Israel shaken by West Asia dominoes

The old certainties of West Asia have been upended, and Israel finds many of its most reliable partners buffeted or blown away by popular agitation from below. Egypt was long one of Israel’s most important allies, and ties were quietly close to Tunisia. With demonstrations for change also in Jordan, Bahrain and Morocco, Israel finds itself floundering.

“Many of our assumptions are broken,” said Mark Heller, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv. “We are groping here, but with the limited tools we have to understand these phenomena, it is not very promising.”

Israelis worry that Arab democracy movements will ultimately be dominated by extremists, as happened in Iran after the 1979 revolution that ousted the shah. They worry about the chaotic transition between revolt and democratic stability, if it ever comes. They see Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, even if it remains a minority of Egyptian opinion, as pressing for more solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the brotherhood. And they fear that Israel’s regional partners in checking Iran are under threat or falling.

New Arab realities

Arab analysts counter that new Arab realities and democracies should be welcomed by Israel, because the new Arab generation shares many of the same values as Israel and the West. They argue there is no support among Egypt’s leaders for the abrogation of the 1979 peace treaty, though it is unpopular with the public, and that the Egyptian army will not disrupt foreign policy.

“There has been an evolution in the Arab world, among political elites and in civil society. Israel is a fact,” said Mohamed Darif, King Hassan II University, Morocco.

But new governments are more likely to increase their support for the Palestinian cause, with Egypt already reopening the crossing with Hamas-run Gaza. That new attitude could pressure Israel to do more to find a settlement, some analysts argue. Most others believe that Israel will instead resist, arguing they cannot make concessions because they are now encircled by more hostile neighbours.

“The widespread indignity felt by Egyptians who see themselves as the jailers of Gaza on behalf of Israel and Washington will give way to a realistic policy by which Egyptians use their ties with Israel to push the latter to adopt a more law-abiding stance towards the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese,” said Rami G Khouri, American University of Beirut. “Egypt will keep peace with Israel, but raise the temperature on issues of profound national concern to Arabs.”

The Israeli-Palestinian issue was not important to the democratic revolts, said Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister of Jordan and its first ambassador to Israel. But he said it might well be in the future.

“Not solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue today will complicate relations between the emerging Arab governments and their peoples on one side and the West on the other,” said Muasher. “In this atmosphere of freedom, it will be very difficult for new Arab governments to ignore the occupation.”

Olivier Roy, European University Institute in Italy, also expects a new Egyptian government to have “a more open policy toward the Palestinians, helping Gazans more through aid and transport.” But he argued that “it won’t go very far,” adding that many Israelis on the right prefer a Gaza dependent on Egypt, rather than on Iran.

While Israelis worry about the Muslim Brotherhood, Roy argued that the revolt surprised and sidelined the group. “The Brotherhood will be very happy to represent some sort of opposition,” he said. “They don’t want to be in the front line.”

“'So I don’t foresee a grand geostrategic change,” Roy said. “But the Saudis and Israelis are convinced there will be one.”

Other analysts see a major opportunity for Israel. “It’s a whole new software now being unfolded,” said Gilles Kepel, Institute of Political Studies, Paris. “I believe there’s a big opening, and the ball is in the Israeli court.”

“The Islamists in the region are splitting between the radicals and the ‘participationists,’ whose role model is the governing party in Turkey,” Kepel said. “They will have to deal with democracy and see their ideological commitments erode.”

But Israelis are anxious, especially about Jordan, where the king appears shaky, and about both the Muslim Brotherhood and left-wing secular voices in Egypt. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, praised Egyptian democracy but noted that “the reformist leader Ayman Nour declared that ‘the era of Camp David is over’.”

Israelis have also noted the emergence in Tahrir Square last week of Youssef el-Qaradawi, an Islamic theologian who had been exiled by Mubarak, and the willingness of the Egyptian army to let some Iranian warships through the Suez Canal.

It’s not just the Israelis who are worried, noted Heller in Tel Aviv, pointing to the protest of Tunisian women over the weekend, concerned that their existing freedoms may be at risk in a new democracy from Islamists.