A Durable Peace

by Benjamin Netanyahu

  The age of missiles has introduced not only long-range missiles but also short-range missiles. For these weapons, too, territory is a vital consideration. I am referring to such weapons as SAM-7s and shoulder-fired American Stinger missiles that can down helicopters and fighter aircraft with devastating effectiveness. Just how effectively they can do this had been seen in the war in Afghanistan by the mid-1980s. The mujahideen had been all but crushed by the Soviet army and air force when the United States decided to supply them with Stingers. This was the turning point of the war. A few years later, Soviet air power in Afghanistan was almost obliterated by peasants firing sophisticated missiles from mountaintops. Israel has recently had to contend with thousands of youngsters throwing stones on the hills of Samaria. Imagine the situation if those youngsters were replaced by thousands of PLO fighters carrying not rocks but rockets, which could shoot down Israeli military and civilian aircraft. Israel’s international airport, after all, is two miles from the West Bank, and all except one of the Jewish state’s military airfields are within range of various short-range missiles that could be easily placed on the West Bank, crippling Israel’s military precisely as the mujahideen crippled the Soviet military. Of course, such weapons were not available to the Arabs when they controlled the West Bank twenty-five years ago. Today courtesy of years of Soviet supplies, they are a key component of their arsenals. And there is a growing fear in the West that the deadly Stingers that were supplied to the Afghanis, Kuwaitis, and others have been making their way into the hands of terrorists—such as the PLO.

  The lesson for a small country like Israel is this: In the age of missiles territory counts more, not less. Long-range missiles increase the need for mobilization time, and short-range missiles can destroy strategic targets within their reach. For both reasons, the control of a contiguous buffer area becomes more, not less, important. This is the conclusion of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, whose left-leaning sympathies stand in sharp contrast to its military recommendations:

  Leaving politics aside for a moment, we can maintain that though surface-to-surface missiles cannot be stopped by territory,… we do have to recognize that missiles cannot win a war…. Territory is especially vital when it permits our forces to “buy” time: in case of a surprise attack, this enables us to mobilize our reserves and bring them to the front lines before the aggressor succeeds in taking any part of our vital area. 11

  Israel does not ask for additional territory, only that the present strategic depth (and strategic height) of the West Bank be left intact. Of course, for a country the size of the United States, ceding even a large parcel of territory, like a corner of North Dakota, would not appreciably endanger the country’s security. There would be plenty of spare strategic depth left (and yet Americans find it impossible to imagine ceding any part of America to anyone). But imagine an enemy state across the Potomac, within sniper range of the capital—and you begin to understand why Israelis feel that territory contiguous to strategic targets is vital as well (see Map 9).

  We can now understand the full danger that a Palestinian state on the West Bank would pose. Such a state could certainly have weapons, including sophisticated ones, brought into it. How could Israel prevent it? The common response that advocates of Israeli territorial concessions make is that the areas vacated by Israel will be “demilitarized.” But traditional concepts of demilitarization cannot be applied here, for two reasons. First, demilitarizing the area against the introduction of smaller weapons is impossible. Unless Israel physically controls the entrances to the West Bank, it cannot possibly prevent the smuggling of missiles and other weapons the size of a suitcase. These can be brought in by trucks or even cars, or flown in by civilian aircraft. Even today, when Israel fully controls access to the West Bank and strip-searches the vehicles entering it, it cannot prevent the smuggling of various weapons into the territories. Imagine what would happen if it were to vacate the territories and such controls were removed. In an open, empty, unpopulated area like the Sinai, demilitarization can be enforced against the entry of tanks or artillery pieces into an area, and if small weapons were somehow smuggled in, they would be too far away from any target to be effective. But demilitarization is woefully ineffective against the miniaturized weapons of today and tomorrow, which can be smuggled into a populated territory such as the West Bank with relative ease, threatening vital Israeli ground and air installations. Demilitarization of the territories is therefore not an answer. Where hostility is so deeply rooted, arms so readily available, and distances so compressed, a “demilitarized zone” is wishful thinking.

  Second, demilitarization could not be relied upon to protect Israel for political reasons. For it is clear that any space from which Israel withdrew would rapidly be filled by a PLO state, no matter what political figleaf were chosen to obscure the fact (such as “confederation” with Jordan). The advocates of the demilitarization of the West Bank are therefore talking about demilitarizing an entire sovereign state—something unheard-of in the annals of nations, and for good reason: It cannot be sustained. Demilitarization in certain zones is hard enough to maintain for prolonged periods. For example, the demilitarization of the German Rhineland following World War I was intended to protect France against future German aggression. But as neither Britain nor France was prepared to go to war to enforce it, demilitarization proved to be no barrier to remilitarization when Hitler chose to abrogate the commitment.

  The fate of past promises of partial demilitarization by Arab states is no more encouraging. King Hussein of Jordan had agreed to American conditions that he not deploy on the West Bank the Patton tanks, which the United States had supplied him, but in the weeks before the Six Day War these very tanks were moved into position facing Jerusalem anyway Similarly, Egypt broke its arms-control agreement with Israel not to move antiaircraft batteries to the Suez Canal prior to the Yom Kippur War. Since dictators have no qualms about violating demilitarization as the need arises, it makes no sense to agree to demilitarization in cases in which a sudden remilitarization would jeopardize the country’s security.

