US incentive to make Israel agree on a Palestinian state

US incentive to make Israel agree on a Palestinian state

Dr Jassim Taqui

Doha(Qatar)—The United States is playing behind-the-scene role in convincing Israel to establish a Palestinian state by the end of 2008. In this regard, it is learnt from sources that the Bush administration has offered to integrate Israel into its ballistic missile early-warning system to ensure that it would not be attacked by Iran, Hezbollah or any other Arab country in the future or in case of eruption of hostilities in the Middle East.

In this regard, Israeli Defense Ministry Director General Pinhas Buchris and head of the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Military Bureau, Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, both have been to Washington in the last month for talks at the Pentagon. The move would represent the operation of a broad strategic alignment between US efforts in ballistic missile defense (BMD) and its relevance to Israeli security.

Israel is not centered on the potential ballistic flight path of a missile launched from Iran at the population centers of the US eastern seaboard, but its geographic proximity has two important implications. First , the United States’ Poland-Czech Republic BMD system always was predicated on a forward-deployed radar in a crisis, either a BMD-capable Aegis-equipped warship or a mobile X-Band radar (now in the final stages of development in conjunction with the Theater High Altitude Air Defense, or THAAD, system). Israel offers reliable location. US -Israeli cooperation on BMD has been the most longstanding international arrangement in the history of the US programme. Additionally, the Green Pine radars of the Arrow system, which was developed in conjunction with the Pentagon is operationally deployed in Israel.

Second, as boost-phase intercept technologies mature, Israel may prove an alternate location for basing them. A solid footing in Israel pushes the foothold of US BMD far deeper into the Middle East than it currently reaches.

Israel would gain the advantage of becoming tied not only into relevant US radar feeds from BMD-capable warships in the Persian Gulf, but more importantly into the Defence Support Program satellite constellation, which continually monitors the surface of the Earth for the plume of a ballistic missile launch. As Israel is far closer to Iran than the United States is to any potential ballistic missile threat, maximizing its reaction time is even more crucial for Israel. BMD cooperation previously was arranged during the Gulf War in 1990-91 and the opening of Operation Iraq in 2003. But this would institutionalize that cooperation. Most probably, the BMD cooperation would create new optimizations and efficiencies in the Israeli system.