Israel digging in
The world may be shocked by the Israeli decision to build 3,000 housing units in bloc E1, but it should not be surprised. The project is an attempt to join East Jerusalem with Jerusalem’s eastern Jewish exclave of Ma’aleh Adumim, and Haaretz reminded its readers on Monday (3 December) that after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had left the Sharon government, on 31 August 2005 “he launched his campaign for Likud chairman - and ultimately, prime minister - on the hilltops of the E-1 corridor linking Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim”. Netanyahu warned: “Jerusalem is in danger”, and he attacked Ariel Sharon for failing to push forward with construction in the pivotal zone. He added that a real Likud leader must withstand the pressure and build. Now he is doing so.
But Netanyahu is not alone in his commitment to Ma’aleh Adumim. As long ago as October 1994, during negotiations over the Oslo Accords, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said that an undivided Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel, and that it would include Ma’aleh Adumim.
Commitments to keeping Ma’aleh Adumim within Israel were reiterated by dovish politicians such as Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, and there has never really been any doubt that it would be retained in any final settlement. Joining Ma’aleh Adumim to East Jerusalem by in-filling with further Jewish settlements is part of this commitment.
The trouble is that Ma’aleh Adumim is not just any West Bank settlement. It is a city of 40,000, and it has long been identified as being of key strategic importance. It protects Jerusalem’s eastern flank; it extends Israel east towards the Jordan Valley; it helps to secure the Jerusalem-Jericho road and with it the route north up the Jordan Valley; and its continuity with East Jerusalem would help achieve the Israeli strategic plan of separating the northern and southern portions of the West Bank from each other.
As the Jerusalem Post argued on 3 December: “Without control over E1, Palestinian building could cut off Ma’aleh Adumim...from the capital; it could also undermine Israel’s access to the Jerusalem-Jericho road, of critical strategic importance for the transport of troops and equipment from Jerusalem eastward and northward via the Jordan Rift Valley...[B]uilding in Jerusalem and E1 protects integral Israeli interests recognized and protected by both left-wing and right-wing governments for well over a decade.”
It has been central to our assessment of the Middle East over many years that whatever deal Israel might eventually agree with the Palestinians over a final settlement, significant causes for war would still persist.
This would probably be the case even with a full retreat to the 1967 border given that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 to liberate lands taken by the Jews in 1948, not 1967, and given the absolute impossibility of Israel agreeing to the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. But it is even more the case when one factors in the continued existence – and extension - of settlements such as Ma’aleh Adumim.
And the view in Jerusalem is that no Israeli government, even a left-wing government (which is not about to be elected), would consider a territorial withdrawal, including an evacuation of settlements, along anything like the lines being wished upon Israel by the Western powers.
Furthermore, the uncertainties caused by the Arab Spring make it certain that Israel will not concede control of the Golan Heights or relinquish its security presence in the Jordan Valley.
It is true that there are some powerful voices in Israel, including military voices, who argue that Israel should ditch its territorial hang-ups because territory is now less relevant militarily than it was in 1973. Almost exactly a year ago, for instance, the Council for Peace and Security published a report arguing that control of the Jordan Valley was unnecessary from a military point of view. As the report was authored by a number of influential former military men, it was a serious piece of work.
Its main argument was that while Israel in the past might have faced the threat of a massive ground attack with air power support from a coalition of Arab states, “the current reality of the military balance in the Middle East renders this threat nearly irrelevant due to the collapse of the pan-Arab movement, the peace agreements in effect with Egypt and Jordan, and the eradication of Iraqi military forces”.
Accepting those arguments would have required quite a leap of faith even a year ago. Now it seems, to most Israelis, a reckless misjudgement. For instance, it is now apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy could prove an even more powerful unifier than Arab nationalism; that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are fragile; and that even if Iraq has seen its military forces decimated, it is now firmly in the Iranian camp which makes it potentially even more hostile than previously.
A more powerful argument, as regards the Jordan Valley, is that its control doesn’t really provide much by way of strategic depth, but the report does concede that control of the border is important from the point of view of countering the terror threat – which it accepts remains a potent challenge to Israel.
However, the report argues that “a final status agreement with the Palestinians along with its security arrangements and mechanisms will provide a more-than-adequate alternative control of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley and will create a strategic reality in which Israel’s de facto border rests in eastern Jordan.”
But this twin idea of the West Bank Palestinians providing “more-than-adequate” control of the West Bank, and of Israel’s “de facto border” resting in eastern Jordan, is being attacked as very out of date (even if it was ever right) given the recent rocket onslaught from the Gaza Strip, which included attacks on Tel Aviv, and the uncertainty that Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy can survive the Arab Spring.
It is not surprising, therefore, that ideas such as these have gained so little traction in Israel. So the reality is Israel building new Jewish homes in zone E1, not planning for a full retreat (with minor adjustments) to the 1967 borders.
Following the outcry over the building plans, Netanyahu’s determination not to back down was revealed by Army Radio on 4 December. It quoted Netanyahu as saying in a private conversation that he had no intention of succumbing to the pressure. He said: “It’s Israel’s right and in the national interest, which has a broad consensus, to create continuity between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim.”
Furthermore, the Jerusalem planning and building commission is due to meet in a couple of weeks to discuss two more contentious building projects in territory taken in 1967: one for 1,600 units in Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem and the other to the south of the capital in Givat Hamatos.
One additional point worth noting is the way that Israel has dismissed the European outcry as being a consequence of an increasing Muslim population in Europe: in other words as something that has to be endured by Israel but not something that should be appeased as it is based on bias not reason.
For instance, on 4 December Israel Hayom wrote: “The Europeans should be more worried about the demographic changes in their countries, which is making their governments pay a disproportionate amount of attention to Muslim voters – who highlight the Palestinian issue. The situation will not get any better in the foreseeable future...”
On the same day Maariv wrote: “For years, we have been explaining to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Europe has changed and that millions of Muslims who have moved there are now playing a key role in determining European governments’ policies.”
It recalled a meeting between Netanyahu and then-President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, when the French leader told the Israeli premier: “There are 8 million Muslims in France and they all have satellite dishes. They all see what’s happening in Israel. They watch all of the Palestinian television channels. A riot in Israel can set off riots across Europe.”
Writing in the 5 December issue of Israel Hayom, former Israeli ambassador Freddy Eytan noted: “[The Europeans] are petrified by the economic crisis, by the wave of Muslim immigration that threatens to inundate their countries...they are concerned about terrorist attacks and that they have no choice but to acquiesce to the extortionate dictates of the Muslims...at the expense of their Israeli allies.”
This adds one more layer to the increasing feeling of encirclement within Israel, and it reinforces the arguments of those who say that Israel can only rely upon itself for its defence – which is the key argument of the hardliners for an Israeli military strike against Iran before its nuclear programme becomes invulnerable to Israeli action. What we have seen in the past week is all of a piece. JdeC.