NYTimes.com Article: Israel Sees War in Iraq as Path to Mideast Peace

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.


I suppose the point of printing this article was to show that SOMEONE outside 
of the Bush administration proper wants this war.  Revealing nevertheless.

Steven Sherman

threehegemons@aol.com


Israel Sees War in Iraq as Path to Mideast Peace

February 24, 2003
By JAMES BENNET 




 

JERUSALEM, Feb. 24 - Israelis once believed that the Oslo
agreement with the Palestinians would usher in a new Middle
East of comfortable Israeli-Arab co-existence. 

With Oslo in tatters, they are now putting similar hopes in
an American war on Iraq. 

Other nations may cavil, but Israel is so certain of the
rightness of a war on Iraq that it is already thinking past
that conflict to urge a continued, assertive American role
in the Middle East. 

Shaul Mofaz, Israel's defense minister, 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 the event of war is most eager for that
war to begin. 

But Israel's military intelligence has concluded that the
chances of a successful Iraqi missile strike here during
this war, while ever-present, are small. Israel believes
that Mr. Hussein seeks devastating weapons but has far less
capacity for mayhem now than he did during the first
Persian Gulf war, when he fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel.
The army also believes its own national defenses are much
improved. 

Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats, and it is
hoping that once Mr. Hussein is dispensed with, the
dominoes will start to tumble. 

According to this hope - or evolving strategy - moderates
and reformers throughout the region will be encouraged to
put new pressure on their regimes, not excepting that of
Yasir Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. 

"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 Mossad,
Israel's spy agency. "We have hopes of greater stability,
greater enhanced confidence from the Persian Gulf to the
Atlantic shores of Morocco," he said. 

Israelis have also suggested that the war might salvage
their economy and prompt recalcitrant Labor to join Mr.
Sharon's coalition in a new government of "national unity."


Expressed in its broadest, vaguest terms, this theory has
come in for the sort of withering 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 recently 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." Polls here have shown a strong though not
overwhelming majority in favor of war. 

The precise mechanism for converting the war into regional
stability and comity has not been detailed. 

"The Israelis are counting on the lesson that will be
learned from taking on Saddam Hussein," said Rep. Gary L.
Ackerman, the Queens Democrat, who met here last week with
some of Israel's security leaders. "This is the whipping
boy theory." According to this theory, he explained, a
prince who misbehaves mends his ways after courtiers
demonstrate the possible punishment on a poor boy - Iraq -
dragged off the streets. 

The problem, Mr. Ackerman said, is that mere examples and
even saber-rattling may not do the trick. "What do you then
do?" he asked. "March on Iran?" 

Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that no one
expected the Americans to march on Iran. Rather, he 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.' " 

Israeli officials say that only sustained American pressure
can turn this hope into reality. Mr. Mofaz warned that,
without continued attention to the rest of the region, an
Iraqi collapse could in fact 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 the
war would come a fork in the road for American policy and
"a battle for the heart and mind" of President Bush. 

He said that the 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 work to Israel's benefit. 

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, regarding the other players as less
supportive of Israel's interests. 

The top Israeli official said that the Quartet may 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/international/middleeast/24CND-ISRA.html?ex=1047114466&ei=1&en=8348136d4462d8b6



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