[WCUSP] Fw: A Top neocon says Israel conned by neocons

[Libby or Mort Frank]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian Lustick" <ilustick at sas.upenn.edu>
To: <Recipient list suppressed:>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 5:29 PM
Subject: A Top neocon says Israel conned by neocons


> (How the "War on Terror" also Traps the Israeli government into costly 
> adventures and pushes Israel away from promising negotiating opportunities 
> with Syria that the IDF high command, for instance, has long favored. IL)
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>>Neo-Cons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria
>>    By Jim Lobe
>>    Inter Press Service
>>
>>    Tuesday 19 December 2006
>>
>>    Washington - Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration 
>> of U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria 
>> during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published 
>> interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle 
>> East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
>>
>>    Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Centre for Middle 
>> East Policy at the Hudson Institute here, reportedly told Yitzhak 
>> Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on 
>> Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq.
>>
>>    "If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," 
>> she asserted, adding that it was chiefly as a result of pressure from 
>> what she called "neocons" that the administration held off demands by 
>> U.N. Security Council members to halt Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and 
>> other targets in Lebanon during the summer war.
>>
>>    "The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of 
>> time and space ... They believed that Israel should be allowed to win," 
>> she told Ynet. "A great part of it was the thought that Israel should 
>> fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah ... If Israel had 
>> hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would 
>> have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East."
>>
>>    Wurmser's remarks bolster reports from Israel that hawks in the Bush 
>> administration did, in fact, encourage in the first days of the 
>> Israel-Hezbollah conflict the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to 
>> extend its war beyond Lebanon's borders.
>>
>>    "In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, [U.S. Deputy 
>> National Security Adviser Elliot] Abrams indicated that Washington would 
>> have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other 
>> northern neighbour, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the 
>> intended target was Syria," a well-informed source, who received an 
>> account of the meeting from one of its participants, told IPS shortly 
>> after the conflict ended last August. A similar account was published in 
>> the Jerusalem Post at the time.
>>
>>    Abrams has been known to work particularly closely with both David 
>> Wurmser, Meyrav's husband, and Cheney's national security adviser, John 
>> Hannah, who, in turn have long favoured "regime change" in Damascus.
>>
>>    Indeed, both Wurmsers, along with former Defence Policy Board chairman 
>> Richard Perle and former Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas 
>> Feith, worked together on a 1996 paper, entitled "A Clean Break", for 
>> incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which called for 
>> overthrowing Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the first step toward destabilising 
>> Syria.
>>
>>    Wurmser and Hannah, according to the New York Times, argued 
>> forcefully - and successfully with Abrams' help - against efforts by 
>> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to persuade Bush to open a channel to 
>> Syria in an effort to stop the fighting in its early days.
>>
>>    Given her husband's work for Cheney, Wurmser's remarks, which come as 
>> the debate over policy toward Syria both here and in Israel is hotting 
>> up, offer important insights into the thinking of the dwindling number of 
>> administration hawks, particularly those around the vice president who is 
>> reportedly steadfastly opposed to any direct engagement with Damascus or 
>> Tehran.
>>
>>    Since last summer's conflict, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad has 
>> given a series of interviews with western media - most recently, Italy's 
>> La Repubblica - in which he has called on Israel for direct negotiations 
>> to end their state of war and fully normalise relations.
>>
>>    The repeated offers have split Olmert's government. Some cabinet 
>> officials, led for now by Defence Minister Amir Peretz, have called for 
>> exploring Assad's offers, if for no other reason than to determine what 
>> price, besides return of the occupied Golan Heights, Israel might be 
>> expected to pay, and what it might gain, particularly with respect to 
>> possibly weakening Syria's ties to Iran.
>>
>>    But Olmert has resisted this approach, insisting Sunday, for example, 
>> that he would not consider talks with Damascus until and unless it first 
>> renounced terrorism and halted its support of "extremist influences", 
>> presumably the Damascus-based wing of the Palestinian Hamas party and 
>> Hezbollah.
>>
>>    But many analysts believe that Olmert is being held back primarily by 
>> fear of crossing hard-liners in the Bush administration, which charges 
>> Damascus with trying to regain its influence in Lebanon by subverting the 
>> government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and providing support to the 
>> Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
>>
>>    Assad himself argued as much in his Repubblica interview. "... [T]he 
>> most important thing ... is that Washington doesn't want that. This means 
>> [Olmert's] is a weak government; it allows Washington to take the 
>> decision instead of the Israeli government."
>>
>>    But, while hard-liners like Cheney's office and Abrams still have the 
>> upper hand on Syria policy here, the administration is also finding 
>> itself under growing pressure to re-think its strategy there, as in Iraq.
>>
>>    Earlier this month, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) called for 
>> Washington to directly engage Damascus and Tehran in regional 
>> negotiations designed to stabilise Iraq. Like some prominent Israelis, 
>> the ISG's co-chair, former Secretary of State James Baker, has argued 
>> that creative diplomacy could woo Damascus away from its strategic 
>> alliance with Iran.
>>
>>    "If you can flip the Syrians, you will cure Israel's Hezbollah 
>> problem," he said recently, adding that Syrian officials - he met with 
>> the foreign minister in September - had indicated they could persuade 
>> Hamas' militant external wing to accept Olmert's conditions for direct 
>> engagement with the Palestinians.
>>
>>    The idea of engaging Syria has attracted growing support not only from 
>> the U.S. foreign policy establishment and Democrats, several of whom have 
>> or are making their way to Damascus over the Christmas recess, but from 
>> some important Republican lawmakers, as well. Sen. Arlen Specter is due 
>> to travel there next week, while even Sen. Sam Brownback, the favoured 
>> 2008 presidential candidate of the Christian Right, has endorsed what he 
>> called the ISG's call for a "very aggressive, regional diplomatic 
>> effort."
>>
>>    The idea of engaging Syria - particularly as part of a broader 
>> "land-for-peace" deal with Israel - is anathema to the neo-conservatives 
>> whose ranks within the administration have steadily diminished over the 
>> past two years and now, in the wake of Defence Secretary Robert Gates' 
>> replacement of Donald Rumsfeld, face further losses in the Pentagon. 
>> Until his nomination, Gates served as a member of the ISG and, during his 
>> confirmation hearings, indicated sympathy for its diplomatic ideas.
>>
>>    Indeed, Wurmser, who is herself an Israeli closely identified with the 
>> Likud Party, expressed a sense of imminent defeat. Noting last week's 
>> departure of former UN Amb. John Bolton, a key neo-conservative ally, she 
>> said, "[T]here are others who are about to leave."
>>
>>    "This administration is in its twilight days," she said. "Everyone is 
>> now looking for work, looking to make money ... We all feel beaten after 
>> the past five years ..."
>>
>>    While she blamed Rumsfeld, the military, and the State Department for 
>> the failure to achieve neo-conservative goals in Iraq and the wider 
>> region, she also attacked Israel's conduct of last summer's war, 
>> insisting that it provoked "a lot of anger" in Washington, presumably in 
>> her husband's office, among other places.
>>
>>    "The final outcome is that Israel did not do it [attack Syria]. It 
>> fought the wrong war and lost ... [i]nstead of a strategic war that would 
>> serve Israel's objectives, as well as the U.S. objectives in Iraq."
>>
>>    IPS sought comment from Wurmser, but its calls went unreturned.
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