“Arik’s New World Order” Envisions Making Israel Broker of U.S. Military Technology to Russia

By Victor Ostrovsky

“It is a dangerous thing to support NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia over the Kosovo issue,” Israeli foreign minister Ariel Sharon warned aides when the U.S.-led NATO action was launched to halt ethnic cleansing of the 90 percent Albanian majority in the formerly autonomous province of Kosovo. “The long-range implications of an independent Kosovo must be taken into account. Such an entity could in the future become a part of the larger Albania and a base for extreme Muslim terrorism—a base for which already exists there—and that would spread across Europe.”

In a separate statement Sharon also asked, rhetorically, “if it becomes NATO policy to get involved militarily in internal conflicts in the world would not Israel find itself one day under attack if the Arabs in the Galilee (an Arab-majority area in northern Israel) want autonomy?”

The background for these remarks which so agitated the Clinton administration that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked Sharon to stop making them is that for some time Ariel Sharon has aligned himself with Netanyahu in a desperate bid to hold on to power in the upcoming Israeli elections. Sharon, or “Arik” as he is known by both his Israeli supporters and detractors, has come to realize that his only hold on power comes through his political alliance with Netanyahu. Standing to the political right of Netanyahu—and thus in the overcrowded right-wing extremist end of the voter spectrum—Sharon is well aware of the strong centrist shift in public opinion. Israelis in general are tired of the war in Lebanon and the economic hardships Israel’s current government has brought on them. The public appears also to be tired of the rhetoric that is no longer working, and a government that has dragged the country into a deep recession and has alienated every friend Israel ever had, including its main benefactor, the U.S.

Nevertheless, as in Yugoslavia, standing up to the only remaining super power has its short-term election appeal to defiant, alienated and anti-Western voters.

While Netanyahu has been concentrating on how to win an election, a task which after his less then three years in power could be compared to pulling a live elephant out of a hat (perhaps not impossible but, for the moment, highly unlikely), Arik has bigger fish to fry.

Sharon’s only hold on power derives from his political alliance with Netanyahu.

He realizes that he must help get Netanyahu reelected or he himself will be forced to return to his grand ranch in the Negev. As Israel’s foreign minister (in addition to being Israel’s minister of infrastructure, an all-inclusive portfolio crafted specifically for him by Netanyahu, whom he dislikes yet must support), Sharon also has taken upon himself the mission of turning upside down the world order, such as it is. In his mind’s eye he sees a world emerging in which Israel is the super power broker, not only dealing on an equal footing with the U.S., Russia and China, but actually controlling their relations with each other.

Some urgency has been lent to Sharon’s self-imposed mission by the fact that secret Israeli talks with the Syrians, which have taken place in a villa outside Paris, have all but collapsed.* The purpose of those talks was to elicit a means by which Israel could extricate itself from Lebanon with some dignity, just in time to help Netanyahu win the 1999 election. Since that is not to be, Sharon took it upon himself to bring about at least some intimation in time to influence voters of his own new world order or, as some might call it, “the world according to Arik.”

As step one in the so-called bigger plan, the Israeli government has pressured the U.S. government, primarily via the work of the Israel lobby on Congress, to cut all military and other aid to Russia until that country promises to stop selling equipment and technology for what Israel calls Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear programs, and whose existence Russia denies. Israel’s lobbyists insist that it would be an abomination for the U.S. to provide aid and assistance to Russia—even though the Russian people are in dire straits and the lack of western support could play into the hands of Russian nationalist/communist extremists—something that could destabilize Russia’s nascent democratic regime.

When the U.S., as expected, complied with Israeli wishes vis-a-vis Russia, it was then time for step two of the program. This involved a rapid succession of Sharon meetings with the Russians in the sort of shuttle diplomacy perfected by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In a rather short time, Sharon has managed to bring about a radical change in the relationship between Israel and Russia by convincing Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov that Israel has the keys to Washington, DC, which in turn can provide a better future for Russia.

