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Begin New Search Political Geography Israel Publishing Institution The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)

11. Operation “Shahid Soleimani”: Iran’s Revenge

Author:
Uzi Rubin
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Operation Shahid Soleimani, the Iranian revenge attack for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, was less spectacular than the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities last September and was apparently controversial even within Iran’s top leadership. Still, Israel can learn lessons from it: that Iran’s regime is willing to take extraordinary risks when it feels humiliated; that in certain scenarios precision missiles can be as effective as combat aircraft; that even a few precision missiles can disrupt the operation of modern air bases; and that good public diplomacy is crucial for crisis management.
Topic:
Military Strategy, Weapons, Crisis Management, Risk, and Qassem Soleimani
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, and Israel

12. The San Remo Conference 100 Years On

Author:
Efraim Karsh
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference of April 1920. Convened for a mere week as part of the post-WWI peace conferences that created a new international order on the basis of indigenous self-rule and national self-determination, the San Remo conference appointed Britain as mandatory for Palestine with the specific task of “putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government [i.e., the Balfour Declaration], and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations—the postwar world organization and the UN’s predecessor. The importance of the Palestine mandate cannot be overstated. Though falling short of the proposed Zionist formula that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people,” it signified an unqualified recognition by the official representative of the will of the international community of the Jews as a national group—rather than a purely religious community—and acknowledgement of “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country.” It is a historical tragedy therefore that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood). Rather than keep trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their people’s statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors. And what can be a more auspicious timing for this process than the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference?
Topic:
History, Zionism, Conflict, Negotiation, and Peace
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

13. The Crisis of Violence in Israeli Arab Society

Author:
Edy Cohen
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Arab politicians blame the Israeli establishment for the rampaging violence in Israeli Arab society, but ignore the underlying problems in their own sociopolitical culture that foster that violence.
Topic:
Demographics, Politics, Law Enforcement, and Violence
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

14. Fighting Antisemitism: Three Strategic Priorities

Author:
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
If antisemitism is to be fought effectively, three priorities have to be set. First, the Israeli government should establish an anti-propaganda agency. Second, an effort must be made to achieve a broad recognition that antisemitism is an ancient and integral element of Western culture. Third, there should be a consistent exposure of Jewish masochists who claim that Israel alone has to be perfect while others do not.
Topic:
Human Rights, Judaism, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

15. Fighting the Demonization of Israel at the International Criminal Court

Author:
Eytan Gilboa
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, has decided to indict senior Israeli policymakers and military officers for committing war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. Her decision is baseless, preposterous, and discriminatory, and it violates the ICC’s own mission and rules. Bensouda’s action should be placed within the wider context of the Palestinian disinformation, delegitimization, and demonization campaign against Israel at international organizations. Israel should discredit and delegitimize the ICC in turn via aggressive political measures and collaboration with concerned liberal democracies, primarily the US.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, Justice, and International Criminal Court (ICC)
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

16. Berlin: Capital of European Antisemitism

Author:
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Berlin has surpassed Malmö as Europe’s antisemitism capital, with a wide variety of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attitudes on display. They include dozens of cases of physical aggression against Jews, including rabbis. Jewish pupils have had to leave public schools. Thirty-five percent of Berliners view Israelis as analogous to Nazis. An Al-Quds Day march takes place annually that calls for the destruction of Israel. Both the municipality and the federal government are two-faced about the problem of antisemitism.
Topic:
Politics, Judaism, Ideology, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Germany

17. BDS, Antisemitism, and Class

Author:
Alex Joffe
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Contemporary antisemitism has the ability to graft itself onto a variety of causes and movements. But the social and information environment in the US and Europe is strongly conditioned by virtue-signaling among elites and increasingly among portions of the middle class. Antisemitism, in part through BDS-fueled antipathy toward Israel, is becoming a signal of middle class respectability. At the same time, though left-wing Western elites remain strongly anti-national, the working classes and other parts of the middle class are becoming renationalized. These and other class conflicts will shape antisemitism in the next decades.
Topic:
Human Rights, Class, BDS, Anti-Semitism, and Political Movements
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

18. The West Bank’s Area C: Israel’s Eastern Line of Defense

Author:
Gershon Hacohen
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
This study explores the strategic-military implications of the establishment of a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 lines. Its central thesis is that the creation of such a state, on the heels of the IDF’s total withdrawal from the West Bank, will not only deprive Israel of defensible borders but will almost certainly lead to the advent of a terrorist entity like the one created in the Gaza Strip – at a stone’s throw from the Israeli heartland.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Military Strategy, Self Determination, and Occupation
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

19. Israeli Nuclear Deterrence in Context: Effects of the US-Russian Rivalry

Author:
Louis René Beres
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Israel’s presumptive nuclear deterrence posture depends upon several separate but intersecting factors. Most important, of course, are the country’s weapons, infrastructures, and missile defense capabilities. Less conspicuously urgent, but still important, are the principal defining structures of world politics. These include (as ever) the fundamentally anarchic system created after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia (“The State System”) and the more transient or temporary US-Russian rivalry. This essay casts attention on the latter set of factors, or “Cold War II.” Israel’s strategists should pay close attention to this critical expression of geopolitical “context.”
Topic:
National Security, Nuclear Weapons, Infrastructure, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Middle East, Israel, North America, and United States of America

20. What Happens to Israel If the US and Iran Go to War?

Author:
Louis René Beres
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
On core matters of peace and security, two closely interrelated questions must be asked: 1. What precisely does Donald Trump have in mind regarding any potential armed conflict with Iran? 2. What might such a possibility portend for Israel, a US ally? Answers to these questions must extend beyond narrowly partisan simplifications. They should be nuanced and subtly overlapping. At a minimum, once a shooting war were underway, the Israeli armed forces (IDF) could become involved, possibly to a substantial degree. In a worst case scenario, clashes would involve unconventional weapons and directly affect Israel’s civilian population. The worst of the worst could involve nuclear ordnance.
Topic:
Security, War, Nuclear Power, Peace, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, North America, United States of America, and Israel