A FLAWED STRATEGY: DAVID ISAAC
A Flawed Strategy
By David Isaac http://www.shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/
PM Netanyahu following his strategy.
“The crucial importance of maintaining the strategic relationship with the United States necessitated efforts to stay on the ‘same page’ with the administration on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, in spite of the view among those close to the Israeli prime minister that the U.S. view of what was achievable in this regard was and remains deluded,” writes Dr. Jonathan Spyer, a columnist at The Jerusalem Post, in a fine analysis of Benjamin Netanyahu’s second premiership thus far.
Spyer attempts to explain the thinking behind the prime minister’s actions. In his view, Netanyahu wishes to keep U.S.-Israel relations running smoothly in order to win American support for his prime objective – stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But as the U.S. has made an Arab-Israeli peace deal a “central part of its regional strategy,” Netanyahu doesn’t want to be seen as obstructing any agreement, which would likely antagonize the Obama-led administration, possibly leading to a “rupture” in relations.
Assuming this is indeed Netanyahu’s strategy, it is a flawed one. Past experience has shown what happens when Israel enters into negotiations with its enemies. The Israeli side is subject to enormous pressure to submit to Arab demands with the U.S. typically playing the role of dispassionate arbiter when, in fact, it’s in cahoots with the Arabs.
Such was the case during the Camp David Accords, when President Jimmy Carter worked together with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to break Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s resistance. As Shmuel writes in The Hollow Peace, (Dvir Co., 1981):
Once the thrust of the “solution” was defined, the remaining details of the agreement flowed reasonably, though apparently not easily. Informed sources reported that Begin opposed most of the crucial formulations, but that as the long and fatiguing talks at Camp David progressed, he was worn down, and capitulated on each of them. …
The Camp David negotiations consisted entirely of coaxing and pressuring Israel to give up more and more; the Israeli delegation made no demands. The only doubt that seems to have arisen throughout the conference was this – whether one paragraph or another would prevent “the worst” – that is, war – from happening – as though the pressures on Israel were backed by an Egypt that had been victorious on the battlefield and whose troops were capable of carrying on with its campaign if the defeated Israeli people did not accept the terms of surrender.
Netanyahu is in a still worse position than Begin. In today’s talks, not only is the U.S. involved, but according to Mideast Envoy George Mitchell, it’s actively seeking input from the likes of the UN, EU, the Quartet, Egypt, Jordan and “many of the other Arab states.” Up against this gang is solitary Israel, led by a prime minister who has shown his susceptibility to pressure, having already conceded to an unprecedented 10-month “settlement freeze”. Worse still, he has accepted as the goal of the talks a “two-state solution,” meaning he agrees in principle to Israel’s retreat to the 1949 Armistice lines and the establishment of an Arab state in Judea and Samaria, with possibly half of Jerusalem as its capital.
If Spyer is right, and Netanyahu has entered these talks in order to pacify an American administration whose support he feels he needs, then he has lost far more than he could possibly gain. In his effort to avoid pitfalls, Netanyahu has fallen into the biggest pitfall of them all – forfeiting Jewish rights to the Land of Israel. As Shmuel writes in The Hollow Peace:
The Arabs are deeply aware of the weight of ‘historic rights’ and of the importance of establishing and emphasizing their claims on historic grounds. That is why they have made a tremendous effort over the years to manufacture and disseminate the outrageous myths about the relationship of the Arab people to Eretz-Yisrael (and to Sinai).
So successful were Arab propagandists at disseminating these myths that they became the foundation of the Camp David Accords. “The underlying premise of the Camp David Agreement,” Shmuel writes, “is that “Israel is an intruder into Arab territory and has only one right worth considering, the right not to have its security injured.”
Unfortunately, this is the exact same stance taken by Netanyahu. He doesn’t breathe a word about the historic and legal Jewish rights to Judea and Samaria, as he has already stated his willingness to part with them. He only speaks of demilitarization – “there is a real fear that there will be an armed Palestinian state which will become a terrorist base against Israel.”
And just as Begin suggested Israeli forces be allowed to remain “in specific locations within what is recognized as Arab national territory”, rumors this week tell of a letter penned by President Obama promising Netanyahu that the U.S. “would allow Israeli troops to remain in the Jordan Valley after a final-status agreement is reached with the Palestinians.”
Shmuel describes Begin and his negotiating team as having entered talks, “with the abject spirit of a defeated people”. Netanyahu channels that defeatist spirit. Whatever his reasons for agreeing to negotiate a “two-state solution”, a position that is the exact opposite of his election platform, which completely disavowed the formula “two states for two peoples”, he has placed Israel in a position where it may end up renouncing its rights to the heart of its homeland.
Can the process be stopped? Israel’s survival depends on it. As Shmuel wrote in “The Vance Team Prepares the Landmines” (The Jerusalem Post, August 18, 1978):
The Government has the opportunity to consider the full import of the situation at which we have arrived. It is most desirable that it should seek ways and means of extricating itself from it. Extrication now involves the most serious political difficulties; it demands a many-pronged national effort, the likes of which Israel has seen only in time of war. The alternative however is to be propelled still further in a process that threatens gradually to undermine our independence and to gnaw at our very being as a nation.
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