Israel Matzav

'Occupation' works

Daniel Byman thought he had proved that 'peace' works better than Israel's security mechanisms. But he found out something very different along the way.

Then he offered the lessons he didn’t want to learn—what we might call inconvenient truths. The first of these is: “occupations can work.” It’s a corollary to the pronouncement that Gaza is quiet. But it rests on a statistic he offered in his opening remarks where he noted that only one suicide bombing was successfully carried out against Israel in 2008. In 2002 that number was 53. IDF antiterror operations in the West Bank, the construction of the system of early-warning chain link security fences, and the decision to maintain a ready IDF presence in the West Bank (what he might call in other circumstances an “occupying army”) enabled Israel to keep the peace.

Another lesson was that “deterrence can work.” And, as he told the audience, you cannot have both deterrence and proportionality.

Byman also played the “demographics pose an existential threat to Israel” card, and he said Israel may be strengthening Palestinian rejectionists and extremists with the lack of a deal. Eighteen years after Oslo, they may reasonably say, “Where are we?”

But while this question implies that Israel is at fault for the lack of progress, Byman needs also to understand is that Israelis are asking the very same question—and it’s worth exploring further.

When an Israeli looks around and says “where are we?” what he sees, externally, are two kinds of states. The first is Egypt, which has effectively suspended its peace treaty with Israel now that the one defender of that treaty, Hosni Mubarak, has been expelled from power and is being replaced with an anti-Western figurehead catering to influential Islamist parties.

The second is Lebanon, a borderline failed state with a sovereign nonstate controlling its security and its legislature. It is a state no one would seek to create if it didn’t already exist.

Is either of these two states an attractive model for a “Palestine”?

And what do Israelis see when they look at the Palestinian territories? They see a quiet border with the West Bank and a relatively calm one with Gaza. And while the border with Lebanon may be tense, Ashkenazi offered some guarded optimism: “I’ve known Hezbollah since 1982,” Ashkenazi said, recalling his days in the elite Golani Brigade. “For the first time ever, the border is quiet… that is deterrence.”

The question that must be asked, although negotiators and dedicated peace processors will avoid it, is this: Is Israel safer, purely from a security standpoint, than it would be by advancing the cause of Palestinian statehood?

Read the whole thing.

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Labels: failed states, Palestinian terrorism, two-state solution

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:42 PM