Instead of unwittingly uniting the Arabs into a common enemy, Israel should divide them. The first step would be for Israel to stop using the word Arab in the media and replace it with Palestinian. Israel should treat other Arabs better than Israel treats Palestinians. Current policy is the opposite. Israel gives Palestinians visa-free entry, labor permits, and a common market. Israel should cooperate with distant Muslim nations like Bangladesh and Pakistan who might be lured into collaboration if offered control of the Islamic shrines in Jerusalem. Israel could stir up conflict among Muslims by agreeing to transfer the administration of Islamic shrines in Israel to a representative body of all Islamic countries, including the non-Arab ones. The Israeli move would channel the discussion about Jerusalem away from religion and onto the political plane of Israeli-Muslim relations.
Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves position it as new Saudi Arabia, a gravity center of the Islamic world. Untainted with supporting foreign terrorism, in need of help to counter the Islamic terrorists at home, less xenophobic, these countries are better partners for Israel and the West than Arabs. Rising nationalism need not deter the West: it is a viable alternative to Islamism. Israel has no quarrel with the Turkish and Persian peoples of Central Asia who are in any case less politically active and anti-Israeli than other Muslims. Israel needs to secure the cooperation of rulers, not of entire Islamic nations. The West and Israel have a chance to influence former Soviet Muslim states which are almost entirely secular after years of communist rule and now apt to embrace either Islamic or Western culture. Their governments need the Western political and Israeli military assistance to deal with local, but foreign supported, Islamic terrorists and insurgents. Israel could be either an American or a Russian proxy; the choice is hers. Russia would offer Israel less money but more obsolete arms which Israel could pass to her Islamic clients; America, more political support and cultural attraction to ease the rapprochement with Israel. America recognizes Russian interests in the region, so Israel might want to side with Russia. Israel needs closer relations with Russia and therefore with France anyway,[2] and Central Asia presents a good opportunity for cooperation, with Israel acting as lynchpin. Turkey, with which Israel extensively cooperates in military affairs, also has vested interests in the Central Asian countries and would welcome further Israeli involvement, especially since joint expansion there with Israel would mean United States license for extending Turkish influence—about which Washington is hesitant--checked by Israeli involvement.
Unlike Arab Egypt, Persian Iran cannot dominate Dar al-Islam on its own, though it strive to, and offers Israelan opportunity for balance of power politics in the Middle East. America cannot keep its assistance secret, and France would be too proud of the rapprochement to hide it. Iran will prefer Israel for clandestine aid. Arrogant Persians look down on Arabs, and Iran is more open to the West and Israel than other large Middle East countries, including Egypt. Persians, unlike Arabs, are long post-nomadic, have some work ethic, respect education and property, and thus are poised for economic advance. They were historically friendly to Jews. Iran without fundamentalists, a development possible soon, might be Israel’s best Muslim friend.
Israel should support Arab insurgents. The Middle East, many mini-states fighting one another with limited military resources, may be a safe place for Israel. Israel could become their arbiter and when after prolonged internal conflict the Middle East achieves unification, Israel would be an integral part of the political landscape, respected instead of suspected.
The mirror image of Middle East “Afghanization,” states disintegrating into a web of warring clans, would be the proliferation of anti-Israel terrorist groups harbored by local Islamic warlords. Strong Arab governments are better equipped to suppress Islamic terrorists, but the combined pressures of democratization and fundamentalism will likely dismantle the current Arab regimes or weaken them so they will not be able to suppress ant-Israeli terrorist support. With the Arab states failing, Israel could strike at Islamic terrorist bases lacking effective sovereign protection.
Arab regimes and fundamentalist clerics use anti-Israeli rhetoric to identify their domestic opponents’ progressive views with the Israeli agenda or Western culture in general. Calling domestic opponents a fifth column was a standard tactic in the U.S.S.R. Such accusations are impossible to disprove, and Israel must learn to use them. After the U.S.S.R. accused hordes of innocent people of imperialist conspiracy, their successors cozied up to the Western powers and in fact established the rapprochement they were earlier falsely accused of. Israel, acting through European proxies, should contact Arab dissidents: the Shiites, the few moderate Islamists, democratizers of any hue, even socialists, and offer international fraternal assistance.
