William Mehlman
“There is no ‘there’ there,?? Gertrude Stein famously remarked of her Oakland, California birthplace.
The “there,?? whose thereness is conjectural at best in the minds of half the Israeli populace, is Judea and Samaria. Its definition is also a matter of conjecture. When former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert contemplated the 98.1 percent of it he sought to lay at the feet of Mahmoud Abbas in the mother of all “confidence-building measures,?? he thought of places like Yitzhar and Eli and Tapuach. Mr. Abbas, who has been scouting digs in Ma’ale Adumim, French Hill, Gilo, Givat Ze’ev and other Jerusalem neighborhoods for himself and his PA nomenclatura must find that amusing.
Ironically, it is precisely in their disaffirmation that Judea and Samaria project a “thereness?? too compelling to be ignored by even those who would brave a swim through shark-infested waters before violating the sacro-sanctity of the 1949 “green line.?? Member of the Knesset Benny Elon, head of the National Union coalition, put his finger on it when he observed that “if Israel will not be in Judea and Samaria, Hamas will be there.?? Those who find internalizing the thereness of a “West Bank?? under Israeli authority too much of a strain on their delicate psyches will have to deal with it under the authority of Hamas.
As a retrofitted Kadima, headed by Tzipi Livni proceeds along its determined course of turning “red lines?? into pink lines and pink lines into no lines, it is becoming increasingly hard to remember that red lines ever existed in Israel. In fact, they were once so deeply ingrained in the national consciousness that they could be ticked off by any reasonably literate taxi driver.
The reddest of those lines, defining the absolute limits to Israel’s territorial flexibility, oddly enough were drawn not by the IDF but by the U.S. Defense Department, specifically in a June 29, 1967 memorandum prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) under its chairman, General Earle G. Wheeler . The memorandum, a terse two-page affair with a three- page appendix and a strategic map of Israel and its immediate neighbors, was prepared in response to the Defense Secretary’s request for a post-Six Day War assessment of the “minimum territory…Israel might be justified in retaining in order to permit a more effective defense against possible conventional Arab arrack and terrorist raids.??
A copy of that document is admittedly easier to come by these days than a copy of the Camp David Accords with Egypt, but not all that easier. While the latter merely exposes the fraudulent “normalcy?? Israel bought at the cost of the Sinai, its oil resources and the two most valuable military air bases in the Middle East, the Joint Chief’s memorandum blows every Kadima argument for redrawing the map of Israel clear out of the water.
As stated by the Joint Chiefs, none of whom were reported to have been Zionists, “militarily defensible borders…based on acceptable tactical principles, such as control of commanding terrain, use of natural obstacles, elimination of enemy-held salients and provisions of defense in-depth for important facilities and installations?? would require Israel to hold on to all of Judea south of Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, key portions of the Sinai, the Golan Heights and more than half of Samaria, contiguous with a thickening of the Jerusalem corridor.
From the tenor of their findings, the notion of creating a PLO state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would have been as remote from the thinking of the Joint Chiefs as a rocket trip to Mars. Indeed, as Bernard Smith, a military analyst with the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense observed in a Jerusalem Post article some 30 years later, “the U.S. rejected the idea of a PLO state until the Oslo Accords forced the State Department to reverse its position. The intention to create an Arab state implicit in the accords opened the competition between the U.S., the European Community and a half dozen Middle Eastern countries for influence in a weak, dependent, irredentist country should it become a reality.??
Little wonder that the Joint Chiefs’ memorandum was buried under a “classified?? blanket for 16 years after it was written, ignored by eight U.S. presidents. The concept of a PLO state to rule the areas enumerated as critical to Israel’s defense by America’s top military commanders may have been the handiwork of Israel’s unhinged Left, but as Smith points out, “the U.S. doctrine of withdrawal almost to the 1949 armistice lines led to Resolution 242 adopted by the UN five months after the Johnson administration received the JCS memo. The fact was that the military logic of Israel’s territorial defense requirements was of small consequence when compared with the need to pacify the Arab countries…?? The JCS memorandum thus became the skunk at the garden party.
The skunk may have been locked away, but it refused to die. Lt. General Thomas Kelly, a diplomatically insouciant armored corps officer and one time director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, trotted it out for a public airing in 1991, shortly after the Gulf War. Kelly had the temerity to attach the label “critical terrain?? to the mountains of Samaria and Judea as well as their approaches. “If an enemy secures these passes,?? he declared, “Jerusalem and all of Israel becomes uncovered. Without the West Bank, Israel is only eight miles wide at its narrowest point. That makes it indefensible.??
