israel-U.S. relations, which seems to be snuffing out any chance of Middle-East peace, was the inevitable result of the surprise announcement by Israel’s Minister of Interior approving new Israeli housing units in East Jerusalem. In this view, Vice President Biden had no choice but to unleash an unprecedented display of American anger, followed-up by Secretary of State Clinton’s dressing-down of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

After all, Biden was there on a peace mission to jump-start the moribund Israeli-Palestinian talks. He could ill afford to see an Israeli show of discourtesy in revealing an embarrassing truth – that Israel had no intention of curbing housing starts in East Jerusalem which it considers its sovereign territory and free to do with it as it pleases.

The Biden rebuke took no less than 90 minutes to formulate and orchestrate, keeping Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu cooling his heels while bureaucrats and political appointees in Washington (if not President Obama directly) spent the time finding the right phrase. In the end the decision was made to bring on the heavy cannon of the diplomatic lexicon: the word “condemn.”

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for the new housing units in East Jerusalem”, Biden railed. Never was American displeasure of Israeli action displayed in starker terms since the U.S. joined (in a decision it has come to regret) in the 1981 U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel’s air attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osyrak. To be sure, the stakes were different. In 1981, the Reagan Administration feared – rightly or wrongly – that the bombing could ignite a free-for-all in preemptive military strikes. Now the Obama Administration is rebuking the Israeli government because the “substance and timing of the announcement….undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel”.

Surely, the Obama Administration knew there were softer ways to make its point. For example, as one veteran U.S. Middle-East observer, Robert Malley, wrote, they could have merely thanked the Israeli Minister of Interior for clarifying the issues. Clearly, Israel had never pledged to change its policy to treat East Jerusalem (as opposed to the West Bank) as sovereign Israeli territory, placing issues of housing off-limits for purposes of negotiation or Israeli-American dialogue. It had pledged to keep its true intentions under wraps (as if the Palestinians were not fully aware of them) in order to provide a fig leaf for American efforts at jump-starting “proximity” talks.

Seen in this light, was the Obama Administration’s idea of a resounding American rebuke of Israeli housing in East Jerusalem pre-planned, if not pre-packaged, waiting for a misstep by the Israelis as an occasion for its activation? Phrased differently, had the Obama Administration already embarked, before Biden’s foray, on a radically different approach to U.S. foreign policy toward the Israel-Palestine dispute?

True, no one in the Obama Administration explicitly said that new Israeli housing units in East Jerusalem were unlawful, but that was the conclusion others (even those unacquainted with the diplomatic usage of “condemn” as reserved for acts of aggression, torture, and the like) were left to draw by the strong language and follow-up punch by Secretary of State Clinton’s publicized dressing-down of Netanyahu. Make no mistake about it: if that were the intention, it signifies a fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy.

Israel’s official position remains, as it has for the last forty years, that East Jerusalem’s status is not negotiable. Of course, in actual negotiations hard and fast positions are prone to change, even those characterized as nonnegotiable. And, Israel’s position on Jerusalem may well change during negotiations. But it seems delusional to believe that Israel can be forced to change its position on Jerusalem in advance of actual negotiations. To the extent that this is the ambition of the Obama Administration, as it seems to be, it marks a radical departure from the long-held U.S. policy towards Israel.

For the last forty plus years Washington’s position has been that: (a) the status of Jerusalem is distinct and wholly different from that of the West Bank; and (b) that while the United States considers Israeli settlement activity in both Jerusalem and the West Bank to be ill advised, it does not deem West Bank, let alone East Jerusalem settlements, to be unlawful.

To be sure, U.S. presidents are free to announce new doctrines and policies, and do not need Congressional approval or even that of the American public. But it is generally accepted, nevertheless, that this is done openly with an opportunity for an airing of costs and benefits. Here, to the extent U.S. foreign policy was changed, it was changed by stealth, although undoubtedly in response to an ill-timed Israeli announcement in violation of its assurance to maintain the charade that Jerusalem was negotiable.

