Deceptive ‘Divorce’ Analogies and the Commanders for Israel’s (in)Security - by Martin Sherman

Having your disagreeable spouse separate and move off to some distant location, allowing each former partner to live their life in undisturbed peace, is one thing. It is quite another to allow a belligerent spouse to take control of a property overlooking your own—from which he/she can harass you continuously, egged on by similarly inimical neighbors in the surrounding areas.

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
21 December '18..


One does not have to be a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967. — Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon, former commander of the Palmach strike force, 1976.

… historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory … — Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons, 1938.

The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. … Then we will move forward. — Abbas Zaki, PLO ambassador to Lebanon, 2009.


I used these very excerpts in an article I wrote some thirty months ago, titled “Imbecility squared,” addressing the policy proposals advanced by an organization called Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), comprising more than 200 senior Israel Defense Forces’ officers and other high-ranking officials in Israel’s intelligence and police force.

Sadly, they are as pertinent now as they were then, arguably more so.

Putting the two-state proposal on indefinite life support

Readers may recall that CIS have, in the past, called for Israel to declare that it forgoes any claims to sovereignty over territory beyond the Security Barrier; freeze all construction in Jewish communities beyond that barrier; encourage the unilateral removal of all Jewish civilian presence there; but leave the IDF in control of security throughout the entire area. Indeed, CIS envisages this IDF deployment continuing until some Palestinian peace-partner emerges—sufficiently pliant to reach an agreement to accommodate Israeli security concerns, yet sufficiently authoritative to enforce its terms on a potentially recalcitrant population.

The purported “rationale” for this policy prescription is to preserve the viability of the two-state formula for resolving the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, something which CIS acknowledges is not feasible at the moment, as no prospective partner with the adequate pliancy-cum-authority can be identified.

Nonetheless, it believes that these proposed measures are necessary to prevent what it considers the disastrous demographic consequences entailed in Israel retaining large portions of Judea-Samaria, together with its Arab population.

While I do not want to diminish the demographic dangers annexation of Judea-Samaria, along with its Muslim inhabitants, might herald for Israel, the CIS blueprint is as pernicious as it is preposterous.

(Continue to Full Column)

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