ISRAELI ACADEMICS OFFER POST-LEBANON WAR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TEL AVIV 004002

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/11/2011
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINR IS LE SY IR IZ
SUBJECT: ISRAELI ACADEMICS OFFER POST-LEBANON WAR
PERSPECTIVES


Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Gene A. Cretz. E.O. 12958 Reason 1.4
(B/D).


1. (C) Summary: The Charge, Political Counselor and PAO
recently discussed Israeli politics and regional developments
in the aftermath of the Lebanon war with leading academics
and area experts from Israeli universities and think tanks.
These academics, who spoke to us under the Chatham House rule
of confidentiality, included several from the generally more
liberal Tel Aviv (TAU) and Haifa universities as well as
conservative opinion-shapers from Bar-Ilan University (BIU)
and the more centrist Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in
Herzliya and Ben Gurion University in the Negev. While only
some of our interlocutors were proponents of Prime Minister
Olmert's unilateral policy of "convergence" before the
Lebanon war, most agreed that it is a dead letter now.
Despite differences of opinion on what GOI policymakers
should do now-- the left favors a search for cease-fire and
making law and order demands of the PA while the right favors
a "conflict management" approach -- these Israeli
interlocutors were in general agreement that the Israeli body
politic has no stomach for a "grand bargain" or a permanent
status agreement at this time. Most academics agreed with
TAU Dayan Center Head Asher Susser and Bitter Lemons Editor
Yossi Alpher that the Lebanon war was a proxy war between
Israel and Iran that marked a paradigm shift in the balance
of power in the Middle East: the new regional powers are now
all non-Arab states: Iran, Turkey, Israel (and the U.S).
Most hoped the U.S. would halt Iranian inroads in the Shi'a
crescent, but others were critical of U.S. policy in the
region. In the words of Alpher, "Israel is fighting on two
fronts with groups (Hamas and Hizballah) that won in
elections (the U.S.) encouraged. We (Israel) paid the
consequences of America's Arab reform policy." End Summary.

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Israeli Politics mired in post-Lebanon war funk
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2. (C) The Charge asked the academics why Israelis were so
self-critical about the recent Lebanon war. TAU Jaffee
Center Professor Mark Heller replied that Israelis are by
nature critical observers who tend to focus on their failings
rather than their successes. Nonetheless, Heller believed
post-Lebanon low public opinion polls combined with
allegations of improper real estate transactions against
Olmert had created a crisis in confidence. Most responses
echoed Heller's critique of the failure of Israel's
leadership and politicians to inspire trust in the body
politic, which has been alienated by a steady stream of
reports of corruption, malfeasance and other improprieties.
Others condemned the "confusion and hesitation" of the Prime
Minister during the war, citing the lack of planning for
civilian evacuation in the north and poor military planning
as examples. Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa University
proclaimed that the only heroes in this summer's war were
Israeli civilians, but another academic bemoaned the state of
Israeli society as one that lacked a sense of civics and was
unfamiliar with the world around it, including knowledge of
the Arabic language. On a more upbeat note, Haifa University
Professor Brenda Shaffer observed that the facts belied
failure: the Israeli shekel had appreciated against the
dollar, the price of oil had decreased, and Israel had taken
the air out of Iran's sails by surviving the threat posed by
Hizballah rockets. She noted that more Israeli civilians
died from car accidents this summer than died in the conflict
to hammer home this point.

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Palestinian Options: Conflict Management or Cease-Fire?
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3. (C) POL/C asked what the implications of the Lebanon war
were on Olmert's options with the Palestinians. A chorus
responded that the Prime Minister's policy of
convergence/realignment (aka "hitkansut" in Hebrew) was a
dead -- or frozen -- letter for the immediate future. Gerald
Steinberg of BIU argued that disengagement policy in general
was a failure, and argued in favor of "conflict management,"
a do-nothing-but-fight-terrorism approach on the Palestinian
account seconded by several of his BIU colleagues. Those
academics on the center-left who had been critical of the
unilateral aspect of the Prime Minister's plan agreed with
their conservative colleagues' assessment that a final status
agreement is not attainable in the near future. Professor
Asher Susser, for instance, argued that inaction -- i.e.,
watching the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority (PA)
-- would be antithetical to an Israeli strategic interest in
a Palestinian state. He urged a rethinking of the
"ideological litmus test" that Israel and the USG now apply
to the Hamas-run PA: "We speak to the PA as if we are
pursuing final status talks with them. Applying an ideology
test is only necessary when (the parties) are discussing
end-of-conflict issues." Susser argued in favor of changing
the litmus test we apply to the PA to one of maintaining law
and order and a sustainable cease-fire (rather than the
Quartet conditions). Professor Dan Bar-On of Ben Gurion
University agreed on the importance of a cease-fire, adding
that the chaos in Gaza is threatening to Israel: "Making
progress with the Palestinians will decrease the influence of
Iran and Al-Qaeda."

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Paradigm Shift from the Palestinian Question to Iran
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4. (C) The Charge asked the academics for their perspectives
on the broader region after the Lebanon war. Professor
Susser opined that the war was the first war by proxies
between Israel and Iran rather than the latest in a string of
Arab-Israeli wars. The Arab state system was in decline, and
was being supplanted by the rise of non-Arab states in the
region -- Israel, Iran and Turkey -- combined with the new
role of non-state actors (e.g. Hizballah, Hamas). Yossi
Alpher, a former Mossad official, described this as a
paradigm shift in focus from the Palestinian question to the
Iranian one. Syria serves as the weak link in a Shi'a
crescent that extends from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon,
Alpher continued. In counterpoint, Dr. Efraim Kam, a TAU
expert on Iran, noted that the bulk of Hizballah rockets
fired on Israel were sourced to Syria -- only six rockets
were Iranian in origin. He claimed that Iran had instructed
Hizballah not to shell Tel Aviv out of concern that the
conflict would spin out of control.

--------------
Iraq Makes Israelis Wary of Democratic reform
--------------


5. (C) Professor Shaffer, a foreign policy hawk from Haifa,
commented that since there was no longer any hegemon to rein
in Hizballah or Iran, we (U.S.) should pay more attention to
the minorities in Iran as a possible lever for understanding
how Iran works and perhaps to influence its behavior. She
urged an active U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian
regime, including assassination of nuclear scientists and
fomenting unrest among Iran's minority communities. Another
academic asked how can Israel trust the U.S. with its
security after the mess they (the Americans) have created in
Iraq? This remark set off a brisk debate on the issue of
democratic reform in the Middle East. In the words of Yossi
Alpher, "Israel is fighting on two fronts with groups that
won in elections (the U.S.) encouraged. We (Israel) paid the
consequences of America's Arab reform policy." The Charge
and Pol/C responded that change is inevitable in the Arab
world. The PAO added that the U.S. has always stood up for
democracy and that it is simplistic to say that the
undemocratic Arab states in the region are stable.

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