MILITARY OPPOSITION TO SHARON?
Via Kevin Drum, I see this interesting piece in WaPo:
Four former chiefs of Israel’s powerful domestic security service said in an interview published Friday that the government’s actions and policies during the three-year-old Palestinian uprising have gravely damaged the country and its people.
The four, who variously headed the Shin Bet security agency from 1980 to 2000 under governments that spanned the political spectrum, said that Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, that the government should recognize that no peace agreement can be reached without the involvement of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and that it must stop what one called the immoral treatment of Palestinians.
“We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully,” said Avraham Shalom, who headed the security service from 1980 until 1986. “Yes, there is no other word for it: disgracefully. . . . We have turned into a people of petty fighters using the wrong tools.”
Like Kevin, I see this as a somewhat hopeful sign. Clearly, the policies of the Sharon government aren’t working. Indeed, as I’ve often noted, he’s taking the absolute worst tack imaginable: launching brutal attacks without much regard to the fate of non-combatants and yet leaving the job undone. It’s just not a policy a civilized nation can sustain.
That said, short of an outrageous policy of ethnic cleansing–pushing the Palestinians out altogether and leaving the area as an unsettled military buffer zone–I don’t have any solutions. Even if there were a more reasonable Israeli leader, Arafat has proven time and again that he’s not a reliable negotiating partner. The deal that was on the table in the late 1990s is about as good as Israel can offer while maintaing its own security, and it was rejected. So I don’t hold out much hope for a negotiated settlement, either.
This interactive history is interesting, if cursory.
How about this, as a thought experiment: Next week, Israel declares a Palestinian state that comprises all of the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli troops withdraw, taking with them all settlers who don’t wish to live under Palestinian rule. Then what?
On the positive side, massive aid would flow to the new state. The UN would probably arrive in force to help set up institutions and probably assist in security. Israel would enjoy a huge diplomatic and public opinion boost.
On the negative side, militants then might launch cross-border attacks on Israel, either because they want to wipe out Israel or they claim a piece of Jerusalem. But then Palestine is its own country, with the corresponding responsibility for hosting terrorists and guerillas on its soil. That changes the diplomatic situation completely. Israel would have the unquestioned right to demand that the fully-autonomous Palestinian government take effective action. If not, then either UN or Israeli forces would be perfectly right to take massive military action against the militants and the Pal government.
Wouldn’t that be a big improvement over the current situation?
The problem with that is that the Green Line–which goes through Jerusalem–is militarily indefensible. Realistically, for this to be a viable strategy, Israel should unilaterally withdraw from all of Gaza and about 50% of the West Bank, then negotiate with whatever Palestinian government that emerges after the mutual bloodletting for the other 50%.
Of course, then Israel would be criticized for failing to facilitate an orderly transition in the occupied territories, or some similar nonsense, so they’re damned pretty much no matter what they do.
These comments — and one of your own — are rather astounding. Sharon launches ineffective attacks without regard for civilian losses? Huh? Some attacks are failures, some partial successes, some complete successes. Civilian losses vary, from case to case. In no case is there any evidence that the procedure of planning to minimize or eliminate the danger of such casualties has been discontinued. And it’s “disgraceful” for Israel to attempt to get at these terrorists, or perhaps disgraceful for these people to consciously seek shelter behind their own civilian population? It’s unbelievable that this sort of mindless moral inversion would come from Israeli security veterans, and not soft-headed ignorant anti-Israel protesters with “Sharon=Hitler” signs.
The former Shin Bet guys say some amazing things. And BTW, their service spanned the political spectrum, but all were part of the ultimately failed “peace process,” both pre- and post-Oslo. So their service didn’t actually span the pre- and post-“peace process” illusion.
All that aside, it’s amazing how they can utter such jaw-droppers as that Israeli counter-terror strikes will create hate — as if hate isn’t systematically cultivated among Palestinians, regardless of Israeli actions. Or the absurd allusion to South African apartheid, which of course represents a precise inversion of the Palestinian situation: Palestinians want their own state, disenfranchised South Africans rejected their relegation to bogus independent states and sought full rights within a unified state.
But running through it all is the most amazing disconnect of all: all these former security chiefs talk as though it’s September 2000, and Israel instead of the Palestinians has rejected a serious settlement proposal and launched a vile terrorist war.
It’s amazing and rather frightening. These guys spout laughably untrue nonsense, such as that the large-scale terror campaign launched by the Palestinians (PA, Hamas, IJ, Syrian-backed stragglers) has in fact not been blunted by Israeli aggressive action. They surely know better.
It’s as though there were frozen, and missed everything from July 2000 to the present. Their idea of pushing Arafat to deliver has been tried, more than once, and resulted in hundreds of murdered Israelis.
How can people who were deeply involved in what is an ongoing war pretend to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that that war has magically disappeared? I don’t think Israeli voters will easily step into the meat-grinder that these guys pretend doesn’t exist. Time will tell.
I have an atlas from 1964. I can’t find a country called Palestine on it. Where did these Palestinians live in 1964?