Is peace around Israël possible ?

The Middle East is a region where many different interests meet and interact. Moving one piece may provoke a reaction at the other end of the chess-board. The tentatives by Donald Trump to break with the strategy of Admiral Cebrowski [1] and pacify a particularly wounded zone are, for the moment, provoking contradictory consequences which are preventing him from concluding.

It is unrealistic to attempt to deal with problems as complex as these in terms of affinities and enmities, while each protagonist is fighting for survival. On the contrary, we have to understand everyone – and forget no-one.

Like his predecessors Reagan and Bush the Father, President Trump is intervening in Iran by destabilising the « reformers » (according to the Western expression) to the profit of the « conservatives » (in other words the partisans of Imam Khomeiny). However, the latter are reacting by marking points in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, which, in return, are destabilising the efforts of their White House allies in Palestine.

When Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the US from the JCPoA agreement, President Rohani (a reformer, in other words opposed to the propagation of the anti-imperialist Revolution to its neighbours) reacted on the one hand by appealing to the Europeans, and on the other by threatening some of them that he may reveal their corruption [2]. Yet it is unlikely that Brussels will respect its signature. On the contrary, everything indicates that the European Union will act as it did in 2012, by conforming to the demands of its United States overlord.

As for the Revolutionary Guard, they reacted by convincing their Syrian allies to lead the operation against Israëli Intelligence in occupied Golan – then by inciting the Lebanese Hezbollah to announce that this operation marked a change of regional strategy - and finally, by pushing Hamas to organise a demonstration at the Israëli security frontier with Gaza.

If Western public opinion failed to understand the link between these three events, Israël concluded that the Revolutionary Guard were now ready to attack it from Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

The strategy of the Revolutionary Guard bore fruit, since the Arab, Persian and Turkish People unanimously condemned the repression of the Palestinian demonstrators (more than 60 dead and 1,400 wounded). The Arab League – several members of which, led by Saudi Arabia, maintain close unofficial relations with Tel-Aviv – suddenly began re-using its anti-Zionist rhetoric.

As for the Iranian interior, the Revolutionary Guard showed that the JCPoA agreement concluded by Cheikh Hassan Rohani was a dead-end, and that their political line was the only one that worked – they are now efficiently implanted in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Gaza, as well as in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

It will therefore be impossible for Donald Trump to negotiate peace around Israël without the help of the Revolutionary Guard.

We should remember that during the 70 years of Israëli conflict, the United States have only once been in a position to negotiate peace between all the protagonists. This was in 1991, after operation « Desert Storm ». In Madrid, President George Bush the Father and his Soviet counterpart Mikhaïl Gorbatchev united Israël, the Palestinians (but not represented by the PLO), Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

George Bush the Father had previously agreed in writing to return to the frontiers of 1967, to guarantee the safety of Israël, not to create an independent Palestinian state and to recognise Palestinian authority over the West Bank and Gaza. He believed it was possible to have this solution accepted, in conformity with the resolutions of the Security Council, relying on the authority of his partner Hafez el-Assad. The Madrid conference were a success. A process for negotiation and a calendar for the progressive resolution of the numerous disputes was determined. But the following meetings failed, because the Likud campaigned in the United States against Secretary of State James Baker and managed to prevent the re-election of President Bush the Father. Finally, Israël alone concluded the Oslo agreements with Yasser Arafat, himself alone. They were designed to address only the Palestinian problems. They were never accepted by the other protagonists, and consequently, were never applied. Then President Bill Clinton attempted to pursue bilateral negotiations with Syria by organising the Barak / el-Assad meetings. They failed, due to Ehud Barak’s about-face, but in any case, they would not have been able to resolve all the problems in the absence of the other protagonists.

27 years later, the situation has become even more complicated. The Palestinians are divided into two camps – the secular groups from the West Bank, and the Islamists from Gaza. Iran is a new protagonist which now sponsors Hamas. Finally, the United States, under Bush the Son, recognised the colonies built by Israël after 1967, in violation of the Resolutions by the Security Council.

The conflicts around Israël can therefore not be reduced to the Palestinian question, and have nothing to do with the fitna opposing Sunnis and Chiites.

The plan drawn up by Jared Kushner is designed only to halt Israëli territorial progression, not to respect international law, thereby returning to the frontiers of 1967. It thus supposes that the Arabs will accept what will then become their « former defeats ». This is unlikely.