Israel Update for June 2007

Facing continuing calls for his resignation in the wake of the Winograd Commission interim report concerning last year's Lebanon War (with the full report due out in July), Ehud Olmert tried to put the best possible light on the portentous disaster that had engulfed Israel's Gaza neighbor. While holding previously scheduled talks in Washington DC with President George W. Bush and other senior American officials, Olmert told reporters that the Hamas triumph and PA-Gaza collapse might somehow energize the brain-dead PLO-Israeli Oslo peace process. According to his thesis, the fact that Abbas had effectively cut to pieces the February Mecca accord that joined his Fatah party with Hamas in a so-called unity government might just open the way for a separate peace deal with Abbas in his only remaining base of power, PA-dominated areas of Jordan's former West Bank.

However dozens of Israeli Knesset members, including increasingly popular opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, joined many media analysts in terming this extreme wishful thinking. They noted that Hamas had won an overwhelming majority of votes in the West Bank, as well as in Gaza, during the January 2005 Palestinian elections. Despite the imposition of international economic sanctions against the Hamas-dominated cabinet that was sworn in two months later, widespread support for the radical group did not wane, as proved by the group's subsequent triumph in municipal elections in several Palestinian towns later in 2006, including in the former Christian stronghold of Bethlehem.

On top of this, the main reason many Palestinians gave for supporting Hamas in the first place-rampant corruption in the PA and Fatah-has not changed. In fact, various attempts to implement real reforms in both bodies since then have largely failed, as has been widely reported in the Palestinian press. Why Israel would suddenly be able to negotiate a final peace deal with Abbas that would actually stick in the face of overwhelming Islamic opposition-when it could not do that with the late Yasser Arafat, who was known as the 'founding father of the Palestinian nation'-was hardly evident to Olmert's many critics.

Iranian Hand

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a longtime PLO official and chief aid to Abbas, blamed Iran for being behind the violent Hamas Gaza Strip takeover. Speaking to reporters on June 19, he said that "Iran supports non-democratic groups in Palestine, Lebanon and in Iraq, and we hold Iran responsible for encouraging Hamas to carry out its coup in Gaza." His comments came after Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki condemned the formation of a new PA government that excluded Iran's terrorist Hamas ally. Rabbo replied that Iran "has no right to give us lessons in democracy."

Israeli Mideast experts were almost unanimous in seeing the veiled hand of Iran behind the latest regional upheaval. Some said that nearly 30 years after Ayatollah Khomeini marched into Tehran to the adulation of millions of Iranians, the Shiite regime believes it is now on the verge of establishing a new Persian empire that will eventually have ascendancy over regional Sunni Muslims. Waking up to the harrowing possibility that a nuclear armed Iran just might succeed in reaching that vaulted goal, Arab League ministers held an emergency meeting in Cairo in mid-June to discuss the Gaza crisis. Predictably, Iran's only Arab ally, Syria, resisted attempts to issue a unanimous condemnation of the horrendously brutal Hamas takeover and a statement of support for Abbas.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, Iran's puppet Hizbullah militia force naturally sided with its Hamas ally. This came as several Katyusha rockets landed in the border town of Kiryat Shmona, hit hard during last summer's Hizbullah blitz upon northern Israel. But the militant Lebanese Shiite group, busy trying to topple the duly elected government in Beirut, immediately disavowed responsibility for the one-off attack, which damaged a car but thankfully left no one injured. Israeli officials accepted the statement, saying that the rockets were probably fired by Al Qaida-linked Palestinian cells known to be operating in south Lebanon. Osama Bin Laden's Palestinian surrogates took responsibility for firing several rockets into Israel just months before Hizbullah launched its cross-border raid last July, sparking off the Second Lebanon War.

Syria In Focus

The Israeli inner security cabinet held a special session in early June to discuss the possibility of war in the coming months with Syria. This came as a Syrian parliament member confirmed in an Al Jazeera interview that his government is currently making active war preparations, and as several military analysts predicted that a conflict could break out as early as August. The Israeli ministers reportedly agreed that PM Olmert had acting correctly in sending recent messages to Damascus meant to assure Baathist regime officials that Israel is not planning a pre-emptive strike against Syria.

The security cabinet also discussed the Premier's public offer to open peace negotiation with the Assad regime even if Israel would have to pay what Olmert termed "a very high price for peace"-which all commentators agreed meant the total uprooting of the estimated 30,000 Israelis living on the strategic heights that rise above the lush Galilee panhandle. However knowing that the Israeli public is hardly in the mood to hand over more territory to Arabs who might then use it to launch further attacks upon the country-opinion polls in June showed over 90% of the public against such a Golan Heights pullout-many analysts said Olmert's statement amounted to mere words meant for international consumption, not a serious indication that peace talks might soon begin with Syria.

Syria's puppet militia force in Lebanon is also said to be feverishly preparing for another round of conflict with Israel. That at least is according to Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief of staff and defense minister. He said in early June that Hizbullah now has around 20,000 rockets in its growing arsenal, most of them surreptitiously smuggled in from Syria over the past year in violation of last summer's UN ceasefire accord. More ominously, he claimed that some of the missiles are of a longer range than the group possessed last year, saying they could now potentially strike all of Israel, including the southern port city of Eilat. However, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Italian General Claudio Graziano, claimed that Hizbullah had not returned to its former strength in south Lebanon, saying evidence of the group is practically nonexistent along the border. However he would not comment on Mofaz's statement that Hizbullah had rebuilt its rocket arsenal, and then some.

The Boys Are Back

The internal Labour primary produced a new party leader in June-former prime minister Ehud Barak. However his triumph was thin, beating former Shin Bet internal security chief Ami Ayalon by just 51% to 48%. The campaign was marred by charges of vote buying, especially by Barak whose people reportedly had signed up whole Galilee Druze villages in recent months-securing support by promising financial benefits after Barak joined the government-all the while knowing that most of his "supporters" were not really Labour party voters at all.

Barak wasted no time in replacing the vanquished Amir Peretz as Defense Minister. The process was actually sped up by the Gaza crisis, with PM Olmert requesting that Barak join the government as Defense Minister just days after his victory in order to deal with the potential military fallout from the crisis. However he also made clear that he planned to replace Olmert as premier in the next year or so, presumably by winning new national elections. However opinion surveys taken after the Labour primary was held showed that Likud leader Netanyahu-who accurately predicted that Hamas would seize control over the Gaza Strip if Israel pulled out of the territory-is supported by at least 35% of the public for Israel's top government job, with only some 20% picking Barak and just 8-10% for Olmert.