By Dr. Aaron Lerner
November 3, 2007
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"To the extent that the Palestinians find it difficult to establish an effective security apparatus to end the terror activity, NATO will fill the vacuum created."
Principles of Permanent Agreement - Yisrael Beiteinu party Chairman and Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman
Would it really serve Israel's interests to inject NATO forces into the equation?
Hardly.
Lieberman sees the mandate of such a NATO deployment as an anti-Palestinian terror force, but the NATO members aren't from Mars. They are nations with their own international (and for that matter domestic) interests and concerns. As such, this force would be careful to avoid the "Israel's Policeman" label.
Deployment of such a force would be predicated on significant and substantial Israeli concessions that contributing countries could point to in order to justify their participation to the Arab world.
The force would also not tolerate any Israeli security activity in areas under its supervision.
By the same token that Israel weighs a constellation of considerations in its security operations, this force would factor in parameters that go beyond trying to assure 100% in a given situation.
For example:
- Roadblocks and other operations that impinge on movement: There is constant pressure today to sacrifice security in favor of expedited movement. The NATO force could be expected to opt to err in the favor of movement over security.
- Operations against terrorists in sensitive locations: Schools, hospitals, mosques, etc.
- Operations against terrorists aligned with the ruling authorities and official Palestinian locations. Historically, many terrorist operations are carried out by forces associated with the ruling Palestinian factions.
In fact, many of these gunmen also serve within the Palestinian security forces as their day job while they moonlight as terrorists. Illegal weapons have also been stored in official PA armories (for example the rockets and other equipment that Hamas seized when it took control in Gaza).
NATO ground commanders would weigh operations against these terrorists against the repercussions, in terms of its impact on relations with both their Palestinian interlocutors and third parties (Arab world, etc.).
Deploying NATO forces across the road from Kfar Saba means stripping Israel of the ability to act to protect itself from terror attacks.
At best the operational goals of the commanders on the ground would be to try to prevent the launching of terror attacks during their tour of duty while avoiding casualties (and bad press) to their own forces, an approach that lends itself, at best, to the hudna concept that it is acceptable for the terrorists to gain strength as long as they don't use it. Yet.
Even if all this wasn't the case, the suggestion that the Palestinians never have to get their house in order constitutes a radical departure from Israel's philosophy to date.
Not only is it a tremendous concession to make in a working paper rather than after prolonged negotiations, it ignores the fundamental truth so often ignored in Israeli policy discussions: that once a sovereign Palestinian state is established, its sovereign status is not conditioned on continued compliance with, or the functioning of, the agreement under which it was created.
Simply put: a sovereign Palestinian state can send Mr. Lieberman's proposed NATO force packing.
It might be appealing to suggest that someone else bear Israel's security burden -- but it won't work.
Raising such phantom solutions only serves to further confuse the policy debate.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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