Ending What It Began

Sharon also promised the Russians that Israel would make an effort on their behalf to loosen the purse strings of the World Bank and provide Russia with a much-needed cash infusion. In addition, Israel would use its extraordinary influence over the U.S. to get the Americans to end the freeze on U.S. help to Russia, the imposition of which Israel had originally engineered.

In return, one might have expected the Israelis would demand that Russia stop all aid to Iran and cancel a pending Russian deal to sell Russian arms to Syria. But, in pursuit of quick results, Sharon did not. There was a vague Israeli request that Russia not help Iran obtain a nuclear device, but the thrust of the Israeli-Russian agreement was that the Russians would start dealing with the Israeli arms industry on a new level of cooperation, and eventually Russia would enter a strategic alliance with Israel similar to the one Israel has with the U.S.

Needless to say, the present heads of Israeli military intelligence, AMAN, as well as the majority of members of the foreign office are against this Sharon plan, as is Moshe Arens, Israel’s present minister of defense.

They all point out that such an alliance could harm the special relationship Israel has had with the U.S., and by doing so could jeopardize the national security of Israel in the long run. But Sharon, who is also known as “the bulldozer,” both for his tenacity and his physical bulk, is pushing ahead.

For the moment Israel has negotiated a deal to supply the Chinese with an advanced spy plane, which is expected to be loaded with high-level allegedly “Israeli-developed” technology. Israel is planning to build this plane with Russian cooperation and Israel is also about to enter into a deal with the Russians to develop a new attack helicopter the Russians call Chornee Akula (black shark), similar to the American Cobra or Apache helicopters, about which the Israelis know quite a bit.

In addition, Russia will enter a joint venture with the Israeli military industry to develop the next generation of Russian SS 300 surface-to-air missile, which is said to be better than the American patriot missile.

The Russians have agreed to set up a combined technological enterprise that would provide refurbishing and upgrading packages to third parties for Russian-made MIGs and tanks. The Russians also have agreed to sell Israel rocket engines for the Israeli space program in cooperation with the Russian space program. It is the same program Israel has requested the U.S. not to support.

In addition to all of the above, the Israelis have asked that the Russians re-enter the Middle East as peace brokers between Israel and Syria, a job at which the Israelis claim the Americans have failed.

To the skeptical Russians, Israel is backing up Sharon’s promise to deliver whatever they need by using its immense influence on the U.S. Congress and the executive branch, pointing out that neither Vice President Gore nor President Clinton (who wants to see Gore elected president in the year 2000) will not risk angering Israel’s powerful lobby in Washington.

The irony of it all is that the Syrians, who have been promised the reopening of the talks with Israel where they were broken off by the incoming Netanyahu administration in 1995 have turned to the United States for a guarantee that this is not just a Netanyahu election ploy.

For Arik, however, all the efforts are aimed at showing the new Russian immigrants to Israel that he is on their side, and that if they vote for Netanyahu and he keeps his hold on power, it will bring about closer and more productive relations with Russia.

To an average Israeli all of this would appear rather simple. But for non-Israelis who don’t understand the motivation for this seeming about-face on Israel’s East-West alignment, it must be understood that most of the 900,000 newcomers to Israel consider Russian as their first language and tune into Moscow Television—via satellite—for their news. They consider the Russian media more reliable than its Israeli counterpart, and seeing Netanyahu and Sharon treated as heroes on Russian television, and hearing Russian Prime Minister Primakov say that if he were an Israeli, “I would vote for Netanyahu,” makes a great impact on their political preferences. Sharon is betting that their votes can place Netanyahu over the top in an election too close to call, and return him to power.

*In an April 10 televised election debate between Netanyahu and Yitzhak Mordechai, head of the new center party and former minister of defense in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Mordechai responded to Netanyahu’s supposed hard stand on the Golan issue by charging that Netanyahu was appeasing Syria in the Paris secret talks and was willing to give up more of the Golan than he has admitted. Mordechai went on to say the talks were abruptly stopped a couple of months ago and that he believes it was because of the fact that the talks were taking place somehow leaked out.

