Israel Update for July 2011

David Dolan

July began in Israel as it does all too many months-with government officials and the media focused on a pending crisis situation with dire international ramifications. The issue this time was the planned multi-ship flotilla designed to aggressively challenge Israel's naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Instead, the flotilla foundered due to direct intervention from Greece, a country that had been decidedly anti-Israel in its foreign policy until recent years. Instead, the national news was dominated by several domestic issues that mirrored some of the things which helped spark the so-called 'Arab Spring' revolts in a number of regional Muslim countries. Among them was the growing lack of affordable housing in Israel, where prices have soared in recent years, fast-rising food and utility prices, and low wages which set off an escalating work strike by doctors and other medical personnel that disrupted normal services at Israel's hospitals and some clinics.

While a tiny remnant of the planned flotilla did manage later in the month to make its way close to Israel's territorial waters before being peacefully intercepted by IDF naval vessels, the real issue at sea was a dispute with Lebanon over the exact territorial boundaries between the two neighboring countries. The dispute provoked more threatening words from the Iranian-backed Shiite Hizbullah movement, even as reports circulated that the militia was rapidly removing its stored weapons from nearby Syria as the internal crisis there intensified. Israeli military forces remained on extra high alert as the escalating public revolt and fierce Assad family regime counter-crackdown spread to the Syrian capital, Damascus. This came as a former CIA official claimed that Israel will launch a military assault against Iran's burgeoning nuclear production programme this coming September, saying the United States government is aware of this and busy preparing for it.

Israeli leaders kept up their public opposition to the Palestinian Authority's planned September declaration of statehood at the United Nations in New York.
Meanwhile the relative calm of recent months along the Gaza Strip border was shattered as a series of rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israeli territory, prompting return IDF military action. At the same time, an opinion survey was released showing that most Palestinians see the so-called "Two State Solution" as merely a springboard for further violent assaults upon Israel, ending with the country's ultimate annihilation.

Sinking The Flotilla

The Israeli Foreign Ministry celebrated a rare international victory during July as the long anticipated multi-national ship flotilla was successfully prevented from sailing towards Israeli coastal waters. Amid widespread fears that the planned Freedom II flotilla might provoke another violent IDF clash at sea with some of the participating ships, as happened the end of May last year, the relief was palpable in Israeli government circles. It was widely acknowledged that a major international diplomatic campaign launched by the Foreign Ministry some months ago to prevent the hostile attempt to break the Israeli Gaza Strip naval blockade was the sole reason that the ships-which included ones dubbed The Audacity of Hope from the United States, the Freedom from Ireland and the Tahrir from Canada-had the wind knocked out of their sails.

The fact that diplomatic relations with Greece have dramatically improved over the past three years played a crucial role in the success of the Israeli flotilla prevention campaign. It was the government in Athens, led by Prime Minister George Papandreou, which prevented the provocative ten-boat flotilla from departing the Greek port of Piraeus where the ships were docked (originally many more ships than that were expected to participate, but the numbers dropped to just ten after several countries announced in recent months that they would prevent announced sailings from their national ports).

When the new flotilla plan was first unveiled earlier this year, the various participating human rights and aid groups and individual activists were hoping to once again set off from Turkey, a Muslim country which had sadly morphed from one of Israel's closest regional allies to a near enemy under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. However, Turkish officials asked the Hamas-backed organizers to move their departure location after national elections were announced for mid-June (won by Erdogan's party), to prevent the flotilla from becoming an issue in the Turkish campaign. The choice of Greece as a replacement flotilla staging country proved to be the death knell that Israeli officials were hoping and working hard for.

Israeli diplomats at the United Nations and in various international capitals argued successfully that no country on earth would allow foreign ships carrying un-inspected cargo to sail into the main seaport of a neighboring hostile entity that is known to be smuggling in weapons for use against it. That the organizers claimed they would only be bringing in harmless aid cargo made no difference, they noted, since only previous inspection could confirm this. They added that under universally-recognized international law, Israel has the legal right to blockade the Gaza Strip since regular armed attacks are launched from the area upon Israeli civilian and military targets. Echoing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's repeated public statements, the diplomats added that Israel would gladly allow any non-threatening cargo to be transported to the Gaza Strip from its own ports (as eventually occurred last year) if ship captains simply requested permission to dock in them. They also pointed out that under the new military regime currently ruling Egypt, any legitimate aid cargo could also be easily passed along to Gaza Strip residents via the southern Gaza border crossings from the Egyptian-ruled Sinai Peninsula.

In other words, the Freedom II flotilla was nothing more than yet another attempt by various foreign individuals and groups openly hostile toward Israel to score worldwide propaganda points on behalf of a terrorist body supported by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Al Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood and other regional lights. This reality was evidently accepted by most Western leaders whose flagged ships and citizens were due to take part in the provocative and unnecessary "aid" flotilla.

In the end, one lone ship did make the voyage three weeks later on July 19-a French yacht dubbed the Dignity for the sailing. Traversing Greek waters after falsely claiming to be heading for Cyprus, the small vessel carried a mere 17 pro-Hamas activists on board. Originally flotilla organizers had boasted that around 1,500 people would take part in the planned multi-ship sailing. Israeli naval commandos attempted to negotiate with the yacht's captain, telling him they would gladly help guide the ship to either an Egyptian or Israeli port where the cargo could be inspected and then passed along to the Gaza Strip.

After the offers were flatly refused, the commandos boarded the boat without resistance from the 17 activists, who were then taken to Ashdod Port just a few miles north of the Gaza Strip (itself the occasional target of Iranian-supplied Grad missiles fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militiamen).

There was a rather silly sideshow to this thwarted drama during the month-an operation dubbed Flytilla by the Israeli media. Frustrated flotilla organizers announced that if they could not steam into Israeli-patrolled coastal waters due to Greek intervention, they would instead fly into Ben Gurion airport and then head to Palestinian Authority-controlled territory north and south of Jerusalem to 'show solidarity' with the Palestinians residing there. Analysts noted the irony in this plan since the Palestinian Authority is still struggling to reach a consensus with the rival Hamas movement which is demanding that its candidate become PA prime minister in the yet to be created new 'unity' government. In the event, just over 120 people even made it onto jets carrying passengers to Tel Aviv and Eilat after officials in Jerusalem issued lists of many hundreds of known anti-Israel activists they warned would not be allowed to enter the country, prompting various airlines to keep those people off of their aircraft in accordance with international aviation rules.

Fresh Threats From Lenanon

Three Israeli petroleum companies that are involved with American and other foreign partners to develop huge natural gas fields discovered in recent years off of northern Israel's Mediterranean coast revealed on July 21 that substantial new deposits have recently been identified under the seafloor. While this would normally be a cause for great rejoicing in Israel, the reality is that the off-shore gas fields are already becoming another major source of friction between Israel and its northern neighbor, Lebanon. Officials in Beirut claim that some of the deposits lie under their rightful territorial waters, not Israel's. Israeli government and military leaders had already expressed concerns that oil drilling platforms to be erected in the area might be subject to physical sabotage from Syrian submarines and ships which operate in the area from their port base of Latakia, where Russian vessels are also stationed.