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1) The PA’s defense budget

The Palestinian Authority regularly complains about its budget woes. Nitzana Darshan-Leitner writes that the largest portion of the PA’s budget goes to defense:

Recently, the Palestinian Authority publicly revealed its new budget. In approving the 2013 fiscal plan, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas signed off on a startling $3.9 billion spending spree. What is fascinating, however, is not just the amount of money being destined for expenditures but rather the manner in which the PA is planning on allocating it.
Almost $1b., about 28 percent of the budget, will be spent on defense, compared to 16% for education and 10% for medical services. In other words, a bulk of the PA’s funds will not be used for schooling, health or infrastructure, but for procuring weapons and maintaining a massive military structure. A government which is not officially at war with Israel, and has no formal army, has somehow decided to invest all of its financial resources in militarization – at a time the US is asking it to continue with final settlement negotiations.
Apart from paying the salaries of 95% of “defense employees” in Hamas-ruled Gaza, the PA also uses its budget to strengthen its oppressive grip on the local population. Money is used to torment minorities, gays, women, and to indoctrinate schoolchildren with hateful rhetoric as well as to glorify terrorist attacks against Jews.

Maybe that’s to fight terror? Recently there’s been a rise in attempted abductions of Israeli soldiers, so maybe there’s a need to beef up the security services. However a recent poll shows Most Palestinians Want Security Cooperation with Israel Stopped:

Only one quarter (24.6%) of the Palestinian public opinion believes the Oslo Accords served the Palestinian national interests while one third (33.6%) thinks they have harmed them and another third (34.9%) considers them to have made no difference. Public opinion is especially critical of the security coordination between the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Israel. Only a third (33.8%) believes it to benefit the Palestinians while a majority of 55.4% wants to see it terminated even if this would lead to an increase of incursions by the Israeli army into Area A of the West Bank.

(The poll also shows widespread support for “non-violent” resistance against Israel. There are a number of other interesting findings in the poll too.)

2) UNESCO site damaged – by Hamas

The Palestinian Authority’s recent campaign to build public support included being accepted into membership of UNESCO. One of the reasons for this was to wage lawfare against Israel.

Following its admission to UNESCO, the Palestinian Authority is planning to pursue Israel legally in international forums for allegedly stealing Palestinian antiquities and changing the Arab and Islamic character of holy sites in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials said over the weekend.
“Now that we have joined UNESCO, we will take Israel to court for systematically destroying and forging Arab and Islamic culture in Jerusalem,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, former PA minister for Jerusalem affairs. “We are also seeking to file lawsuits against Israel in international courts and bodies for stealing Arab and Islamic antiquities and assaulting Islamic and Christian holy sites.”

I wonder how the PA (and the world!) will react to Hamas, which has just damaged a proposed UNESCO heritage site:

“Earlier last month, amid overwhelming criticism from public figures and nongovernmental organizations, the military wing of the Islamic movement of Hamas, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, bulldozed a part of the ancient Anthedon Harbor in northern Gaza along the Mediterranean Sea. The Brigades damaged the harbor in order to expand its military training zone, which was initially opened on the location in 2002, according to Ejla.”
The Anthedon seaport dates back over 3,000 years and is considered one of the most important sites in the Middle East. It was designated an international heritage site by UNESCO in 2012. It contains mosaic floors with historical pillars from the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic ages.

1) How to fight asymmetric warfare

Charles Enderlein and Philipe Karsenty are back in court. Enderlein was the reporter who created the story of Mohammed al-Dura. Karsenty is the media critic who had the temerity to question the much honored “journalist.” Back in 2008 Karsenty successfully fended off a libel suit brought by Enderlein. For reasons, I don’t understand the case is back in court with a verdict due May 22.

Richard Landes has explained the case in terms of asymmetric warfare:

All asymmetrical wars take place primarily in the cognitive arena, with the major theater of war the enemy’s public sphere. The goal is to convince your far more powerful enemy not to fight. In defensive cases, from the Maccabees to the Vietnamese, this has meant getting imperial powers to “go home.” But Islamists who want to spread Dar al Islam conduct an offensive campaign: how to get your targets to surrender on their own home ground? In this seemingly absurd venture, they have had remarkable success.

The mainstream news media – their journalists, editors, producers – constitute a central front of this cognitive war: the “weak” but aggressive side cannot have success without the witting or unwitting cooperation of the enemy’s journalists. The success of global Jihad in eliciting our media’s cooperation with their goals

This is correct though it isn’t new.

Back in 2007, Marvin Kalb wrote THE ISRAELI-HEZBOLLAH WAR OF 2006:The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict in which he observed:

If we are to collect lessons from this war, one of them would have to be that a closed society can control the image and the message that it wishes
to convey to the rest of the world far more effectively than can an open society, especially one engaged in an existential struggle for survival.
An open society becomes the victim of its own openness.

