Israeli Security Concerns and the Balkans

March 31, 2013
By Chris Deliso

Heading into April 2013, Israel is confronted with a complexity of issues in the greater Middle East. These include: chronic political disagreements at home; the Syrian conflict next door, with its possibility to affect Lebanon; volatile unrest in Egypt; the precarious condition of Cyprus and the effect of this on possible future joint energy projects; an intensified threat from Iran and Hezbollah, and strategizing how to handle Turkish diplomatic moves following the (US-brokered) rapprochement. These moves may include an emotive emphasis on the Palestinian issue, which would increase existing anti-Israeli prejudices in the larger Muslim world.

Space for the Balkans?

Given these distractions, nurturing the strategic relationships Israel has forged in the Balkans since the Turkish alliance deteriorated in 2010 would not seem a high priority for the new coalition. However, we do expect that Israel will continue to work with Balkan governments to monitor security vulnerabilities and threats (as it does elsewhere in the world), and possibly on a higher level than in the past. This will be due to both local developments and security issues on a more global level.

Even before the May 2010 Gaza Flotilla, Israel had enjoyed good relations with Balkan countries in diplomatic, economic and security cooperation. In some cases, these friendly ties went back to the early 1990s. However, in the aftermath of the Flotilla incident, the Turkish-Israeli falling out was so high-profile that many foreign media simply interpreted Israel’s expanding diplomatic relations in the Balkans as implicative of reactive diplomacy, an after-effect of the suspended alliance with Turkey.

Yet while Israeli officials did certainly have to acknowledge a unique new situation unfolding then, it is also clear that Israel’s growing regional presence had already been in development over many years, independent of any temporary problems with Turkey.

Nevertheless analysts will still want to follow how the revived Israel-Turkey relationship plays out, and also how both states’ approaches to the Balkans on the bilateral and regional levels will be affected by it. Balkanalysis.com has monitored the fluctuations in Israeli-Turkish relations since the beginning; readers might thus enjoy, for some now historical context, our previous report from Israel, published in February 2011, when Egypt was on the edge of its turbulent transformation and Syria was still just a hazy conflict on the horizon.

A lot has happened since then. The following analytical survey draws upon interviews with numerous sources interviewed in recent weeks, including diplomats, high-level intelligence and military officials of regional states, informed journalists and other experts, as well as general field knowledge and secondary sources. It discusses current security issues for Israel in the Balkans and its relations with regional countries, in the larger context of the Iranian threat and the emerging rapprochement with Turkey.

Renewed, But Not Rethought, Interest in Terrorism in the Balkans

The 18 July 2012 Burgas terrorist attack that killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian national was unfortunate proof that terrorist attacks can indeed occur in the Balkans. This possibility had previously been considered doubtful by experts who view the Balkans as specifically a safe haven/logistics base for extremists- and as something altogether impossible by partisan supporters of local Muslim populations.

However, since the spectacle of an armed Islamist standoff at the US Embassy in Sarajevo on 28 October 2011, US security officials have started to take greater interest, though this has not resulted in overt policy changes (consonant with what Balkanalysis.com predicted at the time).

more se http://www.balkanalysis.com/bulgaria/2013/03/31/israeli-security-concerns-and-the-balkans/