Israel

Most outside observers welcomed the victory of Ehud Barak in Israel's elections last week. Everyone from the United States to Syria welcomed the fall of Benyamin Netanyahu, who was regarded as the main obstacle to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East. Barak's election, it has been immediately assumed, means greater flexibility on a host of issues, from the management of Israel's withdrawal from Southern Lebanon to openness to Palestinian statehood and, finally, a peace treaty with Syria, even one involving the return of the Golan. The assumption has been that Barak and a government dominated by Israel's Labor Party was more likely to reach accommodation on these issues than had the Netanyahu-Likud government.

There is no doubt that Barak is more personally committed to reaching an accommodation. This does not mean that he will succeed or that he is as flexible as outsiders might think. But the most important error most observers are making about the election was that it had to do with Israel's foreign and defense policy. Obviously these were elements in campaign, but not as decisive has outside observers might think or even that the rhetoric of the campaign might indicate. In a very real way, for the first time in fifty years, national security was not at stake in the election. National identity was.

The central issue in the election was the relationship between secularists and religionists. Israel, like many countries in the world, is divided into two general factions. There are those who see Israel as the homeland for ethnic Jews, understood as all those who could make a genealogical claim to Jewish descent. Beyond that, the secularists saw the State of Israel, like other Western states, as being essentially neutral on matters of religion. To be somewhat more precise, it was understood that one could be Jewish without practicing Jewish ritual law or even believing in the Jewish God. The state was seen as the guardian of rights and freedoms, and in some vague sense as the heir to some Jewish tradition, but a fundamental distinction was drawn between Israeli citizenship and Jewish religiosity.

There were three factions that were directly responsible for the founding of Israel. All three were secular. There was the liberal democratic tradition embodied by Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, who was a nationalist in the simplest sense of the term. There was the socialist tradition, embodied by David Ben- Gurion, first Prime Minister, that was wholly secular. Finally, there was the romantic nationalist tradition, embodied by Menachem Begin, which flirted with religion and could comfortably ally itself with the religious, but which was not really religious in terms of its own commitment to using Jewish law as a substitute for secular law.

It must be remembered that the most profoundly orthodox Jews opposed the founding of an independent, secular Israel. Beyond the theological claim that the creation of Israel had to be the work of the Messiah and not of men, there was a deep suspicion to the motives of the secularists creating Israel. The extreme orthodox saw the distinction between Israeli citizenship and Jewish ethnicity on the one side, and Jewish religious practices on the other, with the secularists importing alien teachings from the French and American revolutions into Jewish culture. Israel was, in this sense, anti-Jewish.

Most of the anti-Zionist Orthodox made an interesting shift following the founding of Israel. They had opposed the creation of Israel as blasphemy. Once Israel was created, they were no longer participating in a blasphemous act. Israel was now a fact and participating in its political life was not a violation of Jewish law. They participated deeply and effectively. They were aided by the fact that Israel was divided from its founding between two factions. On the one side, there was the dominant socialist faction. On the other side, there were the romantic nationalists in uneasy, occasional alliance with the small, liberal faction.

Throughout the period from 1948-1973, the socialists dominated Israeli political life. The fundamental issue was foreign policy and national defense. Internally, the massive, inefficient trade union movement dominated economic life and its patronage helped keep the Labor political machine in power. However, that was a trivial matter compared with the survival of Israel in an extraordinarily dangerous environment. Labor's ability to project itself as the most skillful manager of foreign policy and national security kept it in power for a generation.

However, it must be remembered that even during the period of political hegemony, the socialists were forced to form coalitions with religious parties. The reason had to do with the peculiar electoral system created at the founding of Israel, called proportional representation. Voters cast ballots for political parties nationally. Any party that received, on a national basis, a very low threshold of votes, received a seat in the Knesset. Parties with a bit more than 1 or 2 percent of the votes were seated in the Knesset. The result was a multiplicity of parties, no clear majority for anyone and political wheeling and dealing that would have embarrassed Boss Tweed.

The net result of this system is that small minority parties became indispensable for creating governments. The small religious parties, divided among themselves along doctrinal lines and cults of personality, represented a small minority in Israeli life. They nevertheless had a hammerlock on Israeli political life, for unless the large left-wing and right-wing coalitions (today Labor and Likud) formed grand coalitions with each other, the religious parties would have to be induced into coalitions with one of them. After every election, bidding wars were set up in which the dominant coalitions bargained with the small religious parties and the small religious parties bargained among themselves. The Orthodox accumulated power far beyond what their numbers would dictate. They controlled key ministries that in turn made crucial decisions over the texture of daily life in Israel. On issues ranging from allowing public transport on the Sabbath, to whether Reform Rabbis could perform legally recognized conversions, the religious wielded power disproportionate to their strength.

