Rael Jean Isaac

For the first two decades of Israel’s existence, her strategy toward her Arab neighbors was summed up in two words endlessly repeated by her leaders: ein breira (there is no choice). Israel had no choice but deterrence. If deterrence failed, there was war, in which case victory would restore Israel’s deterrent power, i.e. her ability to dissuade the enemy from attacking her by making him feel the cost of aggression outweighed the benefits..

In time, it will be recognized that the most harmful consequence of the Six Day War of 1967 was in making Israelis falsely believe there was an alternative to ein breira, namely “peace” with her Arab neighbors. The pursuit of this will o’ the wisp, and a concomitant, reinforcing belief that Israel’s security could be entrusted to the good will of outside powers (who else would stand behind the peace borders and associated “arrangements”?) would fatally undermine the state.

From the beginning Israel’s government did not see the state’s vastly improved borders as reinforcing her deterrence but rather saw Israel’s stunning victory as an opportunity to trade “territories for peace.” Making this trade was the immediate across-the-board reaction of the national unity government, even including Menachem Begin, whose party’s slogan called for Israel on both sides of the Jordan. When the Arab states responded with the three “nos” of Khartoum--no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no peace with Israel—government leaders like Abba Eban kept reiterating that it was just a matter of time before the Arabs would come round.

The situation has become steadily worse over time. The pursuit of “peace” has become sacrosanct, no serious contender for political office daring to dispel the destructive delusion that peace is within reach – if only Israel comes up with the right plan, the right partner. In yet another Israeli triumph in learning nothing from experience, Olmert now repeats Barak’s disastrous offer to Arafat at Camp David in 2000 (the “leaks” confirm that Israel would redivide Jerusalem and essentially return to the cease fire lines of 1949) which led directly to the second, more lethal intifada. Yet look at Netanyahu, Olmert’s chief challenger. In his successful 1996 campaign for Prime Minister, Netanyahu dropped his previous all-out opposition to Oslo to promise he would bring “peace and security,” and now, again, as front-running challenger, he continues to foster the same illusions.

In his speech to the Knesset on October 8, Netanyahu recites a litany of fully justified criticisms of Israeli government actions going back to the unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 under the Barak government. Netanyahu attacks the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which, he says “created a second Iranian base in the south—Hamastan—from which Iranian financed terror groups attack Sderot, Ashkelon and the Western Negev. (To be sure Netanyahu fails to note his support of the Sharon government while it was implementing this policy and hisresignation from the cabinet literally at the last minute, when it was too late to be of any use.) Netanyahu points out that the Olmert government’s plan for more withdrawals “will inevitably create in the center of the country a third Iranian base that will threaten Jerusalem and the entire coastal plain.” Handing over half of Jerusalem will make life unbearable in the city’s other half. As Jewish communities become enclaves in a Hamas sea, their inhabitants will abandon them. As for the coastal plain, Israel’s dense urban centers will come under Arab missile fire from Judea and Samaria. “This is not how you make peace,” said Netanyahu, “This is how you strengthen terror and bring it nearer.” Netanyahu argues that “instead of the government’s blind policy, Israel needs a different policy, one that is based on an accurate assessment of reality.”

It is impossible to fault any of this. But when Netanyahu articulates his notion of that “different” policy, it turns out to be not so different after all. He, Netanyahu, will bring peace, “a genuine peace” with “a genuine partner.” In his speech he offers not a word that conveys to Israelis an accurate assessment of reality -- the reality of Islamic determination to destroy Israel, the reality that peace in the foreseeable future is a mirage luring the unwary to destruction, the reality that what Israel desperately needs is to restore its badly eroded deterrent. Far from pointing out how Israel had already been deceived by Egypt, how it had returned the economically and militarily vital territory of the Sinai for an empty peace treaty (whose every clause Egypt has violated), Netanyahu actually praises the treaty with Egypt, singling out Egypt’s Anwar Sadat as a model peace partner. (On October 10 even the supine Olmert government sent a strongly worded complaint to the U.S. that Egypt was flooding Gaza with heavy weaponry and Islamic Jihad terrorists and working diplomatically to strengthen Hamas.)

Along with the comforting belief that amity can be conjured out of creative “peace plans” (when Arab plans only differ on the details of how best to eliminate Israel) goes a conviction that (contrary to the prophetic warning) Israel can put her trust in princes, i.e. on the governments of supposedly friendly or “neutral” powers for her security. The most recent example is Israel‘s reliance on a United Nations force in the wake of her recent failed effort to dislodge Hezbollah from the Lebanese border. Resolution 1701, calling for Hezbollah’s disarmament and deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in the south was a dead letter from the day it was signed. As Ariel Cohen points out in Policy Review, Hezbollah announced it refused to disarm, Syria and Iran openly defy the UN by continuing to send arms with no sanctions or even calls for sanctions. Cohen notes that “those U.S. and Israeli decision-makers who actively lobbied for Resolution 1701 as the solution for the conflict now look naïve at best, and possibly worse than that.”