  Yet none of these efforts at partial demilitarization compares to the demilitarization of an entire country. Israel could not strip-search every truck and every car that went into a hypothetical Palestinian state on the West Bank. Nor, obviously, could it intercept every civilian plane that came from Libya or Afghanistan, landing it first in Tel Aviv, then taking it apart piece by piece before letting it continue on its way. What country would allow such gross interference with its international commerce and transport? The Palestinian state would claim the right that every state claims to control its borders. Furthermore, it would demand the right of self-defense—without which it would immediately fall prey to the intrigues and intimidation of other Arab states and terror organizations—which would very soon mean the establishment of its own army Further still, it would demand the removal from its soil of any encampments or enclaves of a neighbor’s army

  Is there any doubt that a Palestinian state would have the backing of the entire Arab world and of many in the international community for such demands? The fervent desire by some to abandon the West Bank cannot be a substitute for clear thinking, and the first order of clarity is to recognize that the concept of demilitarization may sound like a useful panacea to offer an Israel anxious about its security (some Israelis are willing to prescribe it for themselves), but it cannot hold over time, indeed not even for a short time. Even if some Palestinian Arabs could be persuaded initially to accept demilitarization, this commitment is not one that could be expected to last long, and Israel would find itself unable to reassert its military authority in the area. Crossing into the West Bank in reaction to a violation of demilitarization would mean crossing an international frontier that could well be guaranteed by other powers. Israel would then risk triggering a full-scale Arab-Israeli war and international sanctions.

  The impossibility of maintaining demilitarization is even more evident when one
considers the strategy of the PLO’s Phased Plan: Get a PLO state, arm it, launch terrorist attacks from it to provoke an Israeli response, prod the Arab world into defending Palestine, and thereby set off the decisive confrontation. In addition to the Palestinian forces that would fire rockets from the mountaintops on a vulnerable Israel below, one cannot rule out the entry of Arab troops from across the Jordan to assist their brethren. They might even be flown into the West Bank hilltops in helicopters before the actual outbreak of hostilities. If this were done at night in communication silence, as was the case in the Yom Kippur War, Israel could find itself with a second “October surprise.” This time, however, the Arab starting lines would not be on the relatively distant Suez Canal or on the Golan, but a few miles from Israel’s cities.

  How Israel would avert such a disaster from the pre-1967 lines is not obvious. If Israel were to completely withdraw from the West Bank, it would have to field a much larger standing army, since the length of pre-1967 Israel’s convoluted border with the West Bank is more than 3.5 times the length of the present straight border along the Jordan River. 12 The resultant financial cost of facing a greatly extended front would add a crushing burden to Israel’s economy and deprive it of much-needed manpower. But even then there is no certainty that, in the stitch of space between a Palestinian state and Israel’s cities, the Israeli army would find sufficient territory to deploy and fan out for battle. A PLO state on the West Bank would be like a hand poised to strangle Israel’s vital artery along the sea. No wonder the overwhelming majority of Israelis reject it and see in it a mortal threat to their country.

  When advocates of an Israeli withdrawal are presented with all these facts, they usually fall back on one final argument: Israel can always unsheath a nuclear sword, thereby ending all threats to its existence. But Israel has promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, and even if it were to change its policy and introduce them, it is unclear how even this would serve as a deterrent. Considering the tiny distances involved, every movement of Palestinian troops could constitute a serious threat to Israel. But would Israel really be willing to threaten nuclear war every time a Palestinian battalion changed its position? Would nuclear weapons be used if an Arab column crossed into Israeli territory on the outskirts of Petah Tikva, or would they be reserved for the actual arrival of such a force in downtown Tel Aviv twenty minutes later? Israel’s hypothetical nuclear deterrent would suffer from lack of credibility, for who would start a nuclear war over a border crossing? But at the same time, it would require a dangerously sensitive hairline response, for in a ten-mile strip, every border crossing would threaten to snuff the country out of existence.

  The idea of reducing Israel to an indefensible strip along the Mediterranean would mean that it would have to resort to non-conventional means to defend itself, for it would be left with precious few options. It is not an accident, therefore, that even the most extreme territorial doves are nuclear hawks (they cannot conceive of any other defense once they part with the territory), while the territorial hawks are nuclear doves. Naturally, I prefer to be counted among the latter. The idea of laying a nuclear tripwire along Israel’s borders so that it and it alone is the real guarantor of Israel’s security is sheer folly. Further, what would you bomb? Nablus? East Jerusalem? Besides the horrible devastation that such an attack would unleash, the radioactive fallout would poison the entire region, killing Arabs and Jews alike. Atomic radiation does not recognize the “Green Line,” Israel’s pre-1967 border.

