Introduction: Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy A jetliner at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv as seen from a nearby Palestinian village in the West Bank. CONTENTS Introduction: Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon Regional Overview: How Defensible Borders Remain Vital for Israel Ambassador Dore Gold Defensible Borders to Ensure Israel’s Future Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan The Risks of Foreign Peacekeeping Forces in the West Bank Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror A Long-Term Perspective on Israel’s Security Needs Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser Key Principles of a Demilitarized Palestinian State Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze’evi Farkash Control of Territorial Airspace and the Electromagnetic Spectrum Brig.-Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel Understanding UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, on the Middle East Ambassador Meir Rosenne The U.S. and Israel’s Struggle Against the 1967 Lines Ambassador Dore Gold Israel’s Return to Security-Based Diplomacy Dan Diker About the Authors APPENDICES UNSCR 242 (1967) UNSCR 338 (1973) President Bush’s Letter to Prime Minister Sharon (2004) Congress Approves President Bush’s Commitment to Israel (2004) Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech at Bar-Ilan (2009) Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech to a Joint Session of Congress (2011) MAPS Israel and the Middle East Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (pre-1967 Lines) Israel’s Strategic Vulnerability from the West Bank Gaza “Hamastan” in the West Bank: Threats to Israeli Population Centers Israel’s Defense Line: The Jordan Rift Valley with the Steep Eastern Slopes of the West Bank Israel’s Airspace Vulnerabilities: The Limited Time for Interdicting Hostile Aircraft RELATED PUBLICATIONS Defensible Borders on the Golan Heights Implications of a Palestinian Corridor Across Israel Israel’s Right to Secure Boundaries Introduction: Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon Map 1 – Israel and the Middle East Map 1 – Israel and the Middle East Israel’s vital security requirements and a conditional endorsement of a Palestinian state were laid out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his first major policy speech at Bar-Ilan University, just two months after he took office in April 2009. Though at first glance it may appear as though Netanyahu articulated a major shift in Israel’s policy, the ideas he endorsed represent a restoration of Israel’s traditional security-based approach to achieving a lasting peace. This policy has been based on the government’s understanding of the strategic environment in the Middle East and the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That is, since the beginning of the conflict, even before the founding of the state and all the way through the Oslo Accords, the readiness of the Zionist leadership to reach an historic compromise has failed to convince the Palestinians to forgo their commitment to “armed struggle” and other forms of opposition to the right of the Jewish people to live peacefully in a nation-state of their own in their historic home, the Land of Israel. This background supports this urgently needed policy study, Israel’s Critical Requirements for Defensible Borders: The Foundation for a Secure Peace. Israel’s security requirements in any agreement with the Palestinians are presented here by some of Israel’s best military minds, who have experienced first-hand the dangers the Jewish state faces on all fronts, particularly in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and from groups and regimes sponsored by Iran. Throughout my military career, that included the Oslo “peace process” in the 1990s, I dealt with Palestinian and radical Islamic terror as an IDF officer in a variety of posts. I served as head of Military Intelligence, Deputy Chief of Staff, and then as Chief of Staff of the IDF during operations against the Palestinian Authority’s paramilitary forces, Fatah militias, and Hamas forces in Gaza and Judea and Samaria from 2000 to 2005. The hard reality of these experiences taught me the importance of confronting security threats, ensuring the appropriate security protection systems, and not succumbing to wishful thinking about Israel’s enemies. Today, the relative calm on Israel’s borders and in Judea and Samaria should not be misinterpreted. Notwithstanding security improvements by the Palestinian National Security Forces trained by Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton under the U.S.-backed security reform program, the IDF has been working around the clock to uproot the terror infrastructure in many Palestinian areas, while Iranian-backed Hamas has rebuilt its military capabilities in Gaza, as has Iran’s Hizbullah proxy throughout Lebanon. It is with these considerations in mind that Israel must approach the establishment of a prospective Palestinian state. This study is a corrective to the widely-held view that peace requires Israel to withdraw to the perilous 1949 armistice lines. These lines would invite war by denying the Jewish state strategic depth and topographical protection. This study is a corrective to the widely-held view in many international quarters and even in limited circles in Israel about the “need” and even the “inevitability” that peace requires Israel to withdraw to the perilous 1949 armistice lines (erroneously called the 1967 “borders”). These borders would not achieve peace – they would weaken Israel and invite war by denying the