Alternet
Published on Alternet (https://www.alternet.org)
Home > How Kurdish Independence Underpins Israel's Plan to Reshape the
Middle East
How Kurdish Independence Underpins Israel's Plan to Reshape the Middle East
By Jonathan Cook [1] / AlterNet [2]
October 3, 2017, 7:33 AM GMT
Palestinians and Israelis watched last week's referendum of Iraq's Kurds
with special interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were
delighted - for very different reasons - to see an overwhelming vote to
split away from Iraq.
Given the backlash from Baghdad and anger from Iran and Turkey, which have
restive Kurdish minorities, the creation of a Kurdistan in northern Iraq may
not happen soon.
Palestinian support for the Kurds is not difficult to understand.
Palestinians, too, were overlooked when Britain and France carved up the
Middle East into states a century ago. Like the Kurds, Palestinians have
found themselves trapped in different territories, oppressed by their
overlords.
Israel's complex interests in Kurdish independence are harder to unravel.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the sole world leader to back Kurdish
independence, and other politicians spoke of the Kurds' "moral right" to a
state. None saw how uneasily that sat with their approach to the Palestinian
case.
On a superficial level, Israel would gain because the Kurds sit on plentiful
oil. Unlike the Arab states and Iran, they are keen to sell to Israel.
But the reasons for Israeli support run deeper. There has been cooperation,
much of it secret, between Israel and the Kurds for decades. Israeli media
lapped up tributes from now-retired generals who trained the Kurds from the
1960s. Those connections have not been forgotten or ended. Independence
rallies featured Israeli flags, and Kurds spoke of their ambition to become
a "second Israel".
Israel views the Kurds as a key ally in an Arab-dominated region. Now, with
Islamic State's influence receding, an independent Kurdistan could help
prevent Iran filling the void. Israel wants a bulwark against Iran
transferring its weapons, intelligence and know-how to Shiite allies in
Syria and Lebanon.
Israel's current interests, however, hint at a larger vision it has long
harboured for the region - and one I set out at length in my book Israel and
the Clash of Civilisations.
It began with Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion, who devised a
strategy of "allying with the periphery" - building military ties to
non-Arab states like Turkey, Ethiopia, India and Iran, then ruled by the
shahs. The goal was to help Israel to break out of its regional isolation
and contain an Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Israeli general Ariel Sharon expanded this security doctrine in the early
1980s, calling for Israel to become an imperial power in the Middle East.
Israel would ensure that it alone in the region possessed nuclear weapons,
making it indispensible to the US.
Sharon was not explicit about how Israel's empire could be realised, but an
indication was provided at around the same time in the Yinon Plan, written
for the World Zionist Organisation by a former Israeli foreign ministry
official.
Oded Yinon proposed the implosion of the Middle East, breaking apart the
region's key states - and Israel's main opponents - by fuelling sectarian
and ethnic discord. The aim was to fracture these states, weakening them so
that Israel could secure its place as sole regional power.
The inspiration for this idea lay in the occupied territories, where Israel
had contained Palestinians in a series of separate enclaves. Later, Israel
would terminally divide the Palestinian national movement, nurturing an
Islamist extremism that coalesced into Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In this period, Israel also tested its ideas in neighbouring southern
Lebanon, which it occupied for two decades. There, its presence further
stoked sectarian tensions between Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shiite
Muslims.
The strategy of "Balkanising" the Middle East found favour in the US among a
group of hawkish policymakers, known as neoconservatives, who came to
prominence during George W. Bush's presidency.
Heavily influenced by Israel, they promoted the idea of "rolling back" key
states, especially Iraq, Iran and Syria, which were opposed to Israeli-US
dominance in the region. They prioritised ousting Saddam Hussein, who had
fired missiles on Israel during the 1991 Gulf war.
Although often assumed to be an unfortunate side effect of the 2003
invasion of Iraq, Washington's oversight of the country's bloody
disintegration into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish fiefdoms looked suspiciously
intentional. Now, Iraqi Kurds are close to making that break-up permanent.
Syria has gone a similar way, mired in convulsive fighting that has left its
ruler impotent. And Tehran is, again, the target of efforts by Israel and
its allies in the US to tear up the 2015 nuclear accord, backing Iran into a
corner. Arab, Baluchi, Kurdish and Azeri minorities there may be ripe for
stirring up.
Last month at the Herzliya conference, an annual jamboree for Israel's
security establishment, justice minister Ayelet Shaked called for a Kurdish
state. She has stated that it would be integral to Israeli efforts to
"reshape" the Middle East.
The unravelling of Britain and France's map of the region would likely lead
to chaos of the kind that a strong, nuclear-armed Israel, with backing from
Washington, could richly exploit. Not least, yet more bedlam would push the
Palestinian cause even further down the international community's list of
priorities.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is one of the winners of the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special
Prize for Journalism. His most recent books are Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East [3] (Pluto
Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair [4]
(Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net [5].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [6]
[7]
Sign Up!
Get AlterNet's Daily Newsletter in Your Inbox
EMAIL:
+ sign up for additional lists
Source URL:
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/kurdish-independence-helps-israel
Links:
[1] https://www.alternet.org/authors/jonathan-cook-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/counterpunchmaga
[4] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/counterpunchmaga
[5] http://www.jkcook.net/
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on How Kurdish
Independence Underpins Israel's Plan to Reshape the Middle
East&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/kurdish-independence-
helps-israel
[7] https://www.alternet.org/
[8
