Putin's speech, cited in full below, may herald a strategic change in Russian political thinking. Putin said:
"A horrendous tragedy has befallen our country. All of us suffered deeply in the past few days, letting through our hearts the developments in the town of Beslan. It was not mere murderers we had to face; we encountered people who had taken up arms against defenseless children.
"First and foremost, I would like to offer words of support to people who lost the dearest of all the treasures one can have - children, family members, close friends. I share their grief with them. I ask you to recall all those who fell at the hands of terrorists in the past few days.
"Russian history has had many tragic pages and has seen many tragic events. We are living in a situation that took shape after the disintegration of a giant state that turned out unviable in the conditions of a rapidly changing world. But despite all the difficulties, we managed to retain the kernel of that giant and called it the Russian Federation.
"We expected a change - a change for the better, but we found ourselves unprepared for many of the things that came upon us. Why did it happen?
"We are living in a transitional economy that does not meet the requirements of the level of development of our society and its political system. Internal conflicts and ethnic contradictions, so toughly suppressed by the dominating ideology during the previous epoch, are mounting now. Our attention to the issues of defense and security started flagging, and we let corruption mute our judiciary and law enforcement systems. Our country used to have a most potent system of border defenses, yet it became defenseless both in the West and in the East virtually overnight.
"The creation of tangible border defenses will take years and billions of rubles, but even there our performance could be more efficient if our reaction were timely and professional. I must admit that we did not take a close look at the processes unfolding in our own country and abroad - anyway we failed to react to them properly.
"We winked at our own weakness, and it is the weak who are always beaten up. Some want to tear away a large part of our wealth, while others help these aspirants in so doing. They still believe that Russia poses a threat to them as a nuclear power. Terrorism is just another instrument implementing their designs.
As I said, we encountered crises, revolts, and terrorist acts on many occasions, but what happened this time is a terrorist crime the cruelty of which exceeds all past experience. This is not a challenge to the President, Parliament, or cabinet of ministers; this is a challenge to the entire Russian state and its people. This is aggression against us.
"The terrorists believe they are stronger than we, that their cruelty will intimidate us, paralyze our will and degenerate our society. Here we have an apparent choice - to rebuff them or to begin obeying their orders. The second means to surrender and let them partition Russia in the hope that they will somehow leave us alone. As President of the Russian state who gave an oath to defend the nation and its territorial integrity and, last but not least, as a Russian citizen, I am confident that we have no such alternative. The moment we yield to their blackmail and succumb to panic, we will plunge millions of people into an endless chain of bloodletting conflicts, like Karabakh,1 the Dniester region2 or similar tragedies. This is obvious.
"What we are facing are not scattered acts of intimidation or terrorist sorties. This is a direct intervention on the part of international terrorism in Russia. It is a total and full-fledged war that continues to claim the lives of our compatriots.
"World experience proves that such wars do not end quickly. Given this situation, we cannot afford to treat it complacently any more. We must set up a much more efficient system of security and demand from our law enforcement system that its actions become proportionate to the scale of the new dangers. The main thing, however, is to mobilize the consciousness of the nation in the face of the common threat. Events in other countries show that terrorists get the most adequate responses in places where they confront the power of the state, on the one hand, and organized and united civic society, on the other.
"Dear fellow countrymen,
The people who sent the terrorists to commit this utterly heinous crime harbored a hope to set our peoples to fight each other and unleash a bloody feud in Northern Caucasus.
"I would like to tell you the following in this connection:
First, an extensive set of measures aimed at strengthening the country's unity will be prepared shortly.
Second, I believe it is vital that we set up a new system of interaction between the forces controlling events in Northern Caucasus.
Third, we need a new, efficient system of crisis management, based on completely novel approaches to the activity of law enforcement agencies.
I would like to put special stress on our intention to implement these measures in strict conformity with the Constitution".
"My dear friends, all of us are living through mournful and painful hours now, and I would like to thank all of you for your self-restraint and civic responsibility. We have always been stronger than they and will remain so. I mean our morals, courage, and human solidarity. I saw it again early this morning. Beslan is literally imbued with grief and pain, but people there were most caring for one another and immensely cooperative. They were not afraid to risk their lives for the sake of others. They remained real people even in the most inhumane conditions.
"It is hard to reconcile oneself to bitter losses, but the ordeal has made us closer to one another and compelled us to reassess many things. We must be united nowadays, because this is the only way to defeat the enemy".
