A Durable Peace

by Benjamin Netanyahu

  For three-quarters of a century the Jews have repeatedly compromised on substantive strategic, historical, and moral claims in order to placate their Arab neighbors in the hope of buying peace. It is impossible that peace should be attained by asking the Jews to compromise on everything and the Arabs to compromise on nothing. The Arabs, possessing lands over five hundred times greater in area than Israel’s, must now do a small fraction of what Israel has done: For the very first time in their long history of expansionism and intolerance, they must compromise. For the sake of peace, they must renounce their claims to part of the four ten-thousandths—.0004—of the lands they desire, which constitutes the very heart of the Jewish homeland and the protective wall of the Jewish state. If the Arabs are unwilling to make even this microscopic one-time concession, if they are still so possessed by the fantasy of an exclusively Arab realm that they cannot bring themselves to compromise on an inch of land to make the Middle East habitable for the Jewish state, it is hard to make the case that they are in fact ready for peace.

  But what about the other side, the question of the Arabs in the zones of Judea and Samaria? The fact that Israel is extremely circumscribed in the territorial compromises it is capable of making necessarily raises the question of the future of these people. By hanging on to territory, Israel, it is said, might gain the security inherent in better terrain, but it would encumber itself with a hostile population.

  True enough. But this dilemma has been put behind us by the implementation of the early stages of the Oslo Accords. Israel transferred to Palestinian control most of the territory in the Gaza district, which encompasses all the Palestinian residents of that area. Further, in the West Bank, Israel transferred to Palestinian control the lands that encompass a full 98 percent of the Palestinian population (the remaining 2 percent are composed in part of nomadic Bedouin who move from place to place). Thus the question of Israel’s retaining a hostile population has become a moot point. As of 1995 the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank live under Palestinian rule. The remaining issues to be resolved are not over the human rights of the Palestinians or their civil enfranchisement. That is an issue that they have yet to resolve among themselves: individual rights, freedom of the press, pluralism, and democracy are matters that the Palestinians have to resolve between themselves and the Palestinian Authority that rules them. Israel, however interested an observer, has no part in this debate. The Israelis and the Palestinians must resolve two pivotal questions:

  (1) the disposition of the remaining territory of Judea and Samaria; and

  (2) the political status of the self-governing Palestinian entity and its relationship to the State of Israel.

  Resolving the territorial issue, though an extremely complex matter, has been made somewhat less difficult because of the fact that the remaining territories are largely uninhabited by Palestinians (more precisely, they are inhabited by Jews). This terrain includes, however, areas that are crucial for Israel’s defense and vital national interests. Accordingly, Israel seeks a final peace settlement with the Palestinians that would leave it with indispensable security zones. First and foremost, it requires a land buffer that includes the Jordan Valley and the hills directly overlooking it and that would extend southward to the ridges above the Dead Sea. At its deepest point, this buffer will be about 12 miles wide, a minimal depth given the fact that Israel faces a threat from a potential eastern front, which might include thousands of Iraqi, Syrian, and Iranian tanks. During the Cold War, NATO’s generals assessed that they would need 180 miles of strategic depth to ward off a similar threat from the east. Alas, Israel must live with strategic depth that is less than 10 percent of that, but it cannot shrink this depth any further. Second, Israel must have a zone of separation between the Palestinian areas and the crowded coastline where most of its population lives. This zone, whose widest point is a few miles, is narrower than the eastern buffer, but is important in any future arrangement for minimizing terrorist infiltration from the Palestinian areas to Israel’s major cities. Furthermore, Israel must retain a security cordon around Jerusalem to ensure that the city is not choked by adjoining Palestinian areas. Israel must also keep its early warning stations at the heights of the Samarian mountains, facilities that offer indispensible warning against air and ground attacks from the east. In addition, Israel must maintain broad corridors of territory to facilitate movement from the coastline to the Jordan Valley buffer in times of emergency. Those corridors, not accidentally, include much of the Jewish population in Judea-Samaria. Israel must protect the Jewish communities and facilitate the citizens’ ability to live and travel securely. Equally, Israel must make sure that the main aquifer that supplies some 40 percent of the country’s water, running at the lower part of the western slopes of the Judean and Samarian hills, does not come under Palestinian control; it is, after all, impossible for the country to live with its water siphoned off or contaminated by the Palestinian Authority. Israel must take into account other special security requirements, such as controlling the areas abutting the Tel Aviv or Jerusalem airports to prevent terrorists from firing at civilian aircraft from these positions. Finally, Israel must keep places sacrosanct to Judaism and the Jewish people within its domain and guarantee unfettered access to them as was done in the Hebron agreements, which left the Tomb of the Patriarchs under Israel’s control.

  These are Israel’s minimal requirements to protect the life of the state. Obviously, full control of the West Bank, including the Palestinian areas, would have given Israel much greater security in an insecure Middle East. Yet retaining the minimal elements of defense enumerated above will enable Israel to transfer to the Palestinians additional areas that are not included in these categories, thereby expanding the Palestinian domain without significantly hurting Israel’s security. Equally, Israel is prepared to make special arrangements facilitating safe passage of Palestinians through its own territory, thus enabling direct Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank.