During the war, no Hezbollah secrets were disclosed, but in Israel secrets were leaked, rumors
spread like wildfire, leaders felt obliged to issue hortatory appeals often based on in complete knowledge, a nd journalists were driven by the fire of
competition to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated information. A closed society conveys the impression of order and discipline; an open society, buffeted by the crosswinds of reality and rumor, criticism and revelation, conveys the impression of disorder, chaos and uncertainty, but this
impression can be misleading.
It was hardly an accident that Hezbollah, in this circumstance, projected a very special narrative for the world beyond its kin—a narrative that depicted a selfless movement touched by God and blessed by a religious fervor and determination to resist the enemy, the infidel, and ultimately achieve a “divine victory,” no matter the cost in life and treasure. The narrative contained no mention of Hezbollah’s dependence upon Iran and Syria for a steady flow of arms and financial resources.

For Hezbollah, the 2006 summertime war was more than a battle against a mortal enemy; it was a crucial battle in a broader, ongoing war, linking religious fundamentalism to Arab nationalism. Will victory be defined as an open door to modernity or to a new caliphate? That is a key question. The
whole Arab world is often framed as a “politically traumatized region,” wrote Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, caught in the “morbid interim between the dying of an exhausted political and social order and the birth of a still-unknown way of life.” Hezbollah saw itself as a resolute leader in shaping the Arab future.

In addition to changing perceptions about the region, cognitive warfare also had an effect on the battlefield.

A year later, Irwin Mansdorf and Mordechai Kedar concluded in The Psychological Asymmetry of Islamist Warfare (h/t Daled Amos):

How to balance military needs, international humanitarian law, and the reality of facing an enemy whose tactics are not restrained by accepted conventions are challenges to which Israel and other Western nations need to devote serious thought. The asymmetry of battle that Israel faces requires a rethinking of strategy to deal with threats from forces whose ideologies allow them not just to frustrate many Western military advantages but to use the openness of Western societies—especially their print and image media, and the organizations through which the Western penchant for self-criticism is expressed—to their own advantage. Ideology, including the perception of right versus wrong, becomes part of the discussion. Ultimately, non-Islamists, such as Israel, need to win the ideological war as well as the military one.

In the short-term, Israel can take the lead by repeatedly and forcefully asserting the moral high ground by pointing out that civilian causalities are never intentional but, given the cynical tactics of the enemies it must fight, are regrettably inevitable. Israeli spokespersons must further assert that the culpability for civilian casualties lies with the terrorists who have deliberately chosen to wage war against Israel from within civilian populations precisely because of the propaganda benefits of such tactics. While this is not likely to appease those who seek to paint Israel as a serial violator of human rights, the evidence will show that, given Israel’s military arsenal, any premeditated policy of targeting civilians would most certainly have resulted in massively higher death tolls than have actually taken place. From a human rights perspective, the tables need to be turned by arguing that states such as Israel are victims of a capricious and cynical policy of civilian exploitation and that militant Islamists are intentional violators of international conventions that seek to protect civilian lives.

In the long term, though, defeating an ideologically-based movement may not be possible without defeating the ideology itself. For Islamists, any move toward moderation will be a political tactic or a forced concession rather than an actual political or ideological reform or accommodation. What should Western societies do when fighting Islamist groups? In order to defeat the political ideology behind Islamism, Muslim civilians must develop a viable and practical alternative to the Islamist organizations that claim to represent the broader Muslim community.[56] While the ideology is immutable, if the civilian population withdraws its support, Islamist movements will be rendered impotent.

Their conclusion is correct but it appears to be easier said than done. Whether at a time of war or not asymmetric warfare is going on, especially against Israel. Whether or not they’re aware, much of the media assist in this war against Israel. Vigilance against manufactured and false narratives remains an important check on this warfare.

If you doubt the effectiveness of the cognitive warfare being waged against Israel, ask yourself how many of Barry Rubin’s snapshots have you read about in your local paper or seen on the nightly news?

2) The spillover into Lebanon

In Sects and the city Nadine Elali writes how the Syrian civil affects Lebanon (h/t Lee Smith):

Since the outbreak of hostilities in Syria between the Assad regime and opposition forces, the war has spilled over into Lebanon. Sunnis in the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood support the rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while the Alawites of Jabal Mohsen stand loyally by him. It is fitting that the street which forms one of the major frontlines between both is called Syria Street.

This division dates back to the early 1980s when the Syrian Army attacked Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh during the Lebanese Civil War. Since then, the fighting between residents has been directly related to Syrian affairs. Both neighborhoods being among Tripoli’s poorest and most densely populated areas, the high number of unemployed men also means a glut of ready and willing fighters each time the clashes erupt.

Tony Badran’s analysis of Iran and Hezbollah shows that the conflict in Tripoli is a microcosm of the primary conflict in the Middle East.

In the 1990s, there was an attempt to cover up the overt sectarianism of the previous decade. Hezbollah posed as the ultimate banner carrier of Palestine and of ‘resistance’ against Israel. It crafted and perfected an image of itself as a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab resistance movement and as big brother to other – Sunni – ‘resistance’ movements. While this was important image management, one that conferred more legitimacy on the group and its Iranian patron, it also opened the door operationally to spread Iranian influence to other militant groups in the region. Hezbollah’s training of Iraqi Shiite groups, to say nothing of Hamas, is one example.