Editorial Comment: President Putin's speech was the speech of a strong leader ready to face his country's shortcomings and try to correct them. His call for unity was timely. We wish him and Russia well. His open admission that the Russian armed forces are weak and the statement "we need a new, efficient system of crisis management, based on completely novel approaches to the activity of law enforcement agencies" hint that the reorganization of the military and the creation of highly-motivated, well-trained counter-terrorist units might receive high priority on Russia's new agenda.
While the speech did not specifically mention Arab participation in the Beslan massacre, both Russian and international media mentioned it repeatedly. The connection between Al-Qaeda and the Chechen terrorists has long been established. And these are the forces that Putin referred to when he said: "We have always been stronger than they."
The visit of Russia's Foreign Minister, Mr. Lavrov, to Israel had just begun when the Beslan child murders took place. As Israel immediately expressed its profound sympathy with Russia and offered help in various spheres, including counter-terrorism, Lavrov's agenda was extended to them too. Israel's offer is likely to be accepted. However, it remains uncertain whether Russia will give Israel anything in return, even as regards ending its support of the terrorist Palestinian Authority. The PA has promoted and protected terrorism against Israel ever since the Oslo Agreement established it on territory to which it had no valid claim under international law. Its record also includes the deliberate murder of United States diplomats. If Russia now continues to safeguard PLO interests at the United Nations and to maintain a pro-Arab stance in the Middle East, the offer to help it fight terrorism in Russia should be reevaluated. There is more than enough Arab terrorism to deal with here.
A subject that came up many months ago that could benefit both Russia and Israel was the use of the Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline to export Russian oil to the Far East. However, nothing happened. Whether this was due to second thoughts on the Russian side or to the fact that the biggest Russian oil company, previously privately owned, has been placed under state control and the inefficiency President Putin complained of remains unclear.
Perhaps the most significant sentence in President Putin's speech was: "The creation of tangible border defenses will take years and billions of rubles, but even then our performance could be more efficient if our reaction were timely and professional. I must admit that we did not take a close look at the processes unfolding in our own country and abroad - anyway we failed to react to them properly." Israel has built a barrier that reduced the incidence of Palestinian terrorist acts by half. It could advise Russia how to build barriers of its own, but will have little inclination to do so if Russia votes against the Israeli barrier when it is debated at the UN or elsewhere. There is plenty of willingness and capacity in Israel to help Russia in its hour of need. There is also understanding that it is difficult anywhere to change long-established policies overnight. But people who want to help do not like the beneficiary to spit in their faces.
ISRAEL, NOT IRAN, IS WILD CARD IN MIDDLE EAST
By David Hirst
(Reprinted from Arab News, Saudi Arabia)
When George Bush first identified the two Middle East members of his "Axis of Evil", Iran clearly ranked as a far more formidable adversary than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But President Bush went after the easier target instead. So "did we invade the wrong country?" asks a leading commentator, Charles Krauthammer, speaking for many neoconservative hawks as the US refocuses on Iran.
From their standpoint, it must surely look as if they did. For the neocons, overthrowing Saddam was regional in purpose, the opening phase of a grand design to "transform" the entire Middle East. But such are the region's cross-border dynamics that success was never going to be assured in one country unless it embraced others too.
Yet it is hardly success in Iraq that accounts for the increasingly urgent concerns about Iran; it is more likely the specter of catastrophic failure. For if the Islamic Republic was always the most dangerous of "rogue states", it is now more dangerous than it was at the outset of the Iraq adventure. It simply has to be subdued.
"If nothing is done", Krauthammer argues, "a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the 'Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive strike. Both of which are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away in Iraq."
Such talk does not seem to frighten the mullahs. They do worry about the strategic encirclement, which the US has thrown around them. Yet, paradoxically, they are emboldened too. For they think that if they are more vulnerable, so - overextended and floundering - is their adversary.
They are saying it loud and clear: We have strategic assets to match America's, and the cost of any US or Israeli attempt to exploit their military advantages against us will be great and region-wide.
Iran claims it is not developing nuclear weapons. But much of its behavior, at least that of the once again dominant, hard-line clerical establishment, indicates a deliberate attempt to cloak the claim in ambiguity, nourishing the convictions of all those who believe that Iran is developing such weapons. Certainly, at least, it wants to create the impression that it is acquiring the kind of firepower that only weapons of mass destruction can supply.