  It is largely for these considerations that I negotiated the interim agreement at the Wye River Planation in 1998 with President Clinton and Yasser Arafat. My principal objective at Wye was to limit the extent of further interim Israeli withdrawals so as to leave Israel with sufficient territorial depth for its defense. As stipulated under the Oslo agreement, Israel was to withdraw in three successive “disengagements” from additional territory in Judea-Samaria, which would be handed over to the Palestinian Authority prior to the negotiations on a permanent peace agreement, or “final settlement.”

  The Palestinian side had already received 27 percent of the territory from the Labor government. Based on its experience of negotiating with that government, it expected Israel to cede in these withdrawals the bulk of the territory. As Arafat’s deputy, Abu Maazen, explained to a senior official in my government upon the signing of the Hebron agreement in 1997: “What about the 90 percent of the territory you promised us?” The response was: “We didn’t promise you anything of the kind.” Whatever officials of the previous Labor government had whispered in Palestinian ears was irrelevant. What was relevant were the signed contracts we inherited from Labor, and these did not obligate Israel to such dangerous withdrawals. Indeed, since the Oslo Accords did not quantify the extent of redeployment, we proceeded to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, or more specifically with the United States, on much smaller redeployments. Ultimately we agreed in Wye that the first two redeployments would amount to 13 percent of the territory. We also agreed with the U.S. that Israel would officially declare that the third redeployment, which the U.S. recognized as an Israeli prerogative not subject to negotiation, would not exceed an additional 1 percent.

  Thus, instead of a process in which Israel would retreat to the virtually indefensible pre-1967 line even before final settlement negotiations were concluded, I sought and achieved a different result at Wye: that most of the West Bank would remain in our hands pending the start of these negotiations. Israel would retain s
ome 60 percent of the territory with all the West Bank’s Jewish population; the Palestinian Authority would have some 40 percent of the area with virtually the entire Palestinian population. Naturally, this is a much improved position for Israel to negotiate from; one that bolsters our defenses against external attack and the threat of terrorism, while leaving us in an advantageous position for the final settlement negotiations.

  We aslo achieved a second objective at Wye: We incorporated the principle of reciprocity into the agreement. Palestinians would get 13 percent of Judea-Samaria (West Bank) territory in three successive stages only after they implemented their own commitments undertaken at Wye. No more free lunches.

  The first stage in the implementation of Palestinian commitments involved mostly formalities, such as naming Palestinian delegates to various joint committees and issuing decrees against incitement and the possession of illegal weapons. The Palestinians met these obligations, and we promptly discharged ours: We withdrew from 2 percent of area C and transferred 7 percent of area B, hitherto under joint Israeli-Palestinian security control, to full Palestinian control.

  The second stage—which covered the next four weeks—was a different story. At this point the Palestinians were obligated to repeal the articles in the Palestinian Charter, which called for Israel’s destruction, and take the first concrete steps against the terrorist infrastructure. On December 14, they repealed the charter—a genocidal document without parallel in today’s world—in a Gaza gathering addressed by President Bill Clinton.

  Many claimed that from a strictly legal viewpoint the repeal was invalid. According to the charter’s own provisions, it can be amended only in a special session of the Palestinian National Council by a vote of two-thirds of the membership—conditions that were not met in Gaza. But the purpose of the exercise—to make the rejection of the charter irreversible—was achieved. After renouncing the charter in a public display before the world’s cameras and in the presence of the U.S. president, it would be impossible to claim that it was still a valid document.

  But the Palestinians seemed to feel that rejecting the charter was all they had to do. And they expected us not only to reward them for disavowing genocide, but to ignore their failure to discharge their other obligations.

  To us, the other commitments undertaken at Wye were at least as pertinent, for they constituted the first concrete steps to be taken by the Palestinian Authority against the terrorist organizations. The Palestinian Authority was supposed to arrest wanted terrorists and have representatives of the U.S. verify their incarceration; implement the law prohibiting membership in terrorist organizations; collect illegal weapons held by civilians and hand over such prohibited weapons as mortars, anti-tank missles, and land mines held by the Palestinian Authority police; cease daily incitement to violence; stop organizing anti-Israeli riots; submit a report on the number of Palestinian Authority police in excess of the 30,000 permitted by the Oslo agreement; and maintain “comprehensive, intensive, and continuous” cooperation with Israel on security matters.

  The Palestinian Authority complied with none of these commitments. They did, to be sure, display a few assault rifles and handguns, presumably confiscated from civilians, and they detained some wanted terrorists and Hamas political leaders. But after Arafat himself asserted that there were at least 30,000 illegal weapons in Gaza alone, the collection of a few illegal guns for the benefit of network cameras appeared to be little more than a public relations exercise. And the arrest of Hamas operatives was of little consequence. Some of the most notorious participants in planning and executing suicide bombings against Israeli civilians (some of whom were American citizens) were among the scores of Hamas detainees released by the Palestinian Authority within weeks after their arrest.

