What Bradley Manning showed the world about Israel/Palestine
Bradley
Manning leaked diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks that shed light on U.S. foreign
policy and Israel/Palestine (Photo: Associated Press)
The trial of
military whistleblower Bradley Manning has refocused attention on the
revelations about U.S. foreign policy his actions produced. Much ink has been
spilled on the headline-making news related to Iraq and Afghanistan that
WikiLeaks, the organization Manning leaked to, shed light on. But WikiLeaks' and
Manning's actions also exposed many important details about
Israel/Palestine.
The massive amount
of State Department cables that Manning handed over to WikiLeaks was a deep look
into how U.S. policy on Israel, Palestine and the larger Middle East play out.
Here's a look back at some of what Manning told the world about the region—a
reminder why Israel/Palestine watchers should be concerned with Manning's trial
and sentencing.
Israeli
praise for the Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian
Authority (PA) remains a buffer between Israel and a Palestinian population
resentful at a 46-year-old foreign occupation. The West Bank's limited governing
authority cracks down on armed resistance to the occupation and other forms of
dissent while doling out salaries to employees who rely on it to make a living.
It's a formula to keep the West Bank quiet as settlements expand across the
occupied territory.
WikiLeaks focused
attention on how important the Palestinian Authority is to Israel. In 2009,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he wanted to” strengthen, according
to one State Department cable. Another cable from that same year shows why
Netanyahu wanted to boost the PA. Israeli
defense ministry official Amos Gilad “noted that Israeli-PA security and economic
cooperation in the West Bank continues to improve as Jenin and Nablus flourish,
and described Palestinian security forces as the ‘good guys,’” as another cable
reads. A separate cable also reveals that Gilad was concerned about PA President
Mahmoud Abbas' longterm viability. Other cables revealed close security
cooperation and intelligence sharing between the PA and Israel,
though PA officials wanted to keep those activities under wraps.
Fast-forward to
today, and those revelations still resonate, though the situation has changed
some. Israeli actions like transferring tax revenue to the PA are about shoring
up the West Bank government. For Israel, the worst thing that could happen would
be for the economic unrest that rocked the PA in late 2012 to get off the ground
again, threatening the stability of the authority that keeps a lid on
Palestinian unrest. There's also continued concern about the PA's long-term
viability. As a recent
International Crisis Group report showed, the threat of a Palestinian
uprising against the PA or Israel is real, though distant for now in large part
because of a lack of leadership. That report also documented a deterioration in
security cooperation between PA forces and Israel.
As the days drag on
with little political change on the ground in the West Bank, the gap between the
PA—important for Israel's stability, as WikiLeaks showed—and their constituents
is bound to grow.
A
Palestinian Bantustan
The Obama
administration is engaged in another all-out push to jump-start the moribund
“peace process” between Israel and the PA. But they have run into a roadblock:
the PA's insistence that a settlement freeze be implemented and that Israel
commit to the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations. The PA, under intense
pressure to cave on these demands, has good reason to play hardball, as WikiLeaks
showed Benjamin Netanyahu's vision for a Palestinian state. While
much of these details were known without WikiLeaks, the details in the documents
are still a useful reminder of what Netanyahu says when he utters the words
"Palestinian state."
In a 2007 meeting
with Congressman Gary Ackerman, Netanyahu laid out his refusal to divide
Jerusalem and return to the 1967 borders—core components of a viable two-state
solution. Two WikiLeaks cables from 2009 reveal that once he got in the prime
minister's seat, his vision stayed the same. He told a Congressional delegation
that “a Palestinian state must be demilitarized, without control over its air
space and electro-magnetic field, and without the power to enter into treaties
or control its borders.”
Those meetings put
any lip-service by the Israeli government towards a Palestinian state in its
proper context. Indeed, the more honest segments of Netanyahu's current
coalition have already put the kibosh on talk of a Palestinian state. Deputy
Defense Minister Danny Danon said
June 6 that the current
governing coalition is staunchly opposed to a Palestinian state.
The
Gaza assault and the Goldstone report
The Israeli assault
on Gaza in 2008-09 was the subject of a number of important Manning-leaked
cables. The cables exposed regional cooperation with Israel while it waged a
punishing air and ground campaign that resulted in the deaths of 1,400
Palestinians, the majority of them civilians.
A June 2009 meeting
detailed in a diplomatic cable showed that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
told U.S. officials that Israel
had consulted with both Egypt and the Palestinian Authority before invading Gaza. Barak asked them
whether they would take over Gaza in the event of a Hamas defeat. Both said
no. Other
cables showed coordination while the invasion was going on. One cable
revealed that the targeting of tunnels to Gaza was “coordinated with Egypt.”
Another cable showed how Israel frequently consulted with PA security forces
over how to control protests in the West Bank against the Gaza
assault.
The fact that Israel
consulted with pre-revolutionary Egypt and the PA on defeating Hamas is no
surprise. The Fatah-dominated PA and Hamas have been at loggerheads ever since
Fatah attempted to take control of Gaza from Hamas in the aftermath of
democratic elections the Islamist party overwhelmingly won. The Fatah attempt
was backed by the U.S.
And before the
revolution in Egypt, the Mubarak government was a key regional ally of Israel
and the U.S. Mubarak-run Egypt wanted to restrain Hamas' power in part because
of the group's links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition group to
Mubarak. But even after the revolution, Egypt has done its best not to
antagonize Israel or the West. It has continued to crack down on smuggling
tunnels into Gaza used for consumer goods and weapons. The one significant
post-revolutionary change that has taken place is that the Rafah border between
Gaza and Egypt is open for people, though its not open for goods.
WikiLeaks also
showed the extent to which the U.S. shielded Israel from international action
over alleged war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. One October 2009
cable detailed a meeting between UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Rice
told Lieberman that the U.S.
was doing everying it can to “blunt the effects of the Goldstone report” and
that the U.S. was sure it could build a “blocking coalition” to ensure that the
Security Council not take action the report. Sure enough, the Security Council
helped bury the report.
Other cables show
similar actions. Israel had attacked a number of UN facilities during the war,
and the UN wanted to investigate those strikes. A report detailing the 9
incidents where UN facilities were struck by Israel recommended that an
impartial inquiry be carried out. But WikiLeaks
documents showed that after
Rice brought pressure to bear on the UN Secretary General, the possibility of an
independent inquiry was squashed.
Many of the
revelations that Manning helped to bring into the light came as no surprise.
Still, they offered intimate details of official meetings that exposed how U.S.
foreign policy in the Middle East is conducted. Now, Manning is facing life in
prison for his actions--he's accused of violating military and civilian law. The
trial is set to last for the next 12 weeks.
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