ISRAEL IN 2022: DOMESTIC POLITICS & FOREIGN POLICY

An anti-missile defence integrated system to confront the threats posed by the Iranians wagered between Israel and Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE is what Ehud Yaari calls a “big time” development. But increasingly it is a reality. Meanwhile the Palestinian issue no longer dominates thinking mong the big Arab players. And while Israeli domestic politics appears in a crisis, the economy remains unaffected. Commenting on all this and more, Israeli journalist, author, television personality and political commentator Ehud Yaari addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 14 June 2022. Ehud Yaari’s visit to Australia was sponsored by the Australian/Jewish & Israel Affairs Council.

ISRAEL IN 2022: DOMESTIC POLITICS & FOREIGN POLICY

Ehud Yaari

Good evening, everybody. It’s always good to be at The Sydney Institute and in Australia. I will, as usual, make some blunt comments, and then we can have a conversation.

I’ll start with Ukraine. When speaking about the Middle East, you should start with Ukraine. There is a lot of coverage of the war, but one major issue is missing – certainly, in the American and the Australian press, to the extent that I’m able to follow. That is, since September 2015, when the Russians first sent their air force and other units to Syria to save the illustrious President Assad, the Russian, going through a process of modernisation, changing the formation of the Russian army to tactical battle groups – which we see in Ukraine now. Half of them have been wiped out, effectively. The Russian army has turned Syria into a testing ground for its forces. They have tested, in Syria, no less than 320 brand new weapon systems, starting with the hypersonic Kinzhal missile, the Kalibre cruise missile that they fired from the Caspian Sea into well populated cities in Syria.

The Russians didn’t have enough of their new tanks in Ukraine – the URAN-9 – so their T72s, the ancient tanks, were slaughtered. Almost every Russian pilot, who has flown sorties over Ukraine now, has had a few months of carpet bombing in Syria. Almost all the generals, and what they call senior colonels, of their ground forces, have had a few months in Syria. They felt that Syria had proven that the “renovated” Russian army was doing well. This is how they took the decision to invade the Ukraine. Except, in Syria, they didn’t have a real enemy, a real adversary. In Syria, they were confronting a bunch of rebel militia groups; poorly equipped, with no heavy weapons, no anti-aircraft defence system, no planes, no air force. But the Russians came out of Syria – although 20-25 of their planes are still there, and some military police battalions – feeling that they had tested their new army and it was working. As we all know now – it doesn’t.

The poor, almost ridiculous, performance of the Russian army in Ukraine has a lot to do with what happened in our neighbourhood. Syria misled Putin. He saved President Assad and his awful regime. Cannibalising his own people.  Fourteen million displaced people out of a population of 23 million, whether outside the boundaries or displaced inside. In my opinion, if it were not for Syria, you would not have Ukraine. Putin has totally misled himself. His generals misled themselves to believe that they had tested everything, and it was working fine.

The Middle East is watching – Jews but mainly Arabs, along with Kurds, Turks and Iranians. Everybody is drawing their own conclusions. Russia is not only no longer a superpower in economic terms – now just an economy the size of Italy – but it is no longer a military superpower. Do we want to buy Russian weapon systems? Russian planes? Russian tanks? Aircraft batteries? The answer is no. Egypt, for example, our good friend, is negotiating to purchase a bunch of Sukhoi 35; that’s the best plane the Russians have. It’s supposedly the equivalent of the American F-35; the stealth fighter which we are flying. They will negotiate; they will not buy. The same goes for the rest.

So, Ukraine is costing Putin, and whoever comes next such as the Middle East. It’s very important because, simultaneously, there was a general agreement in our turbulent region, or the Muddle East as I call it, that since Obama, and certainly with Biden, the US was retreating from the region. Losing interest. Cutting investment and attention to the region. It didn’t want to get involved in the unending wars of the region.

Therefore, entities such as the Gulf States were looking for other sources of support. The UAE, the Emirates, are Israel’s best friends in our world now. You go to Dubai Airport – I came this time through Abu Dhabi and last time through Dubai – and you see more skullcaps there and you hear more Hebrew than Kaffiyas and Arabic.

So, the region that was working under the assumption the US was going to be less present, less influential, less interested, is now having second thoughts. Because the US is getting more interested, and more involved – not more invested, but more involved in the region. For example, the US is very effective in blocking Chinese penetration into the Horn of Africa, the west coast of the Red Sea. They are very effective in controlling what Mr Erdogan, President of Turkey, is planning to do in northern Syria and northern Iraq. They are playing, they are there, so people are having – with the exception of Israel – second thoughts. “Where are we going?” As the UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed used to say. “Do we really prefer a multipolar world?” The answer now is – I’m talking to somebody who’s talking to them – very vague. The main thing that the Americans are involved in now, which I think is dramatic and, at the end, also touches Australia, is that they are trying to build a regional Arab-Israeli system of defence cooperation.

