28 April 2006

For the first time in its history, Israel is to have a defence minister with no military background. This is a welcome development in an otherwise sombre Middle East scene. It raises the faint, if perhaps Utopian hope that Israel may rethink its relations with the region, choosing a language of good neighbourliness rather than of force.

Any such change would have an immediate beneficial impact on Israel's current, potentially explosive, confrontation with both the Islamic Palestinian movement, Hamas and with the Islamic Republic of Iran, introducing an element of rationality in a situation which threatens to spin dangerously out of control.

Amir Peretz, Israel's defence minister-designate, is a Moroccan Jew whose family emigrated to Israel in 1956 when he was four years old. He grew up in Sderot, a poor development town in the south of the country. An accident during his military service put him in a wheel chair for a couple of year before he recovered the use of his legs.

During the recent election campaign, Peretz introduced a new tone in Israeli politics with such statements as: "It is time for Israel to end its arrogance towards the Arabs. Peace is the best guarantee of security." Or the following: "I see the occupation as an immoral act ? I want to end the occupation not because of Palestinian pressure, but because I see it as an Israeli interest."

Will these sentiments survive the burden of office? Peretz's daunting task will be to take control of Israel's swollen military establishment a veritable state within the state, gorged with American money and American weapons whose philosophy may be summed up in the phrase "the only good Arab is a dead Arab".

Since the creation of the state in 1948, Israel's political leaders have used the IDF to dominate the region by military force. This was the strategy of Israel's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion, a path followed almost without exception by his successors. There is no sign that Olmert has any intention of departing from it.

The real question is whether Peretz, at the head of the powerful defence ministry, will be able to steer Israel in a less aggressive direction. Unlike his predecessors in the job and indeed unlike anyone in the senior ranks of the IDF and the various security agencies he has no blood on his hands. This gives him an advantage in terms of his credibility with the Arabs and the international community. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will be able to reshape Israel's military doctrine in a more conciliatory direction or whether, on the contrary, the defence ministry will reshape him.

How will Peretz deal with the immediate challenges from Hamas and Iran? Will his voice be heard in the Olmert government? Will he be able to argue in favour of dialogue and negotiation rather than war?

Together with the United States, Israel has already embarked on a violently confrontational policy towards both the Palestinian Islamic movement and Iran. In both Tel Aviv and Washington, the immediate Pavlovian instinct has been to threaten Iran with military attack and at the same time to boycott and starve Hamas.

Belligerent attitude
Israel's more hawkish leaders are inclined to liquidate their opponents, rather than simply cutting off their funds. The question is whether such belligerent attitudes are so deeply ingrained in the Israeli psyche as to resist any possibility of change.

A handful of Israelis, such as the peace activist Galia Golan and the former Labour minister Shlomo Ben Ami, have suggested talking to Hamas rather than fighting it. But, to my knowledge, no Israeli commentator or politician has yet suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rash remarks about "wiping Israel from the map" may be nothing more than an angry reaction to Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians rather than an indication of a real intention to destroy the Jewish state an ambition, in any event, far beyond Iran's means.

Any fair-minded observer of the Middle East will recognise that Hamas is demanding no more than reciprocity from Israel: recognise Palestinian rights and we will recognise you; stop your targeted killings and we will stop our terrorist attacks (Hamas has in fact done so for the past 15 months); declare your willingness to live at peace and respect agreements and we will do so also.

The trouble is that Israel is not prepared to deal with the Palestinians, or indeed with any of its neighbours, on a basis of equality. It wants to dominate and dictate terms, seeing this as the only guarantee of security.

Similarly, the US administration of President George W. Bush prefers preventive war to deterrence and containment. It cannot conceive of a negotiation between equals with Iran, in which the interests of both sides are addressed, including security interests and the place of Iran in the highly important Gulf region. The US wants submission rather than cooperation. But in the present mood of the Muslim world this will not be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, the world is getting seriously alarmed at American belligerence. After the disaster in Iraq, a war with Iran would be too terrible to contemplate.

But what argument, what appeal, can curb the war-like instincts of Washington and Tel Aviv? Some leaders can only speak in the language of force. Can the little Moroccan Jew make a difference?

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.

By Patrick Seale

Gulf News 2006. All rights reserved.