An Israeli-Arab Alliance: Inevitable Reality or Illusion?
DEVELOPMENTS
In June, the Saudi government reportedly granted Israel use of Saudi airspace, should Israel decide to conduct air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Combined with Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program, Turkey’s flexing of political and diplomatic muscle in the region, and Egypt’s recent tacit support of an Israeli warship’s passage through the Suez Canal, there are rumbles of tectonic shifts in the Middle East’s geopolitical plates.
Despite these moves, some political dynamics in the Middle East remain fixed. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are stalled, and anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab street is rampant. However, a convergence of Israeli and Sunni Arab strategic imperatives, spurred by the regional emergence of Iran and Turkey, could pave the way for a tacit alliance of unlikely bedfellows.
BACKGROUND
In the last thirty years, despite Israel’s successful implementation of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and its commencement of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, its isolation from much of the Arab world has persisted and deepened, particularly in the aftermath of its wars against Hezbollah and Hamas in 2006 and 2008.
Beginning in the late 1950s, in response to the direct hostility stemming from Egyptian President Gamal Nasser’s hegemonic aspirations and Arab nationalism generally, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion devised a policy of forming military and intelligence ties with key non-Arab states, including Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia, informally referred to as the “alliance of the periphery.” In August 1958, Ben Gurion secretly met with Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes to conceive the partnership between Israel and Turkey, initially encompassing military and intelligence collaboration. Although initially clandestine, the Israel-Turkish relationship gradually evolved into a public alliance with the announcement of military cooperation and free trade agreements in 1996.
Military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Iran also flourished during the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi, reportedly including joint Israeli-Iranian ballistic project development in the late 1970s. Israel also increased strategic military and economic cooperation with Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country. Viewing Ethiopia as a natural counterweight to the threat of Egypt under Nasser, Israel in the 1960s and 70s supported Ethiopia against rebel Eritrean forces.
Expectations of closer military and intelligence collaboration between Israel and key Arab states must be tempered, however, by the realities of domestic Arab and Israeli politics. Antipathy toward Israel on the Arab street has only increased in recent years, following the Israeli wars against Hezbollah and Hamas in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the recent Israeli flotilla raid. At the same time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and, most recently, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, have capitalized on this sentiment to their political benefit, to some degree at the expense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah.
Yet there are points of common interest that can catalyze public cooperation between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors. Efforts by Saudi King Abdullah to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict, as he did by spearheading the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, which he later reaffirmed in the Riyadh Conference in 2007, should be renewed. Saudi leadership on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as well as continued efforts to resolve the Hamas-Fatah split, could complement the upgrading of relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. With the destabilizing influence of Iran’s sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Israel’s likely rejection of Turkey as an “honest broker” in any future negotiations between Israel and Syria, Saudi Arabia could exercise a significant role in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
ANALYSIS
Strategic imperatives similar to those guiding Israel’s “alliance of the periphery” could now compel an “alliance of the interior” between Israel and its key Sunni Arab neighbors – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The elevation of clandestine military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors could buffer Iran. Both Egypt and Israel are directly threatened by Iranian sponsorship of Hamas in Gaza, evidenced by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s reported comments in 2008 that the situation in Gaza has led to Egypt having, “in practice, Iran as a neighbor.” Furthermore, Iranian meddling in Yemen’s war against the Shi’a Houthi rebels threatens Saudi Arabia’s regional power. Moreover, the specter of an Iran with nuclear weapons compels closer military and intelligence cooperation.
Turkey’s burgeoning political, military and diplomatic regional power is not similarly perceived by Sunni Arab states as a threat. Yet the current downward trajectory in Turkish-Israel relations, exacerbated by the recent Israeli raid on the Turkish-sponsored Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, has raised doubts on the future of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, amidst Turkey’s recall of its ambassador to Israel, cancellation of military exercises and potential reneging of arms sales. As Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party, espousing political Islam, has strengthened its hand over the secular military establishment, it is unclear whether historically strong Israeli-Turkish military ties will endure. Deterioration in Israeli-Turkish ties, actual or potential, could be complemented by Israel pursuing closer, albeit clandestine, military and intelligence cooperation with Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Ultimately, similar to the origins of Israel’s “alliance of the periphery,” upgraded relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab world would likely remain clandestine initially. However, the prospect of forging an “interior alliance” against Iranian hegemony that could be crowned with the formation of a Palestinian state remains a tantalizing opportunity for both Israelis and Sunni Arabs. The creation of an Israeli-Sunni Arab alliance would thereby constitute a reconfiguration of the geopolitical map of the Greater Middle East amidst the rise of the non-Arab powers.
Josh Lockman is an attorney and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. From 2008 to 2010, he practiced at Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles.