It would be a mistake to see the religious as universally opposed to a Palestinian state or to the Oslo accords. In many ways, the religious were as divided on these issues as was the rest of Israel. That faction of the orthodox that saw the Oslo accords as a violation of Jewish law was not much larger among the religious than was opposition to Oslo in the rest of society. What the Orthodox were committed to was building an Israel based on Jewish religious principles and they saw themselves as the guardians of those principles and therefore the soul of Israel. They were far less concerned with strategic issues than they were with whether movie theaters would be opened on the Sabbath.

Last week's elections were viewed as a referendum on the peace process. They really weren't. They were in part a referendum on Netanyahu's personality, which grated as much on Israelis as it did on Bill Clinton. But far more, and far more seriously, the election was a revolt by secular Israel against the hammerlock the religious parties have over the social life of Israel. The revolt against Likud had much less to do with the West Bank than with the sense that Likud had written a blank check to the religious parties on domestic policy and the feeling that the religious parties had become corrupt with unearned power.

It is important to understand that Israel's national security debates are not as socially divisive as they might be in the United States, for example. Critics of Bill Clinton's defense policy personalize the debate with the fact that Clinton is ordering men into combat without himself ever having served. Both Netanyahu and Barak have served with distinction in combat. The policy debate does not generate a class debate as it does in the United States, as Ivy League graduates make defense decisions to be carried out by high school graduates. Indeed, in Israel, it cuts the other way. Everyone but the Orthodox theology students serve in the military. Part of Barak's platform was to end this religious deferment. In Israel the doves have as distinguished combat records as the hawks.

This means that anyone expecting Ehud Barak to make serious compromises on national defense issues are going to be disappointed. He may accept a Palestinian state on the West Bank on the theory that the distinction between the Palestine National Authority and a Palestinian state is meaningless. However, he will neither abandon Israeli Defense Force deployments on the Jordan River line nor permit the Palestinians to build a military beyond a police force. If he withdraws from south Lebanon, it will be a decision made from the perspective of a man who personally been under fire there. That makes for very tough negotiating with a high probability of failure.

What is going on in Israel is, in the long run, far more important than where the Palestinian flag flies. The social fabric is torn apart by utterly incompatible visions of what Israel as a society should look like. At one extreme, we have the Rabbinic tradition going back to the fall of the Second Temple. On the other hand, there is the Israel whose primary concern is building an Internet company that IPOs on the NASDAQ. This division is present in most societies. In the United States, for example, the same debate takes place between the Christian right and secular humanists. In Israel, however, it cuts to the heart of Israel's self-understanding. Is Israel the Third Temple, a light unto the nations, or is it a homeland where ethnic Jews can come, be safe and make money.

In Israel, the battle is far from over. Barak has personally won a mandate, but in the Knesset, he holds a minority and must build a coalition. One of the big winners in the Knesset was Shas, a religious party representing poorer immigrants from North Africa, which takes a very hard line on religious and social issues. It has almost as many votes now as Likud. It takes a fairly hard line on the Palestinian/Oslo question, but is obsessed with religious governance. Left out of the coalition, Shas and Likud leave Barak with a bare majority, just enough for ongoing paralysis.

When outsiders look at Israel, what is on their mind is a settlement of the Palestinian question. This is far from the only issue on the minds of Israelis. It is not even the most important issue. Israel, at fifty, is undergoing an identity crisis of gargantuan proportions. It is the crisis it should have had at the founding but couldn't afford at the time. All of the postponed issues are pouring out of the closet now, and foreign policy issues are on the table primarily as they connect to these social issues.

Bill Clinton badly needs a foreign policy success before January 2001. With his Balkan adventure somewhere between a stalemate and a calamity, he will undoubtedly focus on the Barak election as a chance for a comprehensive, lasting peace that can be Clinton's legacy for the ages. The problem is that, like most elections, the real issues in Israel were, while profound, quite local. Indeed, if Barak is to deliver his domestic agenda, he will probably have to make some compromises on foreign policy. Heavy American pressure for a comprehensive peace settlement creating a Palestinian state, a withrawal from Lebanon and a settlement with Syria will be driven by the Clinton Administration's ticking clock. But it must be remembered that Barak's parliamentary position as opposed to his personal numbers, does not give him anywhere near the mandate needed to deal with all of these issues. Moreover, he faces a Likud in opposition. Likud has always been much more effective in opposition than governing.

