Middle East Inside Line: Israel and Hamas Manoeuvre on Settlements Policy

Israel Government Moves for Common Line on Settlements: On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would likely reach a final plan with George Mitchell during the American envoy's visit to Israel this week.

Dealing with increasing criticisms from his Likud Party, the Prime Minister held meetings with some Likud cabinet ministers and members of Parliament to get their support for a freeze on construction in the West Bank settlements. Netanyahu's meetings came as Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave partial approval for 500 new housing units to be constructed in the West Bank, with 2000 more to be approved on Monday morning. A source in the Prime Minister's office said Netanyahu did not use the word "moratorium" or "freeze" but described the proposed measure as "reducing the scale of construction".

While the European Union reiterated its call for a "total settlement freeze," Washington sharpened its tone:

Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the road map.... The administration of President Barack Obama does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas Stand Tough: On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai told Likud Party members:

The postponement in construction is a strategic delay... We won't give up on building in Jerusalem and will still build hundreds of construction units. We are looking ahead, here.

On the other side, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal warned Arab states:

There is an Israeli effort to avoid the American demands... We warn against any Arab rush toward normalization.

Inside Line Special: Iraq, Syria, and Turkey's Move into the Middle East

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Iraq and Syria are in the midst of the most serious tension between the two countries since the 2003 Iraq War. The Iraqi Government has blamed two devastating truck bombs that killed 95 people and wounded 600 in Baghdad on August 19 on insurgents who crossed the Syrian border. Yesterday Iraq deployed thousands of reinforcements along the border, and the Government asserted that it had provided Damascus with evidence linking Iraqis in Syria to the bombings.

Two countries' conflict are another's opportunity, however. For Turkey, mediation between Baghdad and Damascus is a chance to implement its "strategy in depth" in the Middle East. On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad.

After offering his condolences to Iraqi people and a denunciation of the bombings as a threat to the stability of Iraq, Davutoglu asked the Iraqi Government to take a become milder line towards Syria, following al-Maliki’s initial harsh statement that Iraq "asked Syria to return to us those targeting the Iraqi people but Syria sent us only common criminals.” Davutoglu told al-Maliki that there was no short-term solution for the crisis and offered to take information and documents to Damascus, establishing co-operation between Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

The documents referred to briefly today in The Washington Post are the outcome of Davutoglu's intervention. But this, for Ankara, is only the beginning. Just as it used another crisis, the Gaza War of December-January, to further its ties with Syria and its Middle Eastern presence, so it will now extend that influence by being the "good broker" to two of its most important neighbours.

Middle East Inside Line: Chavez Attack on Israel, Gaza Low-Intensity Conflict

Chavez's Diplomatic Dive Bombing of Israel: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez targeted Israel and the U.S. during his visit to Syria. After a one-hour meeting with Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, Chavez blamed Israel for "dividing the Middle East" as "a country that annihilates people and is hostile to peace":

The entire world knows it. Why was the state of Israel created? ... To divide. To impede the unity of the Arab world. To assure the presence of the North American empire in all these lands.

I believe [this] is a fateful battle. It's either now or never in order to liberate the world from imperialism and change the world from a unipolar into a multi-polar world.

Likud Splitting over Settlements Issue? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is feeling pressure from his Likud Party members in the wake of headlines that he already accepted a temporary freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. More than half of the party leadership has accepted an invitation to speak at a hawkish rally in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, Ministers Gilad Erdan, Moshe Kahlon, Yuli Edelstein and Michael Eitan, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin have accepted, while Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon has not decided whether to attend.

Shalom has asserted:

A clear, wide majority in the Likud would not give a hand to any step that would strangle the settlements, which is one of the party's banners... We need to take steps to advance the diplomatic process, but with conditions, and one of them must be not freezing the settlements that we built. The Palestinians cannot ask us to make unilateral, irreversible, far-reaching concessions that impact the permanent [borders] just for agreeing to meet with us.

Shalom added that US President Barack Obama's diplomatic process would "blow up in our face and lead to a dead end."

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar supported Netanyahu on Thursday:

In today's complex situation, our prime minister whom we chose, Binyamin Netanyahu, must maintain all our national interests - the settlements that are the apple of our eye, Jerusalem, and also our relations with the United States and avoiding international isolation, because we will not be able to do the things that are close to our hearts if we are isolated.

Israel-Gaza Low-Intensity Conflict: Seven mortar shells were fired from Gaza into Israel, all hitting open areas without casualties or damage. On Thursday night, Israeli jets bombed a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip.

Middle East Inside Line: Israel Ground War with Lebanon?

Is Israel Backing Away from Shalit Release?
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had two significant messages for high school students on Tuesday. First, as German mediators await a Hamas response over the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Barak said Israel "would do every way to secure Shalit's release but not at any cost....The time has come to say bluntly: combat troops and soldiers arrive with the knowledge that the task of fulfilling their missions entails a willingness to risk their lives and that the fighters have that willingness to undertake the mission."

Barak's second message was just as tough:

We cannot blur the basic truth... We are a generation of fighters and in the Middle East, there is no mercy for the weak and there will not be a second opportunity for those who do not know how to defend themselves.

Israeli Military on Ground War with Lebanon: The commander of Israeli ground forces (and soon the head of the Israel Defense Forces' Central Comman) Major-General Avi Mizrachi,  OC Ground Forces Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi,  has told a conference of more than 100 military officers from almost 30 countries that "the future battlefield the IDF will face will be more difficult, lethal and uncertain":

A war cannot be won without moving forces on the ground....Even today there are people who believe that it is sufficient to threaten to use the forces but in the Middle East this is not enough. Only a ground maneuver will end the conflict and win the war.

