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response 39 of 166:
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Aug 8 04:48 UTC 2003 |
As usual, Scott has to try and snub me (#29) precisely because he can't
address the substance of what I say (#24):
> Of course not even Leeron has "stated" that the Palestinians
> are violent and/or irrational, but plenty of times he's implied such.
Of course, except that for each time Scott has repeated this garbage there
is also a time he was unable to cite any example of such an "implication".
Scott should attempt to respond to what I do say rather than resort to
such straw man arguments.
Joe:
> The Palestinians see the Jews as invaders. They want them gone. Apparently,
> the others in the area agree with the Palestinians. All are willing to use
> any method necessary to achieve their goals.
I think that sums it up. They aren't interested in compromise or peace.
Their goal historically, and at present for a plurality if not a majority,
is expelling or killing the Jews.
But, Joe, keep in mind that the "Palestinians" are Arabs who are not distinct
from the surrounding neighborhood. To the contrary, while some have resided
there for a few hundred years, many immigrated from those surrounding areas
in the 20th century (a particularly large wave from Egypt in the 1840s).
As I've shown previously, in the first half of the 20th century the term
"Palestinian" also referred to Jews (living in Mandate Palestine). The
organization that represented the Arabs of Palestine was the "Arab High
Committee". The term "Palestinian" was adopted in the 2nd half of the 20th
century. More on this in a moment.
That this is "Arab land" (Or Islamic land, Dar a Salam) has been inculcated
into their collective minds. That the Jews are "colonists" (what is the
"mother country"?!), not just in the "territories" but in Israel itself, is
a cornerstone of their belief. (To this end, you'll find many engaging in
various anti-Semitic arguments, suggesting that Jews aren't really Jews
but Khazars or contradictingly that Jews are Jews but are a religion and
not a people or a nation.)
In a recent discussion with a Palestinian Arab, he was surprised to learn
that a majority of Israel's Jews were born in Israel. But then he presumed
that the majority had European/American parents. Turns out that 79% of the
mothers where likewise born in Israel. (Sorry, I didn't find stats about
fathers but assume that immigration stats are close enough to 50/50 that
this shouldn't matter). And only 15% of the grand-fathers were European
or American immigrants. (Oddly, the stats list demographic data for the
baby's mother and her father.)
In any event, what is troubling about the "colonist" model is that many
would-be "progressives" swallowed this faulty analogy as if it were a
repeat of the white man's assault upon Native Americans. In this scenario,
Jews are greedy invaders while the Arabs are indigenous and defenseless
natives (which is why many Jews have a difficult time disassociating this
from anti-Semitic myths).
Except that the Arabs are Not indigenous, which can be seen from their
naming themselves after the land upon which they settled (it's not like
they have any connection to the Philistines who themselves were non-native
European invaders 3250 years ago). Imagine a group of people who moved to
Iowa and called themselves "midwesterners"; would that make them indigenous?
Nor was it the Jews who were attacking defenseless Arabs. The exact opposite
was the case -- for centuries. For more about the Arab and Muslim
mistreatment of Jews, see:
http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/40079.php
Nor were the Jews greedy. The Jewish Agency accepted the principle of
partition when it was first suggested in 1937. And again in the form of the
1947 UN compromise. And UNSCR 242. And most recently the Clinton compromise.
The Arabs rejected this at each juncture, prompting the late Aba Eban to
quip that they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity [for peace]".
Is this a coincidence? Bad PR? Or can we conclude that they miss these
opportunities because they aren't interested?
Peace comes at a price -- compromise, and in the Arab world compromise is
akin to surrender. And this is where Dan is right on the mark with respect
to cultural differences and perspectives.
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earnal
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response 40 of 166:
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Aug 8 06:21 UTC 2003 |
THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
4 August 2003
by Dr. George Friedman
The Wall of Sharon
Summary
Seeking to end the risk of Palestinian attacks, Israel is
building a barrier to separate Palestinians and Israelis. For the
wall to work, it must be more like an iron curtain than the U.S.-
Mexican border. It must be relatively impermeable: If there are
significant crossing points, militants will exploit them.
Therefore, the only meaningful strategy is to isolate Israelis
and Palestinians. That would lead to a Palestinian dependency on
Jordan that might, paradoxically, topple the Hashemite regime in
Amman. If that happens, Israel will have solved a painful
nuisance by creating the potential for a strategic nightmare.
Analysis
Israel, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is in the process of
building a wall that ultimately will separate Israelis and
Palestinians along a line roughly -- but not at all precisely --
identical to the cease-fire lines that held from 1948 until 1967.
