Israel’s Security: The Hard-Learned Lessons

[How quickly we forget.]

by Yaakov Amidror, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004

…Israel must realize that it would be a grave risk if it were to cede
total territorial control to the Palestinians in any future agreement.
Israel suffered heavy casualties when the PA was only on the road to
sovereignty; the price might be even higher were a fully sovereign
Palestinian state to decide to go to war. In those circumstances,
reoccupying Palestinian population centers, as Israel did in April 2002,
would be more difficult, complicated, and costly. Indeed, given the IDF’s
structural limitations and the exponential growth of Palestinian
capabilities from the intifada to the present war, it may not even be
possible for Israeli forces to retake Palestinian cities in a future war.

To protect against another security fiasco, Israel needs to insist on two
new principles in defining security arrangements within the context of a
future peace agreement:

a. If the Palestinians do not actively, persistently, and explicitly fight
terror, the agreement should allow Israel to take its own counterterrorism
measures in the territory under Palestinian sovereignty.

b. If terrorism is conducted against Israel from Palestinian territories,
then the agreement should permit IDF operations in the territory under
Palestinian sovereignty. Israel must insist on retaining the right to
operate throughout the territory in perpetuity, not only for a limited
number of years, not only in emergency situations, and not only upon the
approval of third parties.

Border Control

A second Israeli security requirement in future negotiations concerns border
control. The importance of this issue is clear from a comparison of Israel’s
experience in Lebanon and in the Palestinian areas.

In Lebanon, Hizbullah received a steady stream of weapons, and its ability
to fight increased after every round of conflict with the IDF because of
resupply from Iran and Syria. Israel’s situation vis-à-vis the Palestinians
could be even worse. The latter have already displayed an impressive ability
to circumvent security arrangements through smuggling, such as the fifty
tons of seaborne weapons destined for the PA that were intercepted by the
IDF in January 2002. Add to this the fact that the geography and topography
of the West Bank permit the Palestinians to pose a strategic threat to
Israel’s main population centers, something Hizbullah was never able to do.

If Israel acceded to security arrangements that gave Palestinians control
over their borders with Egypt and Jordan, it is safe to assume that weapons
would flow freely into the West Bank and Gaza, with potentially catastrophic
implications.

In any future negotiations, Israel must give a high priority to preventing
the Palestinian acquisition of enhanced weaponry. Only Israeli border
control can effectively prevent Palestinian efforts to smuggle weapons and
munitions from neighboring countries. Israel, therefore, must ensure that
the Palestinian state does not have contiguous, unfettered contact with its
Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.

The same logic underlies Israel’s need to control international passageways
such as airports and seaports. Israel must retain the ability to check all
imports into the Palestinian areas, whether personal or commercial goods. An
invisible presence, with international forces or Palestinian customs agents
doing the actual work-as envisioned in previous Oslo agreements and in the
recent Geneva accord-will not suffice. Unless Israel can construct a
security envelope around the Palestinian areas, controlling what comes in
and goes out, it is likely to face a Palestinian threat more dangerous than
anything it ever faced in Lebanon.

Israel Fights Alone

A seminal lesson of the Oslo experience is the need for Israel to retain, in
perpetuity, both the right and ability to combat terror independently of
other actors. From the moment the PA took control of territory in 1994, it
never truly fought terrorism; despite Palestinian pretense, most Israeli and
international terrorism experts knew the PA efforts were just a charade. It
was a naïve and costly belief-made famous by the late prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin-that the Palestinians would fight terror more readily than Israel
because they lack an interventionist judiciary (such as the Israeli Supreme
Court) or vocal human rights organizations (such as B’Tselem).

While Israel should welcome the cooperation of others-including the
Palestinians-it now knows from bitter experience what can happen when it
handcuffs its own ability to fight terror for the sake of a political
accord. Israel should accept no restraints. It must retain its capability to
collect intelligence inside the Palestinian area. This means insisting that
in any permanent status accord, the Palestinians must accept continued
collection by Israel of human intelligence as well as an agreed set of
aerial reconnaissance flights (by day and night). Israel also must insist
that Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to detain, arrest, and
interrogate terrorist suspects in the event the Palestinians do not take
action against such suspects themselves. Moreover, mechanisms must be
created by which the Palestinians share all terrorism-related information
with Israel; full transparency is essential.

Should these terms not be included in a permanent status agreement,
Palestinian extremists are certain to expand their terrorist capabilities.

Fewer Forces and Guns

When the first Oslo agreements were signed (Oslo I in 1993 and Oslo II in
1995), most of Israel’s negotiators never conceived of Palestinian security
and intelligence organizations as potential enemies. Instead, they sought to
strengthen these institutions as much as possible so they could play their
expected role in fighting terror. Unfortunately, these terror
fighters-including PA police and intelligence organizations-were themselves
terror purveyors. They played an active role in such episodes of terrorism
as the 1997 Hasmonean Tunnel riots and the launching of the post-Camp David
war in 2000.

Israel needs to re-think the Oslo-era assumption that stronger PA security
forces mean more security for Israel. Instead, Israel should seek to limit
Palestinian security organization to the smallest and weakest force capable
of providing necessary police functions in PA territory. This would mean a
reduction in the number of competing and overlapping forces, shrinkage of
the total manpower, and collection of most of the weapons in the hands of
the various forces.

A weak military force will contribute to peace and stability in Palestinian
society and in its relations with Israel. The emphasis on strong police
forces, instead of providing the PA with the tools to fight terror, only fed
the PA’s authoritarian power and its appetite for more terror against
Israel. And at least in the security realm, one may reasonably question the
new conventional wisdom that maintains that more centralization and clearer
lines of control are conducive to peace. In an authoritarian regime,
centralization may certainly improve efficiency, but that is only desirable
if the security forces themselves are committed to fighting terrorism.

The 1993-2000 experience also underscores an important lesson about another
key feature of Oslo security arrangements: the supposed benefits of security
cooperation. The fact is that six years of Israeli-Palestinian joint patrols
and combined headquarters contributed virtually nothing to mutual
understanding on both sides. In practice, the daily regimen of “jointness”
provided no barrier against terrorism and did not even prove to be an
obstacle to the use of Palestinian security forces in direct conflict
against Israel. In the future, a wholly different approach is called for:
both parties would be wise to restrict security cooperation to those
situations and areas in which neither side is able to act solely by itself.