SO MANY CHALLENGES, SO LITTLE TIME
By Amir Oren

Ha’aretz
Feb 12 2009
Israel

Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi is a veteran professional officer, graduate of
the Reali military academy, the Golani reconnaissance unit and the
Shin Bet security service, who returned to the career army and moved
up the ranks of the Armored Corps to command the 36th Division in the
Golan Heights. On election day, Mizrahi gave a talk at the Tactical
Command College, at the Glilot base, where he blasted a new adversary:
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister.

Among the audience were dozens of foreign guests and local officers,
who were attending an international conference on military psychology
organized, for the third time, by the behavioral sciences center of
Army Headquarters. The participants included Americans and Germans,
a Swiss woman (from the International Committee of the Red Cross),
a Brazilian and many more – people who see the IDF as an important
organization, from whose learning and investigational abilities other
armies and foreign institutions can benefit.

In the wake of Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, the senior
officer corps is embittered by the disparity between the efforts it
went to to engage in selective combat in densely populated areas
and the international perception of the operation’s outcome. Thus
it was that Mizrahi – who formerly served as the Army Headquarters’
(the IDF ground forces) representative to the U.S. armed forces and
frequently met with other army commanders who had been involved in
the fighting in Kosovo and Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan – chose
the platform of the international conference to deliver a sharp
message. He attacked Erdogan for what the Turkish leader imputed to
President Shimon Peres at another international conference, the World
Economic Forum in Davos. Paraphrasing from Scriptures, he called on
Erdogan to look in the mirror. He did not leave it at a clear allusion
to the massacre of the Armenians and the suppression of the Kurds,
but mentioned the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus as well. In
response to Erdogan’s call for Israel to be expelled from the United
Nations, Mizrahi suggested that Turkey should be paired with Israel
on such an occasion.

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Assad’s price

The Gaza operation did not solve any long-term problems. The Ehud
Olmert and Ehud Barak school of thought is inclined to hold indirect
negotiations with Hamas, under Egyptian mediation, on a 12- or 18-month
cease-fire. But if we are to believe Benjamin Netanyahu and Tzipi
Livni, a bitter war will need to be fought against Hamas’ rule in
Gaza. This is a strategic decision that is within the government’s
purview, but its price in the era of U.S. President Barack Obama, and
before the rehabilitation of the ruins left by Operation Cast Lead,
will be deducted from Israel’s political credit.

Of all the alternatives that were analyzed, the one adopted by Hamas –
to avoid armed confrontation with the IDF – was considered the least
likely in Israel on the eve of the operation. Accordingly, there is
no knowing how the military confrontation will unfold if Israel renews
it. The same is true with regard to the Hezbollah front, particularly
in these tense weeks of vigilance, in the wake of the threats to avenge
the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah operative,
and more intensely in the Syrian arena.

Syrian President Bashar Assad wants to upgrade, under American
auspices, the indirect talks that were held with Israel under Turkish
mediation and which fell apart with the political demise of George
W. Bush and Olmert (and after Gaza and Davos). The Syrian president
is ready for a direct give-and-take approach. Assad can also act
unilaterally and tell Obama that he is willing to make peace with
Israel in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights. Such an
approach would result in instant American pressure on Israel to pay
its part in the deal; in that scenario, a military echelon that in
the past signaled its acceptance of such an agreement will face off
against a government – key elements of which, perhaps even the leading
ones, reject this out of hand.

Refusal to adjust to the new reality in Washington-Damascus relations
will throw Israel into a serious reevaluation crisis, of the type
Obama has ordered held in other arenas. With planes becoming more
expensive and resources dwindling, conditioning U.S. aid on an
Israeli contribution to regional stability will be accepted and
understood by the American public and by Congress. In this battle,
against a popular president armed with a persuasive argument, AIPAC,
the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, will lose – if it even dares risk
a defeat that will deal a mortal blow to its deterrent capability.

Doubling the danger

The budgetary distress has forced the defense establishment to strip
naked before the consultancy firm McKinsey and Associates, which is
supposed to recommend revolutionary changes and cuts in the IDF’s
organizational culture and way of life, as well as in the Defense
Ministry and in the military industries.

To unify wasteful double systems and shut down outmoded units, a solid
political base is required, along with a willingness to clash with
conservative officers and militant work committees. The next prime
minister and defense minister will soon find out whether Chief of
Staff Gabi Ashkenazi will join them in this painful undertaking.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, Admiral
Michael Mullen, said last week in a talk at Princeton University that,
"Israel is an extremely close ally of ours. And I don’t see us walking
away from that relationship in any way, shape or form." Mullen was
speaking against the background of the most challenging issue of the
period – namely, the Iranian nuclear project and the declared ambition
of the regime in Tehran to annihilate Israel.

The severity of the Iranian threat is increasing, owing to two
negative developments in the past few days: Pakistan’s decision to
free the traveling salesman of nuclear know-how, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
and the gradual drift away from the sphere of American influence by
the Iraqi government, headed by Nouri al-Maliki. If Obama orders an
accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, to be completed by
the summer of 2010, the process by which an independent Iraq positions
itself against its neighbor and permanent adversary, Iran, will also be
hastened. Iraq will not sit idly by in the face of a nuclear Iran. It
will want its own nuclear weapon. That desire constitutes a possibility
that the danger to Israel will double, unless Iraq agrees to coordinate
with Israel an operation to thwart the Iranian nuclear program.

Amid this tangle, Obama, who is moving to restrict nuclear
proliferation worldwide, might suggest a freeze on the production
of nuclear material in the region, including at Natanz and Isfahan,
and allegedly at Dimona, too. Target date: spring 2010, the date of
the next world conference – which meets every five years – to examine
the nuclear proliferation regime.

Israel’s next defense, foreign affairs and finance ministers will very
soon receive a gloomy appraisal of the situation: Militarily, Israel
cannot accept the existence of nuclear weapons in Iran. Economically,
Israel cannot afford an arms race, even of conventional weapons, with
Iran and other regional powers that will go nuclear. And politically,
it cannot allow itself to get drawn into a frontal clash with the
Obama administration.

It will not be surprising if a security crisis that flares up at
the height of the political wrangling in Israel will provide Livni,
Netanyahu and Barak, at the prodding of Shimon Peres, reason enough
to unite in a joint government.