Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Obama versus security for Israel?

A plan put forward by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and seconded by President Barack Obama, for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, was described in a speech by Obama at the State Department. The basis of negotiations would be a return to "1967" (pre-war) lines -- that is, the 1949 Armistice Lines -- and then, after Israel accepts this disastrous situation as the basis, there could be negotiations. This plan would give Israel indefensible borders, and a territorial width of merely 8 miles. Also, the post-1967 settlement enterprise would be wiped out completely, the Jewish cities, towns, and villages in Judea and Samaria and even half of Jerusalem being turned into areas for the placement of rocket launchers and missile launchers as happened in the Gaza Strip, with the eviction of over 500,000 Jewish residents, about 2/3 of them children. In Obama's speech, he seems to have ruled out Israel's very important security requirement of having a long-term security envelope around the Palestinian entity, including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley. Obama does this, as a lawyer might, by setting up a series of barriers to this. He proclaimed that security would be left in the hands of the Palestinians (so no Israeli security envelope), that the Palestinian entity would border Israel, Jordan and Egypt while Israel would border the Palestinian entity (so no border between Israel and Jordan and no security envelope), and that there would be a total withdrawal of Israeli military forces, to be carried out during a defined and agreed interval of time (so no long term military presence anywhere, including the Jordan River Valley). This was inserted to guide the Palestinians so that in the unlikely event that they might agree to Israel's security envelope needs, Obama overrules them and decrees that it cannot take place.

How this would work out can be seen by considering the effect on different types of warfare that would result. Rocket and missile attacks would be made relatively easy, since Israel's population centers would be in easy range of the rockets and missiles. So would airplanes landing or taking off from Israel's airport be in easy range.

The security envelope that Israel needs, and that Obama seems to have said "no" to, is needed to prevent the smuggling of weapons, including rockets and missiles, from outside into the Palestinian entity. It is also needed to prevent the infiltration of jihadis into the territory controlled by the Palestinian entity. Also, with events unpredictable in the Middle East in Arab countries, and revolution in the air, there is no way to predict what Islamist forces will gain power in revolutions there and what armies will try to conquer an Israel with a territorial width of merely 8 miles. An Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley would be able to resist and delay and armed invasion across the Jordan River, to gain time for Israel's reserve army to mobilize and fight against the armed invasion. Also, an Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley could prevent jihadis from crossing in the other direction, into Jordan, to destabilize that country and lead it to becoming a radically-controlled state, which would be a danger to Israel.

It is unthinkable for Israelis to have to consider what would happen in case of a nuclear attack, say an atomic bomb being dropped on Tel Aviv by Iran. But it would be irresponsible if there were not anyone at all in the government of Israel that is willing to consider what might happen. Think about it. If a nuclear bomb were dropped on Tel Aviv, the blast and fire and enormous radiation would kill large numbers of people outright. But further from ground zero of the bomb, there would be people who survive, but who would have to be brought away from the site to a safer place away from the radiation hazard. Where could they go? The Jewish communities in Samaria would eagerly welcome them. Also, it would provide a place that is highly unlikely to be hit by an Iranian nuclear weapons, because the Jewish communities are distributed over a broad region, and because they are close to Jerusalem which is unlikely to be a nuclear target by Islamic Iran since it is a holy site in the eyes of Muslims, and because there are large numbers of Palestinian residents in the area. In fact, it has already been reported that there was at least one drill in which communities in Samaria pretended to admit Jewish refugees from some unnamed calamity. Likewise, there is room in Judea for receiving Jewish refugees from the nuclear attack. Certainly Jerusalem itself would welcome Jewish refugees, including the half of Jerusalem that Abbas and Obama want to make Judenrein in their ill-conceived plan. This shows two problems of the Abbas-Obama Judenrein plan for half of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria. One is that the more than 500,000 Jewish residents would be expelled from there, and many would wind up in the Tel Aviv area where they would have the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb hanging over their heads. The other is that these regions, becoming Judenrein, would no more be amenable to accepting Jewish refugees than were many of the countries of the world during the Holocaust years -- and even worse, since the Palestinians have been at war with Israel and hate has been drummed into their heads for generations. The Abbas-Obama plan, then, is a plan for decreasing the number of survivors from a nuclear attack. Also, by making Israel a more tempting target, since an attack would do more damage, the Abbas-Obama plan also makes an attack more likely, since the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran would see a greater "reward" in lives for their nuclear attack.

The Abbas-Obama plan would result in indefensible boundaries for Israel with a territory merely 8 miles wide, without the essential security envelope including a long-term military presence in the Jordan River Valley, with Israel unable to stop the rocket and missile attacks and unable to control the flow of rockets and missiles to the launchers, the situation would be that of the "Auschwitz borders" that Abba Eban spoke about years ago, there would be instability caused by Israel's enemies being aware of the precariousness of Israel's situation, and there would be more fatalities and more casualties from an Iranian nuclear attack on Tel Aviv, bringing about a greater likelihood that such an attack would occur.