Editor's Note: The following is excerpted from an article in Nativ of September 1999.
"Without defensible borders, the state will be destroyed in war." --Shimon Peres
This statement by Shimon Peres --which was the foundation of Israel's strategic thinking until recently -- has implications that go far beyond the military. The existential danger for Israel goes beyond defensible borders to include a number of other interconnected factors. It may be possible to cope with each of them individually, but all of them together put the state in mortal peril.
For example, take water. One can compensate for its absence by bringing water from Turkey. Or take a Palestinian state. The military dangers constituted by such a state are secondary. Or take the Arab demand that Israel be reduced to the 1947 partition borders; these can probably be resisted by a diplomatic effort. However, only an insane state would rely on an outside party for its water. The Palestinian state will not fight against Israel alone but will become the jumping board for a comprehensive Arab attack. And the diplomatic struggle is destined to fail, for Israel will have no allies in that struggle. Moreover, fifty years and five wars were intended to defeat precisely this complex of dangers. If so, why should we create these dangers with our own hands?
The deZionization of public discourse is one of the most serious aspects contributing to the public's loss of morale. This expresses itself first and foremost in estrangement from the territorial component of Zionism in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. These areas are "the cradle of the Hebrew nation, the purpose of its historical existence and the one and only reason for Zionism." So spoke Menachem Begin. Without them, there is left nothing of the Jewish people's aspiration for its land but only a simple territorialism and, if territorialism, no one will dispute that New York is much safer than Jerusalem and Los Angeles much more enticing than Tel Aviv.
If Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem are given up, Zionism will be emptied of content and Israeli nationality of its essence. The abandonment of Jewish settlements to Arab sovereignty means the establishment of ghettoes and "galut," i.e. exile within Eretz Israel, carried out by the Jews themselves. Removal of settlements means the expulsion of Jews by Jews in the Land of Israel and willing acceptance of the principle of "Judenrein" within the Jewish homeland. In both cases, it will be a deadly blow to the Jewish ethos as a nation.
The liberation of parts of the homeland in the Six Day War gave Israel a power multiplier of decisive importance in the form of territorial positions which were of strategic value. Without them, Israel cannot exist. Right after the Six Day War, President Lyndon Johnson asked the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff headed by General Wheeler to draw a map of the minimum territory Israel needs for survival...The map includes most
Removal of settlements means the willing acceptance of the principle of "Judenrein" within the Jewish homeland.
In the Israel Defense Forces conception, western Eretz Yisrael and the Golan are one organic entity and therefore retreat to the lines of 1967 will lead to a collapse of its fighting doctrine. From a purely logistical point of view, the borders of 1967 at the level of present population density does not give enough physical room for a dispersal of the army, not to speak of fire areas and training areas. The flying alternatives, AWACs for example, which partially provides the ability to deter on the ground, are so expensive and vulnerable that it is doubtful if they are of realistic value.
[(Continued on p.4)]
January 2000 - 3 - Outpost