  Adhering to the principle of reciprocity, the Israeli government announced that there would be no further withdrawals until the Palestinian Authority complied with the aggrement. This was the guiding principle of my policy from the day I formed the government in 1996, and I was not about to abandon it at this crucial time.

  Insistence on reciprocity became particularly pertinent after the Wye conference, because Arafat and other Palestinian leaders took to threatening to unilaterally declare a state on May 4, 1999, regardless of what happened in the negotiations. By thus predetermining the result of the Oslo process, they made a mockery of the negotiations.

  To hand over territory under such circumstances would have been an act of national irresponsibility. The Palestinians’ refusal to combat the terrorist groups ensured that the relinquished land would be used to facilitate attacks against us and to shelter terrorists. And their threat to declare a state—which by the very manner of its establishment would be hostile, dangerous, and unbound by any agreement with us—rendered the forfeiture of territory on our part nothing short of reckless.

  I made it clear that Israeli redeployment could only follow the faithful and complete implementation of Palestinian obligations, and that conclusive negotiations over territory would have to await the final status talks.

  The negotiations over territory will be the most complex and difficult in Israel’s history. They will involve balancing Israel’s national interests, foremost of which is security, with the Palestinians’ wish to increase their own territorial domain. These negotiations will determine whether Israel will have the territorial bulwarks necessary to defend itself and safeguard a future peace. But they are only one of the two crucial issues for permanent peace negotiations with the Palestinians. The second is the question of the status of the Palestinian entity. Many in the world have blithely accepted the notion that the Palestinians must have their own independent state. They have not asked themselves what powers would accrue to such unbridled Palestinian self-determination. Could the Palestinian state make military pacts with Iran, Iraq, or Syria? Could it be allowed to place troops from these countries on the hills above Tel Aviv? Could it build an army of its own? Could it arm itself with the most sophisticated weapons, such as ground-to-air missiles that can shoot down the planes of the Israeli air force, thereby endangering Israel’s very existence? Could it bring in untold numbers of Arabs, nonrefugees as well as refugees, under the banner of the “right of return,” position them along the seamline with Israel, and begin to infiltrate the country? Clearly, a Palestinian entity with all these powers is a recipe not for peace but for disaster.

  My view of an equitable and secure arrangement for the status of a Palestinian entity is based on a simple principle: The Palestinians should have all the powers to run their lives and none of the powers to threaten Israel’s life. This means that the Palestinian entity can enjoy all the attributes of self-government, which include its own legislature, executive, judiciary, passports, flag, education, commerce, tourism, health, police, and every other power and institution controlling the collective and individual life of Palestinians within the Palestinian entity. In fact, the Palestinians have by now received nearly all of these things in the first two stages of the Oslo Accords. What remains to negotiate are those few powers relating to external security. In a permanent peace settlement, the Palestinians should have all the powers to administer Palestinian life; some should be shared with Israel, such as those relating to the environment (since mosquitoes, for example, do not recognize territorial divisions), and still a few other powers, primarily those relating to external security, should be retained by Israel. Thus, the Palestinian entity should not be able to form military pacts with sovereign states, or build and arm a standing army, or import weapons without Israel’s consent. Israel must maintain control of the airspace, vital for its very survival, and the international entry points through which dangerous arms and terrorists could penetrate into the Palestinian areas and from there into Israel itself. The issue of the Palestinian refugees must be settled responsibly. The overwhelming majority should be given full rights and rehabilitation in the respective Arab countries where they reside. Israel should not be put at risk of being flooded with
refugees sworn to its destruction.

  These arrangements would leave the Palestinian entity with considerable powers, and certainly all the ones necessary for self-government. Yet they are not compatible with the idea of unlimited self-determination, which is what many normally associate with the concept of statehood. Statehood has a dynamic of its own, which implies powers that self-government does not necessarily warrant. Among other things, it will enable the Palestinian Arabs to join the United Nations, where they will easily receive the support of most governments and quickly free themselves of any limitation that they may contractually assume to obtain our consent. That is why when I am asked whether I will support a Palestinian state, I answer in the negative. I support the Palestinians’ ability to control their own destiny but not their ability to extinguish the Jewish future. As I have indicated earlier in this book, I believe that this functional solution, giving the Palestinians all the powers necessary for self-administration and Israel those essential powers necessary to protect its national life, is a model for the kind of solution that could be replicated in many similar disputes around the world. It offers the only reasonable alternative between two unacceptable options: military subjugation on the one hand, and unbridled self-determination on the other. The first option is morally unacceptable, the second a prescription for catastrophe. But at the heart of the solution that I advocate is not only a fair and durable division of territory and powers but also a reasoned hope that the Palestinians will recognize that no other solution will be acceptable to the overwhelming majority of Israelis; and that this realization in turn would foster over time a gradual, if grudging, reconciliation with the permanence of Israel’s existence and the need to come to concrete terms with it. It nullifies the hope of using the Palestinian areas as a base to launch the future destruction of the Jewish state, while offering the Palestinians a life of dignity, self-respect, and self-government.