Disengagement or engagement

Israel Insider ^ | May 30, 2004 | By Michael Anbar

[Turbodog]

A good field strategist might retreat and reposition his troops in order to win the battle - such moves are understandable. But an ideology-based political struggle is different. Giving up political turf without reciprocity is tantamount to unconditional surrender, which can never end in victory.

Ideology-driven political conflicts are wrought with symbols. Israeli unconditional retreat under fire symbolizes for the Muslims the stereotypical terrified Jew runs away like a dog with his tail between his hind-legs. "The Jews are our dogs" is a classical Arab anti-Jewish saying. Israeli unconditional retreat must "prove" to the Arabs that the Israelis lost their resolve, so that their end goal of eliminating the Jews from the whole Israeli territory is not an illusion.

One has a hard time to understand Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's declaration that 7,000 Jews cannot live on their own, legally acquired property, among 1,200,000 Muslim Arabs. If there were just 600,000 Arabs and 7000 Jews, would it have been O.K.?

If there were 50,000 Jews instead of 7000 would it have been O.K.? What does this Jewish/Arab ratio imply concerning Jews living anywhere in the world among overwhelming majorities of non-Jews?

Does Sharon endorse Islamic policy of intolerance of any non-Muslims on "Arab land"? Is then the Gaza Strip more authentic "Arab land" than Judea, or the coastal plains between Gaza and Haifa?

Clearly the notion of evacuating Gush Katif is political and not due to security considerations. The same considerations also apply to Judea and Samaria. The disengagement initiative seems to be based on the following unfounded assumptions:

1. Since the unilateral disengagement plan would put the Palestinians into a worse political position (depriving them of the PR tools of "occupation" and IDF "brutality"), the threat of disengagement or its implementation will shock the Palestinians into a radical regime change and put an end to terrorism, making an equitable political agreement with Israel possible.

2. Providing the Palestinian Arabs an opportunity of reaching internationally recognized political independence would alleviate their current self-perception of being in a humiliating, hopeless situation, which radicalizes their political stance.

3. Support of the European community and the U.S. with billions of dollars to revitalize the devastated Palestinian economy will significantly raise the standard of living of these Arabs and diminish the enormous economic differential between them and the Israelis (more than a 20-fold differential in GDP per capita). The Palestinians will then have much more to lose by continued hostilities.

4. Since the Palestinian Arabs will be able to declare political independence, it would invalidate a major political argument about the need for self-determination of these Arabs. This would then buy for Israel desirable sympathy of the EU and Russia, as well of American socialists.

5. Implementation of the disengagement plan will defuse the "demographic time-bomb."

6. The newly constructed defense fence will reduce the damage of Arab hostilities to a tolerable level (even if the hostile intentions of the Arabs would not change). The Israeli public will feel secure and Israel's economy will fully recover from its current slump.

7. Israel will be able to control the entry of weaponry and terrorists as well as foreign troops into the new "sovereign" Palestinian state, preventing it from becoming the bridgehead of a renewed military assault on Israel.

8. Redeployment of the IDF retreated from Arab territories Israel will save substantial costs in manpower and materiel.

9. In the long run the Arabs will recognize the historical right of the Jewish people to their historic homeland and give up on their intentions to eradicate the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, none of these assumptions is sufficiently realistic to make it a cornerstone of a viable long-term political solution. Let us analyze these assumptions one by one:

1. The unilateral disengagement will not deprive the Arabs from claiming that the State of Israel is Palestinian territory "stolen" from them, and that the Jewish state uses its superior power to blockade their miniature state.

Thus "occupation" will be substituted by "blockade," which justifies belligerence in "self-defense" by international law. Moreover, the "liberation" of "occupied" Palestine, i.e. Israel, will still be there to harp on.

Consequently, European anti-Israeli leftists and the Arab states that have been trying to delegitimize Israel will still have sufficient fodder for continuing their anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish political activities, using the UN as their Israel-bashing forum.

Furthermore, the Palestinians will not feel any political isolation and Israel will continue to be chided by the leftists for its brutal military "siege" and its "heartless" economic "blockade" of those poor Arabs who were placed by the Jews in a huge "concentration camp."

Obviously, Muslims will continue to hate the Israelis who live on "stolen" Arab land; at least this will be what their clergy will continue to tell them each Friday all over the world.

In brief, the shrewd PLO leadership must realize that the Israeli disengagement is an asset - it hardly deprives them of their political clout while improving their ability, probably under an international umbrella, to continue anti-Israeli hostilities aimed to achieve their end goal - elimination of the Jewish state.

2. The Palestinians are today in an apparent humiliating hopeless situation by tolerating their inept leadership. They could have enjoyed a far better quality of life and a brighter political future in concert rather than in discord with their Jewish neighbors. All they would be required is to give up their supremacist religious intolerance, recognizing Jewish national rights. As long as their leadership maintains its militant ideology, they will continue to feel miserable. Since there is little in the "disengagement plan" to induce a change in that leadership (see #1), there is no reason for the self-perception of the Palestinians to change and for their radicalism to subside.

