In the Promised Land

Getting my marching orders.

Some of you may have noticed my absence over the last week. I was in Israel with the American Israel Education Fund, an affiliate of AIPAC. A few observations/impressions... Israeli politics are not polarized, they're paralyzed. We spoke with members of both the governing party, Kadima, and the opposition Likud. They all agree that disengagement has been a failure, in Lebanon, in Gaza, and to a lesser extent in the West Bank, yet no one has any real idea about how the country can move forward. The Palestinian Authority is incapable of delivering security, though surprisingly many of the politicians we spoke with think Abbas would if he could. Iran is the enemy. No matter what question you ask, the answer is the same--Iran is behind all of the current troubles. The Islamic Republic supports Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. But, the Israelis are somewhat less alarmist about the threat of a nuclear armed Iran than their American counterparts. Why is this? There are a number of reasons, not least of which is polling that indicates a substantial number of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon. Israeli politicians seem to fear that an Iranian bomb is inevitable, and that it would therefore be a mistake to hype the threat. Apparently the word has come down from the government that the threat is not to be discussed in existential terms. Which isn't to say that the threat isn't existential, just that no one wants to be painted in to a corner. Still, we did hear from at least one intelligence official who thought that a nuclear Iran could be deterred from using the device, even if it would embolden the clerical regime in other areas detrimental to Israeli security. Bottom line, the situation in Israel is bad, and it will be a lot worse if the Iranians succeed in building a bomb. Israelis don't buy the NIE. This is a fact, and the explanation for it was interesting. Basically, the two countries approach intelligence differently. According to one former intelligence official we spoke with, and I see no reason to doubt his analysis, American assessments of the Iranian program are shaped almost entirely by the intelligence failures of the Iraq war. That is to say, the American intel community was burned by the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and is thus extremely fearful of overhyping the threat from Iran. On the other hand, the assessment of the Israeli intelligence community is shaped by another event, the Yom Kippur War. They fear underestimating the capabilities of their enemies as they did then, and will err on the side of caution in order to avoid a repeat. Still, one got the sense that the Israelis and their American counterparts are not really so far apart on their estimation of Iranian capabilities, at least privately. The land for peace paradigm is dead. It didn't work. The Israelis gave up southern Lebanon and got a war with Hezbollah. They gave up Gaza and they now have a hot war in the south with rockets hitting Sderot daily. There is no chance that the Israelis give up the West Bank only to see the same thing happen, especially given the West Bank's proximity to the economic heart of Israel. Which only further contributes to the paralysis--the old paradigm is dead, but nothing has yet developed to take its place. Even the country's peaceniks are horrified by the turn of events in Gaza--they are no longer pushing for a similar withdrawal from the West Bank. The people we spoke with painted a very bleak picture, and yet life goes on in Israel. The economy is booming, the bars and clubs are full, and the country, outside of Sderot at least, is enjoying something resembling peace. We drove around the West Bank and saw almost no evidence of violence. The security fence has had the desired effect, and despite all the talk about checkpoints and their impact on the daily lives of Palestinians, we moved relatively freely from one end of the territory to the other. I was also struck by how empty the West Bank is. Despite the attachment some settlers have to the land, most Israelis seem willing to cede the area in exchange for peace. That just isn't possible given the current fractures in the Palestinian body politic. On the other hand, the Golan is spectacular. It's also largely empty, but it is stunning terrain. The Israelis we spoke with seemed willing to part with this land as well in exchange for a real and lasting peace with Syria. I'm not sure I would.