Sliver of Hope in the Middle East

Israel’s security cooperation with Egypt has strengthened in the past two years, and a mutual dissatisfaction with US policy has brought it on the same page as Saudi Arabia. Will the Jewish nation’s ties with its neighbours finally blossom in the Arab Spring?

In his address to the Winter Session of the Knesset earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an important comment that has gone largely unnoticed. He said: “For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, a growing understanding is taking root in the Arab world, and it is not always said softly. This understanding, that Israel is not the enemy of Arabs and that we have a united front on many issues, might advance new possibilities in our region.” The statements were made in reference to the tremendous upheaval that the region has witnessed since 2011 and placed against the background narrative of radical Islam gaining ground in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Prime Minister Netanyahu now believes that this narrative is flawed; that radical Islam’s assumption of power is “neither inevitable or nor irreversible”, as the common man doesn’t support the extremists.

While only time will tell if Mr Netanyahu’s assessments (which many believe to be a tad bit too optimistic) are correct, and more importantly if Israel will be able to leverage these shifts in regional power equations to push for a less-hostile neighbourhood, there is, however, some reason to hope for the better. We see this primarily in Israel’s relations with Egypt and to a lesser extent with Saudi Arabia.

In the case of Egypt, Israel’s peace with the world’s largest Arab nation has held strong despite the tumultuous changes that have taken place in that country since 2011. In fact, when the autocratic but relatively secular regime of President Hosni Mubarak was ousted, there were concerns that the Egypt-Israel peace treaty that has been the anchor for regional stability for four decades now, would fall apart. These concerns gained strength especially after the Muslim Brotherhood, which barely recognises Israel’s right to exist, was voted to power last year and Mr Mohammed Morsi became President. And his removal from office earlier this year did little to assuage those fears.

Yet, despite all of this, the treaty has not fallen apart — as many had feared. Instead, it has paved the way for unprecedented military and strategic cooperation between Israel and Egypt in the past two years. As Ehud Yaari at the Washington Institute notes, “Israeli and Egyptian officers hold almost daily meetings and have established an efficient system of communications. This cooperation stems from a mutual interest in curbing the terrorist factions that have emerged in Sinai over the past decade, threatening both the Israeli border and the Egyptian control over the peninsula.”

A good example of this kind of cooperation, and the mutual trust that it quietly engenders, lies in the fact that earlier this year when Egypt wanted to temporarily deploy its troops in areas of eastern Sinai where they are generally not allowed, Israel agreed. This was an especially big deal because the sanctioned deployment was in excess of what the peace treaty provides for.

Zack Gold, who studies Israeli-Egyptian security cooperation in the Sinai Peninsula, has also observed that “Jihadi action over the past two years has purposefully attempted to embarrass the Egyptian military, expose Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, and draw Israel into a cross-border response.” In an attempt to inject bad blood between Egyptian and Israeli troops, terrorists in fact raided Israeli targets wearing Egyptian uniforms.

Yet, in spite of these many challenges, the treaty has proved to be resilient much like it had during previous times of turbulence — such as the two Palestinian Intifadas, the two Lebanon wars and rounds of fighting Israel-Hamas fighting in the Gaza strip. While the treaty may have failed to forge greater socio-economic cooperation between the two countries of the kind that had been envisaged at the end of the Yom Kippur war, the last war waged by an Arab nation against Israel, its strategic benefits cannot be overstated. Not only has it fostered a ‘cold peace’ between the two nations, protecting lives and territory, it has also now seemingly encouraged Israeli-Egypt cooperation on the global platform.

For instance, after the Egyptian military ousted President Morsi from office, Israel lobbied hard with Washington, DC, to not label it a coup — even though that was exactly what it was. Terming it as such would have immediately ended the flow of all American aid to Egypt and upset the generals in Cairo. Of course, the Obama Administration has since then still partially suspended its hefty aid package to Egypt, its biggest Arab ally, at a time of widespread instability in the Maghreb and Mashreq, and no doubt the decision has come under intense scrutiny from several quarters.

Some experts, such as Princeton scholar Sharanbir Grewal, believe that it was the Obama Administration’s “smartest possible option”. Writing for a Washington Post blog, he notes that by halting cash assistance and delivery of large-scale military systems such as F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, M1A1 tanks, and Harpoon missiles, while leaving support for counter-terrorism programmes and economic assistance untouched, Washington, DC, has demonstrated “resourcefulness in maximizing what little leverage it has over Egypt.” He argues that the US has hit the generals where it hurts them the most (the boys in Cairo love their big, shiny, toys) while causing almost no damage to American national interests.

But most policy-makers and security analysts do not share his optimism. While some have criticised the Obama Administration for cutting too much aid that will only lead to further erosion of Washington’s leverage in Cairo, others believe that it has cut too little and, therefore, exposed itself as a toothless tiger desperate for Egyptian support to maintain its influence in the Arab world. And then are others who believe that the partial cut sends out yet another muddled message of the kind that has come to characterise the Obama Administration’s Arab Spring policy. Ultimately, though the strongest criticism of America’s decision to cut aid to Egypt has come from what many would consider to be an unlikely quarter: The State of Israel.

