Israel Update for April 2010

David Dolan

The diplomatic crisis between Israel and the United States seemed to ease somewhat during April as both countries apparently appraised the potentially devastating consequences of a full breach in ties. However many analysts said the failure of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attend an international nuclear summit hosted by President Barrack Obama in Washington was a further sign that personal relations between the Israeli leader and the White House remain tense at best. This came as Iran's Shiite leaders spewed forth more defiance, saying no nation on earth would stop them from pursuing their nefarious nuclear programme.

Meanwhile mixed signals were transmitted during the month concerning the strained relations between NATO member Turkey and Israel, with more negative statements about Israel coming from Turkish government leaders even while Israel was delivering heavy weaponry to Ankara. Jordan's monarch also spoke of deteriorating relations with the world's only Jewish-run state, blaming the Netanyahu government's building policy in all of Jerusalem for creating the purported crisis.

Reports that Syria, backed by Iran, has been smuggling advanced long-range Scud missiles to the Shiite Lebanese Hizbullah militia force sounded deafening alarm bells in Jerusalem. Such missiles could potentially strike all Israeli cities and towns, including the southern port city of Eilat, which was the recipient of two Katyusha rockets fired from nearby Egyptian territory in late April. Israeli leaders warned yet again that Syria itself would be targeted if Hizbullah launches another rocket or missile blitz at Israeli territory. This came as the Palestinian Hamas group said it would cease firing rockets into Israeli territory, at least for the time being.

With proposed American-mediated peace talks still on hold, a call by the Palestinian Authority government for stepped up anti-Israel activities also raised concerns in Jerusalem. Although the call was for non-violent actions, officials expressed concern that some Palestinian elements like Hamas and Islamic Jihad would seize the opportunity to escalate violent clashes with Israeli security forces.

Israel was among many countries whose commercial exports and flights to Europe were seriously disrupted in mid April due to the Icelandic volcanic ash clouds drifting over the continent. Authorities said this might mean that a recent surge in tourist visits to Israel could slow down after records numbers arrived in March. On a much more positive note, an American government report said deposits of oil and natural gas off of Israel's northern coast could be much more substantial than earlier estimated.

Netanyahu No Show At Nuclear Summit

US President Barrack Obama convened an international summit of over 40 world leaders during April to discuss further scaling back nuclear weapons stockpiles around the globe, plus the growing nuclear threat posed by terrorist groups and outlaw states like Iran and North Korea. The move came in the wake of a meeting in Europe between the American leader and Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, where Obama unveiled significant nuclear policy changes he plans to enact. Critics protested that the alterations would leave the US far more vulnerable to foreign attack.

It would seem that the leader of a close US ally, and especially one that is probably the most exposed country in the world to a nuclear warhead assault in the coming years, would be front and center at the American parlay. But Binyamin Netanyahu was no where to be found, instead sending his Atomic Energy and Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor, to the prestigious gathering. Netanyahu's office had earlier announced that the Israeli Premier would indeed fly to Washington for the summit meeting. His office subsequently put out a statement saying that the unexpected cancellation had nothing to do with the widely reported crisis in relation with the Obama administration, while issuing no other viable explanation for the dramatic cancellation.

However an unnamed "senior government official" was quoted in the Israeli media verifying that the PM's no show was directly related to the obvious diplomatic strains with Washington. He said that Israeli leaders were "disappointed with developments in the run up to the conference" - which many analysts read as a clear reference to the way Netanyahu was treated by the White House during his March visit, exacerbated by continuing American pressure to halt all Jewish home building inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries.

Still, the anonymous official also pointed to other factors that he said contributed to the Premier's decision to stay home. He noted that "the nuclear summit is supposed to be about dealing with the danger of nuclear terror, but in the last few days we have received reports about the intention of several participating countries to depart from the issue of combating terrorism and instead misuse the summit to goad Israel over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." This was an apparent reference to statements made in the run up to the gathering by the leaders of two of Israel's supposedly friendliest regional allies, Egypt and Turkey. Both governments issued statements claiming Israel was a clear violator of some of the provisions of that treaty, with international inspections forbidden of the rather large nuclear weapons arsenal that Israel is almost universally believed to possess.

Israeli political pundits said PM Netanyahu did genuinely fear that his prominent presence at the international gathering would draw harsher and louder barbs from various summit participants, including Egypt and Turkey, concerning Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile. Still the issue did lend Netanyahu a convenient way out of the planned trip to Washington, where he was widely perceived to have been poorly treated during his last visit.

Had he attended the Washington summit, the Prime Minister was reportedly prepared to note that even if Israel has built nuclear bombs in past decades, it has never used them nor ever directly threatened to do so, unlike Iran which is still supposedly a few months or years away from possessing such weapons but already saying that Israel is about to be completely wiped off the regional map.

Focus On Iran At The Summit

At a post summit press conference, President Obama repeated his earlier calls for all nations on earth to sign and adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Israel. But when he was specifically asked by a reporter about Israel's reported nuclear weapons programme, he dogged the question. When pressed further, he repeated what he said was long standing American government policy on the issue: "As far as Israel goes, I am not going to comment on their programme." But he added that "We've consistently urged all countries to become members of the NPT, and so whether we're talking about Israel or any other country, we think that becoming part of the NTP is important."