Historian thinks Middle East better than ever now for Israel

By PAUL HAIST

article created on: 2009-02-01T00:00:00

Israeli historian Paul Liptz, in Portland Jan. 21 for two public lectures told his audience that evening at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center that Israel’s survival depends on making sense of the Middle East. He spoke earlier in the day at Portland State University.

As the conflict in Gaza was approaching a cease-fire, Liptz—a 1967 immigrant to Israel from what was then known as Rhodesia and a lecturer at Tel Aviv university for 35 years—drew a parallel between what was happening in Gaza and what happened in the northern Galilee region of Israel between 1948 and 1969.

During that period the kibbutzim in the north were under the guns of the Syrians who held the Golan Heights, said Liptz. “They basically existed waiting for rockets to come and then run into shelters,” he said, not needing to draw the obvious parallel with life until recently in Israel’s south where Israelis have been showered with Hamas rockets from Gaza.

The message to the Syrians then “was that Israel doesn’t respond and you can push them around.”

The Syrian understanding changed, said Liptz, after the Six-Day War when Israel captured the Golan Heights, and the 1972 war when, he said, the Israelis could have marched to the Syrian capital of Damascus.

“Then Syrians concluded that the Jews are a wild and dangerous people and don’t mess with them,” said Liptz. “The border (with Syria) has been very quiet since then.”

He pointed to a similar realization among Israel’s foes in the aftermath of the second Lebanon war, a lesson Liptz also thinks may have been delivered in the south now with Israel’s retaliation against Hamas.

In fact, all the fighting and the threat of a possibly nuclear Iran notwithstanding, Liptz thinks “the Middle East is actually a better Middle East now for Israel than at any time before in its 61-year history.”

He thinks some of Israel’s Arab neighbors are coming to terms with a Jewish state in their midst and have been turned in that direction by Iranian policy.

“Syria would still be happy if Israel disappeared,” he said, but he added that Syria and some other Arab and Islamic states—Jordan, Egypt and even the Saudis—recognize that it may be “better to live with an Israel you hate than with an Iran that can kill you.”

He pointed particularly to Egypt.

“Egypt realizes its existence today depends on a safe and stable Israel,” said Liptz. “That’s why when Israel closes its borders with Gaza Egypt doesn’t open its, because Hamas is a threat to Egypt too.

He said it is “the same with Jordan and the Muslim Brotherhood group there,” referring to the transnational Sunni movement whose principles guide a number of radical Islamic groups.

The Saudi royal family, who he said are threatened by the conservative Sunni Wahhabi movement, “are increasingly considering their future and that they need an ally, and, in a strange way, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Jordan are on the same page.”

He cautioned the West not necessarily to measure progress toward cooperation between Israel and its Arab/Muslim neighbors by counting treaties.

“What’s happening in the Middle East today is a kind of interaction that doesn’t involve signing peace treaties,” said Liptz. “What they are trying to achieve is a new level of understanding” and that includes the fact that “Israel is not going to disappear.”

If that is good news, he said their remains reason for concern. He singled out the nature of most Middle East governments for lacking widespread support among their citizens, such that when a leader dies “everything can change;” there is no guarantee of continuity in policy.

Liptz expressed concern over the nature of Islamic fundamentalism, noting that only some 10 percent of Muslims are fundamentalists, but because of the terror they foment one rarely hears from the 90 percent of Muslims who are not fundamentalists.

Finally, he said the future also depends on Israel avoiding the pitfall of “seeing all the Islamic world in a monolithic way. We have to find a mechanism for meeting people on the other side.”

In an earlier conversation with the Jewish Review Liptz discussed Israeli perspectives on the recent presidential election in America.

“There is a tendency (in Israel) to listen to American immigrants to Israel, a large percentage of which are modern Orthodox and Republican,” said Liptz. “I think that started off a misunderstanding of who Obama is. The (middle name) Hussein thing hit Israel very strongly. There was email going around that Obama would identify with the Muslim world…I think it unnerved Israeli society.”

Liptz said Obama has done several things that have helped to allay concern among Israelis.

“He expressed support for U.S. military action overseas. Obama understands the need for military action,” he said.

Liptz said Obama’s visit to the Israeli city of Sderot where Hamas rockets have rained down in the thousands also helped, especially his statement that “this is an untenable situation.”

The selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is also helpful. “They may not know Hillary, but they do know Bill (Clinton),” he said, citing the former president’s close ties to slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to whom Clinton bade adieu at the funeral with the words, Shalom, chaver (Peace, friend).

Liptz also said that it hasn’t been lost on the Israeli public or leadership that several Jews (eight at latest count) are prominent among the White House inner circle.

Finally, he said, “There is a subconscious component: that Obama isn’t (former President Jimmy) Carter. I think that resonates through Israeli society.”

Liptz’s Portland visit was made possible by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.