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Foreign Affairs
Israel's New Strategy
Barry Rubin
BARRY RUBIN is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center, and Editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His latest book is The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.
THE END OF OCCUPATION
Israeli politics and policy are undergoing a revolutionary transformation -- one of the most important developments in the nation's history. As dramatic as recent events have been, equally important is the emergence of a new strategic paradigm that reverses 30 years of debate and practice and overturns some of Israelis' most basic assumptions.
Why have perceptions, politics, and strategy changed so dramatically? The shift began when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, including the dismantling of Jewish settlements in those areas. Within a few months, Sharon's Likud Party had revolted against him; Sharon had quit Likud and formed another party, Kadima; the Labor Party had chosen a populist outsider as its leader; the governing coalition had collapsed, necessitating new elections; Sharon had been physically incapacitated by a stroke and replaced by a top deputy, Ehud Olmert; and Olmert had gone on to win in the March 2006 elections. Hamas' victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections only underscored already existing trends.
The emerging new policy is based on a broad Israeli recognition that holding on to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is simply not in Israel's interest, despite the fact that the Palestinian leadership has been uninterested in and incapable of making peace and that both Fatah and Hamas will use that land to try to launch attacks on Israel. The territories no longer serve a strategic function for Israel, given the unlikelihood of a conventional attack by Arab state armies, and Israel could better defend its citizens by creating a strong defensive line rather than by dispersing its forces. Moreover, because a comprehensive peace deal is not likely to be reached for many years, the territories are no longer of value as bargaining chips. During the long era before the Palestinians will be organized and moderate enough to make peace, Israel has to set its own strategy based on these realities.
TERRITORY FOR PEACE?
The international situation changed drastically in the 1990s, but until recently, Israel was too busy with shorter-term crises and closer-to-home issues to integrate new external realities into its thinking. The Cold War ended, the Soviet Union fell, and the United States became the world's sole superpower. In 1991, a U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq and forced it out of Kuwait. Meanwhile, Arab states became less interested in waging the Arab-Israeli conflict; the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), after decades of battling Israel without achieving its goals, had reached a low point.
At first, it seemed that such changes -- plus an accumulation of Palestinian defeats and internal troubles -- would push Palestinian leaders, Syria, and most Arab states toward a peace agreement with Israel. The peace process was an experiment to see if this would in fact happen. In 2000, both Syria and the Palestinians (under the Clinton plan and the Camp David accords) rejected peace, proving those expectations wrong.
That result, most Israelis concluded, was not a product of some misunderstanding, U.S. or Israeli intransigence, ...