By 2005, this image had already begun to fade and by 2008 it was, for all intents and purposes, finished. However, while the heyday of ‘resistance’ stardom is now gone, the operational infrastructure built over the last two decades is not.

The difference is that the sectarian underpinnings are once again clear. As analyst Jonathan Spyer put it, “a Sunni-Shiite arc of conflict, centered on the rival interests of Tehran and Riyadh is now bisecting the Middle East.” It’s now recognized that Hezbollah is actively on the ground on all these fronts, advancing Iran’s strategic interests. Aside from its combat role in Syria, Hezbollah/Quds Force cells have been active in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and probably Bahrain, in addition to cases such as the busted cell in Saudi Arabia. In fact, the Saudi cell appears to resemble another cell disrupted in Kuwait in 2010, where a Lebanese man was the key liaison between the locals and the Iranians. But the case of Yemen perhaps best illustrates the original conception Iran had for Hezbollah’s role.

1) The Cartoonish Mr. Netanyahu

In the space of two days the New York Times featured four articles last September mocking PM Netanyahu’s bomb cartoon.
Nod to Obama by Netanyahu in Warning to Iran on Bomb – Rick Gladstone and David Sanger – September 27, 2012

In his speech at the annual General Assembly, Mr. Netanyahu dramatically illustrated his intention to shut down Iran’s nuclear program by drawing a red line through a cartoonish diagram of a bomb. But the substance of his speech suggested a softening of what had been a difficult dispute with the Obama administration on how to confront Iran over its nuclear program.

Talking at Cross Purposes – Editorial – September 27, 2012

In dueling speeches, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel focused on drawing a red line for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities while the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, cataloged his community’s many grievances against Israel and tried to revive the fading dream of a two-state solution. Mr. Netanyahu even had on hand a visual aid — a primitive cartoon drawing of a bomb, which quickly went viral on the Internet.

Netanyahu’s Bomb Explodes on the Internet – Harvey Morris – September 28, 2012

With the aid of a Wile E. Coyote-style cartoon bomb and a red marker pen, Mr. Netanyahu sought to underline the threat posed by Iran in a speech on Thursday to members of the United Nations General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s Bomb Diagram During U.N. Speech Stirs Confusion in Israel – Rick Gladstone and Isabel Kershner – September 28, 2012

Instead, the attention-grabbing performance seems to have created confusion in, of all places, Israel.

But a perceptive Washinton Post editorial, Iran heeds Israel’s warning of uranium ‘red line’ noted this week (h/t Elder of Ziyon, The Algemeiner):

For that, proponents of diplomacy over war with Iran can thank a man they have often ridiculed or reviled: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government is not a participant in the talks with Iran, of course; Iran won’t parley with a nation it aspires to “wipe off the map.” But the Israeli leader’s explicit setting of a “red line” for the Iranian nuclear program in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September appears to have accomplished what neither negotiations nor sanctions have yielded: concrete Iranian action to limit its enrichment.

A host of commentators both in the United States and Israel scoffed at what they called Mr. Netanyahu’s “cartoonish” picture of a bomb and the line he drew across it. The prime minister said Iran could not be allowed to accumulate enough 20 percent enriched uranium to produce a bomb with further processing, adding that at the rate its centrifuges were spinning, Tehran would cross that line by the middle of 2013.

Just last month a New York Times editorial, Congress gets in the way, began:

If there is any hope for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear dispute with Iran, President Obama needs Congress to support negotiations. But negotiations and compromise are largely anathema in Washington, with many lawmakers insisting that any deal with Iran would be unacceptable — a stance that would make military action by Israel and the United States far more likely.

The New York Times is still getting it backwards. Diplomacy is not preventing war but making it more likely, as it is unlikely to deter Iran. What apparently has deterred Iran is a credible threat of force by a man that the New York Times has been portraying as a reckless warmonger.

2) Minor pressure on Turkey

Surprisingly, the United States exerted some limited pressure on Turkey.

Asked about his Gaza trip by a journalist flying with him to Kyrgyzstan, Erdogan said: “It will probably take place after my visit to America.”

The statement comes days after the Turkish premier met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Istanbul. Kerry advised the Turks to consider the timing of the Gaza visit and urged local leaders to fully restore diplomatic ties with Israel.

Immediately after Israel apologized to Turkey over the IDF raid on the Mavi Marmara, Erdogan announced his plans to visit Gaza in April. However it appears Kerry’s visit affected the his plans.

The administration should have prevailed more strongly on Erdogan and pressured him to cancel the trip.

Barry Rubin discovered one more reason why Turkey sought rapprochement with Israel.

“Turkish export routes to the east used to go through Syria, to the East and to the Gulf. That’s not possible anymore. Turkish exports are shipped to the port of Haifa, where they’re loaded onto trucks, which cross Israel and then go to Jordan, and then from Jordan, they are shipped to the Gulf and to the East. Israel has now become a [pivotal] point for Turkish exports. It’s good, but no one wants to talk about it publicly.”