IN ALL negotiations between Arab countries and Israel, ‘land for peace’ was never a preferred option to the Zionist movement. Zionist extremist killed Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995 for agreeing to share land with Palestine. Instead of negotiating land for peace, Israel decided to break Arab unity against the backdrop of an inter-Arab animosity brewing through the Camp David Accord 1978, Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), Gulf War 1991, etc. Israel also found it inconvenient to negotiate peace with all Arab countries one by one. In the mid-1990s, Israel made a paradigm shift in its security architecture to pull Arab countries into the ambit of Zionist influence.
In 1996, a study group led by Richard Perle, a former US assistant secretary of defence (1981–1987) at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, drafted a policy paper entitled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, Ìýcommonly known as the policy of clean break. The report, prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, advocated an aggressive approach to solve Israel’s security problems in the Middle East.
The policy recommendation was to pursue violent strategy to change regimes unfriendly to Israel. The document in the light of Israeli security architecture emphasised three fundamental objectives: (a) working jointly with Jordan and Turkey to contain, destabilise and roll back entities that are threats to all three ie Israel, Türkiye and Jordan; (b) changing the nature of relations with the Palestinians, particularly reserving the right of hot pursuit anywhere within Palestinian territory for self-defence as well as attempting to promote alternatives to Arafat’s leadership. Yasir Arafat died in 2004. There is conjectural assessment that he was poisoned to death; and (c) stressing self-reliance and a new strategic cooperation with the United States.
The policy of clean break under the policy objectives mentioned 34 actionable goals to achieve the objectives. Among these objectives the most important was to contain, destabilise and roll back regional challengers. This policy objective had five actionable goals: (a) challenging Arab countries as police states lacking in legitimacy; (b) fortifying regional alliances; (c) working with Türkiye and Jordan to insert hostile Arab tribes into Syria; (d) military action in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Lebanon for containment; and (e) striking selected military targets in Syria.
Without the US support and physical involvement, actionable goals were not achievable. So, Israel brought in the United States in the implementation of the policy of clean break. The US administration in Washington does not survive in office without the support of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful Zionist lobby in the United States. Israel adopted the ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ towards 2000. The United States made the plan for seven wars to destabilise and roll back countries having the potential to challenge Israel. ‘Seven wars’ was the brainchild of Benjamin Netanyahu. The United States has the good military force to do the job.
Going by the Israel’s play book to remake the Middle East aligned with the clean break strategy, the United States made the plan to take out regimes in seven countries one after another. It started with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu has so far been successful to engage the United States in six wars. The seventh war around Iran is looming large.
The United States attacked Iraq in 2003 to save the world from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and turned Arab spring in Libya and Syria into Arab nightmare in 2011. Israel had bombed unopposed military targets in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. It infested southern part of Sudan with civil war and split the country into Sudan and South Sudan. Now both the halves are restive with civil war. Somalia on the coast of the Red Sea and close to Bab-el-Mandeb has been left in chaos for decades. Lebanon is divided. Lebanese government controls northern Lebanon and Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance has been decapitated with the fall of the Basar al Assad regime on December 8, 2024. There are many armed factions in Syria who control fragmented territories with support from major global and regional powers including the United States, Israel and Türkiye. Normalcy in Syria is unlikely to return soon. The United States and NATO have shattered Libya. The country is virtually split into two and run by two governments. Stability in Libya is a distant possibility. Iran is the seventh country remaining.
Israel and the United States seem to have started the preparation to attack Iran. Immediately after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel carried out more than 500 airstrike on Syrian military targets. Israel has eliminated Syrian air defences and established a safe air corridor to carry out attack into Iran. The United States has made the scenario plan and kept the option open to attack Iran’s nuclear sites. Similarly, Israel has also made a plan to attack Iran. Israel counts on Donald Trump taking office on January 20 to finish off the seventh war with Iran throwing the Middle East into a permanent state of chaos.
Ìý
Mohammad Abdur Razzak ([email protected]), a retired Commodore of the Bangladesh navy, is a security analyst.