So Barak is going to be focusing on domestic issues when a huge and urgent blast from Washington is going to descend on him. Misreading the election as a sea change in Israeli views of Oslo, the administration will find Barak both preoccupied and with a very different agenda than the one Washington would prefer to see implemented. Clinton will feel himself betrayed by Barak, whom he clearly favored in the election and who used his good relations with Washington as a reason to favor him over Netanyahu. Barak, with much less room for maneuver than Clinton will believe, will first cooperate and then resist as Clinton pushes him beyond where the former Chief of Staff of the IDF will want to go and where Israeli politics will permit him to go. Barak is bound to disappoint a lot of people, since his primary mission is to please a large segment of the Israeli public on an issue having nothing whatever to do with foreign policy. Far less has changed in Israel than would appear at first glance.

Iran's foreign ministry on June 21 blasted a report in the previous day's edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which claimed that Iranian President Mohammad Khatami had asked Britain to facilitate disarmament and confidence building talks between Iran and Israel. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi called the report a "baseless disinformation campaign by the Zionist propaganda machine." The pro-Khatami newspaper Hamshahri also attacked the report, calling it "a filthy move to ruin the reputation and image of President Khatami," and an effort "to destroy the Iranian government's policy of detente." The Haaretz report, which has been widely repeated in the British press, cited unnamed British officials as stating that Khatami offered a plan calling on both Israel and Iran to renounce surface to surface missile first strike options and to disarm long range missiles with non-conventional warheads. Britain's foreign office has also denied any knowledge of or participation in such negotiations.

The Haaretz report, which would seem guaranteed to torpedo such back channel negotiations under any circumstances, comes as something of a surprise at this particular moment, given the upcoming trial of 13 Iranian Jews on charges of spying for Israel and the United States. The 13 alleged spies, reportedly arrested two months ago but only officially acknowledged by the Iranian government last week, are believed to be victims of the ongoing power struggle between Iran's conservatives and the moderate Khatami. Indeed, Khatami, whose efforts at improving Iran's international relations have been quite successful, has struggled to assure the international community that the detainee's arrests had nothing to do with their religious affiliation, and that they would receive the full protection of the law.

If the arrests and trial of the 13 Iranian Jews was, in fact, an attempt by Iranian hard-liners to derail Khatami's efforts at international rapprochement, then the Haaretz article would appear not only to play into their hands, but to doom the 13 accused spies. However, the Haaretz article may have been aimed, not at unsettling Khatami, but at warning Iran's hard-liners.

While Israel takes top honors as Iran's propaganda whipping boy, the defining issue of Iranian foreign policy is not Israel, but Iraq. Furthermore, Iran's hard-liners, for whom visceral opposition to Iraq is almost a litmus test, are far more rabid about the issue than are Khatami's moderates, who would rather the problem go away so that they can get down to the business of economic and political reform. Remember that it was Ayatollah Khomeini's hard-liners who participated in the "Iran-Contra" arms for hostages swap of the 1980s. Moreover, in Iran-Contra, it was Israel that supplied the weapons destined for Iran.

This points out the key paradox in Iranian politics. If Iraq is the enemy, then Israel is the ally. And as Iran's hard-liners are the most dead set against Iraq, they are ironically the ones that need Israel the most. Thus emerges the Middle East's dirty little secret -- the secret that everyone knows -- that Iran and Israel have maintained back channel collaboration for 20 years, despite all the rhetoric. Of course, the same Iranian hard- liners who need Israel's assistance against Iraq are also capable of targeting Khatami with a little spy scandal.

Taken in this context, the Haaretz article was a warning. With the article, Israel took a non-critical bit of back channel diplomacy -- even one involving Iran's moderates -- and blew it wide open. In doing so, Israel reminded everyone in Iran that Israel has a great many more secrets it could reveal. If they like this story, wait until they see what is published tomorrow.