If the Islamic Republic does not actually have the unconventional means, not yet at least, to lend substance to its militant rhetoric, it does have conventional means that have long been an intrinsic, largely surreptitious, part of its whole "revolutionary" modus operandi.
In fact, through Iraq, the removal of its archenemy Saddam and the emancipation and new aspirations of the long-suppressed Shiite majority, it has them in new and providential abundance. "Some military commanders in Iran", said Defense Minister Ali Shamkani "are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly. We too are present from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan, in the Gulf, and we can be in Iraq, where US forces won't be an element of strength, but our hostage."
No wonder that, for the new Iraqi government, the Moqtada Sadr rebellion was as much about Iran as it was about Sadr.
And then there is always Lebanon and Hezbollah, that everlasting flashpoint in reserve. Quiescent of late, Hezbollah is ever ready to re-enter the jihad arena, drawing on the arsenal of rockets with which, according to Israel, Iran has been systematically supplying it.
"This", says the veteran Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff, "is an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah array", and its use, almost certain in the event of an American or Israeli strike on Iran, could escalate into "all-out war".
It is clear that the mullahs do not want a full-scale showdown; in parading their assets they seek to deter, rather than provoke. In fact they have always wanted better relations with the US, provided they get something in return, and that they, not their reformist rivals, control the process. If anything, the urgency now lies on the other side; hence the urgings of pundits like Krauthammer to "strike before Iran's nukes get hot".
But perhaps the real wild card lies less in the Iranian "rogue state" than it does in what amounts to the Israeli one. Israel has repeatedly warned that it may sooner or later take direct action to stop an Iranian nuclear bomb "going critical".
As Amos Perlmutter, Michael Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph recount in their book Two Minutes over Baghdad, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was once part of a three-man inner circle that kept even the very sympathetic administration of President Ronald Reagan completely in the dark as they planned and carried out the daring 1981 air strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant.
That exploit had little visible fallout. But a repeat performance against Iran today would be universally perceived as American in spirit, even if exclusively Israeli in execution, and the whole Middle Eastern mess which America came to Iraq to clean up would instantly cross a new threshold in scale, virulence and unpredictability.
Editorial Comment: The Saudi Arab News had good reason to print this article: It contains much excellent material besides conclusions likely to be applauded by most Middle East Moslems, namely that any military action against anti-American Moslem regimes would probably prove counter-productive. These conclusions, however, are based on false assumptions.
Mr. Hirst, in the manner of pundits we might call neo-appeasers, paints a picture of Iranian might, quoting Defense Minister Ali Shamkani as if he believed him absolutely. However, the United States does not need to attack Iran by land. It can attack the nuclear installations from the air and destroy enough to set Iran's plans back by a decade without the Iranians being able to do anything about it.
Mr. Hirst assumes that this would cause the Middle East to "cross a new threshold in scale, virulence and unpredictability" Why it should do so only he can tell. Israel need not and should not be involved, though protecting its existence does not turn it into a "rogue state".
The statement "for the new Iraqi government, the Moqtada Sadr rebellion was as much about Iran as it was about Sadr" implies that Iran was behind it. If it was, all the more reason for quashing it, but there is evidence to assume that a Shiite government in Iraq (now very much on the cards) would be interested in correct but not particularly close ties with Teheran. These are Arab Shiites. The Iranian Shiites are not Arabs.
In Iraq a 17% minority of Sunni Arabs oppressed 60% of Shiite Arabs and 20% of Kurds ever since the country received its independence. Letting the Shiite majority rule now, with autonomy for the Kurds in the North, thus seems the best solution - and one teaching the region than oppression does not pay. As soon as Shiite and Kurdish forces have been armed and trained to maintain security and protect the country, the United States forces should leave it. They would be more useful in the war against terrorism if they were destroying it in Syria instead of provoking it in Iraq. Besides, the downfall of Assad regime in Syria and its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon might well set off a revolution against Khameney and his clique of mullahs in Iran, creating far better conditions for dealing with Iran's nuclear threat
THE GAZA STRIP ON THE BRINK
By Yohanan Ramati
After the PLO announced that simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections would be held in the spring of 2005, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) spokesmen stated that their movements would participate in these elections. This created an entirely new situation. These factions had boycotted previous elections of this kind and their representatives did not serve in any of Arafat's administrations, though they were occasionally consulted.