  The threat of Arab dictatorships armed with nuclear weapons is a real and growing one, to Israel and everyone else. There are policies that Israel can pursue to reduce that threat and to deter would-be attackers from making good on it. They merit the detailed discussions they receive inside Israel’s defense establishment, but I will refrain from going into such matters here. It is, however, important to dispel one patch of fog: There are those who argue that in an age of nuclear weaponry, conventional military concepts such as strategic depth become irrelevant. This position is flawed and dangerous. The fact that Israel may face a nonconventional threat to its life is no reason for it to leave itself open to a conventional threat as well. The fact that a country may have to defend itself against one possible danger that may destroy it does not mean that it should subject itself to intolerable danger on another front. In the heyday of the Cold War, the United States did not disarm its massive conventional forces facing the Warsaw Pact, even though it had plenty of nuclear missiles to destroy the Soviet Union if the need arose. The wisdom of this policy was amply demonstrated by the fact that in all the various wars that the United States has fought since World War II, nuclear weapons were never once used—and traditional conventional factors determined the outcome every time.

  Although by no means universal, the broad consensus in Israel is therefore that the army must retain military control of the defensive wall of the West Bank. It is fashionable to claim that many of Israel’s generals, or at least those who lean to the left, disagree with this conclusion. While there are a handful who do, most emphatically do not. Like other Israelis, they may support Israel’s withdraw from politically controlling the Arab population, but almost all favor an Israel military presence. This contradiction was captured in a round-table discussion with eight left-leaning former Israeli generals in the newspaper Ha’aretz in 1988. Each of the generals explained in turn that he favored withdrawal from the territories, but he insisted that the IDF would have to retain control of some aspects of the terrain so that his own particular branch of the service could function effectively in case of war. By the time the generals were finished itemizing what Israel would need to keep to defend itself, there was little left to negotiate, and the correspondent for the newspaper, not exactly known for its hawkish tendencies, had no choice but to point this out:

  All of you favor withdrawal, but the conditions are [retaining] air space, early-warning stations, the right to hot pursuit, the Jordan River Valley, Israeli cantons…. What Arab partner would be willing to enter into negotiations at all with conditions like these? 13

  Indeed, the truth is that for Israel to protect its cities, it must retain military control over much of the territory west of the Jordan River. The Joint Chiefs had it right in 1967. They reported the unvarnished truth.

  Only in the case of Gaza is the principal danger for Israel political rather than strategic. Whereas the West Bank and the Golan are high ground that completely dominates the country below them, Gaza is flat and small. It was used, and could be used again, as a base for terrorist attacks and Katyusha bombardment, but this danger would be reduced if the Sinai remained demilitarized and Egypt remained faithful to the peace. Consequently, the principal danger in the case of Gaza is that if Israel were to simply walk away from it, the vacuum would be filled instantly by a PLO ministate—which would use this toehold to press for application of the Palestinian Principle to the Arabs of the West Bank and the Negev Bedouin community just across the fence. What this means in terms of future peace arrangements is discussed in Chapter 9. Suffice it to say here that for Israel to defend itself it must keep effective military control of the area west of the Jordan River, as the Pentagon planners said in their political survey.

  Can military control be separated from political sovereignty for very long? This is the difficulty with all the proposals put forward on behalf of relinquishing the territories. The debate between Israel’s left-wing and right-wing generals over the question of territorial compromise is ultimately not a military debate. There is a rough strategic consensus as to what kind of military presence must be retained in the territories in order to make Israel defensible. Rather, the debate is one over political judgment: What kind of sovereign arrangements must exist on the ground in order to make Israel’s defense workable? Some have asserted that one could have an Israeli military presence on sovereign Arab soil. But the Egyptians refused to allow the retention of a single Israeli air base in the Sinai,
and there is no reason to expect that any other Arab government would behave any differently. Similarly, some have asserted that Israel could permanently control their space over an Arab country. All such schemes would break down in the face of Arab domestic pressure—just as American control over the Panama Canal and British authority in Suez broke down in the face of Panamanian and Egyptian pressure—leaving Israel hopelessly vulnerable to powerful neighboring armies. If you wish to control a territory as minuscule as the West Bank, where the strategic points and the population centers are in close proximity to one another, you have to control it both militarily and politically. If you give up political control, you will ultimately have to give up military control. This is the challenge and difficulty of reaching peace with added security with the Palestinians. They should have all the political powers to run their lives but none of those political powers that could threaten Israeli security and survival.

  In addition to such defense-related issues, there are other security issues that must be taken into account. One of the most critical of security arguments pertaining to Judea and Samaria is seldom, if ever, discussed in the foreign media: water. No country can survive without water, and in the Middle East there is not much of it to go around. Like its neighbors Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel is a country that is in severe water deficit, annually consuming substantially more water than is replenished from natural sources. The situation is worst in Syria, whose capital, Damascus, is often without running water at night. 14 A real peace in the region would require regional efforts to conserve water and develop alternative sources. Without such efforts, the only thing that is likely to come of the severe and worsening crisis is more conflict. This has been most evident in the case of the Tigris and Euphrates, which carry fresh water from the mountains of eastern Turkey to Syria and Iraq downstream. Turkish moves to dam and otherwise develop the headwaters have met with outraged and bellicose reactions from its southern neighbors in recent years, and the prospects look no more promising for the future. 15