Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 17)
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- Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 17)
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tried to deal with the PLO in Lebanon, as a primary threat re-
quiring war: Speaking on Israeli army radio, he said, «Let’s
assume for a moment that Jews will not live in Nablus, and in
the course of time terrorist activity begins in Nablus... it is
reasonable to believe that the day will come when we have to
shell Nablus.»
Yehoshafat Harkabi, retired head of Israeli military in-
telligence, maintains the opinion he has expressed since 1968,
that guerrilla warfare and «sporadic subversion» are not a
challenge to Israel; he believes that «Israel’s overemphasis on
terrorism is a mistake,» helpful only in public relations «as a
way to castigate the PLO.» But he goes on to note: «A new
phenomenon is ‘private enterprise’ terrorism, carried out by
individuals, especially young people, which is not spectacular
but hurts just as much - such as random stabbings with a kit-
chen knife... it may become a considerable threat.... This sort
of terrorism is very hard to suppress; it has no command posts
or headquarters to strike at, and attempts to counter it through
increased repression and collective punishment are likely to
lead only to an escalation in scale...» (Israel’s Fateful Deci-
sions, 1988, pp. 36 - written before the intifada).
TERRITORY AS SECURITY?
Territory could not but be the pillar of the Israeli security
concept since the state exists by virtue of conquering others’
land and procuring the required infrastructure. The multi-
dimensional significance of territory was obvious in the appeal
of Chaim Weizmann, Zionism’s foremost pre-state leader, to
US President Truman in the autumn of 1947, as the UN Parti-
tion Plan was being drawn up. Weizmann argued against the
prevailing inclination to exclude the southern Negev from the
proposed Jewish state, citing the importance of Aqaba as the
only outlet to the Indian Ocean: «For the Jewish state this
outlet will be one of the most important routes for commercial
relations with that part of the world.» Citing the need to
develop industry and commerce to absorb Jewish immigration,
he said that the importance of Aqaba was much greater than
just a piece of land, concluding «Aqaba in the hands of the
Arabs, may be a permanent threat in the rear of the Jewish
state» (quoted by Eban, op.cit., p. 442).
The quest for territory was expressed in Ben Gurion’s con-
cept of carrying the war into the enemy’s territory, i.e., the
land which the Palestinian peasants refused to sell or abandon.
In 1948, the Zionist militias not only took control of the ter-
ritory allotted by the Partition Plan, but carved deeply into the
proposed Palestinian state which would have no chance to
materialize.
After a brief interlude in the early fifties when Moshe
Sharett, who had replaced Ben Gurion as prime minister,
tended towards reaching an accomodation with Nasser, the
territorial expansion option decisively won out: «Prior to 1967,
Israeli military doctrine called for an offensive military
strategy to compensate for its numerical disadvantage, lack of
strategic depth, and the absence of acceptable borders with its
neighbors. The concept of preemptive war and retaliatory
strikes became an essential ingredient of Israeli military
policy... linked... with a deterrent theory that advocated an
Israel strong in both military manpower and weaponry»
(Mroz, op.cit., p. 114).
Democratic Palestine, October 1989
In the 1956 attack on Egypt, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip
and Sinai, and was the last of the attackers to withdraw. The
pre-emptive war strategy reached its height in 1967. «li was
only after Israel had acquired significant territorial gains in the
Six-Day War that the formula of ‘defensible borders’
emerged... (which) essentially called for expansion of Israel’s
geographical security margin to enable her to absorb an enemy
attack without a pre-emptive strike» (Horowitz, op. cit., p.
91).
Pre-emptive strikes did not stop, but the belief in the ter-
ritorial component of Israeli security was strengthened across
the political spectrum. The Whole of Israel movement was
formed by prominent Labor intellectuals and politicians. Yigal
Allon, Palmach commander and later foreign and deputy
prime minister, declared that he would choose East Jerusalem
over peace; Moshe Dayan, defense minister, said the same
about Sharm al Sheikh in the Sinai.
The 1973 war showed that the «defensible borders» did not
guard against surprise attack, and that occupation invited war.
Though this sent shock waves through the Israeli military and
political establishment and the public, it did not lead to deep
questioning of the territorial option. «The Israeli public em-
braced the concept that Israel was saved in October, 1973,
largely because the enemy had been at a distance when the war
began, and there was sufficient time for mobilization to stop
the several front attacks» (Mroz, op. cit., p. 45). After the
war, the government rejected King Hussein’s offer of a
separate agreement, if Israel would withdraw 12 kilometers
along the length of Jordan, because this would have denied the
Jordan River as Israel’s security border (Maariv, April 25,
1980). The main response of the Israeli leadership was to fur-
ther build up the state’s military might. Subsequent elections in
1977 brought in the Likud which unabashedly promoted an
ideology of territorial expansion.
Yair Tsaban of the Mapam Party contends that Camp David
greatly affected Israeli perceptions: «Before Sadat’s trip to
Israel, between 80 and 87 percent of the Israeli public sup-
ported Dayan’s formula for Israeli security (that the Sinai and
Sharm Al Sheikh was preferable to peace)... but then Dayan
became one of the architects of a peace plan based not on a
different percept but on its exact opposite... An overwhelming
number of Israelis... changed their minds overnight. Why?
Because before, their political imaginations had been unable to
comprehend something other than war» (Journal of Palestine
Studies 56, Summer 1985).
Other indications tend to modify this assessment: «Despite
the peace treaty with Egypt, the majority of Israelis today still
adhere to the view that defensible borders without peace are
preferable to peace without defensible borders» (Mroz, op.
cit., p. 38). Prominent Labor politicians and military men op-
posed the negotiations with Sadat on the assumption that he
would demand a return to the 1967 borders. The former prime
minister, Golda Meir, called Begin’s «peace plan» a«concrete
terrible danger.»
Mroz reports that «many Israelis believe that the retention of
troops in the Jordan Valley is essential to guarantee the effec-
tive demilitarization of the West Bank and, in the event of
another war, would make Jordan itself the front line» (op. cit.,
p. 115). There is broad consensus that the Golan Heights are »>
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