RUTHFULLY YOURS

You’ve got to hand it to the New York Times. When it comes to publishing delusional drivel on the Israeli-Palestinian issue the “newspaper of record” is difficult to match. But even by the NYT standards, the recent Op-Ed, Bad Borders, Good Neighbors, by Ephraim Sneh plumbed new depths of absurdity. For not only was it an article based on premises demonstrably detached from reality, but its arguments were blatantly self-contradictory, leaving one to puzzle over whether the only journalistic criterion for publication in the NYT opinion section is support for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines…or acrimony toward Benjamin Netanyahu.

For Israelis the article should be a matter of grave concern. After all, the author was not only a longstanding MK and held several ministerial portfolios, but he served as brigadier general in the IDF and deputy minister of defense. It is thus difficult to know what is more disturbing: Whether someone who held such senior positions of responsibility actually believes in the feasibility of his preposterous proposals; or whether he does not – but published them anyway.

Sneh commences his article by conceding that “Netanyahu … is right: the country’s 1967 borders are not militarily defensible.” But then he makes that astounding claim that he should accept them anyway – with a few “mutually agreed adjustments.” Predictably, Sneh – along with all the other advocates of these “mutually agreed adjustments” – never actually specifies what they should be. This is of course no coincidence – for they can never be translated from the realm of theory to that of reality.

Meaningless, misleading mantra

Large swathes of the land designated for the Palestinian state have vital strategic significance for Israel: They overlook the country’s major population centers including its only international airport, run adjacent to the length of trans-Israel highway, command much of the county’s infrastructure and lie atop major water sources. In light of the historical precedent of the last two decades, ceding them to Palestinian control would be incompatible with the nation’s security.

Clearly, it would be politically untenable for any Israeli government to transfer populated territory from within the 1967-lines to Palestinian control in exchange for the areas needed to make its borders minimally “defensible.” Thus the only territorial compensation remotely commensurate in size that Israel could offer the Palestinians for the strategically vital (and inhabited) highlands of the “West Bank” are the arid (and uninhabited) stretches of its southern desert. Thus any borders that even are remotely defensible make a Palestinian state untenable – both geographically and politically. Hence, any talk of “mutually agreed border adjustments” is merely a meaningless and misleading mantra.

Yet the rest of Sneh’s proposals are even more outlandish. Thus he makes the astounding claim that indefensible borders of 1967 may be transformed into defensible ones by means of a magical formula…of making “the cat custodian of the cream.”

“These borders can be made defensible (by means) of a joint Israeli-Palestinian security force along the West Bank’s border with Jordan, a demilitarized Palestinian state and a three-way Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian defense treaty… This security package would make the 1967 borders defensible,” he writes

Talk of a flat learning curve! Joint Israeli Palestinian security efforts have be tried and failed – repeatedly – since the notion was first conceived in the Oslo Agreements two decades ago. One can only wonder what could possibly induce Sneh to believe that this arrangement would be more effective and more durable in today’s climate of dour cynicism and suspicion than it was in yesteryear’s spirit of euphoric goodwill and hope.

And how he would possibly envision this force would function if Hamas took over control of Palestinian regime – as it did in Gaza? But even putting these thorny issues aside, who would command this joint force? Who would have the final say in determining whether a given situation constituted a threat to Israeli security? And if, so what would be the appropriate response? How would real disagreements or contrived disputes be resolved in real time under operational conditions in the field?

Demilitarization myth

Demilitarized Palestinian State? This too was a cornerstone disastrous Oslo debacle -proving itself to be both unenforceable and irrelevant. Unenforceable because from the get-go, the Palestinians have systematically and continually violated their commitments, amassing weaponry far in excess of that stipulated – both in terms the quantity and quality. It is irrelevant because even a state that is demilitarized in the accepted sense of the word – i.e. devoid of airpower, heavy artillery and armor – could still paralyze Israel’s social and economic routine and shut down the nation’s air traffic with the kind weaponry that abounds today in the allegedly “demilitarized” Palestinian controlled areas.

The final element in the bizarre blueprint is an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian defense treaty that will, according to Sneh, be “necessary to safeguard their common strategic interests.” One would of course be hard pressed to identify the existence of any genuine long-term tri-lateral “common strategic interests” outside the realm wishful thinking.

Even before the January “Arab Spring”, the Financial Times noted that the “The atmosphere between the two countries (Jordan and Israel) is poisonous.” Since then, anti-Israeli sentiment has burgeoned with the growing ascendancy of Muslim Brotherhood in the kingdom expressing increasing opposition to the peace agreement with Israel, its members controlling virtually all the professional associations, and whose main political goal is opposition to normalization of relations with Israel.

So with the tectonic changes underway across the region, incumbent regimes either deposed or under assault, and the Hashemite monarchy increasing beleaguered by Islamist forces, Sneh proposes a making it a lynchpin in ensuring Israel’s long-term security and a major element in the rationale for accepting otherwise “indefensible borders”???

The publications of articles like Sneh’s, in channels like the NYT, serve only to increase international pressure on Israel to adopt perilous policies and to empower its detractors. The fact that former senior figures in Israel’s security establishment are willing to affix their names and lend their prestige to wildly impractical prescriptions is deeply troubling. It gravely undermines the nation’s ability to pursue rational policy and cope adequately with the array of threats confronting it. The only way to attenuate the damage they inflict is to discredit them – by exposing them for what they are: Either grossly incompetent fools or cynically unscrupulous villains.