Independent state in temporary borders? And the likely fallout?

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
23 May '13..

So what's the big deal about having a sovereign independent Palestinian state inside temporary land-locked borders in the West Bank?

We are strong, they are weak and we can always clobber them if things get out of hand.

And what would be the big deal if the Palestinians actually ended up having tens of thousands of rockets? After all, as Yossi Beilin argued this week in an interview on Israel Radio, Israel is not concerned about the tens of thousands of rockets held by Hezbollah - Israel’s concern is only if Hezbollah actually shoots the rockets.

The above many sound pretty silly to you.

Unfortunately, there are all kinds of people recommending policy with some pretty silly ideas.

There is every reason to expect that the same reluctance to act against Hezbollah as it armed to the teeth over the years would gain expression in the case of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Come to think of it, we already see this philosophy in play in the Gaza Strip where in the last round we opted to restore "deterrence" rather than wipe out the rockets.

But does any of this really matter?


After all, we are strong and they are weak.

Well, who is "they"?

Is "they" a force challenging Israel on one front or are we talking about a multi-front conflict?

Now if the way that you manage to sleep at night is by always making one-on-one comparisons of the capabilities of the IDF against the capabilities of the armies of other countries in the neighborhood you may be well rested. But your analysis is dangerously overoptimistic.

It certainly doesn't require much of an imagination to come up with various scenarios under which a multi-front conflict develops. In fact, it doesn't require much vision to think of scenarios in which a multi-front attack is launched against Israel for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with the Jewish State (for example, Arab leaders desperately seeking to divert the street’s focus from their domestic failures).

We aren't in a position to determine what happens in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

But we most certainly can still dictate what transpires in the West Bank.

And the very last thing that we can afford to do is to further exacerbate an already extremely dangerous situation by taking steps that could readily transform the West Bank into another serious threat in the event of a multi-front conflict.

Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=61083

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.