Imaginary NATO peacekeeping force to keep peace between Israel and imaginary state?
One of the points laid out by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his Bar Ilan speech (the speech in which he accepted a 'two-state solution') in June 2009 was that Israeli troops would have to remain along the banks of the Jordan River and in the Jordan Valley for the long-term as part of any 'final status arrangement.'Needless to say, the 'Palestinians' have rejected that (along with other parts of Netanyahu's speech). The Obama administration has proposed stationing an 'international force' on the border as a compromise. Because UNIFIL has done such a poor job in Lebanon, Obama has proposed that NATO troops man the border.
We here in Israel object to that idea too. An 'international force' isn't going to risk its lives to protect us, and it is just going to be in the way if IDF troops need to go into 'Palestine' for any reason. We've seen that in other locations aside from southern Lebanon and other troops aside from UNIFIL (UN troops at the Suez Canal in 1967, European troops in the Philadelphi corridor in 2007) that when the chips are down, the 'international peacekeeping forces' either do what they are told or run away - usually both. But now, there's another reason why NATO troops cannot be used to protect the Jordan River frontier. The NATO troops don't exist (Hat Tip: Daily Alert).
Still, for skeptics, take a look at a paper produced by Florence Gaub, a scholar attached to the NATO Defence College in Rome. According to Gaub:You mean that the NATO countries don't see the fierce moral urgency of establishing a 'state of Palestine'? And they won't contribute enough troops to make it happen? I'm shocked. Just totally and completely shocked.Independently from local security forces, the NATO force in Palestine … would, if it follows the example of the successful cases of Bosnia and Kosovo, need forces ranging from 43,700 to 76,000 men, including the police forces. Of these, between 16,100 and 28,000 would patrol Gaza, and between 27,600 and 48,000 the West Bank.Gaub gives a long and detailed explanation as to how she gets to that number — an explanation that is worth reading because it is based on sound number-crunching from previous experiences of peacekeeping. She also confronts the unpleasant scenarios that putting boots on such ground would result in.
But quite aside from her assessment (which leads her to conclude that “NATO’s mission in Palestine would have slim chances of success and a high probability of failure”), what are the chances that NATO countries that found it hard to contribute an additional few thousand men to Afghanistan would give 76,000 for Palestine?
Heh.
Labels: fierce moral urgency, Jordan Valley, NATO, Palestinian state
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:13 PM
2 Comments:
The first time NATO troops are fired on by the Palestinians they will leave. Other countries aren't going to die for the Jews and Israel should never drop the principle its responsible for its own defense. If the Palestinians don't like that, they get no state. Either put up or shut up.
Heh
I think one thing you missed was that Turkey is an important component of NATO and contributes a large number of soldiers to NATO. So would Israel be willing to Turkish soldiers man their borders? The same turks who tried to invade Gaza by Mavi Marmara and who want to annhiliate jews? They only thing that will happen there will be a war in few years after that happens and Israel will be indefensible.
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