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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
October 7, 2005
In an interview with Yediot Ahronoth last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that he expects "enormous progress in the peace process and in the implementation of the road map" over the next twelve months. That means Sharon intends to continue extricating Israel from the Palestinian territories. Israel is out of Gaza. "Enormous progress" can only be achieved in the West Bank.
Israel has been in possession of the West Bank (and, until this summer, Gaza) for 38 years, twice as long as the State existed prior to gaining those territories in the 1967 Six Day War.
Today pre-'67 Israel barely exists even as a memory. But, once upon a time, pre-'67 Israel was simply "Israel." Today, the West Bank, the settlements, the West Bank Palestinians and the settlers are such a large part of the Israel story that it's difficult imagining what the Israelis -- and non-Israeli Jews -- thought about before 1967. At a time when Jewish settlers, compelled to leave Gaza for the Negev and other parts of Israel, claim that they are "refugees," it is hard remembering a time when Israelis and Jews everywhere considered Israel (without the West Bank or even East Jerusalem) to be a living miracle, the solution to 2,000 years of statelessness.
Israel's first decades were its most critical years -- a time when its people not only had to build the state and its institutions but simultaneously absorb hundreds of thousands (and ultimately millions) of Jewish refugees and survivors. Israelis didn't argue about the West Bank because they didn't have it and few Israelis wanted it. The West Bank (with its Palestinian population) were in Jordanian hands and there was little reason to believe that would change.
Post-'67 myth has it that the Israel of 1948-1967 was a very dangerous place. Government officials have routinely said that Israel -- without the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights -- was a place where Jews lived in terror and where neighboring Arab states and terrorists were able to (and did) attack with impunity. But that was not a depiction of the pre-'67 reality; it was rather an argument designed to defend Israel's claim to the territories.
The numbers tell an interesting story. From 1949 (following the War of Independence) until the Six Day War of 1967, the number of Israeli victims of terror was 465. Since the Six Day War, and the beginning of the occupation, there have been 2126 Israeli terror victims with 1075 just in the period that began after the Oslo collapse in 2000. That is 465 terror victims before 1967 and 2126 in the years since.
Numbers can lie but these numbers point to one indisputable truth: the land Israel acquired in 1967 did not reduce Israel's vulnerability to terrorism. On the contrary, the occupation itself has made Israel more vulnerable.
As for conventional attacks, a similar lesson is revealed by the numbers. In 1967, with Israel locked behind the old borders, it defeated the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in a few days, losing 776 soldiers. In 1973, with the Sinai Peninsula (four times the size of Israel itself) separating Israel from Egypt, it took Israel almost three weeks to repel an Egyptian attack and cost the lives of 2688 Israeli soldiers.
The bottom line seems to be that more land does not necessarily equal strength or security.
Of course, Israel did not initiate the war that gained it the additional territory. The West Bank would have remained in Arab hands if King Hussein of Jordan had not rebuffed the plea from Israel's Prime Minister not to join Egypt and Syria in attacking Israel. Hussein gambled and lost the West Bank including East Jerusalem. The Palestinians and the Israelis both continue to pay a heavy price for that decision.
In retrospect, it is clear that those Israelis who, right from the start, viewed the territories not as a place in which to settle but as bargaining chips were absolutely right. They are bargaining chips and, in that sense, Israel's acquisition of the territories still has the potential to be the blessing most Jews thought they were when Israel first gained control of them.
After all, prior to 1967, Israel had little to offer the Arabs at the negotiating table. Obviously, it was in no position to offer territory. Israel had none to spare. It was the Arabs who held all the cards. They could offer recognition and peace while, in return, all Israel could do was to say "thank you."
That changed when Israel gained the territories. Suddenly Israel had something Egypt wanted. And so, in exchange for security, it could offer the Sinai to Egypt -- and Egypt, anxious to get its territory back, accepted. The result has been a quarter century of Israeli-Egyptian peace.
The same strategy must be employed with the Palestinians. Prior to 1967, the Palestinians were demanding the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state on 100% of historic Palestine. No more, not after decades with the Palestinian heartland in Israel's hands. Today, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and (according to the polls) the Palestinian people are seeking statehood not in 100% of historic Palestine but in the 22% that is the West Bank (plus Gaza). In exchange, they would provide security guarantees and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At the failed Camp David Summit of July 2000, and later at Taba, the Israelis and Palestinians came very close to an agreement along those lines.
The key word is agreement. An Israeli-Palestinian agreement can achieve a viable contiguous state for Palestinians and security for Israelis.
But neither can be achieved unilaterally.
The good news is that Prime Minister Sharon and President Abbas appear ready to resume the cooperation that is in both peoples' interests, and that is a prelude to negotiations.
According to today's Yedioth Ahronoth, at their summit next week, Sharon will tell Abbas that Israel will sell the Palestinian Authority the weapons it needs to rein in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This is something the Bush administration has asked Israel to do for months but Sharon has resisted. He now appears to have come around to the Bush team's view that the most effective way of weakening the terrorists is by building up Abbas.
Yediot also reports that Sharon will provide a number of relief measures, designed both to ease the conditions under which Palestinians live and to strengthen Abbas. These include "a prisoner release, approval for deportees from the West Bank who are in Gaza to return home, permission to expand fishing areas in the Gaza Strip, an announcement on negotiations to transfer more West Bank cities to Palestinian security control, and relief measures at a number of roadblocks in the West Bank."
Nobody can predict where any of this will lead. For a dozen years now, there have been so many moments which promised much but delivered little. But one thing is certain. After four years of violence, and one of relative calm, both sides surely understand what the alternatives are.
It's time to choose.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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