This would be an anti-missile defence integrated system to confront the threats posed by the Iranians. That’s big time. The Arabs – UAE, Saudi Arabia, the others – would like to get some of the Israeli anti-missile assistance. But we cannot send the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, the Iron Dome or the David’s sling or our arrow anti-ballistic missile systems. They are too close to the Chinese. And you worry about your technology. When we speak about the UAE, we need to be aware that they have business with Iran, mainly going from Sudan, but not only. But if cooperation is in the framework of a regional system, sponsored and in a way led by the United States, that’s a different story. So, if you have an Arrow battery somewhere in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, it can be operated by Israelis. We don’t have to hand over the technology. This is a tectonic shift in the landscape of a very turbulent region, in which several countries are basically melting down, and their country is only on the map. With the Biden visit to Jerusalem, he will pay his respects to the Palestinian authority. From Jerusalem, he goes straight to Saudi Arabia.

How does Biden explain the fact that he is willing to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the leader responsible for slicing up the journalist Jamal Khashoggi? They’re already saying it’s for the security of Israel but it’s not. It’s for negotiating for more oil to go to Europe. But if you watch, the Americans have now established a special naval task force in the Red Sea – they didn’t have it before. They are doing joint drills with Israel and the Arab allies, over the eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea. It’s a different picture. This is why I allow myself to say we have a tectonic shift.

I would add to that, two points. I said before that the international media misses the role of Syria in Ukraine. But the international media, unfortunately, including my channel, no question about that, are missing two other developments. One is the growing rivalry to the point of active confrontations between Iranian and Turkish proxies in north-eastern Iraq, northern Syria, politically in Lebanon, in Yemen and so on. What you see is Turkey and Iran – the two non-Arab ex imperial superpowers of the region, which have learned over 300 years to conduct competition rivalry without getting into a fist fight – now getting into a fist fight. In Iraq, you see the Iranian led militias bombing the Turks, who have invaded northern Iraq and have bases there. The same goes for northern Syria. You have elections in a key country – the key country of the Middle East, Iraq. The Turks are supporting one side, the Iranians the other side. The Iranians lost the election. Since then, they cannot elect a president or form a government, because the Iranians in losing the election through their proxies would not let a government be formed or a president be elected.

It’s the same now in Lebanon. We had elections, just now. Hezbollah suffered a humiliating defeat; all their allies were not re-elected. They lost the majority in parliament. They cannot dictate who is going to be, in October, the next president of Lebanon, or who will form the government. But they can, as in Iraq, prevent it from happening. I could go on and on to demonstrate how the Iranian-Turkish rivalry is getting fiercer, and more violent.

The second point I need to make is, with this as the background, you have in Turkey’s president, Mr Erdogan, a very peculiar type of statesman. He is now picking a fight with Greece. There is huge tension over the Aegean islands. But he’s making peace with the Arabs and the Israelis. The journalist Khashoggi, who was a friend of mine by the way, was cut to pieces in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Erdogan has moved the trial back to Saudi Arabia. I will place a bet on the result. Ergodan is begging the Saudis for reconciliation as he did with the Emirates. He’s seeking rapproachment with Israel. He’s moving towards the new emerging alliance I’ve just mentioned around the integrated anti-missile, anti-cruise missile, anti-drones defence system.

In my humble opinion, this is huge. It changes the landscape of the Middle East; it makes Iran, in a way, semi-isolated. I won’t go into the details, because they are very technical but, generally, we are engaged in maritime boundary demarcation talks sponsored by the Americans with Lebanon. There is no Lebanon anymore; the state, like others in the Middle East, such as Libya and so on, has melted. But it is on the map and, nominally you have an interim government and a caretaker president. So, we have a ship.

We are under considerable pressure from the EU to pump more gas into Europe from our gas fields. Unfortunately, Woodside is not there which is our mistake. The head of the Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) couldn’t get himself to explain to the Woodside people what the taxation would be on their profits. Mr Coleman, who was heading Woodside at the time, decided that he could not go into such a huge venture without clarification. Chevron came instead – not a small company, not smaller than Woodside. They brought from Singapore, through the Suez Canal, a huge rig to start taking the gas out from one of the fields; it’s called Shark, which is close to where the Lebanese say the maritime boundary should go. Hezbollah is threatening to lob missiles against this rig. We’ll see. I don’t think it will happen, but I’ve been wrong in the past. I think that what we are witnessing is a very slow, step by step process – the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states, with the Gulf leading but also Morocco and Sudan – beginning to shape the region differently.

One word about the Abraham Accords. The basis of all this, whatever we think about President Trump – and I think about him too – he is the basis for what is happening now. Whether to his credit or not to his credit, I don’t care. You have a different reality after Trump. It’s now possible to see a future configuration of a regional system which is broader than just the integrated, anti-missile defence system. We have, in the Red Sea, what is called the Red Sea Council. For now, it is mainly of an economic nature, but it is slowly developing into having some military dimension, securing the naval lanes in the Red Sea. There’s huge traffic there, threatened by the Iranian proxies in Yemen and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait leading in. In the northern end of the Suez Canal, we have the East Med Organisation, which already has military dimensions. So, you have Israeli, UAE, Egyptian, Bahrainis, and so on training together.