The wall is far from complete, but the logic for it is self-
evident: It represents Israel's attempt to impose a reality that
will both satisfy the Jewish state's fundamental security needs
and the minimal political demands of the Palestinians without
requiring Palestinian agreement or acquiescence. It is an
extraordinary attempt at applied geopolitics. The question is
whether it will work.
Let's begin with the technical aspect. It is possible, with
substantial effort, to create a barrier that not only stops
large-scale population movements but seriously inhibits small-
scale movements as well. The Iron Curtain was more than a
rhetorical term: We once walked along the Austro-Hungarian
border, seeing watch towers with machine guns and search lights;
concertina wire; wide, clear-cut killing fields where
infiltrators or exfiltrators could be observed day or night using
search lights and flares, and dense mine fields. The line ran
from the Baltic to the Yugoslav border. It did work -- there was
certainly some movement across, but only at great risk and
probable failure.
The purpose of the Iron Curtain was to prevent eastern Europeans
from moving to the west and away from Soviet occupation. It was
difficult to build and maintain, but it was built and it did work
quite well. It was built with World War II technology. The
Israeli project will involve more modern sensor technology, both
human and machine. Movement will not be spotted by the luck of
the flare, but with sound sensors, ground radar and unmanned
aerial vehicles. The point is that from a technical standpoint,
if the Iron Curtain could work, this can work. The challenge is
political and military, not technical.
From the Israeli standpoint, the driving force is desperation.
Suicide attacks have achieved what Palestinian planners hoped for
-- convincing the Israelis the status quo cannot be maintained.
The bombings have convinced Israeli leaders that the continued
physical occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip are not
an option. The problem the Israelis have had to confront is that
simply retreating and abandoning the occupation might not solve
their strategic problem. From the Israeli standpoint, the problem
of the Oslo accords is that they rested on a political decision
by the Palestinians, who had to guarantee that they would abandon
further claims -- and military operations -- against the state of
Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal.
The last two years convinced Israeli leaders of two things:
First, that any guarantee from a Palestinian government was
unstable and could not be regarded as permanent; and second, that
even if the Palestinian government was able to maintain its own
commitment to an agreement, it was incapable of guaranteeing that
all Palestinian factions would honor it. Israel observed the
ability of the Irish Republican Army, ETA and other groups to
continue operations without or against state sanctions. Since the
absolute minimum concession from the Palestinians had to be the
cessation of suicide bombings and related actions against Israel,
this posed an insuperable problem. On the one hand, the status
quo was untenable; on the other, a political foundation for
withdrawal appeared to be unattainable. Israel was trapped
between two impossible realities.
For Israel, the Camp David accords with Egypt provided the basic
model for negotiations with Arabs. Camp David consisted of three
parts:
1. Egyptian recognition that Israel could not be destroyed
through military action.
2. Israeli recognition that Egypt was capable -- as in 1973 -- of
carrying out military operations that were too costly for Israel.
3. Recognition that the Sinai desert could serve not only as
Israel's strategic depth in maneuver warfare, but equally well as
a demilitarized buffer zone large enough to prevent surprise
attack.
It was on this basis that Menachem Begin, Sharon's intellectual
and strategic mentor, reached agreement with Egypt to end
hostilities -- an agreement that remains the strategic foundation
of Israel's national security policy today. The crucial piece was
that the deal did not rely on Egypt's good will: The buffer was
sufficiently large that any Egyptian violation would be quickly
noticed and could be responded to militarily. In other words,
Israel could keep control of its fate without holding Egyptian
territory.
The Oslo agreement was an attempt to apply this same principle to
the Palestinian question. It was built on the Palestinian
recognition that Palestinians could not destroy Israel
militarily, and Israeli recognition that the cost of occupation
was greater than Israel could rationally bear. What was missing -
- and always has been -- was a third step. There has been no
possibility of disengagement. From the Israeli viewpoint, this
has meant that any settlement depended on both the continued
goodwill of the Palestinian state and the absence of dissident
anti-Israeli movements. Since neither could be guaranteed, no
solution was possible.
Hence, the fence. It should be noted that the creation of a fixed
barrier violates all Israeli military thinking. The state's
military doctrine is built around the concept of mobile warfare.
Israel's concern is with having sufficient strategic depth to
engage an enemy attack and destroy it, rather than depending on a
fixed barrier. From a purely military standpoint, Israel would
view this barrier as an accident waiting to happen. The view of
barriers (such as the Suez Canal) is that they can all be
breached using appropriate, massed military force.
