George Friedman on the Israeli Elections (Agenda)
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Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, Stratfor cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Video Transcript:
Colin Chapman: As Israelis go to vote next week in early elections called by Likud leader of the coalition Benjamin Netanyahu, it's clear that whatever the outcome, uncertain times lie ahead. Now on to the soured days of the U.S.-Israeli relationship: The Obama administration could hardly contain its irritation at another tender for 198 settlements in the West Bank this week, a policy already described by the United States at the U.N. Security Council as "undermining the hopes of peace in the Middle East."
You're watching Agenda. I'm Colin Chapman and I'm pleased to welcome back Stratfor's founder, George Friedman. George, best start with some good news. When I scour the world for countries with a half decent economic performance, there are not very many. Israel is one of them. What has it done right?
George Friedman: Explaining why countries grow, especially very small countries like Israel, is not easy. It's certainly not my forte. But I note two interesting characteristics of Israel. First, it has a very strong military, particularly an officer corps that leaves at an early age with a lot of technical skills and some entrepreneurial spirit that can form new companies (technological companies of various sorts) and they're very successful at that.
And second, the immigration of Russians has given another entrepreneurial class that is able to start small businesses and so on. So in a country like Israel -- which really gained the entrepreneurial spirit fairly late in the game there, it started as a socialist country -- you do have these two classes of people doing some interesting and sometimes extraordinary work.
Whether this is the answer to the six percent growth is something I can't really tell you, but I'm always interested in that aspect of a very small country.
Colin: Now, a year ago people were pessimistic about Israel, a possible war with Iran, the risk of the Camp David Accords with Egypt being ripped up -- none of this actually happened. Does this give us any cause for optimism in 2013?
George: Well, if you've asked about 2013, probably nothing catastrophic will happen to Israel. The real question is a broader and longer one of the generation. I mean, the certainties of the previous generation or two -- that Egypt was going to remain within the peace treaty, that Syria was going to remain stable under al Assad for better or worse, that Jordan faced no internal challenges -- those simply aren't true anymore. So the problem that Israel has is uncertainty, and that uncertainty could wind up in a very dangerous place.
And one of the uncertainties Israel has, whatever the Obama administration wants to say, is its relationship with the United States. During the Cold War, during the U.S.-jihadist war, Israel was a crucial ally, sharing intelligence and other capabilities with the United States. The Cold War is over, the jihadist war is going down (at least in intensity), the United States' dependence on Israel has certainly declined, and the ability of Israel to depend on the United States -- except in extremes if its existence were at stake, which it normally is not -- that's also declining.
So Israel has entered a period of strategic change, and that's the problem. So the issue is not that they avoided these things last year, nor that they will avoid it next year, it's that the possibility of these things happening is not going to go away and Israel is going to have to live in an environment where it can't control its environment completely, and in an environment where it cannot even predict what's going to happen. That's the danger.
Colin: So the question of settlements on the West Bank: Even Israel's closest ally, the United States, has gotten to the point of condemning this in the U.N. Security Council. Do you think we'll have annexation of the West Bank?
George: Well, partly this is semantic. Israel occupies the West Bank, it controls it. Annexation would create an interesting problem for Israel because if it annexed the West Bank, the Palestinians there we would assume would be part of that annexation and would become Israeli citizens, unless it wants to annex the territory but set an ethnic basis for citizenship, which is quite difficult to do. So annexation under most circumstances would turn the Palestinians into citizens. Those citizens would vote, and therefore I really don't understand what the Israelis gain by doing that unless they disenfranchise them, in which case they have a serious public relations problem beyond the already existing public relations problem.
The settlements, of course, are a strategic issue for the Israelis. The Israelis, whatever they might have thought in 1967, certainly no longer have any plans of leaving the West Bank except under very stringent negotiated circumstances, which aren't happening. And they're using the settlements to create a reality of sorts there. The United States is not really interested in that problem of Israel's, it's not interested in creating strategic reality; it has an interest in maintaining relations with various Arab Muslim regimes that are strained by its relationship with the United States. It will not change that relationship, the two countries will stay close, but the United States regards this as an irritant that's unnecessary.
So you have on the one hand the Israelis regarding this as a desirable process to stabilize its occupation; the Americans saying, look we have no interest in this particular thing being used to stabilized occupation -- in fact, we really want some sort of negotiated two-state solution; and the countries are drifting apart somewhat on what they're going to do. Now, this relationship has been discussing this for a long time; the difference is that other issues overshadowed it. At the moment -- and particularly with the Obama administration's approach to this -- those issues no longer overshadow so it might become quite serious.
As for the annexation talk, to go back to that, I'm not sure what they mean by that, they haven't defined what annexation would mean, but it represents a very potentially dangerous thing for the Israelis.
Colin: With Obama clearly irritated and Europe and others offside, is there a danger of Israel being isolated?
George: Well I don't know what isolation means, it's one of those wonderful terms that are used in newspapers. Yeah, people are irritated at Israel. Not all the people in the United States by any means, somewhat more in Europe, but being irritated and taking actions are very different things, and I think we spend too much time talking about loosely held opinions and less time about what actions are taken. I don't think it's Obama, per se, that represents a strain on the relationship. The fact is that the United States at this moment doesn't need Israel for its national security as it did in previous years. And therefore it has other interests and what Israel does is somewhat less tolerable.
The Israelis, we should also remember, don't need the United States the way they used to. They still get aid from the United States, but that aid which used to be tremendously important to Israel is -- partly because of the economic growth that we've seen -- really pretty trivial. In terms of the impact on the economy, it's maintained by the Israelis as a symbol of the relationship more than something they need. These two countries are linked, historically; they have many interests together as liberal democracies; but they have diverging interests on any number of issues. And neither country is, I think, prepared to give on these issues, which are going to remain irritants between them and I think the relationship will not in the years to come be as warm as it was in the past.
Colin: Right, so how do you see the Israeli government handling the well-known big issues it has with other countries -- Egypt, Lebanon, Iran -- in the months ahead?
George: Well, the problem that the Israelis have is they can't handle these issues, they're really out of Israeli control. The question of Iran's nuclear weapons seems to have gone by the wayside for the moment. But even if it wasn't, I mean I still maintain that Israel by itself would have tremendous difficulty with airstrikes, and if they had carried them out they could have failed, which would have been a very bad outcome. In the case of Egypt, the more Israel tries to do, the more powerful anti-Israeli sentiment becomes. What happens in Egypt is simply not in Israel's control. And Israel is certainly not planning to go back into Lebanon, it's had very bad experiences there. So the problem here is not how Israel is going to handle these, but regardless of the new government, they're not able to be handled by Israel. They are events that Israel is going to have to respond to, and it's not clear what's going to happen that they have to respond to.
Colin: Finally, if Netanyahu wins as many expect he will, what will he try to achieve in his next term?
George: Probably winning another term as president. It's not clear what he wants to achieve. Like many leaders who have led for very long time, his goals have either been achieved or fallen by the wayside. He will continue to govern, which is what he wants to do. But it's not clear that he really expects to achieve any dramatic change in the status of Israel. I don't think he expects to create a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians; I'd be surprised if he's going to annex the West Bank; he doesn't have very many cards to play in Egypt, nor in Syria, nor Lebanon, limited ones in Iran. It seems to be he will, by the old saying, maintain rather than revolutionize. That's not a bad basis for governing, but I think it's one that is not going to be very exciting, hopefully.
Colin: George Friedman, thanks. And thank you for being with Agenda today. See you next time.
