Now that we’re done with the road map, I’d like to propose a new plan that would both improve Israel’s security and be a huge confidence-building measure toward the Palestinians.
By rights, it should be supported by anybody who says Israel is fighting a war of self-defense, that this is a fight for security, not settlements, and that if the Palestinians would give up terror, Israel would clear out masses of settlers to make way for a Palestinian state.
This is the plan: Evacuate the isolated Jewish settlements and turn them into purely military installations.
I’m talking about the settlements in Gaza and deep in the West Bank too far from the Green Line to be annexed to Israel proper; the ones in thickly Palestinian areas, the ones most Israelis would love to be rid of. There are about 100 of them, home to about 50,000 settlers.
We move these settlers out, but keep that land for the Israeli army. We don’t give any land up until we reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
If the Palestinians never agree, so be it. Meanwhile, all those 100 or so settlements remain under Israeli control; but instead of Jewish families living there, the army would use the land as it sees fit to defend the country.
The advantage to Israeli security is obvious. Soldiers are better to have on a battlefield than families. Soldiers in military vehicles fight better than schoolteachers in station wagons do. They also make much harder targets.
Not security assets
The 50,000 evacuated settlers — the remaining 175,000 living near the Green Line wouldn’t be touched — would be much safer in Israel proper. The army would no longer have the burden of escorting and protecting them, so the soldiers in those areas would be safer and freer to take the war to the Palestinian terrorists or do other things for Israel’s protection.
The settlements were never security assets for Israel; just the opposite. During the Yom Kippur War, the ones on the Golan Heights had to be evacuated for the residents’ safety.
To the extent that land has security value, if it’s important to “control the high ground” or ”maintain strategic depth,” doesn’t that value go up if you’ve got military installations instead of residential neighborhoods on it?
This approach offers more security, and thus would be more acceptable to Israelis, than the “unilateral separation” plan popular in Labor Party circles. Unilateral separation would pull both settlers and soldiers out of Gaza and the West Bank, put up a border at the withdrawal line, defend it and wait for the Palestinians to stop fighting and negotiate.
Personally, I’d prefer that approach because it would separate Israel from the Palestinians, which is the ultimate goal. The pullout from Lebanon has made Israel’s northern border far more peaceful than it was when the IDF was there, and the same stratagem could work in the West Bank and Gaza.
But I know most Israelis aren’t convinced. They still think getting out of Lebanon was a show of weakness to the Arabs.
They’re afraid that if we clear out from any part of Gaza or the West Bank, the Palestinians will see it as another surrender, proof they’ve got us on the run; and with nobody to stop them they’ll advance to the new border, closer to the heart of Israel, and attack us more easily from there. This is not a groundless fear, either. It’s something I think about, too.
But however justified these worries may be, keeping the army in the evacuated settlements ought to allay them. The Palestinians wouldn’t be receiving a “prize for terror”
because they wouldn’t be getting any land. They would get a more effective, less hamstrung Israeli army in their faces. The only way they could get land or statehood would be by putting down their arms and reaching a peace agreement with Israel.
At the same time Israel, by evacuating 50,000 settlers, would for the first time be showing by its deeds, not just its words, that it is willing to make “painful concessions” for peace, and that the Palestinians have a great deal to gain by calling off the intifada.
There’s a political obstacle, though. While most Israelis would trade the isolated settlements for improved security, a minority wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, this minority is politically stronger than the majority, especially now that one of its own is prime minister. Standing up to the settlers and their supporters is something no Israeli government has ever done, and I don’t know that one ever will.
So I understand a plan such as this has virtually no chance of ever being tried.
Moreover, I admit it’s far from being “the solution.” The Palestinians could still go on fighting for another 100 years or more.
But they would have a harder time of it. They would also have a reason to stop – a true “political horizon.” And Israel could make this move unilaterally, without having to depend on the Palestinians’ cooperation, which plainly isn’t forthcoming.
It’s an idea. At the very least, it has one advantage over the last two we’ve tried, the Oslo approach and Sharon’s — it hasn’t failed yet.
Larry Derfner writes about Israeli society for U.S. Jewish newspapers and the Jerusalem Post.
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