ISRAEL VS. THE NEW ISLAMIST AXIS Martin Kramer*

The following article was adapted from a lecture presented at a GLORIA Center conference entitled "After Lebanon: A New ?," made possible by the generosity of Mr. Joel Sprayregen.

This article discusses how the 2006 Lebanon War marked the beginning of a third and new phase in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli-Islamist conflict. It argues that the reversal of the tide driven by the Iranian Revolution is the only way for a new Middle East to come about.

The 2006 war has been analyzed from of the Arab collective by reaching a every conceivable angle. Yet I think the separate peace with in 1979, and the debates about who won and who lost Arab-Israeli conflict came to an end. obscure the deeper significance of the war: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict took its The 2006 Lebanon War marks the place. In this second stage, the Palestine beginning of the third stage in the conflict Liberation Organization (PLO) used a mix over Israel. of politics and armed struggle to open up Let me explain what I mean with a bit of new fronts against Israel: in Jordan and abbreviated history. In the first stage, from Lebanon, in the heyday of the fedayin; in Israel’s creation in 1948 through 1973, the the West Bank and in Gaza, during the first rejection of Israel dressed itself as pan-Arab intifada; and in Israel proper in the second. nationalism. In the classic Arab-Israeli However, the Palestinian struggle also conflict, Arab states formed alliances in the stalled as the PLO grew inefficient and name of Arab unity. They aimed to isolate corrupt. Its absorption into the ramshackle Israel and to build an Arab coalition that Palestinian Authority (PA) only amplified could wage war against Israel on two or its weaknesses. more fronts. This was the classic phase of The Palestinian movement under Yasir the Arab-Israeli conflict. This was the era of Arafat never really developed a coherent Arab unity plans and pan-Arab treaties and strategy. It lurched from policy to policy alliances all directed against Israel. according to the whim of one deeply flawed The flaw of this strategy lay in the man; and when Arafat died in 2004, his weakness of pan-Arabism itself. Arab states demise effectively marked the end of the simply could not agree on objectives or on Israeli-Palestinian conflict. strategies to achieve them. The resulting In the third and present stage, the Israeli- failure of Arab states to coordinate led them Palestinian conflict has been superseded by to humiliating defeats in multi-front Arab- the Israeli-Islamist conflict. There had Israeli wars in 1948 and 1967. In 1973, always been an Islamist component to the Egypt and Syria did launch a well- resistance against Israel. One could trace it coordinated surprise Arab assault on Israel all the way back 60 years, but it had always with partial success. Egypt then opted out played a supporting role, first to the Arab

Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2007) 13 Martin Kramer states and then to the PLO. It was Ayatollah of the Arab world, which had come to Khomeini, leader of the Islamist revolution believe that Israel left land only in return in Iran, who pioneered an entirely different for peace treaties. vision of the role should play Yet while Islamists rejected peace with opposite Israel. Israel and called for resistance, they didn’t Khomeini rejected the view that Israel yet challenge the prerogative of the Arab had become a fait accompli. He wasn’t states and the PLO to design a grand impressed by Israeli victories or Israeli strategy toward Israel; that is, until this past power, because he believed that Israel was year. an offense against the heavens. It was, he Now, two developments have put the thought, a test of belief put to Muslims, Islamists in the driver’s seat. First, something that the Almighty would help Palestinian elections in January 2006 them to undo if Muslims returned to true carried Hamas to power in the West Bank belief. Khomeini believed that had and Gaza. Hamas has regarded the elections the power to call forth the sacrifice and as much more than a mandate to substitute discipline needed to deny legitimacy to good governance for PLO corruption. They Israel and ultimately to defeat it. see it as a mandate to bend Palestinian To achieve that goal, Khomeini said strategy to the Islamist vision of gradual Islamists couldn’t rest content with a attrition of Israel. supporting role; they had to push Second, Iran’s nuclear drive under themselves to the front. By establishing President Ahmadinejad has revitalized the Hizballah as an armed vanguard in idea that Israel can be confronted on the Lebanon, Khomeini sought to open a new external front. The possible combination of Islamist front against Israel, independent of Iranian nukes, Hizballah rockets, and the weak Arab states and the ineffective Hamas resistance has electrified the Muslim PLO. Hizballah, from the moment of its world. People ask themselves: Might the creation, sent out exactly one message: forces of Islamism acting together in Israel should be met only with resistance, concert achieve the victory that eluded the which would ultimately be victorious. Arab states and the PLO? Might they make The resistance alternative built up a bit it possible once more to wage a multi-front of steam in the 1990s as Islamist war against Israel? Might an Islamist movements gained ground across the coalition achieve greater success by tapping Middle East. We think of these years as the the self-sacrificial spirit of Islam? “peace process” years, because we were Last summer brought the Islamist mesmerized by the signing ceremonies on coalition into play against Israel for the first the White House lawn. Yet far from the time. We know that it wasn’t the war that lawns of Washington, Islamists were Iran would have chosen. Iranian strategy building momentum. The Palestinian would have deployed the coalition at a Islamist movement, Hamas, filled the moment of its own choosing, probably vacuum left by the PLO’s incompetence. It closer to the make-or-break moment in began to flex its muscles by launching Iran’s nuclear plans. Yet Israel preferred to resistance without seeking the approval of meet the challenge early by launching what the PLO. Hizballah waged a successful was, effectively, a preemptive war against campaign to end the Israeli occupation of Hizballah’s missiles, rockets, and south Lebanon, much to the astonishment infrastructure.