The Haaretz article was a shot across the bow of any Iranian official who believed that Israel needs to conceal and maintain its secret links to Iran more than Iran needs to conceal and maintain those same links. Should Israel choose to publish a chronicle of back channel relations with Iran, there are a host of great Islamic revolutionaries who stand to lose a great deal. More than just 13 Jews could hang for the stories Haaretz could publish. And while Israel was willing to publically blow a minor peripheral back channel negotiation with Khatami to make its point to the hard liners, Khatami would only stand to gain should Isreal choose to release a more complete expose, as it would not only sink his foes but also paint Iran historically in a more moderate light.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has taken office and arrived in Washington for meetings with President Bill Clinton and his national security staff. The Clinton administration, as always, is eager to restart the peace negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Given the rhetoric of the campaign and the early actions of Ehud Barak, the administration has reason to believe that there is now some real possibility of a peace accord with Syria if not the Palestinians. This shift to a focus on Syria by Barak must be examined carefully, because it has broad geopolitical implications.

To begin with, it is important to understand that, rhetoric aside, there has been a general Arab-Israeli peace in place for nearly a quarter of a century. The last general war occurred in 1973. That war set the stage for a general peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Israel and Jordan have been in close alignment for many years. With two of the three frontline states neutralized, the only military threat to Israel came from Syria and Syria alone did not constitute a credible threat.

Neither the Lebanese situation nor the Palestinian situation constituted a life- threatening situation for Israel. From a purely military standpoint, they were fairly trivial and manageable problems. At the same time, they drained military resources and had a dramatic effect on morale, both military and civilian. Most important, unlike the direct military threats faced in the past, neither the Lebanese nor Palestinian issues could be settled with a definitive, military solution. This was a reality difficult for Israel's political culture to absorb, and Israel kept searching for a military solution where there was none. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was emblematic of the problem. The direct occupation of Lebanon protected northern Israel from the occasional rocket attack. The cost was a prolonged occupation by Israeli forces, exposure to casualties, substantial financial expense all without solving the problem. Indeed, Israeli exertions were consistently out of proportion to the problems.

Because neither issue was life threatening, Israeli interest in solving the problems was driven as much by domestic political consideration as by strategic analysis. As a result, the peace process in Israel was always hostage to the national mood. That mood was always deeply divided and changeable. This meant that the peace process was highly manipulable, not only by political figures, but also by elements that wanted to see the peace process fail. Terrorist actions on both sides could rapidly redefine the dynamics of negotiations. Every peace talk was hostage to the next terrorist act.

Barak is extremely sensitive to this reality. His own government can be easily fragmented. Barak has therefore chosen to shift his focus from the Palestinian question or even the Lebanese question. Instead, he has chosen to focus his attention on an agreement with Syria. Barak has, we think, grasped something critical about Israel's position. Israel cannot create a stable situation in Lebanon or even among the Palestinians without first reaching an agreement with Damascus. Israel will not be able to withdraw from Lebanon until there is an entity prepared to control Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli groups operating in the south. By itself, the Lebanese Army is incapable of bringing the south under control. Syria can bring order to the south, but Israel cannot permit Syrian troops or even Syrian-controlled Lebanese troops into the south without a firm and comprehensive settlement with Syria. Moreover, such an understanding will serve to further isolate Palestinian radicals like Hamas, hurting their morale and decreasing their effectiveness. For Barak, the key is in Syria.

This would be a major shift for the U.S. The Americans have been obsessed with the Palestinian question for decades, certainly since the Camp David Accords mandated some sort of peace process involving the Palestinians. Moreover, Washington is deeply suspicious of Syria. This is not only a matter of concern over Syrian support for terrorism, but also that Syria intersects two issues of fundamental interest to the U.S. There is deep tension between Syria and Turkey. Turkey is a key American ally. Any settlement with Israel that opens the door for Syrian adventures in Turkey is unacceptable. There is also the matter of Iraq. Hafez al Assad and Saddam Hussein are mortal enemies. That does not mean that they can't work together this is the Middle East, after all. The U.S. is clearly beginning to increase the pressure on Iraq again, as forces used in Kosovo are freed up. The U.S., concerned that Russian arms availability increases Syrian unpredictability, are concerned about releasing Israeli pressure on Syria. Therefore, Barak's job this weekend has to been to persuade Clinton and Albright that a settlement with Syria is the precursor to a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians and will not destabilize the region.

To begin with, Barak had to explain why he expects Assad to be open to a settlement now, when he has flirted with them in the past but always avoided signing one. There are three reasons, we think, why Assad is open to a settlement.

