Posted on 02/23/2004 7:05:10 AM PST by SJackson
Widen the area where Gaza meets Sinai and relocate its Palestinian population to Gush Katif.
Egypt has confidentially asked Israel to retain its military presence in the narrow Philadelphia corridor of southern Gaza when – and if – settlements are relocated, according to the Channel 1 Friday night newsmagazine.
The several hundred-meter-wide Philadelphia corridor runs along the Egyptian border and separates Palestinian Rafiah from the Egyptian part of town.
The request was reportedly made by the head of Egyptian intelligence to his counterpart in the Mossad. Although there was no specific attribution, the report sounds authentic. The Egyptians, as fellow Arabs, know even better than we Israelis what a painful thorn the Palestinians can be.
During the years Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, between 1948 to 1967, they ran the area as occupied military territory, absolutely refusing to consider the possibility of annexing it to Egypt (as opposed to how Jordan handled the occupied West Bank). Egypt kept the Palestinian population hermetically sealed in their ghetto and refused them entry into Egypt. No Arab or international voices were raised against that brutal occupation.
That Palestinian thorn has now turned into a very real threat to Egypt itself. The menace is now ever more imminent in light of reports of President Hosni Mubarak's dodgy health. A bloody succession fight may not be far off and there is a possibility Palestinian Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists could infiltrate from Gaza into Egypt from Rafiah and tip the balance in favor of radical Islamic forces inside Egypt.
The extent of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed unilateral withdrawal from Gaza will be determined primarily by the response of the Bush Administration. It is essential the Americans be keenly sensitized to the implications of any withdrawal on the fate of their closest Arab allies in the region: Egypt and Jordan.
ISRAEL SHOULD respond favorably to the Egyptian request (which Egypt would never publicly admit). But it should do so on condition the US agree to Israel's widening the Philadelphia corridor from several hundred meters to several kilometers, with the Palestinian population of that part of Rafiah evacuated and relocated in our abandoned settlements in Gush Katif.
The widening of the Philadelphia corridor is essential to finally overcome the pernicious problem of tunnels through which the Palestinians have been smuggling arms from Egyptian Rafiah. Egypt, too, would have to end its scandalous turning of a blind eye to that deadly gun-running.
It is something of a comeuppance for the Egyptians to belatedly realize that the same tunnels that have served to smuggle arms against Israel could serve the reverse process of infiltrating Palestinian terrorists to destabilize a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Israel's approach to the Philadelphia corridor should serve as the yardstick for a new pragmatic policy toward the territories, one in which security has primacy over sentimentality. Sharon (together with the late Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan) was mistaken about the security value attributed to the Gush Katif settlements. Now, having come to his senses it is crucial that he not be coerced into giving up the Philadelphia corridor, which is of crucial security importance.
The same argument can be made about a pragmatic, security-oriented approach to the long-term Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria. The crucial part of that territory for Israel to retain is the Jordan Rift Valley from Beit She'an south to the Dead Sea and from the Jordan River to the Allon Road at the top of the eastern mountain slopes.
Like Egypt, Jordan will never admit openly that permitting a nexus between autonomous Palestinian territory and the Hashemite Kingdom would be a death warrant for the Jordanian state. But just as Israel saved King Hussein's Jordan from a Syrian invasion in the early 1970s – which permitted him to quash a PLO uprising, a permanent IDF presence in that buffer area would be crucial for preserving the stability of Jordan as an American ally and Israeli peace partner.
Sharon, long-term godfather of the Israeli settlement movement, has now returned to himself as a pragmatic military man concerned with the overall security of Israel. This is a switch the vast majority of Israelis made some time ago. It is important that, alongside hammering out the details of Israel's withdrawal from some of the territories, Sharon impress upon Washington the overarching importance – for America's own interests – of retaining the Philadelphia corridor and the Jordan Rift Valley.
The writer is a retired lecturer in political science and a veteran journalist.
An excellent idea. If the Arab world is worried about the loss of territory, Egypt can donate a strip of the Sinai, better yet a big chunk of the Sinai and give the palestinians a contiguous state, the last thing Egypt wants on her border.
Like Egypt, Jordan will never admit openly that permitting a nexus between autonomous Palestinian territory and the Hashemite Kingdom would be a death warrant for the Jordanian state. But just as Israel saved King Hussein's Jordan from a Syrian invasion in the early 1970s – which permitted him to quash a PLO uprising, a permanent IDF presence in that buffer area would be crucial for preserving the stability of Jordan as an American ally and Israeli peace partner. Sharon, long-term godfather of the Israeli settlement movement, has now returned to himself as a pragmatic military man concerned with the overall security of Israel. This is a switch the vast majority of Israelis made some time ago. It is important that, alongside hammering out the details of Israel's withdrawal from some of the territories, Sharon impress upon Washington the overarching importance – for America's own interests – of retaining the Philadelphia corridor and the Jordan Rift Valley.I understand the point the writer's making, but I think Sharon saw it long before anyone. The fence and the Gaza pullout are obviously going to endanger Israel's not too neighborly neighbors, who will see the value of joining Israel's defense efforts against terrorists in a meaningful way.
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