Third Lebanon war possible: diplomat

ISRAEL may be on course towards a new war on its northern border, but has little to fear from a change in leadership in Egypt, former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told The AJN in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

While the former diplomat discussed a number of issues facing Israel, he made no bones about the one that worries him most at the moment.

“I’m very concerned about Lebanon,” Kurtzer said. “Israel faces a lot of tough security challenges, but this is one of the most challenging because it has elements of terrorism, interstate war and regional war,” he explained. “All could escalate and spiral out of control.”

The professor referred to a recent contingency study he authored for the Council of Foreign Relations, which looked at the possibility of a third Lebanon war in the next 12 to 18 months.

“The massive rearmament of Hezbollah, the introduction of new, qualitatively more challenging weapons in their hands and their growing relationship with Iran” are all changing the strategic outlook for Israel, he said.

In contrast to his concern over the prospect of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, the former US envoy to Israel from 2001 to 2005 and Egyptian ambassador from 1997 to 2001 expressed complete confidence that Egypt will remain stable following President Hosni Mubarak’s expected retirement.

Kurtzer pointed to the two Egyptian political accessions since 1952 — that of Anwar Sadat over Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 and Hosni Mubarak over assassinated Sadat in 1981 — as proof of Egypt’s ability to maintain stability during times of transition.

“Both [leadership transitions] were conducted according to Egypt’s constitution … without major deviation in policy,” he noted. “I don’t foresee either a particularly difficult succession issue and I don’t see a change in Egypt’s basic approach [to the West and Israel],” he added.

Turning his remarks to the current crisis in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Kurtzer expressed some surprise that the issue of the continuation of the moratorium on construction in Israeli West Bank settlements — which now threatens to end talks — had not been discretely resolved between the parties earlier.

“I think when the direct talks started, many of us assumed that as part of the understandings reached to get the talks started, there would have been an understanding on the settlement issue,” Kurtzer said. “But I gather that was not the case.”

Kurtzer, who chairs Middle East policy studies at The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, was in Australia under the auspices of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

AHRON SHAPIRO