Jack the Insider: for Israel, Islamic State is an Arab problem

FILE - In this Monday, June 16, 2014 file photo, demonstrators chant pro-al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. The expulsions show how Iraq’s sectarian mosaic is unraveling in particularly hateful ways, unseen since the mid-2000s when sectarian killings nearly plunged the country into civil war. (AP Photo, File)

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak believes the Islamic State group could be destroyed in “a matter of days” with a swift, co-ordinated military response. In an interview with Russian media outlet, RT, he spoke of the Iraqi Army’s lack of commitment to combat which led IS to overtake Ramadi in Iraq in May.

“I think that ISIS is successful to a certain extent because they are not facing a concentrated effort to destroy the organisation,” Barak said. “Technically they aren’t that strong. They are made up of only about 30-40,000 people.”

Barak’s prediction may be a case of easier said than done but it raises the question of why Israel has as yet not attacked IS. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is the most powerful military force in the region with bristling weapons IS could only dream of and combat hardened troops at the ready.

No one could ever regard Israel as soft or a nation that shirks a fight when challenged. Israel has determined IS poses no existential threat at this time but if it did emerge as one in the future, one would imagine that Ehud Barak’s reckoning would be realised in a heartbeat.

In December last year, IS’s Minister of Foreign Fighters & Suicide Bombers, Abu Kassem, told Israeli media Islamic State would have a significant presence in Jerusalem in “eight years”.

He said that IS had 300-400 supporters in Israel now and that number would grow.

“In time they will enter Israel. This is very easy,” he said. “They have their methods and they’ll come in. I don’t think (Israel will) do anything. If (they won’t go into Gaza) don’t think they can defeat IS.”

Asked how Jews would be treated in his vision of an IS controlled Israel, Kassem said they would be allowed to continue living in Israel but he warned, “You will live like I want you to. You will live here as a Muslim. If you don’t oppose me there’s no problem.”

This is one of the stranger propaganda delusions of IS but in more direct ways Israel has already felt the force of the rise of IS. The jihadis are locked in bitter fighting with the Free Syrian Army within a few kilometres of Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights. IS mortar rounds have fallen into Israeli territory.

In May, Israel organised humanitarian and medical aid for the Free Syrian Army which includes Jabhat-al-Nusra and a range of other al-Qa’ida groups but the IDF’s guns have been silent.

One theory for Israel’s neutrality is that it remains in Israel’s interests for the Arab world to be in a constant state of chaos and conflict. There is a Machiavellian truth in this, not least of all because, while the Arab world falls further into territorial and sectarian conflict, threats to Israel are minimised.

Israel’s political and military leaders are the masters of strategic planning in the political morass that is the Middle East and their sometimes brutal assessments reveal much about the Syrian civil war and more broadly the rise of IS in the Sunni dominated Anbar Province in Iraq.

Israel’s aversion to attack IS is based on the entirely reasonable proposition that doing so could at best lead to the least worst option in Syria and even the most optimistic view of the outcome in the Syrian civil war is of that type.

There are really only four options and none of them are good. Assad and his Iranian allies may emerge victorious, the Free Syrian Army with its al-Qa’ida connections may win the war, IS could raise the black flag in Damascus or the combatants will fight to a standstill with Syria geographically devolved into a series of regional strongholds, much as it is today.

Israel would regard IS’s control of large parts of Anbar Province in Iraq as none of its business, viewing it properly for the sectarian conflict it largely is. Iraq’s Shiite leadership and its reliance on Iranian military support is another reason Israel would give the conflict a wide berth.

While there are many similarities, Israel’s interests are not entirely in tune with those of the West but there are lessons for the West in Israel’s assessment of IS. Israel is alarmed at the rise of Iranian influence in the region and sees IS as a bulwark whereas the West has the destruction of IS’s military capacity as its number one priority, come what may.

Yet, Syria is a nest of vipers and military support for one group over the other is problematic. Iraq is lapsing into a sectarian quagmire with its well armed, well resourced military failing against an admittedly well organised group but one of little more 30,000 troops.

There is considerable sense in the longer term view that ISIS will ultimately be self-defeating. As with al-Qa’ida in Iraq, the principle group engaged in the Iraqi insurgency in Anbar in 2006-2008, they may be successful at first but as with AQI, the people will tire of the brutal control and the Sunni warlords will rise up to evict them.

And if not, and if IS looms to pose a threat to Israel, it can be dealt with on the battlefield.

While the clamour grows for increasing US — and Australian — military presence in Iraq, for troops on the ground engaged in combat against IS, Israel’s view is the defeat of IS is an Arab issue and should be left as one.