At one point, the idea is to combine these two regional systems, which emerged out of economic necessity, into a chain at both ends of the Suez Canal. Then, at the southern end, the hope is that one day it will link up to the Quad, once and if it emerges. Hopefully, before the Chinese have a blue navy fleet which can get to the western side of the Indian Ocean. This is where Australia comes in, being part of the Quad. I know it’s very problematic. I know India is problematic. But does anybody think that a smart fellow, whether you like him or not, like Prime Minister Modi, is going to buy more Russian weapons? I don’t think so. You already have very strange forums that you never had before, like the India-UAE-US-Israel forum. All of a sudden, India decided that supporting the Iranian base in Chabahar, close to the Pakistani border, is not such a good idea. A lot is happening, and most of what is happening goes unreported – it also goes unreported in the Israeli press because of political crises and scandals.

I’ll say a word about the Israeli political situation. We now need, in the immediate future, a very effective government which can take advantage of the opportunities presenting themselves. I can tell you there are a few more Arab states, members of the Arab leagues, lining up for normalisation with Israel. It takes work; it has to be orchestrated, with the Americans and others. For example, if we talk about a Big Bang with Indonesia, we need Canberra to help. Not taking the lead role, but we need them. I’m not sure they are there. They were there a few years ago.

In Israel today, we have a totally dysfunctional political system. We have a government which will collapse any day, because it has a majority of one in parliament, and already there are five defectors. The government is a mosaic of an Islamist Arab party, extreme right wingers bordering on racist and, I have to be honest, some centrists and they cannot agree on anything, just survival and the cry of ’’don’t let Mr Netanyahu come back to power’’ – probably with very good reasons. But it’s not enough in order to hold them together. It’s a matter of days, a few weeks – that’s it.

Luckily, the economy in Israel is thriving, doing very well. The ASX fell today 5 per cent, but when I left Israel was up 2 per cent. The economy is not dependent on government decisions, because it’s mostly high tech; that’s what generates growth. The military, intelligence, security sector establishment don’t wait for ministers to make decisions, they know what they have to do.

One word about the Palestinians; they are being frustrated by the pace of the development in the relationship between the other Arab states and Israel. They feel abandoned. I can understand that, because the Arabs are saying to them, “You don’t have any more veto power over what we do with Israel. At the end we will help you.” The Palestinian Authority, part of the PLO, is crumbling. Succession wars for the morning after Mr Abbas leaves have started. It can generate lots of violence in the West Bank, and against us. Negotiations, unfortunately, are not on the cards, because that’s their position now.

Finally, I will say a few words about what is really happening in the Middle East and goes unreported. Not The Age, not the Sydney Morning Herald, not The Australian, not The Daily Telegraph; nobody is reporting this. And that’s an ongoing war escalating, between Israel and Iran. We have a real war going on; it’s continuous, it’s intermittent, it’s not declared, it’s fierce, it’s not a full-scale war, but it’s a very serious affair. In the past fortnight or so, you may have read that 5 Iranian nuclear scientists were found dead. Damascus Airport is out of operation because of an Israeli raid, and Israeli tourists in Turkey have been whisked out because the Iranians are planning to carry out a terrorist operation. It’s all over. From 2017 until today, Israeli forces have conducted more than 1200 raids on Iranian targets in Syria, apart from other operations, not by the air force. These are mostly unreported. It’s a war at sea and by cyber, and it’s escalating.

The Israelis cannot allow the Iranian plan of building a war machine on Syrian territory to go ahead. Israel cannot allow Iran to provide Hezbollah with their 100,000 missiles, with the ability to convert many of these missiles into precision guided missiles, that can hit any target within 50 metres of its aim. Which means that if they keep trying – this week it was Damascus Airport, next time it will be some Syrian port, etc. We cannot take this risk, because then you have hundreds of targets in Israel within range, and our defence systems cannot cope with so many at a time. So, this is going to go on, and I think it will accelerate and expand.

The second matter, and here I conclude, is the nuclear problem. I’ve said it at The Sydney Institute before; the Iranians want to be a screwdriver away from the bomb. To package a bomb, and put it on the tip of missile, that’s a different operation. I assume they can do it. It takes times, but they can do it. But if they do it – they are on record with this – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey will not be far behind. Does Iran want a nuclearised Middle East? It’s one thing to have Israel with whatever arsenal it’s supposed to have, and never use it. It’s a different thing to have Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and maybe the UAE, with nuclear bombs. The best for Iran now would be to get a pretence of the renewal of the 2015 nuclear deal from Obama, gain some time and see what can be done in the future. For Israel, the main thing is the alliance with the Arabs and foiling the Iranian plan to turn Syria into a base for their missiles, their drones, their cruise missiles and, from the Syrian and Iraq border, subvert and undermine Jordan.