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda.

SIDEBAR

Israeli Court Defers Action on Bribery Allegation Against Sharon Until After National Election

Israeli court authorities have deferred until after the May 17 national elections any action on a rumored police recommendation that Gen. Ariel Sharon, who has been minister of foreign affairs in the Binyamin Netanyahu government, be indicted on charges of bribing a witness in a court trial to change his testimony. The recommendation followed a lengthy police investigation of an allegation made by Mibi Mozar, attorney for the Tel Aviv daily Ha’aretz, to Israel’s Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein.

Mozar complained that General Sharon had bribed retired Brig. Gen. Avigdor Ben-Gal, former commander of the Israel Defense Forces northern command, to change his testimony in a law suit Sharon had launched against Ha’aretz .

The lawsuit had been triggered by an article in Ha’aretz which claimed that while Sharon was defense minister in the Begin government he had misled the prime minister and the cabinet as to his intentions regarding the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The paper claimed that Sharon knowingly presented the government with a war plan that was far smaller than the one he had been planning with the IDF’s high command in order to get the government’s approval to invade Lebanon. The article claimed that in the initial planning stages it was clear that Beirut was the target of the incursion, but Sharon had presented the government with a plan for a limited attack that would not penetrate more than 40 kilometers into Lebanon.

General Ben-Gal had been asked in 1996 by the newspaper’s defense lawyers to repeat in court material from a lecture he had given at the Institute of Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University in 1987. In that lecture Ben-Gal stated that before the war in Lebanon, “The IDF high command and Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon had a secret and unauthorized plan to drag the Begin government into a deep operation against the PLO in Lebanon that was referred to as “The Large Pines Plan,” as opposed to “Operation Pines,” the plan for a limited incursion that was presented to the Begin government.

In his court testimony in 1997, however, Ben-Gal retracted what he had said in the lecture, calling it “nonsense and bad-spirited.” He explained that he was “mistaken at the time and since had been privy to secret documentation that had proven to him that he had been wrong in his statement.”

During the trial Ben-Gal also said, in response to a question by the Ha’aretz attorney, that he had not met with Sharon for a long time, and specifically not since Sharon had been appointed minister of infrastructure in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. Shortly thereafter it was learned that, only a few days prior to the court hearing, Ben-Gal and Sharon had traveled together to Russia to try to close a natural gas deal that would benefit Ben-Gal financially, since he would become a partner in the private company which would receive the gas import rights.

The attorney general asked the police to look into the matter and, on April 29, the police completed their investigation and, according to leaks reprinted in Israeli newspapers, recommended Sharon be indicted for allegedly bribing former General Ben-Gal to give testimony favorable to Sharon in his libel suit against Ha’aretz.

Although police spokeswoman Linda Menuhin turned the file over to State Attorney Edna Arbel, the police spokeswoman refused to confirm or deny the reported recommendation to prosecute. “It was decided not to comment on this further because of the proximity to the elections,” she said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to the police recommendation by pledging his complete confidence in Sharon: “I have full confidence in Ariel Sharon and his innocence, and I also have full confidence in Israel’s justice and legal system,” he said.

It was a shock to Likud officials that the police recommendation was issued two and a half weeks before Israel’s May 17 national election. “It was hard to escape the conclusion that inappropriate considerations had guided the police timing,” a Likud spokesman said.

It is worth mentioning that despite the alleged perjured testimony, Sharon lost his libel suit. Judge Moshe Telgam said at the time: “There is justification to the assumption that Prime Minister Begin was aware of the fact that Sharon was dishonest with him.”

(Interestingly, Ben-Gal’s predecessor as head of the northern command was Brig. Gen. Yekutiel Adam, who was assassinated while on a farewell visit to northern command troops in Lebanon after accepting an appointment as chief of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Adam’s death occurred four days after a bitter dispute with Sharon. His unavailability for the Mossad directorship cleared the way for the appointment in his place of Nahun Admoni, the first Mossad career officer to attain the position.)—Victor Ostrovsky