Now, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the leftist PFLP urge their followers to register to vote. They are aware that corruption has undermined Yasser Arafat's personal support and the disputes within his Fatah faction have caused serious unrest, weakening it considerably. So Hamas suddenly became a champion of democracy. One of its statements read: "We in Hamas regard elections as a way to lay the foundations for a community built on the pillars of freedom, stability and justice."
Fatah knows it has a tough fight on its hands. Some of its old hands have voiced doubts about its ability to win the elections, but its capacity to stuff ballots and forge results should not be underrated. Anything may happen. Yet a peaceful takeover of power is very unlikely.
Israeli helicopters attacked the terrorist training camp in the Shajaiyeh section of Gaza City, a known Hamas stronghold, after midnight on September 7th, killing at least 14 militants and wounding 30 others in one of the deadliest helicopter strikes since fighting broke out. All the casualties were Hamas members receiving training for terrorism. The attack was launched a week after Hamas suicide bombers blew up two buses in the Israeli city of Beersheba, killing 16 people and wounding more than 80. There was pandemonium at Gaza's Shifa Hospital as casualties arrived in ambulances and cars. Blood-spattered Palestinians carried the dead and the wounded into the emergency room.
The Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia warned that there would be "justified" Hamas retaliation. His expectation that after the Beersheba outrage Israel should permit Hamas terrorists to train intensively for similar crimes on territory nominally under his control defies logic. However, Qureia cannot afford to defy Hamas with his quarreling and divided security forces.
One of the factors politicians in the Gaza Strip must take into consideration is the popularity of terrorism among the general public. Almost every successful terrorist act against unbelievers brings outbursts of public joy in the streets. Besides, Hamas is much less corrupt than Fatah and runs a reasonably effective system of social services for its members. The 2005 elections, always assuming they are really held, thus hold out a serious prospect that Fatah will be defeated.
Such a development would be a major setback for Egypt, which created the PLO in 1964 (when there were no "occupied territories" as presently defined) and has been supporting it ever since. The possibility that Egypt may be tempted at some stage to reoccupy the Gaza Strip can no longer be discounted.
Israel should discourage such a move. Egypt has been rearming fast - chiefly with American weapon systems - and still poses the main strategic threat to Israel, especially as US support during wars with Egypt could never be relied upon in the past and may prove unreliable in future. An Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip would multiply the dangers inherent in this threat. Moreover, the arrest of six armed Egyptian students who crossed into Israel from the Sinai Peninsula well South of the Gaza Strip border with the declared intention of carrying out terrorist acts in Israel indicates that significant sections of the Egyptian population have no interest in peace. This should occasion no surprise in view of the continuous attacks on Israel and the Jews in the Egyptian press and electronic media. It seems that the overly conciliatory Israeli attitude to manifestations of Egyptian hostility pays no dividends.
Israel will face no less serious dangers of its own making if it tries to evacuate unilaterally by force its settlements in the Gaza Strip - and especially the settlements protecting Ashkelon from infiltration and the Katif Block. The terrorist movements will celebrate victory and will intensify their attacks against the nearest Israeli towns. But there is an internal danger too: Sharon's policy is opposed by a relatively high percentage of Israel's population. The idea that Jews, who with their government's approval settled in the Gaza Strip some thirty years ago, should be turned out their homes by the army or the police is repulsive even to some on the Left side of the political spectrum. Both in the army and in the police very many are opposed to this policy and though they will execute the orders of their government, they will not approve of them.
Sharon's motives are commendable. He wants to strengthen the alliance with President Bush at a time when the United States is the only factor ready to help Israel in the war with terrorism. He has even extracted some vague promises from Bush to allow Israel to retain parts of Judea and Samaria in the long run. But the history of US-Israel relations is strewn with broken American promises, of which Bush's refusal to implement his promise before the last American election to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem is only the latest.
In any case, Sharon's acts - unless, despite his assertions, he decides to change course once again - carry a far too heavy price for the stability of Israel. Like many domineering leaders, in democracies as well as in dictatorships, he is unaware of the consequences of his actions. This is not an issue of settlements in the Gaza Strip. This is an issue of the survival of Sharon's own political party, which he is asking to give up its ideology and accept a policy it rejected by free and democratic vote. A leader who does this, for whatever reason, is no leader at all. He is making sure that the party that brought him to power does not survive him. He divides instead of uniting. And he does not realize that, in his situation, the end - however desirable - cannot justify the means.
