Security threats through shifts in regional power dispersion?

According to (Neo-)Realism, relative power capabilities are crucial (Grieco et al., 2003): States cannot afford to focus on absolute gains since the degree to which they are beneficial to them depends on whether they may possibly be overpowered by the capabilities of other actors. Therefore, security threats are very often the result of shifts in the distribution of power capabilities on a global or regional scale. In the case of the Arab uprisings, some scholars convincingly argue that the wave of revolts and regime transformations brought along significant changes in the regional power system. Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the downfall of Mubarak, according to Realist logic, due to the anarchic Middle Eastern state system Israel was potentially unsettled and concerned about potential power shifts (Amour, 2016: 4–6).

At the same time, with the exception of its foreign policy toward LebanonFootnote 4 —which is a case of low relevance for the present article, as the “Arab Spring” did not unsettle the Lebanese political system—Israel has appeared as a “status quo power” since 1967,Footnote 5 when it managed to significantly expand the territory controlled by its government and military and establish an occupational regime on Palestine that, according to Israel’s self-concept, includes the dynamic expansion of Jewish settlements. In that sense, however, as a contemporarily defensive power, Israel could always rely on its superior capabilities toward other potential regional powers in the Middle East (Byman, 2011: 129; Inbar, 2013: 150ff; Magen, 2015: 128).

What power shifts materialized as an outcome of the Arab uprisings and how did they affect Israel? Among the big five in the Middle East—besides Israel, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey—some shifts relevant to Israel did indeed occur (Sandler, 2013: 133–134). As Egypt’s role as a potential regional power was weakened because of its ongoing economic and political crisis, the immediate effect for Israel was instead positive, since any government in Cairo had a strong incentive not to lose its only remaining foreign policy asset from a Western point of view: the peace treaty with Israel. Thus, as early as February 2011, Israel got reassurance from the top of the Egyptian military that the peace treaty between the two countries would be maintained (Berti, 2013). However, some other Middle Eastern actors gained relative power: Turkey (Altunışık, 2014), Iran (Fürtig, 2014), Saudi Arabia (Al Tamamy, 2014), and also Qatar (Machowski, 2011), as well as the newly emerged Islamic State (Inbar, 2016).

Turkey, whose relations with Israel had cooled down in the years before the Arab uprisings, was strengthened particularly in the period between the first elections of an Islamist government in 2011 in Tunisia and the usurpation of power by the Egyptian military in July 2013, as Ankara then enjoyed leverage based on the political ideology of moderate Islamism. Yet, although Turkey’s ambition particularly in the Flotilla incident was to pillory Israeli occupation policy, contrary to Iran’s foreign policy, that of Turkey was never driven by a strong anti-Zionist stance (Mor, 2014). Arguably, the Arab Spring even provided Israel with opportunities to improve bilateral relations (Goren, 2012), as later materialized in the reconciliation agreement in June 2016 (Times of Israel, 2016). To what degree did Iran gain relative power as a result of the Arab uprisings? The Iranian power gains were rather limited insofar as the relative rise of Saudi Arabia, which due to Egypt’s weakness has been able to unfold its potentials as an Arab hegemon (Beck, 2015), and its increasingly active role in the region served as a significant compensation, despite the Wahhabi regime not having diplomatic relations with Israel. Riyadh’s foreign policy since 1979 has been to balance Iran and at the latest since 1967 to moderate tensions between the Arab world and Israel. Moreover, although Egyptian—Iranian relations of course improved with the shift of presidency from Mubarak to Mursi, they remained much more distant than generally expected (Aran, 2012: 57), as Egypt under Mursi distracted the hopes of Teheran to “re-unite” Islamic forces by overcoming the Sunni—Shia rift and refused to fight in Syria side-by-side with Iran (George and Awad, 2012; Klein, 2014). Also Qatar gained some relative power with the Arab uprisings, at least until the 2013 military coup in Egypt. However, the effects for Israel were very limited: relations between Qatar and Israel had arguably been Israel’s warmest with an Arab state in the two decades prior to the Arab uprisings. Yet, heavy Qatari criticism of Israel’s Gaza war 2008/2009 cooled relations down, and Qatari attempts to resume closer ties were disapproved of by the Israeli government (Ulrichsen, 2012). Finally, the Islamic State emerged as a new power center in the Middle East. However, its territorial expansion took place away from the borders of Israel and inhibited adversaries of Israel, particularly Iran, from unfolding their power capabilities in the region. Accordingly, Inbar (2016) denominates the destruction of the Islamic State as a strategic mistake because a rather weak Islamic State is functional in curtailing Iranian influence in the Levant.

Regional power shifts as triggered by the Arab uprisings had mixed effects on Israel in terms of relative gains. At the same time, it is safe to say that the Arab uprisings did not trigger major changes in Israel’s power position in the Middle East. Thus, Israel was at no point in the recent history of the Arab uprisings seriously challenged by shifts in regional power dispersion. Amour (2016: 14) goes so far as to state that Israel “remains the top regional superpower”.

Security threats caused by failed states?

