London, Feb 28, IRNA – While the Arab uprisings are provoking serious concern among state and security elites across the West, “Israel’s stance is the most self-defeating of all,” according to one of Britain’s leading security analysts.
Professor Paul Rogers said that Israel’s “most immediate fear is that a reformed government in Cairo will respond to public pressure and end the embargo of Gaza.”
“Substantial change would likely require Israel’s army to reoccupy the southern part of Gaza and isolate the Philadelphi corridor (between Gaza and Egypt), in turn making clear that Israel alone was treating Gaza as an open prison.” Rogers said.
“But Israel's concerns go far wider,” he warned, referring to the recent Herzliya security conference in Israel, which was attended by such figures as Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox, and the former head of the US national-security council General James Jones.
“Israel’s dominant perspective is that the United States is losing its potency across the region, in great part through its readiness to abandon presumed guarantors of stability such as Hosni Mubarak,” Rogers said in his latest column for OpenDemocracy.
“More broadly, Washington seems willing to countenance unpredictable political change that (in the Israeli view) carries the risk of ‘the street carrying the day’ and of protesters unrepresentative of the majority being propelled to power,” he said.
The professor of peace studies from Bradford University said that Israel's conclusion from the decline in Washington's power and regional uncertainty could be to seek to strengthen its links with other states, such as China, Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil and even Azerbaijan.
“There is little if any sign that Israel will upgrade its efforts to seek a just peace with the Palestinians it still has a chance to do so,” he said. |