Could ISIS
Force an Israeli Intervention? Alan Johnson
Having declared a caliphate stretching across Iraq
and Syria, the Sunni jihadists of ISIS may now pose a threat to the kingdom of
Jordan. If they do, Israel will feel its own interests would be directly
threatened, and could ultimately intervene.
Watching the Arab Spring degenerate into sectarian
slaughter, Israel has sought to protect itself from the chaos, and, above all,
avoid being sucked into the tribal, religious, and sectarian conflicts that
have been eroding the Sykes-Picot borders
and are now dissolving the “countries” established after 1918.
However, the victories of ISIS, its thrust
southward, and its open threat to overthrow Jordan’s King Abdullah could change
all that. If the ISIS danger to Jordan becomes real and present, Israel may
feel compelled to respond.
“Our first challenge is to protect our borders.
Extremist Islamic forces are knocking on our doors,” Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said during
a conference at Tel Aviv University recently. His proposed response: building a
fence along the full length of Israel’s border with Jordan, insisting on a
security presence in the West Bank as part of any future peace agreement with
the Palestinians, and building a regional axis against ISIS, including by
strengthening Jordan.
Israel has a history of acting to preserve Jordan’s
territorial integrity. In the Jordanian civil war in 1970, Israel acted to
deter regional enemies of the Hashemite monarchy contributing to its collapse.
Now, as then, Jordanian stability is a strategic
Israeli interest for obvious reasons, not least its location and its
pro-Western orientation. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that
Israel’s national interest dictates an intense concern with Jordan’s survival
and has made it clear that Israel is ready to do whatever it takes to defend
it.
The significance of Jordanian stability should not
be underestimated as a strategic Western interest. Stable
allies are not exactly thick on the ground in the region, these days, and the
remaining few should be protected zealously. That means a number of things:
sealing Jordan’s borders from returning ISIS fighters—and Jordanians are the
largest foreign contingent among the jihadist groups in Syria—and strengthening
Jordan’s economy, already weakened by the flood of Syrian and Iraqi refugees
and the loss of cheap energy from Egypt.
The Israeli prime minister could be looking beyond
the ISIS threat to Jordan to the possibility of a broader alliance able to face
the threat from extremist Sunni and extremist Shia Islam: “It is upon us to
support the international efforts to strengthen Jordan, and support the Kurds’
aspiration for independence. Jordan is a stable, moderate country with a strong
army that can defend itself, and it is especially due to this that these
international efforts are worthy of supporting it. The same is true for the
Kurds: They are fighting people that have proven political commitment and
political moderation but they’re also worthy of their own political
independence.”
Israel does not want to be an actor in intra-Arab
strife. It knows that if it has to take this role, then the diplomatic terrain
will only become more difficult for the US and its regional partners. But the
destabilisation of a country that shares with it a 250-mile border, not to
mention a peace treaty, just can’t be accepted by Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment