Reviewing the Possibilities of a Post-Two-State-Solution Middle East Policy

SEPTEMBER 2, 2016 2:45 AM 0 COMMENTS

Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the Oslo I signing ceremony, September 13, 1993. Photo: Wikipedia.

16 years after the failed Camp David summit, the fiction of the two-state solution is about to be shattered once and for all. The only relevant question today, is what does Israel intend to do next? — Caroline Glick, “The end of Mahmoud Abbas,” The Jerusalem Post, August 29, 2016

Imperative to prepare for post-two-state era

Last month, following the decision of the Republican Party (GOP) to remove its longstanding support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the party platform, The Algemeiner published my article entitled “Potential Payoffs and Pitfalls for Israel if the GOP Wins the Presidential Election.” In it, I noted that this shift was merely one more indication that “enthusiasm for the two-state concept is waning — even among ardent erstwhile adherents,” some of whom have actually acknowledged that the Palestinians have contributed to the policy’s accelerated irrelevance.

However, I also advised that Israel must begin preparing itself for a new reality, one in which the two-state principle is no longer the dominant paradigm that, in large measure, monopolizes the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the growing awareness of the dangerous futility entailed in continued pursuit of the two-state chimera is potentially a distinctly positive development, the challenges Israel may yet have to face could well be as dire — perhaps even more so — than those posed by the perilous two-state paradigm.

Indeed, with the passing of the two-state formula as a relevant policy option, new perils will immediately — and inevitably — emerge. Accordingly, I urged that planning to contend with those issues ought to be seen as a pressing national imperative.

I was, therefore, extremely gratified that Caroline Glick took up essentially the same theme in her recent article, “The end of Mahmoud Abbas,” in which she made a similar call for focusing on the approaching post-two-state situation.

As if in a parallel universe

Given the internal realities of the Palestinian administered (or, rather, largely un-administered) territories, it is hard to believe that any well-meaning soul is seriously suggesting anything approaching a two-state prescription as a means of defusing — never mind permanently resolving – the conflict.

Citing studies from the Gatestone Institute and Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), Glick describes the disintegration of Palestinian society, its descent into lawlessness and violent anarchy and the accelerating decline of Abbas’s central authority in Ramallah. These developments are set against the backdrop of approaching Palestinian Authority (PA) municipal elections in which those associated with or backed by Hamas are expected to emerge victorious — or at least with handsome gains.

Indeed, it would appear that today’s adherents to the fatally flawed formula of two states inhabit a parallel universe, where facts are very different and far more amiable from in this one.

After all, given the situation on the ground — a quarter-century after the Oslo process was initiated with all the pomp and ceremony, the international fanfare and enthusiastic optimism — it is difficult to accept that anyone could, in good faith, still suggest, that some stable two-state scenario was even remotely feasible, much less desirable. When it comes to Israelis, who profess concern for the security and well-being of their country, continued support for the idea is little short of staggering.

Accordingly, given the past precedents and future projections it is difficult to avoid the disturbing conclusion that yet unchastened Israeli two-staters have greater allegiance to their pet ideology than they do to the security  of their country and the safety of their countrymen.

Fading relevance of two-statism

Glick writes, “Like it or not, the day is fast approaching when the Palestinian Authority we have known for the past 22 years will cease to exist.”  It is a caveat that both the Israeli political leadership and civil society elites will do well to heed.

An urgent and thorough debate is called for to formulate ways to contend with emerging realities, in which the demise of the two-state principle appears inevitable — or at least highly probable.

Indeed, recent polls show sagging support for the idea in both Israeli and Palestinian societies. A recent joint survey conducted by the left-leaning Israel Democracy Institute and the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey Research shows that only small majorities support (and hence very sizable minorities oppose) the generic two-state idea.

However, when the proposal is fleshed out and the details elaborated, support for two states declines steeply from small majorities to distinct minorities.

Only 39% of Palestinians and 46% of all Israelis (39% of the Jewish population) support a peace agreement “package” that comprises:

– A de-militarized Palestinian state;

– An Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line with equal territorial exchanges;

– A family unification in Israel of 100,000 Palestinian refugees;

– West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine;

– The Jewish Quarter and Western Wall under Israeli sovereignty, and the Muslim and Christian quarters and the al Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount under Palestinian sovereignty;

– The end of the conflict and claims

Significantly, the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly rejected similar offers in the past.

“Regionalism”: a ridiculous canard

Refusing to concede the irresponsible impracticality of continued endorsement of the two-state folly, its proponents — undeterred by the disaster their political credo has wrought on Jew and Arab alike — have, in a desperate effort to rescue it from fading into oblivion, plucked a new rabbit from their magician’s hat: the idea of “regionalism.”

Having more or less despaired of reaching a two-state outcome in a bilateral arrangement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, dogged — or, rather, dogmatic — two staters now bandy about the idea of such an outcome being achieved within the context of a regional accord with the wider Arab world. This proposal is usually presented in the form of the Arab Peace Initiative (API), aka The Saudi Peace Plan, which involves Israel withdrawing to the pre-1967 lines, including from the Golan Heights, the division of Jerusalem and acknowledging the “right of return” of Palestinian Arabs within the pre-1967 borders. In return for these far-reaching concessions, the Arab world would “establish normal relations with Israel in the context of a comprehensive peace, and consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended…and provide security for all the states of the region.”

But “regionalism” of this kind is nothing but a risible ruse, a mere sleight of hand to prevent the public acknowledgement of the final failure of the two-state formula.

You couldn’t make this stuff up

Significantly, since it was first raised almost a decade and a half ago, the API has been rejected by all successive Israeli governments — including by some of the most ultra-concessionary ones, such as those headed by Ehud Olmert. Indeed, for years, any such proposal would have been considered borderline sedition, and with good reason.

For, in essence, what does this “regionalism” entail?

It involves Israel undertaking perilous (and largely irrevocable, except at enormous cost) concessions in exchange for pledges (entirely revocable at the slightest pretext) for some of the most decadent, depraved, oppressive, unstable, anachronistic and tyrannical regimes on the planet. Seriously???

You couldn’t make this stuff up — especially today with the post-Arab Spring ravaging the area.

If, with a giant leap of faith, one might have conceived of there being any sense in such an arrangement back in 2002, when the API was first aired, there can be no justification for such forlorn hope today. With the Arab world ablaze with merciless fratricidal frenzy, with Arab countries at war among — and within — themselves, with no guarantee that the regimes of today will be the regimes of tomorrow, what possible stock can be placed in any pledges to “ provide security for all the states of the region” — when they can provide it for none today?

What credence can be given to undertaking to “establish normal relations with Israel” when Arab nations cannot even establish, much less maintain, “normal” relations (in the normal sense of “normal”) with one another?

No, “regionalism” is little more than a red herring to divert attention from the increasingly evident collapse of the concept of two-states.

Israel will do well not to succumb to its lure.

End of two-state era: Potential payoffs and pitfalls

With the growing prospect of the two-state option being abandoned, the question of what alternative paradigm Israel should adopt is becoming a matter of increasing and urgent relevance. But, while there can be little doubt this is a development that heralds great opportunity for Israel, it is not one without dangerous pitfalls.

Indeed, to reap the potential benefits (and avoid the potential pitfalls inextricably inherent in this emerging situation), Israel must prepare a persuasive, sustainable, long-term alternative blueprint for the outcome of the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs to replace the two-state folly.

In recent years, a debate on such alternatives has indeed begun. Sadly, however, its output has been less than impressive. After all, not everything that is not a two-state proposal is preferable to the two-state principle itself. Indeed, nearly all the major alternatives being advanced today by prominent opponents of the two-state paradigm, are, notwithstanding the sincere goodwill of their authors, no less inimical to the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In broad brush strokes, these “alternatives” can be divided into three major categories.

The first is proposed by those who favor “managing — rather than resolving — the conflict,” a plan which basically consists of “kicking the can down the road.” In effect, it calls for letting the problem fester, until some unspecified event(s) occur to — hopefully and inexplicably — facilitate resolution.

The other two, somewhat more proactive, suggestions can be divided into those that will, almost inevitably, lead to either:
(a) The Lebanonization (and later Islamization) of Israel, by incorporating the Palestinian-Arab residents of the territories across the pre-1967 lines into the permanent enfranchised population of Israel; or
(b) The Balkanization of Israel by trying to encapsulate the Palestinian-Arab population in disconnected, miniscule, autonomous enclaves in portions of these areas.

No less menacing than the two-state formula

In a series of past articles, I have — with varying degrees of acerbity and exasperation — laid out in considerable detail, the manifest shortcomings of these alternative proposals.

In them I demonstrate why:

– “Managing the conflict” is an exercise in futility — and self-delusion — that will only carry the country on a perilous downward spiral, with prevailing security and political problems increasing in scale and intensity;

– Proposals that prescribe including the Palestinian Arabs in the permanent population of a post-two-state Israel would almost inevitably turn the country into a Muslim-majority tyranny within a few generations — even if the optimistic demographers are right and, initially, the Muslim population will comprise a 35-40% minority;

– Proposals that advocate partial annexation and limited autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs, concentrated in disconnected mini-enclaves, will result in wildly torturous and contorted borders, virtually impossible to demarcate and secure, thus emptying  “sovereignty” in the annexed areas of any meaningful content.

None of these three categories can pave the way for Israel — as the nation-state of the Jews — to a sustainable long-term situation that is any less menacing than that entailed in the two-state scenario.

To do this Israel requires a policy paradigm that addresses both its geographic and demographic imperatives for survival, lest it adopt a proposal that threatens to make it untenable, either geographically or demographically, or both.

Accordingly, it must be a proposal that ensures Israeli control over vital geo-strategic assets in Judea-Samaria and drastically reduces the presence of the hostile Arab population resident there — preferably by non-coercive means such as economic inducements…which, by the way, is what attracted the bulk of the Arab population here in the first place.

A very relevant question…

To formulate such an alternative policy paradigm in lieu of the two-state formula, to acquire sufficient legitimacy for it, to advance it in the public discourse and to generate widespread recognition for its adoption as a national imperative is undoubtedly, as Glick identifies, one of the most pressing and pertinent questions on the Zionist agenda today.

Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic-israel.org)
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“Mowing the lawn” won’t cut it—my challenge to BESA by Dr Martin Sherman

 
“Mowing the lawn” won’t cut it—my challenge to BESA by Dr Martin Sherman ( Guest)

By avoiding confrontations in which Israel can win, Israeli governments risk backing the country into a confrontation which it cannot win.

Israelis have gradually come to realize that at present the Palestinians are neither a partner for comprehensive peace nor capable of establishing a viable state…The Palestinian Authority has no intention of accepting a Jewish state in any borders, and the two sides remain far apart on most of the concrete issues to be resolved…Israel’s recent governments are left, willy- nilly, with a de facto conflict-management approach, without foreclosing any options. - Prof Efraim Inbar, director of the BESA (Begin-Sadat) Center for Strategic Studies, cited in David Weinberg’s “Israeli West Bank policy – where to?”, Jerusalem Post , August18, 2016.

Israel is acting in accordance with a “mowing the grass” strategy. After a period of military restraint, Israel is acting to severely punish Hamas for its aggressive behavior, and degrading its militarycapabilities… The use of force … is not intended to attain impossible political goals, but rather is a long-term strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities.- Prof Efraim Inbar and Dr. Eitan Shamir “Mowing the Grass…” , BESA Perspectives, Paper No. 255 July 20, 2014.

Last week, Jerusalem Post columnist David Weinberg published a wide-ranging survey of the views of several senior policy experts at Bar Ilan University’s BESA Center for Strategic Studies regarding Israel’s future “West Bank” policy. At the outset, allow me to state that, to my mind, BESA is perhaps the most solid strategic policy center associated with a major Israeli university—and the only one that is not doctrinally distinctly Left-of-Center. Moreover, I consider Weinberg, who is also BESA’s director of public affairs, to be one of the most insightful and incisive opinion-writers in the Israeli English-language media.

That said, I have serious disagreements with the bulk of the positions he presents (although, significantly, he refrains from expressing any of his own), and am convinced that, if adopted, they bode ill for Israel’s future.

Conflict management “least-worst option”

The sub-heading of Weinberg’s piece sums up the dominant perspective prevailing among the BESA experts. It reads: “A consensus of experts: Conflict management is currently the least-worst option.”

Thus, according to Weinberg, the overriding theme that emerges from months of debate in BESA seminar rooms and on its website is that it “is wiser for Israel to defer action than to take steps that threaten to make a bad situation worse”.

Thus, for example, Prof Hillel Frisch stipulated five possible Israeli policy approaches: caretaker conflict management, creative friction, constructive chaos, unilateral withdrawal, and unilateral annexation. While conceding none of the options is ideal, Frisch deems the “caretaker conflict management option” to be probably the most feasible, noting that in all cases Israel will have to maintain a significant military presence in Judea and Samaria.

Maj.-Gen. Yaakov Amidror (former national security advisor and today a senior fellow at the center) is also averse to unilateral Israeli initiatives, and is concerned that concessionary initiatives would be likely to “increase, rather than decrease, Palestinian terrorism”; whereas assertive initiatives “may well inflame Palestinian passions and engender severe opposition to Israel abroad.”

But perhaps the most explicit and elaborate advocate for the idea of conflict management (rather than conflict resolution), in what appears to be an impossibly deadlocked impasse is Prof. Efraim Inbar, BESA’s longstanding director. According to Inbar: “Israelis have gradually come to realize that at present the Palestinians are neither a partner for comprehensive peace nor capable of establishing a viable state…The Palestinian Authority has no intention of accepting a Jewish state in any borders, and the two sides remain far apart on most of the concrete issues to be resolved.” He thus concluded: Israel is left, almost by default, “with a de facto conflict-management approach, without foreclosing any options.”

Why ‘mowing the lawn’ won’t cut it

Inbar has long been a proponent of the conflict management approach. Indeed, soon after the outbreak of fighting in the summer of 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), he co-authored a BESA paper with Eitan Shamir, entitled “Mowing the Grass in Gaza” July 20, 2014—an approach that entails a new bout of fighting every time the Palestinian violence reaches levels Israel finds unacceptable.

The paper essentially endorses a policy based on resignation to a reality of recurring rounds of violence, separated by intermittent periods of calm, whose length is determined by either the enemy’s willingness to engage, or its desperation, making it impossible not to.

The “rationale” for this approach (as set out in the opening excerpt) is not to inflict decisive defeat and impose surrender of the other side, but to force a cease fire on it, after punishing it for its recalcitrant behavior, and degrading its military capabilities as part of a “long-term strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities”.

Regrettably however, there is little evidence that this is succeeding. To the contrary, what we have seen is that far from “debilitating the enemy capabilities,” the said enemy keeps reappearing, spoiling for a fight, ever bolder, with ever-greater capabilities.

Indeed, since Israel unilaterally abandoned the Gaza Strip—and after three bloody military campaigns, which that ill-considered initiative precipitated—the enemy’s capabilities have been enhanced far beyond anything imagined in 2005.

“The ruinous results of restraint”

About the same time that Inbar and Shamir published their “Mowing the Grass” paper, I wrote a column entitled The ruinous results of restraint (July 10, 2014), in which I warned of the fatal flaw in the conflict management oriented “mowing the lawn” approach. I pointed out that: “…the periods of inter-bellum calm have been consistently used by the Palestinian terror groups to enhance their capabilities…After all, when Israel left Gaza (2005), the range of the Palestinian rockets was barely 5 km., and the explosive charge they carried about 5 kg. Now their missiles have a range of over 100 km. and warheads of around 100 kg. When Israel left Gaza, only the sparse population in its immediate proximity was threatened by missiles. Now well over 5 million Israelis, well beyond Tel Aviv, are menaced by them.”

Moreover, Hamas has exploited periods of calm to further advance and extend its infrastructures and other abilities, which were barely conceivable a decade ago, such as its massive tunneling enterprise and the development of naval forces including commandoes and underwater capabilities.

Indeed, had Hamas accepted Netanyahu’s offer of “calm for calm” at the start of Operation Protective Edge, ceased its fire and continued with the construction of its attack tunnels under the border into Israeli communities, who knows what perils the country would be facing today.

It is an open question just how many more rounds of “mowing” the residents of southern Israel will endure before losing confidence that the government will/can provide them adequate protection, and choose to evacuate the area permanently.

Eroding political realities: Rabin’s 1995-address as benchmark

But it is not only in the exponential growth of the terror groups’ martial prowess that the endeavor at conflict management has been a resounding failure. The same can be said—arguably even more so--with regard to the looming political threats Israel is facing, particularly as the Obama-term draws to a close, and the prospect of the US withholding its veto powers to block anti-Israeli measures becomes ever more tangible.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic and disturbing indications of just how far Israeli positions have been eroded over the last two decades is reflected in the views articulated by Yitzhak Rabin, in his last Knesset address (October 5, 1995), a month before his assassination. In it he sought parliamentary ratification of the Oslo II Accords, then considered by much of the Israeli public as excessively dovish and dangerously concessionary.

In this address, significantly delivered after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and showered with international acclaim as a “valiant warrior for peace,” Rabin:

• rejected the notion of Palestinian statehood (declaring the final Palestinian entity would be “less than a state”);
• robustly rebuffed any possibility of returning to the pre-1967 lines;
• endorsed a united Jerusalem (including its post-67/trans-Green Line suburbia) as Israel’s capital;
• called not only for the inclusion of existing “settlements” within the final frontiers of Israel, but for the construction of additional one “like Gush Katif,”;
• insisted that Israel retain the Jordan Valley border – “in the broadest meaning of that term” – as its permanent security border.

There can be little doubt that if today, Netanyahu were to embrace, verbatim, Rabin’s prescription for a permanent accord with the Palestinian-Arabs in the “West Bank” as articulated in his October 1995 address, he would be dismissed—scornfully, disparagingly and angrily—as an “unreasonable extremist”.

Avoiding confrontations that can be won…

There is, of course, some prima facie wisdom in the conflict-management counsel to refrain from hasty measures that are likely to make a bad situation worse. However, such “wisdom” does not have universal validity. This is glaringly manifest in Israel’s grim predicament.

On the one hand, the country is facing the threat of rapidly escalating military prowess of non-state terror groups, increasingly able to threaten much of the civilian population, crucial infrastructure installations and to paralyze economic activity. On the other hand, the increasingly hostile political realities afford it diminishing ability to deal with these threats effectively.

In this regard, it should be remembered that, today, with the changing nature of Arab enmity, the major existential challenge to Israel’s existence as the Jewish nation-state is no longer repulsing invasion, but resisting attrition.

The Arab stratagem is no longer the cataclysmic annihilation of the Jewish state, but the ongoing erosion of Jewish will to maintain the Jewish state, by making Jewish life in it unbearable – both physically and psychologically.

Accordingly, by advocating against the adoption of drastic measures to contend with a predicament that entails a mounting threat and decreasing freedom to deal with it, “conflict management” has become a prescription for avoiding immediate confrontations that can be won, thereby risking having to contend with later confrontations that cannot be won—or can be won only at ruinous cost.

Paying the price of diplomatic impotence

Regrettably, the penchant for conflict management reflects reluctance to face unpalatable realities, and unwillingness to accept the need for regrettably harsh, but essential, policies.

In this respect, it is little more than a needless admission of intellectual surrender and operational inadequacy. Thus, when Inbar urges the government to eschew pursuit of “impossible political goals”, this—despite its ring of down-to-earth common-sense—is, to a large degree, misleading. For what is politically “impossible” today reflects in great measure the gross incompetence and impotence of Israel’s public diplomacy efforts—which are little short of a grave dereliction of duty on the part of successive governments.

It is a diplomatic debacle that is endangering the lives of both Israeli citizens and Israeli soldiers—exposing them to recurring dangers because it is considered “politically impossible” to eradicate them.

But what is “politically impossible”, given the current puny public diplomacy effort may well be eminently possible with a far more robust, muscular and assertive endeavor designed to provide the authors of Israel’s national strategy the freedom of action they require to achieve the goals they set for that strategy.

Thus, diplomacy must be developed to facilitate the attainment of strategic goals, not to become a constraint that determines those goals.

Conflict management as “red herring”?

I have argued repeatedly in the past that the function of diplomacy in general and public diplomacy in particular is akin to that of airpower. For just as the traditional role of the air force is to provide ground forces the freedom of action to achieve their objectives, so diplomacy—especially public diplomacy—must provide national leaders the freedom of action to achieve their county’s national goals—including those that pertain to the “West Bank”

Accordingly it should be afforded the kind of resources that befits its vital strategic role. I have advocated allotting 1% of the state budget (i.e. one billion dollars) for a strategic diplomatic offensive. If that were done, one might find that what is politically impossible today, may suddenly become far more possible in the future—and conflict management will been seen to be no more than a misleading red herring.



Dr. Martin Sherman

The writer served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir's government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

To: “Bogy” Yaalon; cc: Dore Gold; Re: Israel’s security imperatives

To: “Bogy” Yaalon; cc: Dore Gold; Re: Israel’s security imperatives
By Martin Sherman ( Guest)

By MARTIN SHERMAN

What are the political ramifications of the security prescription authored by the former Defense Minister and the current Director-General of the Foreign Ministry?

Israel’s security depends on its retaining defensible borders. This means maintaining control over key areas of Judea and Samaria and certainly over an undivided Jerusalem…This is also why it is crucial for Israel to control the strategically vital Jordan Valley. If it does not do so, the situation along the Jordan border may become similar to that of the Gaza-Egyptian border…[S]afeguarding Israel’s vital security requirements is the only path to a viable and durable peace …This includes defensible borders, a demilitarized Palestinian entity, control of a unified airspace with Judea and Samaria, electromagnetic communications frequency security. –Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe “Bogy” Yaalon, Former Defense Minister, and IDF Chief-of-Staff, 2014.

This week, Moshe “Bogy” Yaalon took an additional step to further his declared intention to mount a challenge for the national leadership, after being rather abruptly removed from his position as Defense Minister in a highly controversial move by Benyamin Netanyahu.  He announced the formation of a new non-profit entity, called “Different Leadership” (presumably to convey the idea that should he be at the helm, things would be very different than they are at present under Netanyahu), which will serve as the organizational platform for his public activities in the near future.

Owes a moral debt





I have been personally acquainted with “Bogy” Yaalon for almost a decade and a half, ever since, soon after his appointment as Chief of Staff, he kindly invited me for a one-on-one meeting at the IDF General Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Although I cannot claim that we became “bosom buddies”, over the years I did develop both a sense of personal esteem and liking for him—and greatly appreciated his willingness to make himself available for events I was involved with, whenever I extended an invitation to him.

Yet, for all my personal bias in his favor, I must confess that I have been disturbed, disappointed  and, at times, even dismayed at some of his decisions in the last few months of his term.

However, for the present I do not wish to dwell on the whole gamut of issues of disagreement I have with him but rather focus on one cardinal point, regarding which he owes the Israeli public clarification and the removal of any ambiguity or internal contradictions in his positions concerning it.

This pertains to the question of the future of Judea-Samaria in light of Yaalon’s own very detailed and tightly argued stipulation of Israel’s security imperatives vis-à-vis  these areas.

“Israel’s critical security requirements…”

In 2005, a study began at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), headed by Dr. Dore Gold, currently Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,  to determine what Israel’s critical security requirements in Judea-Samaria were, in order to ensure it defensible borders—as a crucial foundation for a durable peace. The study continued for a good number of years and—in the words of Gold himself in an October 2014 interview to “Mosaic” magazine—produced

“a series of monographs on the subject published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Copiously illustrated with maps and photographs, they featured essays by such prominent authors as Moshe Yaalon, now Israel’s defense minister, Yaakov Amidror, until recently Israel’s national security adviser, and Major General (ret.) Uzi Dayan [former deputy chief of staff and national security adviser].  The latest edition in the series was released this year…”

The endeavor did, indeed, include an impressive array of participants with unimpeachable security and diplomatic credentials. Apart from those mentioned above,  the list included Gold himself, as former ambassador to the UN; Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, former head of Military Intelligence;  the late Meir Rosenne, formerly Israel’s ambassador to France and the US;  Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, formerly head of the IDF’s Intelligence Research and Assessment Division; Brig.-Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel, formerly head of the IDF’s Strategic Planning Division, and Dan Diker, former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress.

“Israel’s security depends on defensible borders

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Ambassador Dore Gold Director General of Israel Foreign Ministry

The underlying theme of the series of studies was that unless Israel’s borders were defensible, the country would be so vulnerable that temptation to launch attacks against it would be irresistibly strong—resulting in inevitable instability, which would preclude any chance of durable peace.

Reflecting this fundamental perspective, in 2014, Gold’s JCPA produced a 160-page ` (an updated version of an earlier 2011 publication), with elaborate maps, photos, and instructive illustrations, entitled “Israel’s Critical Requirements For Defensible Borders: The Foundation For A Secure Peace”. The document (much like its 2011 predecessor), provided detailed explanations of the rationale for these requirements and the imperative for fulfilling them.

Significantly, the authors elaborate on why the decline of the former state-structure and the rise of non-state actors, such as the terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, as well as the proliferation of high trajectory weapons (particularly the more primitive and readily available variety) do not diminish the importance of the territorial component of these requirements—but in fact enhance them. Indeed, Gold himself underscores the “robust” martial capabilities developed by these organizations, which in both Iraq and Syria, have shown themselves capable of defeating regular army divisions—including those equipped with armored forces.

Like Gold, Yaalon was a prominent contributor to the monograph, authoring the 10 page introduction entitled “Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy”, which set the tone for the ensuing chapters.

Among other topics, these dealt with designating the territory across the 1967 Green Line that Israel must retain in any future political arrangement, the rejection of reliance on foreign troops to ensure security and the need for Israel to maintain control of the airspace above, and the electromagnetic spectrum throughout, Judea Samaria.

Graphic visual illustration

To complement the written papers, Gold’s JCPA also produced a series of incisive videos to illustrate the points made in the study, which were sharply critical of the conventional paradigm of territorial withdrawals as the sine qua non for peace.  For example Maj-Gen (res) Uzi Dayan devoted a considerable portion of his analysis to “The Implosion of the Land for Peace Formula and its Consequences” and “Defensible Borders in the Age of Rocket Terror”.

Arguably the most notable of these videos was the five minute long “Israel’s  Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace”, which visually encapsulates the essence of the major arguments made in the more detailed written work and conveys them graphically to the public.

The video enjoyed wide public exposure, totaling over 2 million views in its various postings on YouTube.  It vividly demonstrates what Israel’s “critical security needs” are—and the deadly dangers almost certain to materialize if they are not met. It condenses the findings of JCPA studies into four concise points:

To defend itself Israel must retain control over:

– The Jordan Valley

– Key areas of the mountain ridge [in Judea-Samaria]

– The air space over the “West Bank”

– Its main arteries of transportation [dominated by the western slopes of said mountain ridge]

Several participants—including Yaalon (see introductory excerpt)—stressed the importance of retaining control over the electromagnetic spectrum as well. Thus Brig.Gen. (res) Dekel cautions: “Israel must guarantee that the Palestinians do not exploit their topographical advantage to block or neutralize Israel’s communication systems, or to gather intelligence on their own behalf or on behalf of hostile states” and Uzi Dayan warns:  “Western analysts…predict that the electromagnetic spectrum will become one of the main targets of future weapons, stripping away the advantages in surveillance”

Summarizing JCPA’s security prescription:

Accordingly, the JCPA security prescription reduces to the following:
To fulfill its critical security imperatives, Israel must continue to control:

– The Western slopes of the mountain ridge in Judea-Samaria to protect the heavily populated urban coastal plain, its only international airport, major infrastructure installations such as power generation and desalination plants; its main transportation arteries—including the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway (Route 1), the  Coastal Highway (Route 2) and the adjacent Route 4; as well as the Trans-Israel Highway (Route 6)

– The Eastern slopes of the mountain ridge in Judea-Samaria (including the Jordan Valley) to contend with any aggression from the East, whether future hostile military action, terrorist infiltration, or smuggling of arms and ammunition, as is the case in Gaza. This is becoming particularly acute as the current regime in Jordan appears to be increasingly threatened by ascendant Islamist adversaries.

– The airspace above, and the electromagnetic spectrum throughout, Judea-Samaria to facilitate the ability of the IAF to intercept any hostile aerial intrusion before Israeli population centers are threatened; to forestall disruption of Israeli communication and surveillance systems; and to deny such capabilities from foreign entities, inimical to Israel.

These are the core elements of the security prescription that Yaalon and Gold have subscribed to both implicitly and explicitly. Their commitment to it has—or at least should have—self-evident ramifications.

JCPA’s security prescription: What are the political ramifications?

For anyone with a smidgeon of familiarity with the Arab-Israeli conflict, in general, and the Israel-Palestinian one, in particular, one thing should be undeniably clear: If Israel is to fulfill what the JCPA prescription deems to be its “critical security needs”, the chances of reaching a political resolution through negotiation are—to greatly overstate the case—somewhere between extremely remote to imperceptibly slim.

After all, if Israel is to retain control of both the Western and the Eastern slopes of Judea-Samaria, the sky above it, and the “ether” that surrounds it, then there is precious little room for instituting Palestinian self-rule—much less sovereignty.

Under these conditions, there is equally precious little chance of finding any Palestinian negotiating partner, who would even contemplate acquiescing to such conditions—much less signing an agreement to comply with them.

Accordingly, given the persuasive case the JCPA experts make for their security prescription, Israel is confronted with the predicament of having to decide what the political ramifications that arise from it are.

What kind of political arrangements, if any, does it facilitate? Should Israel forego some, or all, of its critical security requirement to maintain the hope of a negotiated settlement? If it does, how can any future Israeli government justify playing “Russian roulette” with its citizens’ lives for the sake of such a forlorn hope?  If not, what will be the fate of the Palestinian-Arabs, resident in Judea-Samaria?

Need for urgent debate

These and other trenchant questions emerge inevitably from the JCPA’s security prescription—precisely because it is so compelling. They are questions that its authors have a duty to address—precisely because they have made their case so compellingly.

The need to debate them is urgent.  After all, if the land-for-peace concept has indeed “imploded” permanently, what is to take its place?  How is any alternative to be advanced and implemented? What are the ramifications for the future of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews – and for the Zionist ideal?

In recent months I have tried to prod several of the study’s participants into initiating discussion of these questions but sadly found little enthusiasm for broaching them. Indeed, quite the opposite, there seems to be a surprising (or not) reluctance to do so.

I am left to hope that perhaps this essay may pique some interest in projecting the political ramifications of JCPA’s persuasive security prescription into the public discourse; and that Yaalon’s newly formed non-profit “Different Leadership” will take the lead—by picking up the gauntlet…

 Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org)

To: “Bogy” Yaalon; cc: Dore Gold; Re: Israel’s security imperatives

To: “Bogy” Yaalon; cc: Dore Gold; Re: Israel’s security imperatives
by JMA on August 18, 2016 in Opinion
9

By MARTIN SHERMAN

What are the political ramifications of the security prescription authored by the former Defense Minister and the current Director-General of the Foreign Ministry?

Israel’s security depends on its retaining defensible borders. This means maintaining control over key areas of Judea and Samaria and certainly over an undivided Jerusalem…This is also why it is crucial for Israel to control the strategically vital Jordan Valley. If it does not do so, the situation along the Jordan border may become similar to that of the Gaza-Egyptian border…[S]afeguarding Israel’s vital security requirements is the only path to a viable and durable peace …This includes defensible borders, a demilitarized Palestinian entity, control of a unified airspace with Judea and Samaria, electromagnetic communications frequency security. –Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe “Bogy” Yaalon, Former Defense Minister, and IDF Chief-of-Staff, 2014.

This week, Moshe “Bogy” Yaalon took an additional step to further his declared intention to mount a challenge for the national leadership, after being rather abruptly removed from his position as Defense Minister in a highly controversial move by Benyamin Netanyahu.  He announced the formation of a new non-profit entity, called “Different Leadership” (presumably to convey the idea that should he be at the helm, things would be very different than they are at present under Netanyahu), which will serve as the organizational platform for his public activities in the near future.

Owes a moral debt





I have been personally acquainted with “Bogy” Yaalon for almost a decade and a half, ever since, soon after his appointment as Chief of Staff, he kindly invited me for a one-on-one meeting at the IDF General Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Although I cannot claim that we became “bosom buddies”, over the years I did develop both a sense of personal esteem and liking for him—and greatly appreciated his willingness to make himself available for events I was involved with, whenever I extended an invitation to him.

Yet, for all my personal bias in his favor, I must confess that I have been disturbed, disappointed  and, at times, even dismayed at some of his decisions in the last few months of his term.

However, for the present I do not wish to dwell on the whole gamut of issues of disagreement I have with him but rather focus on one cardinal point, regarding which he owes the Israeli public clarification and the removal of any ambiguity or internal contradictions in his positions concerning it.

This pertains to the question of the future of Judea-Samaria in light of Yaalon’s own very detailed and tightly argued stipulation of Israel’s security imperatives vis-à-vis  these areas.

“Israel’s critical security requirements…”

In 2005, a study began at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), headed by Dr. Dore Gold, currently Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,  to determine what Israel’s critical security requirements in Judea-Samaria were, in order to ensure it defensible borders—as a crucial foundation for a durable peace. The study continued for a good number of years and—in the words of Gold himself in an October 2014 interview to “Mosaic” magazine—produced

“a series of monographs on the subject published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Copiously illustrated with maps and photographs, they featured essays by such prominent authors as Moshe Yaalon, now Israel’s defense minister, Yaakov Amidror, until recently Israel’s national security adviser, and Major General (ret.) Uzi Dayan [former deputy chief of staff and national security adviser].  The latest edition in the series was released this year…”

The endeavor did, indeed, include an impressive array of participants with unimpeachable security and diplomatic credentials. Apart from those mentioned above,  the list included Gold himself, as former ambassador to the UN; Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, former head of Military Intelligence;  the late Meir Rosenne, formerly Israel’s ambassador to France and the US;  Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, formerly head of the IDF’s Intelligence Research and Assessment Division; Brig.-Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel, formerly head of the IDF’s Strategic Planning Division, and Dan Diker, former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress.

“Israel’s security depends on defensible borders

”


Ambassador Dore Gold Director General of Israel Foreign Ministry

The underlying theme of the series of studies was that unless Israel’s borders were defensible, the country would be so vulnerable that temptation to launch attacks against it would be irresistibly strong—resulting in inevitable instability, which would preclude any chance of durable peace.

Reflecting this fundamental perspective, in 2014, Gold’s JCPA produced a 160-page ` (an updated version of an earlier 2011 publication), with elaborate maps, photos, and instructive illustrations, entitled “Israel’s Critical Requirements For Defensible Borders: The Foundation For A Secure Peace”. The document (much like its 2011 predecessor), provided detailed explanations of the rationale for these requirements and the imperative for fulfilling them.

Significantly, the authors elaborate on why the decline of the former state-structure and the rise of non-state actors, such as the terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, as well as the proliferation of high trajectory weapons (particularly the more primitive and readily available variety) do not diminish the importance of the territorial component of these requirements—but in fact enhance them. Indeed, Gold himself underscores the “robust” martial capabilities developed by these organizations, which in both Iraq and Syria, have shown themselves capable of defeating regular army divisions—including those equipped with armored forces.

Like Gold, Yaalon was a prominent contributor to the monograph, authoring the 10 page introduction entitled “Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy”, which set the tone for the ensuing chapters.

Among other topics, these dealt with designating the territory across the 1967 Green Line that Israel must retain in any future political arrangement, the rejection of reliance on foreign troops to ensure security and the need for Israel to maintain control of the airspace above, and the electromagnetic spectrum throughout, Judea Samaria.

Graphic visual illustration

To complement the written papers, Gold’s JCPA also produced a series of incisive videos to illustrate the points made in the study, which were sharply critical of the conventional paradigm of territorial withdrawals as the sine qua non for peace.  For example Maj-Gen (res) Uzi Dayan devoted a considerable portion of his analysis to “The Implosion of the Land for Peace Formula and its Consequences” and “Defensible Borders in the Age of Rocket Terror”.

Arguably the most notable of these videos was the five minute long “Israel’s  Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace”, which visually encapsulates the essence of the major arguments made in the more detailed written work and conveys them graphically to the public.

The video enjoyed wide public exposure, totaling over 2 million views in its various postings on YouTube.  It vividly demonstrates what Israel’s “critical security needs” are—and the deadly dangers almost certain to materialize if they are not met. It condenses the findings of JCPA studies into four concise points:

To defend itself Israel must retain control over:

– The Jordan Valley

– Key areas of the mountain ridge [in Judea-Samaria]

– The air space over the “West Bank”

– Its main arteries of transportation [dominated by the western slopes of said mountain ridge]

Several participants—including Yaalon (see introductory excerpt)—stressed the importance of retaining control over the electromagnetic spectrum as well. Thus Brig.Gen. (res) Dekel cautions: “Israel must guarantee that the Palestinians do not exploit their topographical advantage to block or neutralize Israel’s communication systems, or to gather intelligence on their own behalf or on behalf of hostile states” and Uzi Dayan warns:  “Western analysts…predict that the electromagnetic spectrum will become one of the main targets of future weapons, stripping away the advantages in surveillance”

Summarizing JCPA’s security prescription:

Accordingly, the JCPA security prescription reduces to the following:
To fulfill its critical security imperatives, Israel must continue to control:

– The Western slopes of the mountain ridge in Judea-Samaria to protect the heavily populated urban coastal plain, its only international airport, major infrastructure installations such as power generation and desalination plants; its main transportation arteries—including the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway (Route 1), the  Coastal Highway (Route 2) and the adjacent Route 4; as well as the Trans-Israel Highway (Route 6)

– The Eastern slopes of the mountain ridge in Judea-Samaria (including the Jordan Valley) to contend with any aggression from the East, whether future hostile military action, terrorist infiltration, or smuggling of arms and ammunition, as is the case in Gaza. This is becoming particularly acute as the current regime in Jordan appears to be increasingly threatened by ascendant Islamist adversaries.

– The airspace above, and the electromagnetic spectrum throughout, Judea-Samaria to facilitate the ability of the IAF to intercept any hostile aerial intrusion before Israeli population centers are threatened; to forestall disruption of Israeli communication and surveillance systems; and to deny such capabilities from foreign entities, inimical to Israel.

These are the core elements of the security prescription that Yaalon and Gold have subscribed to both implicitly and explicitly. Their commitment to it has—or at least should have—self-evident ramifications.

JCPA’s security prescription: What are the political ramifications?

For anyone with a smidgeon of familiarity with the Arab-Israeli conflict, in general, and the Israel-Palestinian one, in particular, one thing should be undeniably clear: If Israel is to fulfill what the JCPA prescription deems to be its “critical security needs”, the chances of reaching a political resolution through negotiation are—to greatly overstate the case—somewhere between extremely remote to imperceptibly slim.

After all, if Israel is to retain control of both the Western and the Eastern slopes of Judea-Samaria, the sky above it, and the “ether” that surrounds it, then there is precious little room for instituting Palestinian self-rule—much less sovereignty.

Under these conditions, there is equally precious little chance of finding any Palestinian negotiating partner, who would even contemplate acquiescing to such conditions—much less signing an agreement to comply with them.

Accordingly, given the persuasive case the JCPA experts make for their security prescription, Israel is confronted with the predicament of having to decide what the political ramifications that arise from it are.

What kind of political arrangements, if any, does it facilitate? Should Israel forego some, or all, of its critical security requirement to maintain the hope of a negotiated settlement? If it does, how can any future Israeli government justify playing “Russian roulette” with its citizens’ lives for the sake of such a forlorn hope?  If not, what will be the fate of the Palestinian-Arabs, resident in Judea-Samaria?

Need for urgent debate

These and other trenchant questions emerge inevitably from the JCPA’s security prescription—precisely because it is so compelling. They are questions that its authors have a duty to address—precisely because they have made their case so compellingly.

The need to debate them is urgent.  After all, if the land-for-peace concept has indeed “imploded” permanently, what is to take its place?  How is any alternative to be advanced and implemented? What are the ramifications for the future of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews – and for the Zionist ideal?

In recent months I have tried to prod several of the study’s participants into initiating discussion of these questions but sadly found little enthusiasm for broaching them. Indeed, quite the opposite, there seems to be a surprising (or not) reluctance to do so.

I am left to hope that perhaps this essay may pique some interest in projecting the political ramifications of JCPA’s persuasive security prescription into the public discourse; and that Yaalon’s newly formed non-profit “Different Leadership” will take the lead—by picking up the gauntlet…

 Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org)