Another Realist potential security threat triggered by the Arab uprisings is caused by effects of the failed-state syndrome. Before the Arab uprisings, in many respects weak Arab states neighbouring Israel were rather strong insofar as they controlled a monopoly of force in the sense of Max Weber (cf. Ayubi, 1995). However, the most sensitive borders and demarcation lines of Israel—the border to Jordan as by far the longest and the boundaries to the Palestinian territories as by far the most politically contested—were not affected by the “Arab Spring”, simply because both the Hashemite Kingdom (Aran, 2012: 59) and the Palestinian Authority (Al-Omari, 2015) did not face major upheavals during the Arab uprisings and continued their effective security cooperation with Israel. However, Syria (Rotberg, 2014), and, albeit to a much lesser degree, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula (Jacoby, 2013: 32) have been showing signs of failing as states and state territories, respectively, since the early days of the “Arab Spring”. Indeed Israel faced some border incidents (Eglash, 2015). However, some severe events such as an attack on 18 August 2011, implemented by militants infiltrating Israel through the Sinai Peninsula, which caused eight Israeli death casualties (Jacoby, 2013: 32)—notwithstanding, Israel was not exposed to a systematic, large-scale terrorist threat from Egyptian and Syrian territory (Sandler, 2013: 132). Violent conflict in Syria had reached a high level of turmoil and certainly exceeded the limits of a domestic civil war, particularly toward Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and to a certain degree Jordan—but not toward Israel. Particularly remarkable is the fact that the highly violent and oppressive policy of the Islamic State toward different Muslim groups, Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds inter alia did not include Jewish Israel and there are no strong indicators that this could change in the foreseeable future.

Institutionalism on Israel’s response to the Arab uprisings

Contrary to (Neo-)Realism, Institutionalism portrays (international) institutions as (often) influential structures and/or actors that (sometimes) enjoy a life of their own (Keohane, 1989), which may facilitate, but sometimes also hinder, cooperation. The Middle East stands out as a world region with a rather low degree of regional cooperation—and Israel’s integration into regional organizations and agreements is particularly underdeveloped (Beck, 2015). Yet, the Israeli—Egyptian peace treaty that was negotiated, concluded, and finally signed under American patronage in 1979 arguably had a significant impact on Israeli-Egyptian inter-governmental relations and on regional affairs. At the same time, it never became a “warm” peace accepted and vitalized by the respective civil societies—particularly Egyptian society has always remained very reserved (Bar-Siman-Tov, 2000). Thus, on the eve of the “Arab Spring”, institutions had a double impact on Israeli-Egyptian relations. On the one hand, the treaty created a state of affairs that fostered cooperation on the governmental level in several realms, of which security is of high relevance for the purpose of the present article, and facilitated Israel’s ability to maintain occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967, as the “Arab front” against Israel and its occupation policy had lost its most powerful member. On the other hand, the weakness of Egyptian civil-society-dominated organizations, as caused by Cairo’s authoritarianism, prevented potential “spoilers” of the cold peace on the societal level from going through with their agenda.

When Egypt cancelled a 20-year-old gas contract with Israel in 2012, some Israeli politicians reacted with disgruntlement. Yet foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman explicitly refrained from taking the Egyptian decision as an issue of “high politics”: “I think that to turn a business dispute into a diplomatic dispute would be a mistake” (quoted after Sherwood, 2012). Not least due to discoveries in their own gas fields, Israeli proved to be invulnerable to the termination of the Egyptian deliveries (Jewish Virtual Library, 2016).

The second Arab country with which Israel enjoys the benefits of a formal peace treaty is Jordan. In Jordan, however, the level of protests in 2011 was incomparably lower than in Egypt and never reached the momentum of seriously challenging the Hashemite regime in Amman (Beck and Hüser, 2015). Thus, at no point in recent history has Israel had to be seriously concerned about the stability of its effective security cooperation with Jordan (Schenker, 2014).

Security threats because of weakened inter-state institutions?

One of the immediate concerns of the Israeli political elite after the downfall of Mubarak was that new governments that arose as a result of the Arab uprisings could terminate the Camp David peace treaty because of its unpopularity (Asseburg, 2012: 84; Federman and Barzak, 2012). However, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took over power after the downfall of Mubarak, unsurprisingly maintained its well-coordinated relations with Israel. Yet, the Islamist government headed by President Mursi also left no doubt that it would stick to the basics of the peace treaty (Sobczak, 2012; Katz, 2014: 79). As the Egyptian military, in compliance with Western interests, managed to dominate national security affairs even in the heyday of Mursi’s presidency, there was no moment in history when Israel was seriously challenged by undermined Camp David peace accords.

Security threats because of strengthened anti-Israeli institutions?

As a result of the Arab uprisings, national institutions, particularly parliaments, that had been marginalized under the old regimes were (re)vitalized as an outcome of fair and free elections (Völkel, 2014). In Egypt, the first elections after the downfall of Mubarak resulted in clear victories for Islamist political parties, whose ideological leaders came from the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi movements. Thus, at first glance it seems that from an Israeli viewpoint there was a potentially challenging development unfolding: institutions, particularly the parliament, many deputies of which were actually or potentially critical of the peace treaty with Israel in particular and Zionism in general, apparently gained room to manoeuvre. However, the new constitution that Mursi pushed through with a hastily arranged referendum did not touch the political prerogatives of the pro-Israeli Egyptian military (Ottaway, 2013). On the level of ideology, the Muslim Brotherhood oriented itself much more toward moderate Islamist Turkey than toward the Iranian model (Kassem, 2013). When a mob looted the Israeli embassy in Cairo in September 2011, it failed to receive support from the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and the army did not hesitate to contain the attack. Moreover, by declaring a state of alert, the military signalled its readiness to actively defend the good relations with Israel on the state level (Fahmy, 2011). Seventy-six persons were convicted by Egyptian courts for their participation in the incident (Times of Israel, 2012). Therefore, from the perspective of Institutionalism it was always visible to Israel that the strengthened role of actors from “below” did not constitute a severe security threat. After the downfall of Mursi, Israeli-Egyptian relations became even more effective than in the era of Mubarak, particularly since al-Sisi who took power in July 2013, shared a hostile stance toward Hamas and was subsequently ready to squeeze Hamas in cooperation with Israel (Magen, 2015: 120).