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September 23, 2009
by Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem – The National Times – 23 September 2009
Forgive me for being confused, but exactly what are the clear and present dangers facing the State of Israel? According to Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations Gabriella Shalev, her government’s main goal at this week’s UN General Assembly meeting is to show the world how dangerous Iran is.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to give what his aides say will be a “dramatic” speech to the UN on Thursday, Shalev said the Iranian threat would be the main focus.
“We know Iran is a dangerous country,” Shalev said on Monday. “We stress and we emphasize that Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it’s a global threat.”
Israeli diplomats, Shalev added, would meet with their Australian counterparts and officials from other countries, to make them understand “the challenges Israel is facing in a very crucial time”
Perhaps Shalev should leave time in her schedule to make sure Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak also understands exactly what those challenges are.
Last Friday, according to Jewish New Year’s tradition, Barak gave an interview to Israel’s biggest selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
Instead of the usual palaver about the threats facing Israel, Barak surprised his questioners with this frank admission.
“Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel,” said Barak.
Given Barak’s pedigree as Israel’s most decorated soldier, a former chief of the Israel Defence Forces, and Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, his words were not those of some neophyte.
With Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres repeatedly hyping up the threat posed by Iran as a potential Holocaust, Barak’s assessment of the threats facing Israel’s security was unambiguous.
“Israel is strong,” he said. “I do not envision anyone who can pose an existential threat to us. As of now Iran does not have a bomb. Even if it does, this does not mean that it becomes an existential threat to Israel.”
nusual for a politician in his position, Barak spoke honestly about what Israel could do to Iran if necessary.
“Israel can turn Iran into a pile of rubble,” he said. “There is no change in my position: I have opposed and continue to oppose panic. I do not believe that we are at the dawn of a new holocaust.”
Sobering words that should be remembered the next time we hear anyone seeking to amplify the perils facing Israel.
The more urgent threat to Israel’s existence is it’s continued occupation of the West Bank. The most common reason given by Israeli leaders for denying Palestinians the right to build a sovereign state of their own is security.
Give the Palestinians a state, many Israelis argue, and it won’t be long before they conspire with the rest of the Arab world to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea.
But as Barak openly reminded the country last week, no such thing is in danger of happening. “Say that Saudi Arabia purchases two bombs at some point: this does not mean that the country is through,” he emphasized.
As long as Israel implements one set of laws for Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank, and another set of laws for the Palestinians who live alongside them, the country will continue to be condemned as an “apartheid state”.
“I don’t make light of that,” Barak said last week when asked about the apartheid label and its potential consequences.
“Time is not necessarily on our side. Everyone realizes this, except those believers who are certain that the Messiah is about to come. We are liable to spill over into a bi national state.” Such a situation would be a fundamental contradiction of the Zionist vision of a Jewish state, yet the mainstream Israeli right-wing continues to encourage the notion that the West Bank is the proper Land of Israel.
Ahead of last night’s New York summit meeting with Barrack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas aimed at re-starting the interminable “peace process” some of his senior ministers were telling a group of West Bank settlers camped outside Netanyahu’s Jerusalem office what they really thought.
According to Silvan Shalom, who holds the rank of deputy Prime Minister, “the settlements are not an obstacle to peace.”
Uzi Landau, Israel’s Minister for National Infrastructure, emphasized that “construction in the West Bank must continue.”
Likud MP Tzipi Hotovely told the settlers that the only way to demonstrate Israel’s ownership of the West Bank was to build.
“We must build in all of the West Bank, the blocs and the cities alike,” Hotovely said.
As one Israeli commentator noted yesterday, Netanyahu’s pre-summit demeanor was of smug satisfaction that he had thwarted Obama’s demand that Israel freeze settlement construction.
What Netanyahu, and the people in his party to whom he is beholden, has actually shown is that Israel has no interest in withdrawing from the West Bank. By implication, Netanyahu and the people around him demonstrate no desire to establish a Palestinian state. Netanyahu wants to Israel stay in the West Bank because he believes that the land truly belongs to the Jewish people.
Next time we hear that denying Palestinian sovereignty is all about security and keeping Israel safe, remember that security has little to do with it.
In the words of Ehud Barak, Israel is strong and there is no one who poses an existential threat.
Jason Koutsoukis is the Middle East correspondent for the Fairfax newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. This is his first instalment for the National Times, Fairfax’s new aggregator website for opinion, analysis and commentary.
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