1: Assad is a member of the generation of Arab leaders who came to power in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They took their bearing from Gamel Abdul Nasser. They were military men, committed to modernization using the army as the prime vehicle. They had overthrown both the British- created monarchies and the religious authorities linked to them. They believed in the Arab nation, socialism and modernism. They spawned a generation of Arab radicalism that is now passing into history. Hamas and Hezbollah are not modernist, not socialist and not Arabist. They are Islamic to the core, and Assad sees them as a threat to his regime and his life. His cooperation with the Iranians was never heartfelt. It was only pragmatic. Assad has fought Muslim fundamentalists inside Syria and crushed them. He fears Hezbollah and Hamas even as he uses them. He is 69 and has heart disease. He would like to secure his political heritage before he goes. In one of history's ironies, a deal with Israel would help Assad do this.

2: The intensifying Israeli-Turkish alliance has unnerved him tremendously. The Syrians despise both the Turks, who oppressed them for centuries, and the Israelis. Assad also hates the Iraqis. That leaves Assad only the Mediterranean to be friendly with. Earlier this year, Turkish forces were actually threatening Syria militarily for their support of Kurdish separatists. Assad knows that Syria is now the isolated country, not Israel. Assad also understands that Syria's dispute with Israel is less profound and personal than his dispute with Turkey or Iraq. Indeed, they have interests in common. Syria must break the anti-Syrian front posed by Turkey and Israel. He has more room to maneuver with Israel.

3: Assad badly wants an agreement with Israel over Lebanon. Syria has always claimed that Lebanon was part of Syria. Even if that claim is never enforced, Syria in general and Assad personally have intimate ties and fundamental interests inside Lebanon. A stable, prosperous Lebanon is essential for Syrian development. The same forces that threaten Israel inevitably fragment and destabilize Lebanon. This has little to do with religion. When Syria first intervened in Lebanon in the 1970s, it was in support of the Christians and in opposition to the PLO. Israel and Syria have a shared interest in a stable Lebanon. Indeed, they have been cooperating in various ways for years. Israel no longer has the stomach for patrolling southern Lebanon. Syria holds the keys and it is in Syria's interest, at this time, to use them.

If an agreement with Syria were reached, then all of Israel's borders would be secured by treaties for the first time in history. Now, treaties are only paper. But the military threat from Syria would be not much greater with a treaty than without. Much is made of the Golan Heights, but rarely by Israeli military professionals. If Syria wanted to bombard Israeli settlements, they could do so right now, without retaking the Heights. Moreover, fighting a holding action with its back to an escarpment is not something the Israeli Defense Forces want to try again. Israeli forces west of the Jordan river would have a field day picking off Syrian armor descending the Golan escarpment. They wouldn't have to be on the Golan to seal them off.

The real threat would come from Syrian forces passing through Lebanon and hitting Israel along its northern frontier. That, however, has been a threat since the founding of Israel. It hasn't happened because the logistical problems involved and the opportunities for counterattack are too great. More important, Syria has never and will never attack Israel alone. It is not large enough or strong enough. It will attack only in concert with Egypt. The threat of Lebanon or Golan is meaningful only in the context of a fundamental reversal of the geopolitics of the region. Were that to happen, these issues would pale into triviality anyway.

An agreement would include an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, retention of key facilities on Mount Hermon, a joint agreement on Israel security interests in Lebanon to be guaranteed by Beirut, and a Syrian guarantee of support for Beirut in these efforts. The net result would be the liquidation of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the complete isolation of the Palestinians in the Arab world. This would not end anti-Israeli terrorism; there will always be Palestinians prepared to strike at Israel. However, it would weaken their access to weapons, intelligence and political support. It would also strengthen the hands of Palestinians within the Palestine National Authority that want to move on with developing the Palestinian state. Indeed, statehood would turn from a major issue into an administrative abstraction. In the long run, what does it matter what Palestine is called, so long as it is isolated and surrounded by suspicious former enemies like Israel and the Hashemite Jordanians?

Barak is therefore proposing to redefine the driving issues in the region. It is not clear that the Americans will be particularly happy with this choice. American eyes are increasingly on areas where a strong and secure Turkey could be essential. An agreement with Israel strengthens Syria and inevitably threatens Turkey. Negotiations with the Palestinians, win or lose, do not effect the geopolitics in the region. Negotiations with Syria can and do. Thus and this is the interesting part here one of the keys to this strategy rests in Ankara. in order to head off Turkish pressure on Washington, Israel must convince the Turks that an agreement with Syria will not threaten them. Thus, Barak has initiated a powerful strategic move, but like all things in the Middle East, the unintended consequences are substantial. Syria will have to make some promises to the Turks and that will be hard to do.

