Why Israel cannot accept 'international forces'
Mort Zuckerman has this right: A sovereign Palestinian state that refuses to accept an international force is bad enough. Worse yet is that, in practice, organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas can render any international force ineffective. This is what occurred when European monitors were placed at Gaza's Rafah crossing. The monitors fled their positions as soon as internal fighting between Hamas and Fatah heated up after the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections. The monitors themselves fell victim to local Palestinian kidnappings. When the Palestinian president says he will not accept Israeli forces but might accept an international presence, his statement might seem reasonable or negotiable. In truth, it has about as much value as the "peace in our time" document that Neville Chamberlain waved on his return to London after meeting Adolf Hitler. Bottom line: The only successful security forces that Israel can rely upon are its own. Israelis feel they have read the book in Gaza and don't want to see the movie in the West Bank.Indeed.
Paradoxically, the presence of U.N. forces creates an obstacle to Israel's ability to defend itself, by itself. Look at what happened to the force that was dispatched to Lebanon in August 1982. The U.N. mission was made up of units from Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, but in October 1983 both the French paratrooper barracks and the U.S. Marine headquarters were attacked by Shiite suicide bombers, killing a few hundred French and American service members. Within a year, both forces withdrew from Lebanon, reflecting the reality that foreign forces will quickly leave the theater when attacked. The states that volunteer them soon lose political support for keeping them there.
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There is an old saying: "Nobody ever washes a rental car." Only Israel would have the will to defend itself. When you think about the failure of NATO forces in Afghanistan, you have to wonder about the efficacy of NATO troops in this theater.
Israel knows that a threat will evolve when hostile intentions join with aggressive capabilities. Given that it has been virtually impossible to alter hostile intentions, with the split between Abbas's Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza—the latter allowing non-state actors to emerge—classic principles of deterrence and punishment are far less effective. There is no unified government to exert control over people, weapons, and terrorist groups.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:30 AM
3 Comments:
There can be no substitute for a permanent IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and in the strategic heights of Yesha. This should be a non-negotiable principle for Israel as well as unified command of the airspace and electronic communications in the territory along with prohibiting a Palestinian entity from entering into a security or military alliance with any foreign state. The Palestinians can live with Israel's security requirements or they can forgo a two state solution. For Israel, its literally a life and death matter. In short, the country's security must be not bargained away or watered down to secure a peace agreement.
A "sovereign palestinian state" could expel any international forces whenever they chose to and no one could stop them. Similarly, nothing can stop them from entering military or security alliances with whomever they choose.
The only real solution is that a palestinian state can not, MUST NOT, ever be created in Judea and Samaria
If you look at Gaza and Lebanon, the "international forces" have shown themselves to be human shields or hostages at best, and joining into adversarial operations against Israel at worst. The urge to delete Israel among the inhabitants and the support of these killers among the internationals would need to be removed from their consciousness before international involvement would do anything other than enhance Israel's enemies. This has been proven on the ground, which I know is inconvenient to the internationals, who hope to have deniability in getting involved on Israel's enemies' side.
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