3. Thirty years of experience (1970-2000) showed that practically all Israeli, European and American investments in the economy of the Arab territories went down the drain by corruption and by diverting resources to terrorist activities; being a terrorist has become a lucrative profession in the Palestinian territories. As long as the Palestinian leadership remains the same, there is no reason for new investments to be more productive. As long as Palestinian school children are being taught hatred, militancy and glorification of death when killing Jews, instead of math and science, there will be no workforce to benefit from new economic opportunities.

Moreover, as long as the hostilities continue (and they will continue under the current Arab leadership), newly constructed manufacturing plants are likely to be destroyed in inevitable Israeli retaliatory attacks, as these constructions will be used to store war materiel and serve as staging bases for terrorists just as schoolhouses, hospitals, factories and mosques are used today. Therefore, following more investments in the Palestinian territories while hostilities continue, Israel is going to lose rather than gain sympathy in the West.

4. As stated under #1, little will change in the international political status of Israel as a result of Palestinian self-determination without a dramatic change in Arab leadership and ideology.

5. The "demographic time-bomb" will still be there, probably in an even more severe form. Putting a rapidly growing Arab population in a confined area and pumping them up with economic misery mixed with hatred in proximity to the prosperous surrounding Israelis, is a prescription for a disastrous blowout that will be hard to contain.

Shortsighted Israeli politicians are worried about Israeli democratic elections that may endanger the hegemony of their party, whereas one should worry more about an unprecedented economic differential within the boundaries of historic Israel, which is bound to end in a catastrophe.

6. The sixth assumption is completely unfounded. True, the fence makes it harder for suicide bomber to enter Israeli territory. So what? The fence will then change the mode of operation of the terrorists. It would not take the Arabs more than a year to attain the capability of neutralizing the effectiveness of the fence. What will prevent the Palestinians from launching into the suburbs of Jerusalem or Kfar Saba Kassam rockets tipped with weaponized anthrax or Vx, or even weaponized small pox, made in Iraq or Iran, courtesy of the Hizbullah? Tel Aviv and Herzliya might be bombarded with longer range just as deadly missiles. It is naive to assume that the destruction of a few tunnels in Rafiah will prevent importation of deadly long-range weaponry into the enclosed Arab territories.

There are additional scenarios that will alleviate the effectiveness of the security fence. What options will Israel have in such a case? Will it bomb Palestinian power stations as it did in Beirut? Will this not be regarded by the Europeans an unwarranted collective punishment of a fledgling country under a leadership that "just" cannot control its extremists? We have heard, for years, similar claims about the PLO.

7. No blockade can be 100% efficient and only one transport of Vx is needed to indiscriminately kill hundreds, if not thousands of Israelis. What would be Israel's retaliatory options if at that time the besieged Palestinian state were full with American and European civilians as well as with UN personnel, who would certainly be there?

8. Continuous maintenance of a tight blockade along hundreds of miles around Arab territories will be costlier in manpower than intermittent random interception of terrorists inside the same territories.

9. If the proposed unilateral disengagement made assumption #9 to materialize, which has not happened in the last 85 years, we would not need any unilateral disengagement in the first place. All that would be needed is a dramatic change in the political and spiritual Muslim leadership and in their Islamic supremacist militant ideology. That would be a political "end of days," which would draw to a close the ongoing violent global clash between civilizations.

Sharon's plan, in any of its versions, is myopic. It lacks a rudimentary analysis of its basic assumptions and their potential consequences. Analyzing those assumptions, one must conclude that the only common constructive denominator is unilateral removal of the entire current Palestinian leadership. This option contradicts unilateral disengagement. Such a change of regime will not happen spontaneously, just as it did not happen in Afghanistan or Iraq. It will have to be enforced without compromise.

The disengagement plan must be substituted by an active engagement plan to liberate the Palestinians from their militant Islamistic despotic leadership (not just Yasser Arafat). That must be followed by a thorough cleansing of the militant, supremacist, Islamistic doctrine imbedded in the Palestinian Arab populus. Such an active engagement will not necessitate any unilateral disengagement.

An ideology that advocates unconditional surrender to violent harassment, in response to European and some American pressure, risks Israel's very existence, even if it was appreciated for its civility and political flexibility. A similar ideology has previously cost millions of Jewish lives -- Jews who were cowed to eventually go to the gas chambers as nice, law-abiding people. Such a potentially suicidal ideology must be abandoned before it is too late.

Mr. Sharon seems to be worried that if Israel does not show that it pursues a constructive plan to solve the conflict, the U.S. might not defend it against Arab or EU sponsored UN sanctions. However the U.S. Administration, which has repeatedly declared that Israel is its most reliable ally in the war against Islamic terrorism, a position reaffirmed by American public opinion, is unlikely to impose on Israel a political plan detrimental to its long-term existence. It must be remembered that President Bush and not the traditionally Arabophilic Department of State speaks for America.

In conclusion, the totality of material and political costs associated with implementing any unilateral plan that makes territorial concessions to Islamic terrorism, instead of its eradication, will be substantially higher than the costs of its abandonment, even at this late stage. It would be better to admit that further analysis of the plan has shown severe shortcomings that warrant its rejection rather than adhering to it to avoid personal embarrassment to Israel's PM or to President Bush.