Jewish state strategic depth and topographical protection against Palestinian rocket and other attacks. The 1949 armistice lines enabled Israel’s enemies to deploy and operate in dangerously close proximity to Israel’s main population centers to such an extent that they constituted an existential threat to Israel. Brief Historical Context Israeli policy immediately following the Six-Day War in 1967, and up to the Oslo Accords in 1993, centered on finding a formula that would enable Israel to avoid ruling over the Palestinians, without returning to the unstable pre-war ‘67 lines. It was on this basis that Israel did not annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, yet at the same time did not speak of a Palestinian state within those territories. In fact, nothing that Israel did or said in those years – including at the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, which called for “autonomy for the Palestinian people,” and later, in 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin entered into the Oslo Accords – constituted intent or consent to establish a Palestinian state within the pre-war ‘67 lines. Those Israeli leaders understood that these lines were indefensible. What Rabin envisioned for Judea and Samaria was something along the lines of the “Allon Plan,” originally drafted by Yigal Allon, Rabin’s former commander in the pre-state Palmach, and former foreign minister under Rabin. Drafted shortly after the Six-Day War, the Allon Plan called for Israel to retain sovereignty in some of the territories it came to control in Judea and Samaria, but not to settle in areas with large Arab populations. The plan delineated a security border extending from the Jordan Valley up the steep eastern slopes of the Judea-Samaria mountain ridge and retained sovereignty over Jerusalem as Israel’s united capital. The Allon Plan served as the security reference point for Israeli governments from 1967 until far into the 1990s. Rabin was very clear on the need to provide Palestinian autonomy, yet maintain defensible borders for Israel. In his speech before the Knesset on October 5, 1995, on the ratification of the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement – a month before he was assassinated – he stated: “We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 line.” In the same speech Rabin emphasized that “The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”1 He added that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s united capital. Map 2 – Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (pre-67 lines) Map 2 – Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (pre-67 lines) The erosion of the concept of defensible borders began in 2000 when Prime Minister Ehud Barak went to the Camp David summit with PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton to negotiate an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Sensing that the Israeli public was ripe for substantial concessions in exchange for a peace agreement, Barak decided to put the Palestinians to the test. He did this by abandoning defensible borders and waiting to see whether Arafat would accept Israel’s unprecedented peace offer, and if not, “expose his true colors.” The result was the latter. However, in doing so, Israel paid a heavy price – one that it continues to pay today. Barak inaugurated a new land-for-peace paradigm that was not rooted in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which had governed all Arab-Israeli peace initiatives since the Six-Day War. Instead, from that point on, Israel was expected to live within the curtailed borders that Barak had proposed. Even more far-reaching, the Palestinian leadership succeeded in establishing in the minds of Western policy makers the idea that the “1967 lines” –that is, the 1949 armistice lines – should be the new frame of reference for all future negotiations, as opposed to the notion of “secure and recognized boundaries” which had been unanimously approved by the UN Security Council after the Six-Day War. In the aftermath of Arafat’s rejection of Ehud Barak’s peace offer, the Palestinian suicide bombing war that followed, Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the Second Lebanon War, the failed Annapolis talks, and the 2008-9 war in Gaza, the Netanyahu government is readopting the notion that safeguarding Israel’s vital security requirements is the only path to a viable and durable peace with our Palestinian neighbors. This includes defensible borders, a demilitarized Palestinian entity, control of a unified airspace with Judea and Samaria, electromagnetic communications frequency security, and other guarantees. This marks a shift away from the previously held misperception that territorial withdrawals would make room for a peace deal, and that such a deal would bring security. Prime Minister Netanyahu is articulating a broad Israeli consensus that has been forged in the trauma of recent events for a security-first approach as the only avenue to real peace. The return to a security-first approach is firmly rooted in Israel’s longstanding commitment to defend itself by itself. Israel has never asked any foreign power to endanger its troops in its defense. Perhaps the most important element of a viable security framework is the requirement that the Palestinians at all levels of society inculcate in their people a culture of peace that forswears indoctrination and incitement to violence and terror, and accepts the Jewish people’s 3,300-year connection to the Land of Israel
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:19:50 +0000
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