This naïve faith is not confined to Israelis. A particularly dramatic example of such misplaced confidence was exhibited by Norman Podhoretz, a staunch friend of Israel normally known for his clear-headed analysis. Given his trenchant criticism of Oslo (from the very beginning, not in hindsight), his readers assumed he would be a strong opponent of Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. But in an April 2005 article in Commentary “Bush, Sharon, My Daughter and Me,” Podhoretz makes a 180 degree turn. He supports the “disengagement:” he even supports “the road map” for a Palestinian state. The departure from his previous positions was so marked that his daughter in Israel, who embraced his “old” ideas, insisted he had been taken over by aliens—Podhoretz says this antic idea helped them sustain their warm relationship.

Podhoretz makes no bones about the reason for his “conversion.” “It was because I had come to place so much faith in Bush that I was able to overcome my misgivings about the road map. And it was partly because Sharon was also putting his money on Bush that I was ready to bet on Sharon.” It was not only his daughter who was dismayed: some Commentary readers wrote to protest. And in the letters to the editor section in the July-August 2005 issue, Podhoretz responded to a reader who asked what could convince him that he was wrong. Podhoretz writes: “I will admit to having been wrong the moment Bush goes along with—and Sharon acquiesces in—Abbas’s wish to skip the first two phases of the ‘road map’ and to jump immediately into the third and final phase.” After detailing the requirements of phase I and phase II of the road map, Podhoretz reemphasizes the same point: “I would also admit to having been wrong if they [Bush and Sharon] were to endorse the characteristically cynical preference of the ‘international community’ for a ‘fast-track’ approach (i.e., jumping into the third phase even though the requirements of the first two admittedly remain unmet by the Palestinians).”

And what is the position of the Bush administration today? Rick Richman sums it up well in the The New York Sun of October 10. “Under the Roadmap, final status negotiations were to occur only after a sustained and effective effort by the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure, Phase I, and then only after the establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders and limited sovereignty, Phase II. With respect to Phase I, the PA has yet to dismantle a single terrorist organization, or arrest a terrorist leader, in the four years since the Palestinians accepted the Roadmap….In 2006 the Palestinians elected their premier terrorist organization to control their legislature. In 2007, half the putative Palestinian state was taken over in a coup. With respect to Phase II, in January Mahmoud Abbas rejected a provisional state, and Ms. Rice then suggested that Phase II might be skipped, since it could be easier ‘just to go to the end game.’ Thus despite the PA’s inability to execute Phase I and its unwillingness to consider Phase II, the Bush administration is now devoting maximum effort to negotiate a Palestinian state ‘as soon as possible.’”

Richman notes that what the U.S. is doing is the more inappropriate given President Bush’s formal promise to Israel, set forth in his letter of April 14, 2004, that America would prevent “any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan” than the Roadmap. A few days after Richman’s article, at a news conference with Abbas, Rice announced the Bush administration’s determination to be done with phases altogether. “Frankly it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” a state, she went on, the U.S. considered “absolutely essential” to her interests. How the administration, which is pouring so much effort in preventing Iraq from becoming a terror base, can think it is in U.S. interest to establish another sovereign terror base in the Middle East boggles the mind. But the short-term rationale is clear. The administration is following the Iraq Study Group recommendation that Israel be thrown to Arab wolves in hopes of shoring up support among neighboring states for the present Iraqi government.

Whether or not Podhoretz issues a formal mea culpa, he has been unequivocally proven wrong. And if Israel cannot rely on the word of well-intentioned princes like George W. Bush, what possible reliance can it put on the enemies who make up the rest of the Quartet (Russia, the UN, the EU)?

There are many Jews who insist it is necessary to go the last mile for peace and if the enemy refuses any reasonable terms, one can always walk away, no damage done. Churchill knew better. In Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-41, Ian Kershaw examines Churchill’s refusal of French pleas to seek negotiations with Hitler through Mussolini as Hitler was overrunning France. Within the cabinet Lord Halifax was the chief proponent of testing the waters, arguing Britain could withdraw from negotiations if Hitler’s demands were excessive. But Churchill responded that irreparable damage would have been done even by the readiness to contemplate the concessions which entry into negotiations meant. It would be almost impossible to resuscitate fighting morale in the public once it realized the government was prepared for concessions, and even if Britain kept nominal independence, the concessions demanded would leave Britain at Germany’s mercy.

Already the endless concessions (from territory to prisoner releases) to advance “the peace process” have seriously undermined Israeli morale. Draft dodging, once virtually unknown in Israel, is common: deeply worrying to IDF commanders, young Israelis are avoiding the military in record numbers.

And yet, where is the leader who will seek to rally Israel with a policy based on an accurate assessment of reality? As Daniel Pipes has pointed out “seven years of Oslo diplomacy undid 45 years success in warfare” as “each Oslo-negotiated gesture by Israel further exhilarated, radicalized and mobilized the Palestinian body politic.” The damage that has already been done is incalculable. As Professor of Islamic History Moshe Sharon puts it: “The enemies of Israel, comprising all of the Arab countries in the Middle East (including Egypt and Jordan) as well as the rest of the Islamic world, are now convinced that Israel is a temporary entity that can be defeated and destroyed and that its Jewish population can be exterminated.”

Rebuilding Israel’s deterrent, now that Israel has forfeited it, will be immensely costly and difficult. Nonetheless Israel’s only hope for survival rests in deterring her enemies by her strength, determination and toughness. Ein breira.