Fwd: Israel Says War on Iraq Would Benefit the Region

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/middleeast/27ISRA.html
>
>New York Times
>February 27, 2003
>
>Israel Says War on Iraq Would Benefit the Region
>By JAMES BENNET
>
>JERUSALEM, Feb. 26 ’ Israelis once believed that the Oslo agreement with
>the Palestinians would usher in a new Middle East of comfortable
>Israeli-Arab coexistence.
>
>With Oslo in tatters, the Israelis are now putting similar hopes in an
>American war on Iraq.
>
>Other nations may cavil, but many in Israel are so certain of the
>rightness of a war on Iraq that officials are already thinking past that
>conflict to urge a continued, assertive American role in the Middle
>East.
>
>Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told members of the Conference of
>Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations last week that after
>Iraq, the United States should generate "political, economic, diplomatic
>pressure" on Iran. "We have great interest in shaping the Middle East
>the day after" a war, he said.
>
>It may seem paradoxical that the country most vulnerable to an Iraqi
>attack in case of war is most eager for that war to begin.
>
>But Israel's military intelligence apparatus has concluded that the
>chances of a successful Iraqi missile strike here during this war, while
>ever present, are small.
>
>The Israeli government and military elite believe that Saddam Hussein
>seeks devastating weapons but has far less capacity for mayhem than he
>had during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when his forces fired 39 Scud
>missiles at Israel. The Israeli Army also believes that its own national
>defenses are much improved.
>
>Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats and is hoping that once
>Saddam Hussein is dispensed with, the dominoes will start to tumble.
>According to this hope - or evolving strategy - moderates and reformers
>throughout the region would be encouraged to put new pressure on their
>own governments, not excepting the Palestine Authority of Yasir Arafat.
>
>"The shock waves emerging from post-Saddam Baghdad could have
>wide-ranging effects in Tehran, Damascus, and in Ramallah," Efraim
>Halevy, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, said in
>a speech in Munich this month.
>
>Until recently, Mr. Halevy was the chief of the Mossad, Israel's spy
>agency. He said, "We have hopes of greater stability, greater enhanced
>confidence from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic shores of Morocco."
>
>Israelis have also suggested that that an Iraq war may salvage their
>economy and even prompt the opposition Labor Party to join Mr. Sharon's
>coalition in a new government of national unity.
>
>Expressed in its broadest, vaguest terms, that theory has come in for
>the sort of mockery that the idealistic vision of Oslo's effects
>suffered from the right. The accusation is the same: fuzzy, wishful
>thinking.
>
>Uzi Benziman, a journalist and author of a biography of Mr. Sharon,
>wrote in the newspaper Haaretz, "Israel is looking for Ares, the ancient
>Greek god of war, to play the part of the deus ex machina in this
>drama."
>
>Referring to this "almost pagan faith," he continued, "It's still hard
>to shake the feeling that what the fervency of Israeli expectations
>regarding the war really attests to is despair." Opinion polls here have
>shown a strong though not overwhelming majority in favor of war.
>
>The precise mechanism for converting a war into regional stability has
>not been detailed.
>
>Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic
>Studies at Tel Aviv University, said the potential engine for change
>would be the example of a transformed Iraq.
>
>"It's at least conceivable that Al Jazeera will end up showing pictures
>of Iraqis celebrating in the streets, in which case people in other
>places - like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - are going to start saying,
>`If Iraqis deserve decent government, so do we.' " Al Jazeera is a
>widely watched Arab broadcast network.
>
>Israeli officials say that only sustained American pressure can turn
>that hope into reality. Mr. Mofaz warned that without continued
>attention to the rest of the region, an Iraqi collapse could strengthen
>Iran.
>
>As they look ahead to the aftermath of an Iraq war, Israeli officials
>are also considering how the Bush administration's present diplomatic
>struggle could help or hurt them. A top Israeli official predicted that
>after such a war would come a fork in the road for American policy and
>"a battle for the heart and mind" of President Bush.
>
>The official said the Bush administration might try to mend relations
>with Arab and European nations by wringing concessions from Israel
>toward the Palestinians.
>
>But he said it was more likely that rising American frustration with
>Europe would benefit Israel. Mr. Sharon has been alarmed by the recent
>efforts of the so-called quartet - the United States, the United
>Nations, the European Union and Russia - to intervene in the conflict
>here. Mr. Sharon would much prefer to deal only with the United States.
>
>The top Israeli official said the quartet might prove a "casualty" of an
>Iraqi war. "The idea of using the quartet as the great instrument of
>resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - there are people in
>Washington who are going to say, `What do we need these people for?' "
>he said.