Fighting Israel is the Arabs’ only military goal today. Israel should offer them other targets. Israel could sponsor a Christian state in Lebanon. Syria, which does not want to see Lebanon become a rival Muslim state, would support the idea, and Syria’s Christians would welcome a Christian state nearby. Such a Lebanese state could not be absorbed into Greater (Muslim) Syria and, expediently for Israel, would check Syrian expansionism. Or Israel could stir up Christian-Muslim conflicts throughout the Middle East, then pose as arbiter. Israel could incite Christian radicals to attack Muslim shrines in Israel to retaliate for Islamic terrorist attacks in the West. Yet another option is to support the Shia minority and the Kurds who are genetically close to Jews.
Arabs are important in the modern world only because they have oil. Without it they have no economic value. The Arabs’ geopolitical importance has declined ever since the Portuguese found the water route to India and without oil is minuscule in the age of airplanes and missiles. Only oil props the Arab states up.
During the Cold War, the Arabs were pampered and rewarded to get them to keep the international oil market stable in case of international conflict. Today oil firms irrationally lobby the Western governments for regional involvement from corporate self-interest. Therefore, Israel should work at opening Russian and Asian oil production concessions for Western companies to take their attention off the Arab world. Introducing Western oil producers to non-O.P.E.C. oil regions will help lower prices and Arab income, thus their potential to fight Israel.
Even the Arabs’ importance as oil suppliers is often exaggerated. All they have done is raise prices. Russia and other Israel-neutral countries can meet all the demand for oil. A boycott of the Arab oil cartel might lower prices from their current monopolistic levels, unrelated to the cost of extraction, and arranging an international boycott is not so difficult through Israeli efforts in mass media. Israel would find allies among various consumer and ecologist groups, anti-corporate movements, and citizens concerned with lobbying and transparency, perhaps also among special interests, like automotive firms. A consensus among oil importers would be desirable for Istaeli policies though not critical. Arab oil sales finance the war against Israel, and Israel should hamper them by war.
While the U.S.S.R. would have opposed Israeli aggression against Arab oil facilities, Russia likely would not. Oil producers influence the Russian government both through the conventional corruption and state tax revenues. Those producers have a stake in opening the American oil market and would lobby the Russian government to support, or at least tolerate, Israeli disruption of Arab oil sales. Recent Arab attempts to enter the liquefied petroleum gas market put them on a collision course with mighty Gazprom, Russia’s biggest corporation and a major gas supplier, making it an ally of Israel. Until the second Iraqi war, Russian hopes for Iraqi oil concessions would have blocked pro-Israeli policy, but now the Russians companies are in all for war against the Arab oil countries, thus on Israel's side. Russian oil and gas producers can pressure their government to support Israeli attacks on Arab oil infrastructure, especially in Saudi Arabia, which openly supports Chechen insurgents. Islamic terrorism in Russia will drive the Russian government to closer relations with Israel who alone has significant experience in antiterrorism.
A few targeted terrorist actions against tankers and Arab pipelines would stop exports and induce a boycott. The Israeli government itself would not carry out the attacks, but any small group of Israeli enthusiasts can launch long-range torpedoes and remote-control mini-ships, mine tankers in Arab ports, and sabotage pipelines and blame Islamic terrorists. In 2002, Al Qaeda made an appeal to Muslims for intelligence about American oil company pipelines, so the Islamic terrorists are already implicated. Iraqi terrorists have attacked the oil infrastructure ever since the American invasion. The Israeli subversive action would not even have to be intense: no one will risk expensive tankers when other sources of oil are available. A few ships sunken by Israeli commandos will paralyze Arab oil exports.
The legendary Arab wealth is a chimera: if their current income drops, Arab leaders will not spend on useless weaponry, and the largest Arab investments are vulnerable. Financial scams could be more effective than sabotaging civic structures. Wrecking Islam’s economic base is Israel's best war strategy. Israel should dedicate more funds to sabotaging Israel's enemies and spare the Israeli Defense Force.
Unhindered development of nuclear power will reduce the oil demand. Israel should mobilize scientists and media to disprove the science fiction of the dangers of nuclear power plants. Ecologists sponsored by Israel could lobby to prohibit cars with combustion engines in Western city centers, switching to electric cars. With oil pushed out, Arabs will fall into oblivion.
[2] Israel’s shift to the United States during Kissinger’s administration alienated France and prompted it to forge closer ties with Islamic states. Israel’s move was unnecessarily direct and offensive to France which had supported Israel for many years. Current good relations with Germany could help Israeli rapprochement with France. Otherwise, EU would further tie up with Palestinians, replacing the Soviet sponsor and inhibiting Israeli retaliation.