Now we are left to reap the whirlwind. Having had the United States condemn Israel for the substance as well as timing of its decision, Palestinians can hardly with any sense of self-dignity come to the negotiating table. And Israel’s foes, who have been deterred by the strength of the U.S.-Israel alliance, would like nothing more than to further exploit the rift.

Undoubtedly, Biden was put in a tough position, although he should not have been totally surprised by the development. Could his response have expressed disappointment while not igniting a show-down with Israel on Jerusalem in which it is unclear whether the Unites States will prevail? History will have to judge. But, at the moment it looks like personal pique and the determination to forge a new policy regardless of costs may have forged the decision in Washington.

*Allan Gerson is Chairman of AG International Law, a Washington, D.C. law firm. He served as Senior Counsel to the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations during the Reagan Administration, and is the author of “Israel, the West Bank, and International Law” (1978).

By shaming the Israelis, Obama has hurt American interests in the Middle East. – By Lee Smith – Slate Magazine.

That’s the logical outcome of the Obama administration’s current policies.

By Lee SmithPosted Wednesday, March 17, 2010, at 4:47 PM ET

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Gen. Petraeus Israel Obama

US Centcom chief Gen. David Petraeus

“Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that’s not going to go away,” said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile‘s Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it.
However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned down their initial proposals for easing the upset and laid down three pre-conditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:
1.  The Netanyahu government must extend the 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction to include East Jerusalem;

2.  When the moratorium runs out in September, it must be renewed for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. Israeli must make more concessions to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli government was informed that until those conditions were met, its ministers would not be received in Washington by high-level American officials – a virtual boycott, which downgrades the normal diplomatic, strategic and security exchanges between the two administrations to the level of senators and the special Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
Netanyahu tried offering the Obama administration a number of compromise proposals, such as the suspension of construction in East Jerusalem and the city’s outlying Jewish suburbs until September, but they were rejected, as was an offer to prohibit further Jewish purchases of land and buildings in Jerusalem’s Arab districts during peace negotiations.

Obama and Clinton made it clear they would brook no departures from their three demands, which Israel is required to treat as an ultimatum.
Neither party to the difference has mentioned the US administration’s fourth condition for resuming normal relations:  an Israeli commitment to refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear program without prior US consent. Because that commitment has not been offered, administration officials are continuing to hammer Israel in every possible arena. Indeed, the gloves are now off in earnest for insinuations that Israel’s settlement policy is the root-cause of Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb and of the conflicts endangering American lives in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Vice President Joe Biden launched this drive, when he reportedly attacked Netanyahu for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem by saying: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

A much-admired American military figure, CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, was the next US official to put this linkage into words. In his briefing to a Senate panel, he said Wednesday, March 16:  Clearly the tensions on these issues [with Israel] have enormous effect on the strategic context in which we operate in the Central Command’s area of responsibility.”

The general denied he had as yet formally asked for the Palestinian territories to be transferred to his command, but added: “In fact, staff members at various times have discussed asking for the Palestinian territories to be added to CENTCOM’s turf.”
debkafile‘s military sources explain that, if approved, this step would be tantamount to providing the Palestinians with an American military umbrella against Israel.
More than one friend of Israel demurred against the Petraeus suggestion.

Former presidential candidate, Republican Senator John McCain, caught on fast to the way the wind is blowing in Obama’s Washington: During his testimony, he put in: “Isn’t the issue not the issue of settlements as much as it is the existence of the state of Israel…? So maybe you could put it all into the larger context of what needs to be done to reduce tensions on the US’s closest ally and friend in many respects.”
The general did not rise to the senator’s challenge, except for a polite: “Absolutely true.”
Some of the more respectable US and British media are playing up the theme that Israel has shot itself in the foot and therefore deserves what’s coming, namely escalating punishment from the Obama administration.