The Relevance of the Golan Heights
Sharon would do well to remind Bush of the commitment in Republican President Gerald Ford's letter to Itzhak Rabin on September 1st 1975, which states: "The U.S. has not developed a final position on the borders. Should it do so, it will give great weight to Israel's position that any peace agreement with Syria must be predicated on Israel remaining on the Golan Heights."3 Of course, Syria will not agree to this. So the crucial question now is: "What is President Bush ready to do to compel Syria to make serious territorial concessions to Israel?"
There has never been a more urgent need to demand the implementation of President Ford's promise and to realize that unless Israel does so - persistently - the answer to the above question will probably be "nothing". The timing is as favorable as can be hoped for. Congress has passed the Syria Accountability Act. The US has finally decided to demand a Syrian retreat from Lebanon and a stop to the support Damascus extends to Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist movements. In the light of Syrian aid to Saddam Hussein and his followers in Iraq, this is less surprising than it otherwise would be. However, it does not automatically follow that Washington would regard Syrian behavior as sufficient reason to support Israel's claim to the Golan Heights. If the State Department has its way, there might even be American pressure on Israel to return the entire Golan to Syria to sweeten its "loss" of Lebanon. Saudi Arabia supports the Syrians. And until Saudi influence in the United States, due more to bribery and corruption than to oil, is totally eradicated, the Americans may not be able to protect their own security and political interests from Moslem encroachment - let alone Israel's.
The Golan is relevant to the intra-Israeli dispute about evacuating the Gaza Strip because it is in many respects its antithesis. The Strip is crowded with hostile Palestinians; the Golan is virtually empty of Syrians and its small Druze population is peaceful. Except for a small amount of offshore gas, the Strip has no natural resources; the Golan provides nearly 40% of Israel's water. Evacuating the Strip creates the serious danger of a Palestinian state there, certain to be recognized by the United Nations and the powers and able to sign treaties of alliance and to import arms freely, with all this implies. Evacuating the Golan destroys the only real deterrent to war Israel possesses - the presence of Israeli tanks less than two hours drive from Damascus, which has prevented any land or missile attacks on Israel for the past two decades, as even an irresponsible Syrian regime knows it would not survive the attempt. The loose talk of some Israeli politicians about giving up the Golan in return for a worthless peace treaty is something very close to treason. Israel will be living dangerously if it leaves the Gaza Strip, but it invites war and is unlikely to survive if it withdraws from the Golan Heights. Relying on foreign guarantees in such circumstances offers very poor security at best.
And this brings us back to Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement. The public discussion surrounding it ignores its greatest danger - a further erosion of the national will to exert sovereignty over land. The Arabs have this in plenty. Their religion and the heritage of Mohammed dictate it. They sanctify the land conquered and subdued no less than the land they originally possessed. Since 1967, far too many Israelis regard the patrimony they redeemed from Moslem occupation with the blood of their soldiers as a bargaining chip for "peace treaties". They ignore Yasser Arafat's repeated assertions that he intends to "liberate" all of Israel in stages and that four years of Palestinian intifada began when Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's condition to terminate the conflict after Barak and President Clinton offered him almost all the territory he demanded. They ignore the fact that all the provisions of the "peace treaty" with Egypt benefiting Egypt have been scrupulously implemented, while all the provisions benefiting Israel (normalization, end of incitement against Israel, etc.) have been equally scrupulously infringed. To admit that the Arabs will never accept an independent Jewish Israel in the region hurts the self-esteem of these Jewish politicians, academicians, journalists and their admirers. They are incapable of admitting they were wrong. And they are incapable of loving the land of their fathers for its own sake.
The unilateral uprooting of 30-year-old Jewish settlements will not encourage us to love our land. The Arabs may well dance in the streets, but will not thank us. They will simply demand more of the same. Our national morale might be severely damaged.
Notes
1 A part of Azerbeijan populated mainly by Armenians.
2 Part of Moldova that proclaimed itself independent in the early 1990's
3 The accenting is ours. Seemingly a firm commitment binding Ford's successors, it is weakened by the preceding sentence "a just and lasting peace… must be acceptable to both sides."
