by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen
At critical strategic junctures, decisions are always complex, and Netanyahu’s is complex many times over. But full Israeli control over the West Bank’s main traffic arteries is absolutely essential.
The Tunnels Road leading from the
Jerusalem suburb of Gilo to the West Bank
settlements of the Etzion bloc
(view from Beit Jalla), photo via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,606, June 15, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The issue of applying
sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the West Bank’s Israeli communities
puts PM Benjamin Netanyahu on the horns of a difficult strategic
dilemma, one of the most important in Israel’s history. At critical
strategic junctures, decisions are always complex, and Netanyahu’s is
complex many times over. But full Israeli control over the West Bank’s
main traffic arteries is absolutely essential.
The matter of applying Israeli sovereignty to
certain areas of the West Bank is being assailed from both left and
right. The left-wing camp, backed by many former army officers and
public servants, is portraying the idea as such a morass of risks as to
invalidate the possibility that it contains any kind of opportunity at
all. From the right, leaders of the settlement enterprise speak not only
of grave security risks but of an irreversible step that awards the
Palestinian Authority half of the territory that is still in Israel’s
hands, which is known as Area C.
In the debate with the left, Netanyahu enjoys
public support including from a growing group of former officers and
security officials. The more difficult dilemma is the one posed by the
right.
David Ben-Gurion faced a similar dilemma in 1937
when accepting the Peel Commission’s partition plan, which offered the
prospective Jewish State a small fraction of the territory of mandatory
Palestine. “The Jewish state now being offered us… is not the Zionist
goal, but it could serve as a decisive stage on the way to realizing the
larger Zionism,” he said, in an encapsulation of his perception of
Zionism as a ceaseless pioneering struggle. (It is doubtful whether that
sort of logic underpins Netanyahu’s approach.)
From a security standpoint, however, several
things need to be clarified. First and foremost is the matter of control
of the West Bank’s main traffic arteries. The prime minister promises
that after the implementation of the Trump plan, the IDF will remain in
charge of security on the ground, certainly when it comes to those key
arteries. Yet security control in itself is not enough. If an artery is
partially under Palestinian sovereignty, there will be no way to prevent
dense construction on both sides of it. That means Israeli security
control will dwindle until it becomes impossible.
PM Yitzhak Rabin understood this when he
conditioned progress in the Oslo process on the completion of bypass
arteries, such as the Tunnels Road leading to Gush Etzion and the
Ramallah bypass road. These roads were not paved merely to make it
easier for local Jewish residents to get to Jerusalem. They were an
operational necessity. During Operation Defensive Shield (2002), these
roads enabled the swift movement of IDF forces throughout the West Bank
to suppress the Palestinian war of terror.
The upshot is that Israel must maintain full
control of the main West Bank’s traffic arteries. This includes Highways
5 and 35 as well as Highway 60 north and south of Jerusalem, which is a
critical link between the city and the communities that envelop it—to
the north in the Eli-Ariel bloc and to the south in the Kiryat Arba
bloc. Without Highway 60, Jerusalem will be unable to fulfill its
metropolitan role and will degenerate into a border town.
Notwithstanding the undeniable risks, the
application of Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and parts of the
West Bank is a historic opportunity. It should be implemented in the
light of a perennial vision, as part of the ceaseless process of
redeeming the people and the land.
A previous version of this article was published in Israel Hayom on June 5.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/netanyahu-dilemma/
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