Arab Spring for Gaza and End Game for Israel

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As we write this, heavy fightingis under way and Israel ispreparing to invade Gaza.  I am curious just what their war aims will bethis time?
The reason we must ask thisquestion is that conditions on the ground are utterly changed.  All potential threats to an Israeli coup demain have been neutralized totally.  Syria ismilitarily hors de combat.  Hezbollah haslost its sponsor in Iran andSyriaand is penned in with hostile borders.  Jordancontinues to work at maintaining the Status Quo. And Egypt is clearly signaling businessas usual even if they say otherwise.  Infact they are themselves hostile to Gaza.
The remarkable fact is that thereis no political incentive in supporting any form of adventurism against Israel and noneof these folks are suicidal.  Hamas ofcourse is suicidal.  What is more Israelimilitary power continues to wax while that of the rest is looking ugly.
My point is that forcing asettlement arrangement today is possible and it may even be pulled off withoutserious pressure from even the USto turn back the clock.  Off course, thatwould make Obama the most hate USpresident ever among the Islamicists, if that is possible.
More likely we will have anincursion and a negotiated withdrawal leaving a heap of rubble behind as we didbefore.  Yet removing women and childrento the West Bank for their protection wouldsend them all a powerful message.
Regardless, an incursion willdestroy all weapons available and likely establish a semi occupation and sealedborders, even if it allows a slow simmer.
What is emerging in the MiddleEast is a fire wall of representative governments around Israel who leada population who has totally grown up with an Israeli presence and actuallywants more of what they have and can trade for. There is no better formula for peace and we are now seeing the lastkicks of a dying resistance.
It would be a mercy to find ashort cut to ending it all.
Israel’s Arab Spring
Started by Anchorman, Yesterday, 05:01 AM
Gary C. Gambill:
http://www.bluecanada.ca/index.php?/topic/78735-gary-c-gambill-israel%E2%80%99s-arab-spring/
As the greatest outbreak of Israel-Palestinian hostilities in yearsunfolds in Gaza,many Israelis are bracing for reaction from the surrounding Arab world.Theories abound, but no one has been entirely sure how the weakening andcollapse of Arab autocracies over the past two years will impact the Jewishstate.
The answer is likely to underwhelm.
For over six decades, Israelstood alone as the most vilified antagonist in Arab public life. Governments,media and civic groups singled out the Jewish state as a standing crime againsthumanity, while glorifying or ignoring mass murderers such as Saddam Husseinand Muammar Qaddafi. Outside observers assumed the Israeli-Palestinian conflictto be such a visceral affront to Arabs everywhere as to account almostsingle-handedly for their collective political dysfunction. Arab anger toward Israel “weakens the legitimacy of moderateregimes,” warned U.S.CENTCOM commander David H. Petraeus in 2010. Take away those “moderate” regimes— such as Hosni Mubarak’s government in Egypt— and Israelwould presumably be in a world of trouble.
In fact, while the Arab Spring has invigorated nearly every otherrevanchist political cause under the sun, thus far it hasn’t unleashed a surgeof anti-Zionist fervour.
Anti-Israeli slogans were relatively few and far between in the massdemonstrations that brought down Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisianpresident Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Insurgents battling Syrian President BasharAssad have ignored Israel altogether, while the Libyan revolutionaries whovanquished Gaddafi are said to have secretly communicated well wishes toIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Today’s newly elected Arab statesmen have proven surprisingly willingto check their anti-Zionist baggage at the door. Egyptian President MohamedMorsi, formerly a leading official of the Muslim Brotherhood, has avoideddirect public mention of Israel, while sending a private letter(subsequently leaked and reluctantly acknowledged by his office) to IsraeliPresident Shimon Peres, calling the latter a “great friend” and vowing to“strengthen the cordial relations, which so happily exist between our twocountries.”[Just in case anyone had any doubts regarding the stabilityof the Israeli Egyptian Peace Treaty - arclein]
While there is little evidence that popular anti-Israeli sentiment inthe Arab world has waned, the erosion of authoritarian controls gives politicalactors less incentive to tap into it. [Popular Nazi Support slowly wanedalso – it is hard to escape a belief system]
In the old Egypt,anti-Zionism was central to the Brotherhood’s public profile, partly forideological reasons, but partly also because “justice” for the Palestinianswas the only revolutionary political cause that its cadres could emphaticallyembrace without risking government reprisals. In the new Egypt, where the public square isunsanitized and control of the state is up for grabs, challenging a distantenemy readily conflicts with the pursuit of other goals. Morsi and others maybe soft-peddling their hatred of Israel purely to curry favour with the West,but this underscores how ancillary the “Zionist entity” has become to theirpolitical ambitions for the time being.
The Arab Spring also has put the brakes on anti-Zionism by acceleratingthe progressive discrediting of the Iran-led rejectionist axis over the pastsix years.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s willingness to kill and maim fellowArabs in ostensible pursuit of the cause, first in Lebanon after 2005 and thenin Syria, steadily eroded what was once a substantial reserve of regionalgoodwill toward Iranand its proxies.
According to Pew polling, the percentage of Egyptians holding afavourable view of Irandropped from 59% in 2006 to 22% in 2012, while that of the Lebanese ShiiteHezbollah movement declined from 56% to 20%.
Even radical Sunni Islamists have reevaluated their priorities. Thepreeminent Egyptian writer Fahmi Huweidi, who for years staunchly supported theAlawite-dominated Assad regime because of its anti-Zionist credentials, nowconcedes that it “oppresses the Syrian people worse than the Israelis oppressthe Palestinians.” Jordanian salafi leader Abu Muhammad Tahawi contends that it“is currently the biggest threat to Sunnis, even more than the Israelis.”When Morsi condemned the victimization of a people dear to “the hearts” of hiscountrymen and denounced an oppressor that “kills … day and night” in his Sept.26 address to the UN General Assembly, he wasn’t talking about Netanyahu.
To be sure, many other radical ideologues — including the spiritualleader of the Muslim Brotherhood — continue to demonize Israel as loudly as ever. However,such appeals have generated little mass enthusiasm from Arab youth, who rankedthe Israeli-Palestinian conflict behind civil unrest and lack of democracy asthe “biggest obstacle” facing the region in a May 2012 survey. Efforts toharness their support for a failed campaign to win UN recognition ofPalestinian statehood, an unprecedented hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners inIsrael and a “Global March on Jerusalem” all fizzled.
The Israeli assault on Gazais sure to elicit a stronger reaction from the Arab street. Anti-Zionism willcontinue as always to be the refuge of extremists who otherwise have little tolose (or gain), and political instability in the region will afford themgreater opportunities to evade authorities.
So long as the Arab world continues to develop more representativeand accountable governments, however, the vast majority of its inhabitants willfind that they have better things to do with their time.
National Post
Gary C. Gambill is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.