WarSclerotic

The current Israel-US rift was only a matter of time | The Times of Israel.

Given their wildly different stances on the Mideast — the so-far positive outcome in Syria notwithstanding — is it any wonder the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government keep clashing?

By Avi Issacharoff November 15, 2013, 2:19 pm

In many ways, the most recent discord between Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was inevitable. It was really only a matter of time — for more reasons than just the personal tensions between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama.

A deep abyss separates the two sides when it comes to their perspectives of the Middle East and the changes it has undergone in recent years.

When an Israeli official was asked about the most recent disagreement with the Obama administration, he tried to argue that the disputes were over a single specific issue, namely the Iranian nuclear program and interim negotiations with world powers.

But later in the conversation with The Times of Israel, that same source admitted that the strategy that the Americans chose to employ in the talks with Iran is consistent with the erratic policies, in Israel’s eyes, that the US government has been promoting throughout the Middle East.

In his speeches this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to send a message to Netanyahu along the lines of “you can trust me” — his precise words in the Iranian context being, “We are not blind and I don’t think we’re stupid.”

The trouble is that since the Arab Spring began three years ago, the White House has displayed what seems to many in the Israeli leadership to be a worrying combination of blindness and stupidity — from its intervention in Libya, its handling of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak’s regime and then under General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, its insistence on a settlement construction freeze in the West Bank at the beginning of Obama’s first term, to its decision not to act in Syria, despite ultimately making significant progress in dismantling Damascus’s chemical weapons.

For many in Jerusalem, the Syrian issue demonstrates the White House’s erratic policies in the region perfectly. The Assad regime ordered its forces to use chemical weapons against civilian populations, and the entire Arab world — including the Syrian opposition — expected American forces to strike back at Damascus. But then came Washington’s glorious capitulation.

That last-minute stammer, that indecision, may have had positive implications as far as dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal was concerned (mostly thanks to Russia’s intervention), but it had a negative impact on the US’s standing among moderate Sunni Arab countries in the region.

In addition, it intensified Jerusalem’s skepticism over Washington’s ability and willingness to take military action against Iran if the latter chooses to continue marching toward the bomb. The bottom line is that while the outcome of Washington’s strategies in Syria may turn out to be positive, the manner in which this strategy was devised has caused the decision makers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to think twice before accepting Kerry’s appeal to Israel to trust America.

No more chemical weapons

Many, including several senior IDF officers, question the new recommendation made by defense officials to stop the production and distribution of gas masks. Nevertheless, the efficiency with which Syria has destroyed its chemical weapons capabilities has succeeded in pleasantly surprising many, including Israeli supporters of the US-Russian agreement on the arsenal, signed in late September.

The latest progress reports from Syria regarding the complex task of destroying its nonconventional weapons are as follows: In the next 24 hours, Damascus is expected to present the UN delegation and the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) with a detailed description of its plans for destroying all of the chemical weapons in its possession, or transporting it outside of Syrian boundaries.

The plan will also include disposing raw materials used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Last week, the OPCW reported that it had searched all of the facilities in 21 of the 23 sites used to produce chemical weapons, sealed them off and destroyed the machinery used to manufacture these weapons. The Syrians showed videos that documented an additional site being dismantled and sealed off by the Syrian army, meaning that only one facility remains. This final site is accessible only by routes that are currently controlled by the opposition, thus preventing the UN supervisors from reaching it. This means that the threat of Syria launching a chemical attack against Israel has all but dissipated. Progress on this scale would have been considered inconceivable only two months ago, but it happened nevertheless thanks to America’s indecision and Russia’s persistence.

There is still the “small” problem of destroying or transporting these materials. There are currently 1,300 tons of chemical warfare materials on Syrian soil, including raw materials — materials that do not become lethal until they make contact with other materials — that the Syrian government committed to destroying by mid-2014. Multiple inspections have led the international supervisors to the conclusion that the only alternative is to transport a significant amount of these materials outside of Syria where they can be neutralized. This means guaranteeing that the material is safely transported to a secure port such as the one in Latakia, though many of the routes that connect Damascus to the port city are controlled by rebels.

The Syrian army has recently compiled a long list of equipment that it will need in order to safely transport these materials outside of Syria. The list includes dozens of armored vehicles, which western countries adamantly refuse to provide to the Syrian army, fearing that they will use the vehicles against the opposition forces. Another challenge is finding a country willing to receive and destroy these dangerous materials.

One of the countries that the US considered was Albania, though several days after the Albanian government announced that the US had contacted them, concerned Albanian citizens began to protest the government’s intention of accepting the request. It remains unclear where the Syrian chemical weapons will be taken.

What about the possibility of the Syrians hiding chemical weapons or attempting to deliver them to Hezbollah? This scenario is possible, considering Assad’s long rap sheet and his past inability to conceal the nuclear reactor that was being built. US and Israeli sources suspect the Syrian regime is concealing chemical weapons, though the general consensus is that its capabilities are no more than “residual,” to use the term coined by Israeli experts. In other words, the supervision and control mechanisms that have been put in place as a result of the US-Russian agreement will make it extremely difficult for Syria to conceal a substantial amount of chemical weapons.

The agreement was drafted after Russian and American intelligence experts cross-checked the information that they had regarding the Syrian chemical weapon cache — and if any country has accurate information about this, it is certainly Russia. After Washington and Moscow compared information, and reported it in great detail back to Moscow, supervisors arrived in Syria equipped with this data.

In addition, Damascus submitted its own version of the amounts of chemical weapons in its possession and the location of all of the materials; and the supervisors found only minor discrepancies between the two versions. The probability of Syria delivering chemical weapons to Hezbollah is negligible as well — first, due to the accurate information about existing chemical weapons; and second, because of Israel’s proven ability to foil attempts to smuggle “game-changing” weapons from Syria to Lebanon.

Hezbollah, for its part, does not appear at all enthusiastic about receiving chemical weapons. Therefore, even at this early stage (less than two months since the agreement) and despite the erratic route that the US took to reach its decision, the Israeli government had to admit that the agreement served the interests of the State of Israel as well as those of the citizens of Syria.

The Americans can also celebrate a preliminary triumph on yet another complex issue. The Syrian National Council, the central political opposition organization that operates outside of Syria, has announced the establishment of a temporary government that will take responsibility for all of the territories under opposition control. What’s more, the Council has agreed to participate in Geneva II — the international conference aimed at finding a political solution for Syria set for later this month.

The Council has meanwhile retracted its demand that no representatives of the Syrian regime would attend the conference, a demand it stood by for months. The opposition further announced that it will not demand the release of political prisoners and the creation of humanitarian corridors leading to territories under opposition control, as preconditions for attending the conference.

The dramatic announcements means that if and when Geneva II convenes, the opposition leaders will finally meet with representatives of the regime and attempt to resolve the crisis in Syria.

The armed militant forces that fight the regime on Syrian soil vehemently object to the Council’s announcement and refuse to sit with members of the regime. This was the reason for the fierce arguments at the Syrian National Council meeting held in Istanbul late last week.

The political opposition may have finally comprehended the situation in Syria — realizing that continuing to boycott the regime means intensified fighting and increased instances of violence and terror. Or to echo the US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who attended the meeting in Istanbul and is of course not in Syria, in a conversation with representatives of the opposition (as quoted in The New York Times) — your alternatives are to sit with representatives of Assad’s regime or with those of al-Qaeda.

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized

This entry was posted on November 15, 2013 at 2:35 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.