Tel Aviv is walking a tightrope

Israel faces the option of “direct war” against Iran and Hamas in 2022

• Israel does not want to repeat the scenario of the last Gaza war as long as it is preoccupied with Iran.

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• US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan (left) talks with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about options for dealing with Iran if the Vienna negotiations fail.

  From The Times of Israel.

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Israel will enter 2022 while facing internal and external challenges, the developments of which are difficult to predict, most notably its threat to use the unilateral military option to stop Iran's nuclear project, and the possibility of Tel Aviv entering into a clash with the administration of US President Joe Biden over the Palestinian and Iranian files, as well as the difficulties that may It faces the expansion of peace and cooperation agreements to include other Arab countries.

These and other challenges are related to sub-problems related in one aspect to the ability of the current ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, to remain in power, and in the other aspect to the unprecedented escalation of political and social divisions inside Israel.

Obstacles to striking Iran

Israel failed to persuade the United States, under the Biden administration, to refrain from negotiating with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, which Washington withdrew from under the previous Donald Trump administration in 2018. Tel Aviv stressed that it would not accept reactivating the nuclear agreement until In its original form, it demanded that Washington adopt a military option against Tehran, and threatened Israel that it might have to act unilaterally against the Iranian nuclear project, even if the United States objected to that.

However, there are doubts about the possibility of Israel launching a unilateral military strike against Iran, for several considerations, including:

1 -

Israel does not possess the military capabilities that can destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities, which are distributed in widely separated and heavily guarded sites.

2-

If Israel can choose a single Iranian nuclear site or facility to focus its strikes on and bring it out of work completely, thus cutting the project’s lines of integrity and slowing its implementation for several years to come; If Iran is exposed to direct Israeli aggression with missile strikes or air strikes, it will turn the Israeli strike and the Iranian counterstrikes into a large-scale war in which Tel Aviv is expected to face intense missile attacks directed at most of its cities by Iran’s arms in the region, specifically in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. It is a scenario that Israel cannot confront alone.

3-

Despite Israel’s threats to Iran, which coincided with the first naval and air maneuvers with the United States and other allied countries, as well as massive exercises on how to confront the Israeli home front, multiple attacks from several external parties, and even the possibilities of confrontations during the hypothetical war with Iran, between Arab and Jewish citizens within mixed cities;

However, these threats can be understood as part of a “psychological war” that Israel is waging not only against Iran, but also against the United States and the other five signatories to the 2015 agreement.

Continuing marginalization of the Palestinian file

Despite the promises made by US President Biden that he will seek to revive the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that have been stalled for several years, and that the governing framework for these negotiations is the two-state solution; Doubts are swirling around Biden's ability to fulfill his promise, in light of Naftali Bennett's categorical and public rejection of this solution, even before he assumed the presidency of the Israeli government. The Biden administration also wants to finish the Iranian file first, and does not want to divert its efforts in this regard.

The biggest problem here lies in Israel's ability to exploit the security card to dismantle American pressure on it, as this card has become dependent on the invisible relationship between the Iranian and Palestinian files, and Tel Aviv's attempts to convince Washington that it cannot pose a double danger to its security.

It is represented in Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons on the one hand, and the Palestinians’ efforts on the other hand to either destroy it (as Hamas and Jihad want), or to weaken it (as the Palestinian Authority wants in Ramallah) by adopting the project to return Israel to the borders of June 4, 1967, which brings together experts Israeli security forces consider them untenable borders and endanger Israel even in the long run.

In a more blunt sense, if the Vienna nuclear negotiations fail, Israel will act as a pretext for the failure of the United States to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions;

In order to justify that it is not ready to expose itself to another danger by making concessions to the Palestinians.

Development of Abrahamic Agreements

The peace agreements signed by Israel with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan represented a great success for Israeli diplomacy, and the latter hopes to preserve and develop these agreements, and for more Arab countries to join them.

However, these successes remain threatened by the unstable conditions in some countries, such as Sudan;

And who announced his disappointment at not receiving the return he wanted in terms of economic aid and political support.

Hence, Israel's expansion of the Abrahamic peace agreements by including other Arab countries may be unlikely to occur in 2022, and instead Tel Aviv will work to develop or at least maintain what has been achieved of cooperation agreements with Arab countries.

internal crises

Israel faces intertwined internal problems, on top of which is the existence of a ruling coalition with a narrow majority, which makes it vulnerable to disintegration at any moment, and then the country’s return to the severe crisis it was exposed to before the formation of the last Bennett government, as it remained without an elected government for two years after 4 consecutive general elections. . These fears are increasing in light of the slow procedures for the trial of the former prime minister and current opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as the ruling coalition led by Bennett is seeking by all means to remove Netanyahu from the political map, whether by passing legislation preventing his candidacy for the position of prime minister, as long as he remains under trial, or By putting pressure on judicial institutions to speed up the pace of his trial.

On the other hand, Bennett wants to avoid any confrontation with the "Hamas" movement in the Gaza Strip, as this confrontation, if it occurs, will be a real test of what Bennett declared that he was able to defeat the movement with stronger military operations than those used by his predecessor Netanyahu during his rule.

Thus, if Bennett fails to deter or defeat Hamas in any future battle, it would amount to an early termination of his ambitions to rule Israel for a long time, if not a severe blow to his entire political future.

internal tension

Israel suffers from serious tension between its Jewish and Arab citizens, a situation that is difficult to remedy in a short time; What will affect Tel Aviv's decisions regarding the possibility of it entering into an open military confrontation with Iran, or the possibility of it continuing to reject American pressure to open the peace track with the Palestinians. The source of Israeli concern here stems from the precedent of the outbreak of violence between Arab and Jewish Israeli citizens during the military confrontations that took place between Israel and the “Hamas” movement in May 2021, which at that time constituted a major security burden on the domestic front in Israel, which could be repeated in the event of a confrontation Expansion between Tel Aviv and Tehran, or against the backdrop of Israeli security practices, especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israel faces intertwined internal problems, on top of which is the existence of a ruling coalition with a narrow majority, which makes it vulnerable to disintegration at any moment, and then the country’s return to the severe crisis it was exposed to before the formation of the last Bennett government, as it remained without an elected government for two years after 4 consecutive general elections. .

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