Indefensible it may be, but hasn’t Israel’s governing mindset long distanced itself from the lines of strategic defensibility perceived by Kelly in 1991 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff 25 years earlier? A defensible Israel? There is no “there?? there, Ehud Olmert informed us in an IBA-TV Channel 2 interview days prior to Kadima’s recent primary election. “Delusional?? was his word for what he termed “the vision of a Greater Israel.?? By that he was referring to an Israel in continued control of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights. The Gaza Strip and key portions of the Sinai that the Joint Chiefs urged Israel to retain after the Six-Day War are, of course, long gone.
Whatever differences Mrs. Livni might have with Mr. Olmert, they are one in their disdain of strategic depth as pertinent to Israel’s physical well being. In place of defensible borders, Livni would rely on “dialogue,?? albeit of a highly selective nature, to deal with the nation’s security concerns. In a letter to 70,000 Kadima members on the eve of the party’s primary, the then Foreign Minister promised to arrive at a permanent rapprochement with the “pragmatic Arabs, while struggling determinedly against the Palestinian extremists.?? This, she assured them, will “allow the State of Israel to continue to be Jewish and democratic, with a Jewish majority living securely within final borders.??
The Knesset, which occasionally rouses from its customary torpor to sound an alarm bell, has responded to the Olmert-Livni redefinition of defensibility by approving an amendment to its “National Referendum Bill?? requiring a plebiscite prior to the granting of concessions on any territory “under Israel’s legal jurisdiction, including Jerusalem.?? While that might put a leash on Mahmoud Abbas’ demand for riparian rights in the Dead Sea and the Kinneret, the amendment will provide no barrier to his claims on Judea and Samaria, since the State of Israel, in its greater wisdom, never established ??legal jurisdiction?? over either region.
Unfortunately for Israel, its disdain for “facts on the ground?? is not shared by any of the other players in the Middle East. Jordan, in the face of the Jewish state’s paralysis in response to Hamas’ consolidation of its position in Gaza, has initiated talks with the terrorist entity, reversing a 10-year ban on any dealings with its principals. There is no joy in Amman over this development, but as Jonathan Spyer, a senior Global Research Fellow at the International Affairs Center in Herzliyah notes, “in the zero sum terms of Middle East power brokering, there is no force currently both willing and able to deprive [Hamas] of power. Jordan is therefore adjusting to facts on the ground.?? Another fact on the ground King Abdullah could hardly ignore is the close link between Hamas and Sheikh Zahi Bani Irsheid, head of the Islamic Action Front, Jordan’s main opposition movement.
What Spyer calls “the continued decline into irrelevance of Fatah and the West Bank Palestinian Authority?? is another factor propelling Hamas’ rising fortunes in the Arab Middle East. From this perspective, he avers, “the desire of the U.S. administration and the Olmert government to reach an agreement of some kind with the Abbas administration seems detached from reality.??
Having re-engineered reality to accommodate its vision of the 2006 debacle in Lebanon as an accomplishment and its planned retreat from Judea, Samaria and major portions of Jerusalem as a guarrantor of Israel’s survival, the Olmert-Livni government has transmuted detachment into an art form. David B. Rivkin, Jr., a prominent Washington attorney and member of the Reagan administration’s brain trust observes of the defeat in Lebanon that “by demonstrating Israel’s weakness …the Olmert government has seriously depleted the reservoir of strategic toughness that generations of Israeli soldiers and statesmen amassed at great cost. A credible deterrent takes decades to build up but moments to squander.??
Then again, perhaps a nation that has done little more than shrug at the massive rearming of a terrorist Hezbollah that rained 4,000 rockets down on its citizenry no longer feels the need for the kind of “credible deterrent?? to which Rifkin refers. Perhaps, as Ha’aretz columnist Yoel Marcus recently averred ,we have now reached the point where “the public absolutely must get used to the idea that in any military operation, war or deterioration in Israel’s security, the home front will always be the main front…Those who still believe that Israel can be destroyed, therefore, will invest all their energy in attacking the home front… Israel’s citizens have turned into soldiers without uniforms. It is their steadfastness and stamina that will determine whether we win or lose.??
To which, we might all add:“lots ‘a luck.??
*William Mehlman represents AFSI in Israel and is co-editor of the Jerusalem-based internet magazine ZionNet (www.Zionnet.net)
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