Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 18)
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- Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 18)
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essential for Israeli security. Likud’s implementation of the
Camp David accords in fact proved that Israel only re-
linguished the Sinai to improve conditions for holding on to
the other territories occupied in 1967. The 1982 invasion of
Lebanon was to a great extent launched in hopes that crushing
the PLO there would make it easier for Israel to retain the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, and Israel retreated from most of
Lebanon only because the Palestinian-Lebanese National
Resistance made the new superexpansionism too costly in army
casualties and loss of social consensus. In contrast, it took
Egypt ten years to regain Taba, even after signing a peace trea-
ty with Israel.
All in all, the territorial option appears to have enormous
resilience in Israeli security thinking, despite growing
awareness of its drawbacks, particularly in terms of increas-
ingly heavy defense burdens. For example, Mroz reported:
«Numergus Israelis have pointed out that, prior to the 1967
war... a force of a few thousand troops was sufficient to guard
its borders. In contrast, several divisions of tens of thousands
of soldiers are required for the same duties today» (op. cit., p.
119).
With the onset of the intifada, Israel has been forced to sta-
tion more troops in the West Bank than were originally needed
to conquer it. Moreover, the army in engaged in the process of
reconquering liberated villages time after time. «The Israeli
soldiers cannot retreat or even fail to advance, for loss of con-
trol over so much as a few square feet of public space gives the
Palestinian state physical reality» (Anne Joyce, American-
Arab Affairs, Winter 1988-89).
SETTLEMENTS AS SECURITY?
In Zionist strategy, settlements obviously derive from the
need to control territory, backing up military conquest with
demographic conquest. However, Israeli statements as to the
role of settlements in security and defense policy are con-
tradictory.
Harkabi addresses the role of settlements in war, drawing on
The Defense Line in Judea and Samaria, written by Aryeh
Shalev, a brigadier general in the reserves and scholar at the
Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University: «During
the War of Independence no settlement, except for Nirim,
withstood the onslaught of a regular Arab army without the
aid of the Israeli army. Even with regular day-to-day security,
sectlements are more of a liability than an asset because they
require forces to guard them and because they are a provoca-
ticn to the Arab population. The settlements increase rather
than decrease the need for Israeli military efforts... And let us
not forget that sophisticated intelligence-gathering tools are
increasingly able to provide Israel with warnings of an Arab
invasion long before settlements could sound the alarm» (op.
Cit., p. 124).
«Until 1977, Labor-dominated governments tended to em-
phasize the trip-wire and antiterrorist functions of settlements
and concentrated the settlement effort in the Jordan Valley, to
which Labor security doctrine ascribed paramount impor-
tance. Even within this framework, the immediate security
vatue of civilian settlements (as opposed to military outposts)
was a subject of dispute, and settlement policy was arguably as
much a product of the government’s territorial aspirations... »
18
(Heller, op. cit., p. 112). Moshe Dayan is one of many Israeli
leaders who has dismissed the security value of settlements.
As of 1982, there were 110 Zionist settlements, housing
between 20-25,000 settlers, in the 1967 occupied territories (A/
Fajr, December 10, 1982). The 1981 Labor party platform
specified the following as indispensible security zones: the set-
tlements in the Jordan Valley, the Etzion Bloc (southeast of
Bethlehem) and a Jerusalem Bloc stretching eastwards to the
Maale Adumin settlement complex.
Mroz’s book cites military officers who still contend that
settlements have value as an early warning system, as sealing
the borders to «terrorists» and providing up-front units on the
spot (along the Jordan Valley). But he also cites a defense
analyst speaking of the Golan Heights, site of the largest con-
centration of Israeli settlements in the 1967 occupied ter-
ritories, as saying, «One can make a good case that security is
not the major purpose of these settlements» (op. cit., p. 174).
Mroz also cites Israeli polls made in 1978 and 1979, showing
that «some 69.8 percent of Israelis believed that peace within
secure and recognized borders was more important than the
right to settle on the West Bank and Gaza» (op. cit., p. 156).
While few would maintain that settlements have major
military significance in the face of a real war, there is no doubt
they play a sustained role in «the war within» which is in reality
more closely related to the demographic battle. When he was
defense minister, Ariel Sharon said that settlements were the
«Zionist response to the menace of establishment of a Palesti-
nian state and to Soviet expansionism in the Middle East» (as
quoted in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1983). At a
time when many Israelis were disturbed by the possibility of
the autonomy plan being implemented in a way that they
viewed as tantamount to a Palestinian state, Dan Horowitz
wrote in Yediot Aharonot (June 6,1980): «From this point of
view, there is no importance in the fact that some of the set-
tlements are like ghost towns. The main thing is that when the.
time comes it will be possible to mobilize Jewish masses to
prevent the evacuation of the settlements and maybe even de-
fend them with arms. And if, in spite of everything, some ar-
rangement is found for the period of autonomy, it will be
possible to operate from these bases to prevent it, and this
violence will be disguised as self-defense.»
Today, this appears as a premonition of the settlers’ increas-
ing brutality and provocations against the masses of the in-
tifada; the outcome of this confrontation will surely have a
decisive impact on the issue of whether settlements provide
security to Israelis or the opposite.
SECURITY FROM ABROAD
Israeli security has always depended to an abnormal degree
on its international relations (including with Jewish com-
munities around the world), and aid from the imperialist center
in particular. The average Israeli is highly cognizant of this
fact, whether he likes it or not, despite the rhetorical bravado
of some like Dayan and Sharon about Israel «going it alone.»
Ironically, these two have been in the forefront of Israeli ef-
forts to garner military aid and strategic cooperation from the
US.
«Israel’s best friends include the strongest nations. The
United States showed a great constancy of support, interrupted
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