14 Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2007) Israel Vs. The New Islamist Axis

The verdict on the war is still out. First, as has been mentioned, its backbone However, the war does offer some glimpses is Shi’a. Some Sunnis, including Islamists, into the possible character of this Israeli- see the coalition as a threat to traditional Islamist conflict by showing the intrinsic Sunni primacy as much as it is a threat to strengths and weaknesses of this Islamist Israel. Saudi Arabia in particular has been coalition. The strengths of the Islamist mobilizing against the Iranian-led coalition, coalition include ideological discipline and which makes it more difficult for the leadership authority. coalition to keep Sunni Islamists in its orbit. The ideology purports to be authentic Moreover, while the coordination between and efficiently mobilizes all the pent-up Iran and Hizballah is, I believe, total, resentment against Israel and the West. The Hamas does have its own approach, which leaders—Nasrallah is only one of them— reflects its own predicament and constraints personify the spirit of defiance that is over- imposed by the Arab states on which it valued in their societies, and they command depends. nearly total obedience. Training is exacting. The other major weakness of the Islamist Everyone follows orders, and, as we saw in coalition is its lack of direct access to the summer, no one surrenders. Israel’s borders. The unmarked turf The Islamist coalition also brings between Israel and the West Bank has been together a very flexible mix of assets, closed off by Israel’s separation barrier, to comprised, as it is, of a state actor (Iran), a the detriment of Hamas. In the summer war, quasi-state actor (Hamas), and a sub-state Hizballah did lose its exclusive control of actor (Hizballah). They have developed Lebanon’s border with Israel, which was innovative weapons systems, with suicide arguably the most significant strategic bombings and rockets that go over and outcome of the war. Without access to around Israel’s conventional strengths. Israel’s borders, the Islamist coalition In the Lebanon War, there was evidence cannot control a sustained war of attrition that this kind of mix could be very effective with Israel. Moreover, if the coalition uses in identifying and exploiting Israel’s its rocket arsenal—its remaining offensive vulnerabilities. Moreover, if Iran were to capability—this effectively licenses Israel acquire nuclear weapons, this would give to retaliate with devastating force. The the Islamist coalition a card no previous coalition’s offensive option is presently coalition, no previous adversary, has held. reduced to the firing of Qassam rockets Nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands would from Gaza. transform Israel’s small size from an So consider the paradox: Islamists are advantage—and it has been an advantage; very full of themselves now, believing they for example, short lines of supply—into a have achieved tremendous gains, and yet liability, a total vulnerability to one strike. never before have Israel’s borders been so An Iranian nuclear weapon could transform inaccessible to its adversaries, Islamists the Israeli-Islamist conflict into a dangerous included. Moreover, without Iran’s game in which periodic nuclear alert crises acquisition of nuclear weapons, the Islamist could bring about the economic, the coalition is likely to remain blocked unless political, and even the demographic attrition and until it includes an Arab state or Arab of Israel. territory that neighbors Israel. Syria, of On the other side of the ledger, the course, is an obvious candidate for that role, Islamist coalition also has weaknesses. but its present leadership acts as an ally of

Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2007) 15 Martin Kramer the coalition and not a full-fledged member resolved, the Middle East could be turned in it. Until now, it has kept its own border around. That is a very outdated notion. The with Israel closed to any resistance. There Arab-Israeli conflict entered on a track are also Islamist political movements in toward resolution in the mid-1970s. It made Egypt and Jordan that would eagerly join remarkable if fitful progress through a the coalition, but they are presently kept at series of formal and tacit agreements, bay by the regimes. beginning with the Egyptian-Israeli peace Given these limitations, the Israeli- accords and continuing through Oslo. Islamist conflict doesn’t yet define the new What derailed that process at crucial Middle East, but it could come to define it moments was Islamist extremism as if the Islamist coalition gains more military inspired in large measure by Iran’s and political power than it already enjoys. revolution. There is, indeed, a core problem As I indicated a moment ago, a nuclear in the Middle East, but it is not the Arab- Iran would take us into an entirely different Israeli conflict. It is radical Islamism and scenario. It would be the crowning the power accrued to its champion, Iran. achievement of Khomeini’s revolution. It Until the fever of radical Islamism would be read everywhere as a crucial step subsides and until Iran’s drive for regional to transforming his theory of resistance into power is broken, their influence will a practical reality. Experts in think-tanks effectively block any initiative for change. may convince themselves that it wouldn’t A prior condition for a new Middle East, matter or that a kind of balance of terror then, must be a reversal of the tide driven would be established; however, in the by Iran’s revolution. Any other approach is Middle East itself, a nuclear era would be a meaningless panacea of self-delusion understood as a dramatic shift in the bound to end in failure. balance of power away from the United The only way to reverse that tide is for States, Israel, and Arab regimes and the to do what it failed to do towards the Islamist coalition. in 1979. Someone in the White House must It would strengthen Hizballah do what the feckless Jimmy Carter didn’t dramatically and would draw in Hamas and do nearly three decades ago: face down other Sunni movements. It would prevent Iran’s radicals. That someone must promise Palestinians from ever reconciling Iran and the world that there will be no themselves to Israel’s existence. It would nuclear weapons in the hands of an Islamist persuade Syria to deepen its alliance with coalition led by millenarian visionaries in Iran. It would persuade Arabs that existing Iran. That leader must take practical steps to peace treaties were acts of surrender. This ensure that this promise is in fact honored. would leave moderate Arab regimes feeling shame-faced and embolden their domestic *Martin Kramer is the Wexler-Fromer opponents to demand abrogation of all fellow at the Washington Institute for Near agreements with Israel. It likely would East Policy and senior fellow at the Shalem spawn al-Qa’ida-like movements or groups, Center in Jerusalem and the Olin Institute all seeking suitcase bombs for detonation in at Harvard. Tel Aviv and elsewhere. I conclude. It is conventional wisdom that the root problem of the Middle East is the Arab-Israeli conflict. If only it were

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