JINSA Report #973 quoted by CNSNews.com in article on Gen. Petraeus quote flap, 3/18/10
Gen. Petreaus Discusses Effect of Israeli-Arab Hostilities on ‘Moderate’ Mideast Governments
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. military command overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has not formally asked the Obama administration to add the Palestinian territories to its area of responsibility but officers have discussed the idea, according to Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command.
Gen. Petreaus Discusses Effect of Israeli-Arab Hostilities on ‘Moderate’ Mideast Governments
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. military command overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has not formally asked the Obama administration to add the Palestinian territories to its area of responsibility but officers have discussed the idea, according to Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Petraeus said tensions between Israel and the Arabs “have an enormous effect on the strategic context within which we operate in Central Command area of responsibility.”
He spoke about the importance of having “a sense of progress moving forward” in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, “because of the effect that it has, particularly on what I think you would term the moderate [mostly Arab] governments in our area.”
CentCom’s area of responsibility (AOR) stretches from Pakistan to Egypt, incorporating Central Asia and the entire Middle East, except for Israel and the Palestinian self-rule territories, which fall within the AOR of the Germany-based European Command.
Petraeus told the committee that he and CentCom staff members at various times had discussed asking for the Palestinian areas to be added to their AOR, but that he had neither made a formal recommendation to that effect nor sent a memo to the White House on the issue, as was recently reported.
The Foreign Policy magazine Web site reported at the weekend that CentCom officers had recently raised concerns with the Joint Chiefs of Staff “that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region,” and that Petraeus had requested that the Palestinian territories fall under CentCom.