OK, but where will be that "future battlefield" be?

The head of the Israeli Armored Corps Brigadier-General Agay Yehezkeli said that, in case of a war between Lebanon and Israel, the IDF would need to launch a quick ground operation, heavily dependent on tanks, deep into Lebanese territory to curb rocket attacks. Chief Infantry Officer Brigadier General Yossi Bahar disagreed: several brigades would be capable of conquering southern Lebanon and taking control of the 165 villages south of the Litani River.

Conflict between Israel and European Media Widens: The controversy over a Swedish newspaper's coverage of the allegation that Israeli troops harvested the organs of dead Palestinians has been joined by a second furour. The Spanish daily El Mundo is interviewing historians to mark 70 years since the start of World War II; one of them is David Irving, who served time in an Austrian prison for his denial of the Holocaust..

Israeli diplomatic circles and media are furious over Irving, whose interview appears on Saturday, being considered as an expert. The Israeli Ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, argued that the publication would give credibility to Irving and his ideas. El Mundo responded that the interview was part of freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, the Swedish-Israeli dispute has another participant. Syrian President Bashir al-Assad's spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban praised the article in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday, saying that "Israel should be put on trial" and giving a lengthy explanation of "Soprano-like networks", run by US rabbis, "to sell the kidneys of Palestinian martyrs in the US black market".

Yossi Levy, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman for the Israeli press, responded, "It is not surprising that Damascus smelled the anti-Semitism emanating from the article, and quickly embraced it for its propaganda purposes....Poisonous anti-Semitism was no stranger to Syria's political philosophy."

Latest on The IAEA Conclusion on Iran's Nuclear Programme (28 August)

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Talks, Threats, and Propaganda

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UPDATE 2 September, 0900 GMT: In an interview with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad el Baradei has said, "Somehow, many people are talking about how Iran's nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world. In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped....The idea that we'll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn't supported by the facts as we have seen them so far."

UPDATE 29 August, 0920 GMT: An EA correspondent has pointed out, in response to my judgement, "These conclusions could be, almost word for word, the conclusions of reports from 2008", that there is a subtle difference from the IAEA's June 2009 report: "The section on possible military dimensions is considerably longer and more detailed...and also entails a subtle change of tone." In particular, the IAEA emphasizes that documentation "derived from multiple sources over different periods [is so] generally consistent and sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran".

This should not be read as a declaration that Iran has moved towards nuclear weapons capability. Rather, it is an amplification of the IAEA's frustration at not getting full access to Iranian facilities to verify the state of research and development.

As we expected, such subtleties are beyond the US press. The New York Times, confused that "Iran Has Bolstered Ability to Make Fuel but Slowed Its Output", gives up and puts out the panicky conclusion, supported by far-from-neutral "outside experts", "If Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium was further purified, it would have nearly two warheads’ worth of bomb fuel."
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We reprint below the conclusions of the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's Nuclear Programme. The full report is available on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security.

As we noted earlier this week, there has been and will be a rush of propaganda around this report. Those who wish to put pressure on Iran, including tougher economic sanctions, will bring out the finding that Iran "has not suspended its enrichment related activities". More ominously, they will convert the IAEA's "remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme" into the conclusion that Iran is definitely pursuing nuclear weapons. (The US State Department has already put out the statement, "Based on what we have seen in press reports ... it seems clear that Iran continues to not cooperate fully and continues its (uranium) enrichment activities." Ha'aretz has trotted out the Israeli line, "The report states that Iran may be working towards acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.")

On the other side, Iranian officials will claim, with the finding of "the non-diversion of declared nuclear material" that they are in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Or in the objective summary of Press TV, "the UN nuclear watchdog has confirmed that the country is improving its cooperation with the agency while it continues to enrich uranium in spite of UN Security Council resolutions".

All of this will overshadow the real significance of the report, which is that almost nothing has changed over the last year. Indeed, these conclusions could be, almost word for word, the conclusions of reports from 2008. This is a limbo in which Iran is neither culpable of definite violations of the NPT through pursuit of weaponry rather than civilian energy nor exonerated with full inspections of the IAEA of its research and production facilities.

Implementation of the NPT [Non-Proliferation] Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Report by the Director General
....
26. The Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.

Iran has cooperated with the Agency in improving safeguards measures at FEP and in providing the Agency with access to the IR-40 reactor for purposes of design information verification. Iran has not, however, implemented the modified text of its Subsidiary Arrangements General Part, Code 3.1, on the early provision of design information.

27. Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities or its work on heavy water related projects as required by the Security Council.

28. Contrary to the requests of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has neither implemented the Additional Protocol nor cooperated with the Agency in connection with the remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. Regrettably, the Agency has not
been able to engage Iran in any substantive discussions about these outstanding issues for over a year. The Agency believes that it has provided Iran with sufficient access to documentation in its possession to enable Iran to respond substantively to the questions raised by the Agency. However, the Director General urges Member States which have
provided documentation to the Agency to work out new modalities with the Agency so that it could share further documentation with Iran, as appropriate, since the Agency’s inability to do so is rendering it difficult for the Agency to progress further in its verification process.

29. It is critical for Iran to implement the Additional Protocol and clarify the outstanding issues in order for the Agency to be in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

30. The Director General will continue to report as appropriate.