Israel’s departing consul general shares his thoughts on his country’s rapidly changing geopolitical neighborhood. Excerpt from the talk on May 16, 2011.
AKIVA TOR, Consul General for Israel for the Pacific Northwest
In the Middle East, [Israel sees] a region going through a prolonged political earthquake, where almost every regime and society is undergoing some sort of fundamental change; the outcome is as yet unclear. But a number of aspects of how the political terrain will look in the Middle East are clear, and that is primarily the rise of political Islam in the region.
In Morocco, the parliamentary elections delivered a victory for the parties of political Islam. In Tunisia, considered by many to be the most cosmopolitan Arab state in North Africa, the parliamentary elections delivered a similar outcome. In Libya, it is unclear what will be the political configuration once the regime stabilizes. Likewise in Syria; though if the Assad regime is defeated – as may well happen – it seems a possibility that the Sunni political opposition will coalesce around the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and we will see a victory of political Islam there as well.
But first and foremost, as always in the Arab world, Egypt is at the forefront of all political and cultural transformation in the region. Here, the parliamentary elections after three rounds, which were free and fair, delivered a clear victory for political Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood received approximately 46 percent of the vote; the Salafist Party approximately 25 percent. In other words, [about] three-quarters of the Egyptian parliament is represented by parties of political Islam, with the liberal and secular parties representing no more than 15 percent.
We may not know exactly who will be the next Egyptian president or the precise place of the military in the continuing political life of Egypt, but one political fact is undeniable: political Islam won the elections. This political ideology represents the free choice of the majority of Egyptians, and probably the majority of Arab voters in every place in which free elections are held or will be held.
What does it mean for Israel? It’s quite a question. We have not yet had a relationship with a government dominated by political Islam. With the government of Hosni Mubarak, we had a relationship which was with an Egypt defined formally as a secular, nationalist Arab state. In many ways, secular Arab nationalism perhaps leaves place for an accommodation with the national movement of the Jewish people, Zionism; perhaps there is less place for that in the viewpoint of political Islam, which might see history in the Middle East through the lens of a religio-historical rather than a secular-historical outlook. Therefore, we are understandably curious how things will be.
With the [Egyptian] military, we’ve had quite a good relationship and a lot of security cooperation in the past in the Sinai and in carrying out the requirements of the Camp David agreement.
In the current politics of Egypt, there are analytical reasons supporting both optimism and pessimism, but Israel prefers to take an optimistic and constructive approach. For our part, we welcome the new Egyptian government that is emerging. We will welcome any elected president of Egypt, and we will seek to engage the new Egyptian government in as deep a relationship as possible for the mutual benefit of both our states.
If things go really well, or even just reasonably well, this will be the first case where Israel has a working political peace and relationship with an Arab government of political Islam, and perhaps that will open doors and possibilities for peace in other places in the region that have not been susceptible to peace until now.
Right now, we do have some emerging challenges, in particular in Sinai. The security situation in Sinai has deteriorated. We don’t think this is because the Egyptian military wants it to deteriorate, but there has been a loss of control, and our southern border has become less safe. Pretty much everything that can go into Gaza – Mercedes Benzes, refrigerators, TNT, and advanced munitions – is going into Gaza right now. The gas pipeline between Egypt and Israel was bombed more than 10 times.
Our other neighbor, Jordan, with whom we have a peace treaty, remains stable throughout the political earthquake. We are gratified to see it. We view the Kingdom of Jordan as a fine and excellent neighbor, as a country ruled by a decent and modest monarchy which cares for their people, and we believe that is an abiding national security interest of Israel that Jordan continue to succeed; all indications seem to indicate that.
Regarding our relations with the Palestinians, the situation is quite complicated, interesting and requiring analysis. From the Israeli perspective, everything that is going on in our region – in Syria, Egypt, North Africa, in the Emirates – is out of our control. We have to analyze it, understand it to the best of our capacity, and prepare for all eventualities; but we cannot control it. But with the Palestinians, we do have a relationship and we do have a political process.
The Egyptian revolution has affected Palestinian politics. One way is the greater strength and political popularity, to a certain extent, of Hamas. Hamas is a movement that is politically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. But whereas the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has accepted the peace treaty as a sovereign obligation of the Egyptian state and has voiced no intention of abrogating [it], Hamas does not recognize Israel, does not recognize any of the agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and does not recognize our legitimacy in the region at all.
But the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a majority power in Egypt has affected Palestinian politics and made Hamas perhaps more popular. Between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza there is a continuing dance, which has been going on for some years, and talks about the possibility of the establishment of a Palestinian national unity government. We understand the desire of a stateless people to want to be ruled by one unified leadership. At the same time, we Israelis have to live with the outcome and the security dilemmas that will be entailed. It would be a very, very deep challenge for us if Hamas and the Palestinian Authority do unite and Hamas ministers enter into an Authority government. It would make it very difficult to move forward toward a peace agreement when we would be signing with a government where many of the ministers do not even recognize our legality or morality of our presence, statehood, and national ambitions as a sovereign Jewish people.
The West Bank, on the other hand, is still succeeding economically, with high levels of growth. We very much respect our Palestinian interlocutors. Ramallah and Nablus are thriving cities with functioning self-government and law enforcement. We are very happy about this; the success of the Palestinian economy is an abiding Israeli national interest, as well as an abiding Palestinian interest.
The question is, What will happen in the next couple years? Here I fear that we may find ourselves facing conditions in which the opportunities for concluding a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may have receded.
On the one hand, the political picture of how an agreement between us should look is clear. And we actually agree on the basic outlines. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority agree that the correct way to achieve peace between us is through the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, living in a formal agreement of peace and friendship and as much economic and governmental cooperation as each side can accept, which hopefully would include a very deep and strong cooperation in as many spheres as possible.
The Arab Awakening and the strengthening of political Islam and everything that has been happening in Egypt have weakened Palestinian moderate leadership in its capacity to reach an agreement with us. Egypt under Mubarak was always a stalwart and the most important Arab political support for peace making between Israel and the Palestinians. That leadership is not there anymore. The Egyptians are involved with their own affairs, and it is unclear to what extent a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists will be supportive of such a peace process between us.
But in any case, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank finds itself with less political support for moving toward us to an agreement. Because in order to sign such a peace treaty, we have to agree on and end of claims; end of the state of war; and in our view Palestinians have to acknowledge that Palestinian refugees will be resettled within a Palestinian state and not within Israel. We have to reach an agreement on Jerusalem, which will surely be difficult for both sides. I don’t think that the Palestinian governance is able to take the decisions like that, given the political situation in the region.
From our perspective, any Israeli government looking at the political scene also has to ask itself how will the Middle East look in three months, six months, nine months, two years from now. I’m not certain any Israeli government at this time would be willing to repeat offers made previously in the last decade, which were extremely far-reaching in terms of territorial concessions, given the current situational uncertainty in the Middle East and in Palestinian governance.