Irrespective of the merits of the debate on US aid to Egypt, the point to be noted here is that it was yet another instance of diverging Israeli and American interests in the region. Washington’s decision to cut aid to Egypt came around the same time it chose to respond positively to Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s peace overtures. This has sent alarm bells ringing in Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned against his counterpart in Tehran being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and also in Riyadh where the royals have made clear that the US is violating the terms of their protection racket by warming up to Tehran. Clearly, mutual dissatisfaction over US foreign policy has brought Israel and Saudi Arabia closer than ever before. It is, of course, still unclear if Israel in the near future will be able to have peaceful ties with its Arab neighbours but a sliver of hope seems to be emerging.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 31, 2013)

Futile Bid at Damage Control

Foreign policy will not be among the glorious legacies that Manmohan Singh will leave behind. But that will not be for want of trying, although on many occasions he blundered badly. Ties with Pakistan remain strained, since he has been repeatedly outsmarted 

Coming at the tail end of his almost decade-long prime ministerial tenure, Mr Manmohan Singh’s trip to the US for the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly should, ideally, have been about consolidating, if not celebrating, his foreign policy legacy. Instead, it turned out to be a last-ditch attempt to salvage his image. Be it his lacklustre speech to the General Assembly or his meetings with US President Barack Obama, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, each one of these was essentially just an exercise in damage control. Here’s how:

The Singh-Sharif Meet: That this one was even held in the first place is  a little victory for Mr Singh. The meeting was not confirmed until the very last minute, and exactly a day after it was finalised a terror attack in Jammu that claimed nearly a dozen lives, put tremendous pressure on the Prime Minister to call off the talk. Such incidents have been happening with increased frequency since Mr Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan earlier this year. Earlier, we had the brutal beheading of two Indian soldiers in January. Since then, there has continued ceasefire violations along the Line of Control — and most in New Delhi believed that the time was not right for a high-level summit. But having still committed himself to the New York meet, Mr Singh was right in not caving to forces that wanted to disrupt the peace process. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the only positive take-away from the Singh-Sharif meet — and few are possibly more disappointed about this than Mr Singh himself.

Having spent his entire nine years in office nurturing the fond hope that he will be the one to script a landmark India-Pakistan peace deal, sometimes even at the cost of India’s security interests, in the final analysis Mr Singh has been able to do next to nothing. This is despite the fact that he inherited Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s legacy of vastly improved bilateral ties between the two countries. He clearly failed to carry it forward. In this context, the New York meeting was little more than a pointless conciliatory gesture from India that made the Pakistani Prime Minister (who came to power promising better ties with New Delhi) look good, and gave the latter the opportunity to bid Mr Singh farewell.

At best, it was also an excuse for some diplomatic amusement — and no, this is not a reference to Mr Sharif’s PJ about village women, but that he, of all people, would whine about India taking up Pakistan’s shenanigans with the US when it was he who had pleaded for Washington to intervene during the Kargil conflict.

The Singh-Obama Meet: This one came at a time when the India-US bilateral has slowed down significantly, having initially raced forth into the 21st century. The decade between 1998 and 2008 saw the India-US relationship come into its own with the world’s largest democracy forging a strong sense of fellowship with the world’s most powerful democracy and acknowledging each other as natural partners. For the first time, Washington’s India policy was dehyphenated from Pakistan while the landmark nuclear deal literally energised the India-US bilateral. In Washington, President George W Bush had used all his political capital to push through that deal while in New Delhi, Prime Minister Singh put his Government at stake. But, if in those years, India and the US were like teenagers in the throes of first love, as one analyst put it, post-2008 their relationship seems to have matured and settled into a humdrum routine. And so, ambitious plans for bilateral cooperation have got stuck in the bureaucratic maze that is as much Delhi as Washington — think of the nuclear liability clause, the tightening of the visa regime and restrictive trade practices. Unfortunately neither Mr Singh, who has already been reduced to a lame-duck Prime Minister, nor Mr Obama, whose Government is shutting down, was currently in a position to resolve any of these issues, even though now would have been the time to give the India-US bilateral that extra push so that it doesn’t plateau before reaching its full potential. And so, the nuclear negotiations, for one, have been left for a later date.

Still, the meeting was not as much of a failure as some had predicted it would be. President Obama, for instance, deserves credit for being graceful enough to spare Mr Singh the litany of complaints against Indian trade practices that American companies have thrown at him. Similarly, Prime Minister Singh, often derided for being soft on terror, deserves a word in praise for highlighting the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, particularly the support that organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba receive from state actors in that country. Indeed, Mr Singh’s description of Pakistan as the “epicentre of terror” took many by surprise. Also, talks on defence co-operation between Ashton Carter and Shiv Shankar Menon have been positive, with the US offering a deal to India that, it claims, it has not offered to its Nato allies even.

The Singh-Hasina Meet: Though largely ignored in the international and the national media, this was possibly the most important of Mr Singh’s engagement, given that it was the only meeting that had the potential of immediate impact. While the Prime Minister’s discussions with Prime Minister Sharif and President Obama would have done little to change the ground realities of either the India-Pakistan or the India-US bilateral, his talks with Ms Hasina was crucial to India-Bangladesh relations, which are at a crossroads. This bilateral too has evolved significantly in the recent past, thanks primarily to Ms Hasina who has left no stone unturned to address India’s primary concerns regarding terror fugitives hiding in Bangladesh. But Mr Singh and his Government have failed to put the deliverables from their end — the land border agreement and the Teesta water deal — on the table. This has left Ms Hasina, who is bracing for a tough re-election battle later this year, in an uncomfortable position. The Prime Minister has promised to push these measures through during the Winter Session of Parliament. In the meantime, the progress made in the power-sharing deal — the two leaders will jointly inaugurate a power transmission system on October 5 — is good diplomacy. It will hopefully placate to some extent an otherwise very disappointed Ms Hasina.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 3, 2013)