BICOM

Key Points

• A key concern stressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his UN speech, ahead of his meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, is that the focus on stopping the advance of ISIS will take pressure off Iran and its nuclear programme.
• Netanyahu gave a forthright response to Mahmoud Abbas’s incendiary accusation of ‘genocide’ against Israel, but these tensions mask a more complicated relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), including cooperation over the future of the Gaza Strip.
• Netanyahu stressed that amid the threats posed by militant Islam, there lies an opportunity for “broader rapprochement” between Israel and the Arab world; it remains to be seen whether this will develop into a concrete diplomatic development.

A New York state of mind

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly capped a week of UN speeches which reflected the diplomatic and security challenges facing Israel in a fast changing region. They also provide a preview to the meeting between Netanyahu and President Obama which will take place on Wednesday. Netanyahu’s speech had three interrelated messages:

1. Militant Islam is an indivisible challenge.

A key concern for Israel is that the current international focus on stopping the advance of ISIS will take pressure off Iran and its nuclear programme, especially with Western leaders reaching out to Iran as a potential partner in the fight against ISIS. The central theme running through Netanyahu’s speech was that militant Islam is a single global phenomenon. Even though it may express itself in different ways in different arenas, and its various strands may at times be at war with one another, they all share the same ideological agenda to dominate the world and stamp out freedom and tolerance.

In this context he described Hamas and ISIS as “branches of the same poisonous tree,” but even more pointedly made the case that Iran was no different in its radical global ambitions to ISIS, and that Iran would be an even more potent danger as a military nuclear power. He stressed that: “To defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war,” adding that, “When militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere.”

He warned the West against falling prey to Iran’s charm offensive. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the General Assembly that resolving the nuclear issue would open the door to greater cooperation on regional challenges. Meanwhile Iran’s erudite, English speaking foreign minister Mohammad Zarif – who has also been in New York, charming journalists, think tankers and officials – was quoted by Netanyahu, from a book in which he wrote of Iran’s “fundamental problem with the West” and agenda to “change the international order.”

It was clear that this part of the speech was meant especially for American ears, even including a baseball reference which would have left much of the rest of the world baffled. It will no doubt form a central part of Netanyahu’s pitch to President Obama at the White House on Wednesday.

2. Hamas are the war criminals, not Israel.

A second key theme of Netanyahu’s speech was his firm response to the accusations made against Israel during the recent Gaza conflict: that it deliberately targeted civilians. He focused on the charge of genocide hurled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas from the UN podium on Friday, and the UN Human Rights Council’s biased treatment of Israel, which he linked to a resurgence of global antisemitism. Netanyahu held a picture from Gaza showing children peering at a rocket launcher in a civilian neighbourhood to prove that: “Israel was using its missiles to protect its children. Hamas was using its children to protect its missiles.”

As with Abbas, Netanyahu’s domestic audience is at least as important as the international audience when it comes to talking about the recent conflict. Netanyahu used the speech to hit back at Abbas personally over the genocide accusation, invoking the Palestinian president’s doctoral thesis, portions of which are considered Holocaust denial by critics, and Abbas’s insistence that a Palestinian state should have no Jews.

However, the tense exchanges from from the UN podium mask a more complicated relationship between Israel and the PA. Both leaders suggested that the model of a conflict ending agreement through bilateral negotiations has run its course. But behind the scenes Israel and the PA continue to cooperate to maintain order in the West Bank, and on stabilising the Gaza Strip, in the face of their shared adversary Hamas.

UN Middle East coordinator Robert Serry announced on 16 September a trilateral agreement between the UN, Israel, and the PA giving a lead role to the PA in large scale reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip. Israel recognises that improving the situation for ordinary Gazans is in its interests, and that the only way of achieving that without strengthening Hamas is to bring about a return of PA control.

3. There is a new chance for Arab-Israeli rapprochement.

The third element in Netanyahu’s speech reflected a theme he has stressed in recent months, that amid the threats posed by the rise of militant Islam, there lies an opportunity for “broader rapprochement” between Israel and the Arab world. In New York he developed the theme by suggesting that this in turn might help facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

On this occasion Netanyahu went further than he had in the past, by naming some of the states he had in mind by their capitals: Cairo, Amman, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. Netanyahu stressed that he was ready for “historic compromise”, and that peace “will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise,” but stressed that the experience of withdrawing from Gaza and southern Lebanon, which had brought militant Islam onto Israel’s borders, heightened Israel’s security concerns and the need for “rock solid security arrangements.”

Netanyahu’s words follow Abbas’s speech on Friday in which Abbas declared “it is impossible … to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed” and announced plans to seek a new, Arab League endorsed, Security Council resolution which would define the contours of an agreement. There are increasing calls from among policy elites in Israel to respond to this challenge with an Israeli diplomatic initiative. It remains to be seen if Netanyahu’s hint at a regional route to peace, will be followed up with a concrete development.