This is the critical point. From the Israeli standpoint, the wall
is not a military solution. It is not a Maginot Line designed to
protect against enemy main force; it is designed to achieve a
very particular, very limited and very important paramilitary
goal. It is designed to stop the infiltration of Palestinian
paramilitaries into Israel without requiring either the direct
occupation of Palestinian territory -- something that has not
worked anyway -- nor precluding the creation of a Palestinian
state. It is not the Maginot Line, it is an Iron Curtain. And
this is where the conceptual problems start to crop up.
The Iron Curtain was a fairly impermeable barrier. Nothing moved
across it except at very clearly defined and limited checkpoints.
The traffic at these checkpoints was quite low during most of the
Cold War, and there was ample opportunity for inspection and
interrogation of traffic headed in either direction. Even so,
these checkpoints were used by Western intelligence both to
penetrate Warsaw Pact countries and to extract people. There were
other points along the frontier where more informal traffic
crossed, but what never took place -- particularly after the
Berlin Wall went up -- was mass, interzonal traffic on a
continual basis.
The Iron Curtain never looked like the U.S.-Mexican border, nor
can the U.S.-Mexican border become an Iron Curtain because
neither the United States nor Mexico wants that to happen. Trade
is continual, and the movement of illegal labor from Mexico to
the Unit manpower. If the wall is not
continual and impermeable, it may as well not be there.
The geopolitical idea underlying the fence is that that it will
not be permeable. If this goal is achieved, regardless of where
the final line of the fence will be, then economic and social
relations between Israel and Palestine will cease to exist except
through third-party transit. Forgetting the question of Jerusalem
-- for if Jerusalem is an open city, the fence may as well not be
built -- this poses a huge strategic challenge.
Palestinians historically have depended on Israel economically.
If Israel closes off its frontiers, the only contiguous economic
relationship will be with Jordan. In effect, Palestine would
become a Jordanian dependency. However, it will not be clear over
time which is the dog and which is the tail. Jordan already has a
large Palestinian population that has, in the past, threatened
the survival of the Hashemite Bedouin regime. By sealing off
Palestinian and Israeli territories, the Israelis would slam
Palestine and Jordan together. Over the not-so-long term, this
could mean the end of Hashemite Jordan and the creation of a
single Palestinian state on both sides of the Jordan River.
There are Israelis -- including Sharon, in our view -- who would
not object to this outcome. They have argued that the Hashemite
presence in Amman has long distorted the reality in the region.
The Hashemite regime was installed by Britain after World War I.
In the opinion of some Israelis, Jordan ought to be the real
Palestine. Therefore, if the fence results in the fall of the
Jordanian monarchy and the creation of a unitary Palestinian
state, these Israelis would find this a positive development.
Indeed, one argument goes that a Jordan with boundaries roughly
analogous to pre-1967 lines would undermine Palestinian radical
movements by creating a more stable, less aggressive Palestinian
nation-state.
Two other scenarios exist. In one, the Hashemites survive and
drive many of the Palestinians on the east bank of the Jordan
into the West Bank; the Israelis maintain their cordon sanitaire
and the Palestinian nation-state becomes an untenable disaster --
trapped between two enemies, Israel and Jordan. Israel would not
object to this, but the problem is that the level of desperation
achieved in Palestine might prove so chaotic that it either would
threaten Israeli national security or set into motion processes
in the Arab world -- and among Israel's Western allies -- that
would increase pressure on Israel. In other words, the Israelis
would wind up strategically where they started, with the non-
trivial exception of fewer or no suicide bombings.
The other scenario is that the Palestinians do merge with Jordan,
but -- given the dynamics of the Arab and Islamic worlds -- the
new nation-state does not moderate but instead generates, with
assistance from other Arabs, a major military strike force for
whom the fence represents at most a minor tactical barrier rather
than a strategic force. Under this scenario, the consequences
would be a return to the strategic situation of 1948-1967 (except
for Egypt's participation), with a potentially more powerful
enemy to the east. If Egypt were to change its policies, the
outcome could be strategically disastrous for Israel.
The problem with the fence, therefore, is this:
1. If it is to be effective as a barrier, it must be nearly
absolute; large-scale movement cannot be permitted.
2. If a Palestinian state is isolated, it would develop a
dependency on Jordan that could topple the Hashemite regime,
creating a potential strategic threat to Israel.
The fence strategy works only if the Palestinian-Jordanian
rot have
good choices. It has to make some bad ones work.
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