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Publié le 3 Mars 2008

Israeli Ambassador Dany Shek: Iran is the most disturbing player in the region

1/ Iran

At once the regional player who is furthest away and the most disturbing, this regime practices a militant expansionist Islam. Ahmadinejad’s negationism and hatred of Israel are so extremist that they are posing a problem even to his own allies. Yet Iran continues to develop its nuclear technology and in so doing poses a threat that extends way beyond Israel, to the whole region and even to the world. Sanctions are proving increasingly difficult to adopt because of Russian and Chinese reticence, so that diplomatic pressure must be maintained at all costs.

France, at all levels of the State, has maintained an extremely firm attitude towards Iran, be it the Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Defence.

2/ Lebanon - Syria

Ever since UN Resolution 1701, the Lebanese border has never been so quiet, with the second version of UNIFIL having at its disposal much greater resources in manpower, material and above all prerogatives than was the case for the first version, and as such appears to be correctly playing its deterrent role.

Nevertheless, to the North and the South of the Litani river, Hizbullah has been rebuilding its infrastructures and despite the arms embargo has been receiving astronomical quantities of weapons, which are stockpiled chiefly in the North. To the South of the Litani, unarmed members of Hizbullah have been recommissioning tunnels for launching missiles. Passing weapons from one zone to the other takes no more than a few hours. But above all, and contrary to the UN Security Council resolution, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are still hostages of Hizbullah, and even though the most pessimistic hypotheses have sometimes been circulated by the press, the Israeli government has chosen to act as if the two hostages were still alive.

3/ Palestinians

With the process that started in Annapolis, never in the last seven years has the international climate been more favourable to furthering the peace process. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have been keeping absolute secrecy as to ongoing developments and this method seems to be bearing fruit.

On the other hand, the latest developments in Gaza – the forced crossing of the Egypt-Gaza border by Hamas Palestinians – have enabled a vast stock of rockets to be smuggled into Gaza, rockets that are capable of reaching regions well beyond Sderot. The Gaza strip is a dissident territory in the hands of Hamas and this situation is a stumbling block in the negotiations which, in the end, must cover all the territories.

Above all, the Qassam rockets that have been incessantly raining down on Israeli civilians is unbearable. Some consider it as a kind of acceptable “background noise”, but this is not the case. Not only are these cowardly terrorist acts, they are also the most serious menace weighing on the success of an already fragile negotiation process.

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