Long. Herewith the opening section — the behind-the-scenes details of events we watched from here can be read at the link, but get yourself a cup of your favourite beverage and a comfortable chair before you start, dear Reader.
[IsraelTimes] Under Netanyahu’s leadership, the Jewish state survived the difficult early years to come out on top as Iran and jihadists are on the defensive.Ten years ago, in late 2010 and early 2011, the Arab world experienced a series of convulsions that tore apart the Middle East as we knew it. Starting in Tunisia, where a young fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest corruption and police abuse, angry demonstrations spread throughout the region. Some of the world’s longest-ruling leaders were toppled within months. There was a sense of optimism, that the long-suffering citizens of Arab nations were finally rising up to demand basic human rights
When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much...
and dignity in secular, youth-led popular uprisings.
Observers in Israel were largely of a different mind. Tacit understandings and written agreements with Arab autocrats — demonstrably not with the masses — were long a foundation of Israel’s national security mindset. Now figures like Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
, who had maintained the peace treaty as eight Israel prime ministers came and went, were being pushed out, and Israel’s ties with the Arab world, both official and undeclared, were at risk of being undone by the Arab street that had never fully accepted them.
Unlike the wave of anti-Communist demonstrations that bolstered liberal democracy in the Eastern Bloc two decades earlier, in the Middle East Islamists would seize power from secular dictators, Israeli political and military leaders feared.
’’When some people in the West see what’s happening in Egypt, they see Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
1989,’’ said an Israeli official. ’’We see it as Tehran 1979.’’
In many places, Israel’s fears became reality in short order. The Moslem Brüderbund and affiliated parties won elections in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. Protests spread across Jordan, with which Israel has had a peace treaty since 1994 that is vital to maintaining quiet in the West Bank and over the Temple Mount. Jihadists were pouring into Syria, filling the vacuum left by the collapsing Syrian army, which had maintained calm along Israel’s Golan Heights frontier for decades despite the enmity between the countries.
Israel was the big loser in what became known as the Arab Spring, argued both Israeli and international pundits.
A decade later — astonishingly — the headlines look very different. "Ten years on, the Arab Spring’s biggest winner is Israel," wrote Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer in December. "Why Israel is now delighted about the Arab Spring," reads a January Middle East Eye headline.
How did Israel manage to emerge from a complex, fast-moving, and dangerous upheaval as a "winner"?