Barak's initiative will force Washington to think through some of the strategic principles that have governed U.S. policy in the region. The U.S. has deepened its relationship with Turkey during and since the Kosovo war. The U.S. is depending on Turkey to influence events in the Caucasus. The U.S. is increasing pressure on Iraq once again. The situation in Iran appears somewhat unstable. There are fundamental strategic questions on the table in the region, and Barak has just dumped another one on the Administration's desk. Barak's Syrian initiative cannot be treated in isolation, precisely because this time, an opening to Syria might well work. The question now is whether the United States wants it to work and if so, how should it be made to work?

The Iranian news agency IRNA reported August 5 that Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Yiannos Kranidiotis held separate meetings in Jerusalem on August 4 with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy and Minister for the Premier's Office Chaim Ramon. Kranidiotis, the first Greek official to visit Israel since the election of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, reportedly discussed business prospects, as well as the possibility of improving bilateral military cooperation between Israel and Greece. According to IRNA, Kranidiotis was assured that both Barak and Israeli President Ezer Weizman would visit Athens soon.

The Greek news agency ANA reported on August 5 that Israel and Greece had come to an agreement over the possibilities for improved military cooperation between the two countries. The agency also reported that Israel's navy chief will visit Athens later this month and that Greek Defense Minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos will visit Israel in September.

If these reports are true, they will only further heighten concerns of Turkey, which is already uneasy about apparently rapidly improving relations between Israel and Syria. Turkey and Israel, and in particular their militaries, had grown close since the signing of a series of accords in 1996 aimed at containing a growing Syrian-Greek threat. In fact, Israel and Turkey had attempted to recruit Jordan and Egypt into the bloc, though with only marginal success in the former case and none in the latter. Greece, in turn, has boosted its ties with Armenia and Iran. All three countries have increased political and economic cooperation, and Greece maintains a military cooperation agreement with Armenia. Prior to a recent trilateral meeting in Athens, the Greek and Iranian defense ministers announced the three countries would sign a defense pact, but that plan has since been officially denied.

As we have noted previously, Turkey's military cooperation with Israel has seemed less secure with Barak's election [http: //www.stratfor.com/services/giu/071999.ASP]. Barak is pressing for a comprehensive peace settlement involving Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine - a plan which would strengthen Syria and potentially decrease Israel's commitment to Turkey. Israel has long maintained behind-the-scenes relations with Iran, undermining the perceived Iranian threat as justification for a close Israeli alliance with Turkey. While Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is unlikely to sign a formal peace treaty with the "Zionists," he could both facilitate a substantial decrease in tension with Israel and collaborate on containing Iraq, reducing Israel's need for involvement in eastern Turkey. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, the Kurdish opposition PKK has even made recent overtures to Israel, in hopes of improving relations and saving the life of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, now facing a death sentence in a Turkish jail. With Syria, Iran, and the Kurds all potentially available to counter an Iraqi threat, Israel's need for tight relations with Turkey diminish.

Still, despite the Israeli opening to Syria and Greece, it continues to hedge its bets in Turkey. Turkey and Israel are reportedly due to sign a contract for the joint production of the Israeli Popeye 2 air-to-surface missile. Turkey, Israel, and the United States are planning to hold naval maneuvers in the Mediterranean soon, and the Israeli ambassador to Turkey announced August 5 that Egypt and Syria would be welcome to participate. During a July visit to Israel, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel announced that the two countries were strengthening their military cooperation, begun with the signing of a cooperation agreement in 1996, and that the two countries were looking into a plan under which Turkey could supply Israel with fresh water. Iran, meanwhile, has curiously toned down its evaluation of border incursions by Turkey, calling them accidents rather than Zionist- backed provocations and emphasizing improvements in Iranian-Turkish relations. And finally, while the Israeli-Syrian peace plan reportedly calls for Israel to report to Damascus on its military cooperation with Turkey, it also allegedly calls for Syria to prevent the PKK from operating out of Syria or Lebanon.

The Barak government is pushing ahead vigorously with a Syrian peace plan, and now appears open to improving military ties with Greece. At the same time it is opening these doors wider than ever, Israel is not closing the door to Turkey. Bet hedging is one thing, and balance of power politics another; this may be a bit of both. But in the web of competition and mutual insecurity that is the Levant, it is not clear that Israel can, in the long run, play friend to all sides.