T. Belman. “Liberman has agreed to adopt a plan prepared by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), for Israel to transfer the Civil Administration’s planning and zoning authority in Area C to the PA. The plan also involves retroactively authorizing tens of thousands of Palestinian structures built illegally in Area C and authorizing the construction of a new Palestinian urban center in Area C.” This says it all. The government has not wanted to prevent the illegal construction in Area C or to execute the demolition orders. Very upsetting.
There are no magic solutions to our problems with the Palestinians. But there are options other than repeating let alone expanding on failed policies.
th, Hamas announced it will be participating in the Palestinian municipal elections in October. The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leadership greeted Hamas’s announcement with deep and understandable anxiety. Hamas is expected to win control over a significant number, perhaps even a majority of municipal and local governments in Judea and Samaria.
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas (whose own fiveyear term in office ended six years ago) and his Fatah comrades aren’t the only ones worried. Last week, Yediot Aharonot’s military commentator, Alex Fishman, reported that the IDF’s senior leadership is also deeply concerned.
According to Fishman, in recent weeks Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has held a series of senior-level discussions, initially convened to discuss long-term Israeli strategic options in Judea and Samaria. Due to the IDF’s concerns over the elections, those discussions quickly devolved into a more limited discussion of how to prevent a Hamas electoral victory.
Fishman reported that the top generals have convinced Liberman, who until now supported octogenarian Abbas’s swift retirement, that “it is Israel’s interest not only for Abu Mazen [Abbas] to remain in power, but to empower him still further.”
To this end, according to Fishman, Liberman has agreed to adopt a plan prepared by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), for Israel to transfer the Civil Administration’s planning and zoning authority in Area C to the PA. The plan also involves retroactively authorizing tens of thousands of Palestinian structures built illegally in Area C and authorizing the construction of a new Palestinian urban center in Area C.
Area C, it should be recalled, constitutes some 60 percent of Judea and Samaria. It has a negligible Palestinian population. All of the Israeli communities are located in Area C. The IDF holds sole security control over the area.
Area C is the only area where the Civil Administration retains governing functions. Areas A and B, where all the major Palestinian population centers are located, have been autonomously governed by the PA for 20 years.
The IDF’s plan is startling on several levels.
Since the earliest years of the Oslo peace process with the PLO, retaining Israeli control over planning and zoning powers in Area C has been a central goal of Israeli policy. Israel’s retention of these powers has enabled the IDF to retain security control over Area C and so defend not only the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, which are all located in Area C, but to defend Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel’s major urban centers as well.
Why would the IDF recommend conceding these strategic interests just as Hamas is poised to gain significant power in Judea and Samaria? Even more to the point, what is the basis of the IDF’s assessment that by conceding these strategic assets Israel will enhance – let along guarantee – Fatah’s chances of winning in October? For the past 16 years, Israeli concessions have only served to make the Palestinians more contemptuous and hateful toward us.
Consider the case of the Gaza withdrawal. That operation, undertaken 11 years ago this week, was the largest single strategic concession Israel has made to the Palestinians in the past 23 years.
The Palestinians responded to Israel’s forcible expulsion of 10,000 of its citizens, the destruction of their communities and the withdrawal of all its security forces from Gaza by destroying the greenhouses Israel had given them free of charge and torching the synagogues it left behind.
Then five months later, they elected Hamas to lead them.
The actual harm that a Hamas electoral triumph will cause Israel is also completely unrelated to the IDF’s recommended course of action. If Hamas rises to power in various local governments in Judea and Samaria, the change will harm Israel in two ways.
First, in municipalities dominated by Hamas, we can expect for Fatah security forces to stop their anti-Hamas operations. This change will require the IDF to increase the tempo of its counterterror operations.
How will this be facilitated by giving up control over land policy in Area C? Second, with Hamas rising in power in the PA’s bureaucracy, we can expect for the PA to increase the amount of money it transfers monthly to the Hamas regime in Gaza.
To mitigate the damage, Israel will need to aggressively target foreign governmental and NGO funding to the PA in accordance with binding international and domestic terrorism financing statutes.
Here too, Israel’s task has nothing whatsoever to do with permitting the PA to conduct building projects on a massive scale in Area C.
Finally, even disregarding the fact that the IDF’s plan has no relationship whatsoever to the expected consequences of a Hamas electoral victory, it is hard to understand the intrinsic logic of the idea.
Is the IDF suggesting that Israel will give planning and zoning powers to a Hamas dominated PA in Area C? Or is it suggesting that the concession would be contingent on a Fatah victory? If the latter is the case, why do the generals believe that the Palestinians whose hatred for Israel is endemic, will be more likely to vote for Fatah because Israel is tipping the scales in Fatah’s favor? The practical irrelevance and strategic irrationality of the army’s recommended course of action make it hard to avoid the conclusion that the generals went into their meetings with Liberman with the goal of preventing him from developing a relevant strategy for contending with the elections specifically and the Palestinians in general.
Fishman implied that this was the case when he noted that COGAT has been lobbying for two years to give up planning and zoning powers and legalize tens of thousands of illegal Palestinian structures in Area C.
It is no secret that the IDF General Staff continues to support the strategic goal of Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria either in the framework of a peace deal with the PLO, or if necessary with no deal. So it makes sense that they use every perceived crisis as a means to advance this goal, even though both the two-state policy and the unilateral withdrawal policy failed completely years ago.
The main objective motivation for the IDF’s arguably insubordinate behavior is the generals’ desire to avoid dealing with Israel’s demographic challenge. This is a challenge Israel has worked to avoid facing since it ended Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria in 1967.
Israel has a dilemma with regards to Judea and Samaria. It needs to control the areas for security reasons. It wishes to control the areas because they are the cradle of Jewish civilization. But it fears retaining control over them because it wishes to retain its massive Jewish majority.
Israelis worry that adding the Palestinians to the population registry will destroy that three quarters majority. If that happens, so the thinking goes, Israel will lose its international legitimacy on the one hand, and end the Zionist dream of Jewish sovereignty on the other.
Regarding the issue of international legitimacy, events over the past 16 years have shown that international sentiment towards Israel is not positively impacted either by Israeli concessions to the Palestinians or by the Palestinians’ open rejection of Israel’s right to exist. To the contrary, ever since the Palestinians rejected statehood in July 2000 and opted for perpetual war with Israel, the level of international support for them has continuously risen, while support for Israel, particularly in the West, has consistently eroded.
This state of affairs indicates that there is no direct correlation, and there may indeed be an indirect correlation between Israel’s international status and its willingness to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians. Consequently, Israel should not take the issue of international legitimacy into account in its strategic discussions of its long-term policy goals in Judea and Samaria.
As for our genuine domestic concerns, the truth is that if adding the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria to Israel’s population registry as permanent residents or citizens destroys Israel’s Jewish majority, then we will need to suffice with something less than complete sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
The problem with determining how to proceed is that we simply don’t know what will happen.
We have no idea how many Palestinians live in Judea and Samaria. All we have are competing unofficial estimations of that number.
The Left ascribes to the demographic doomsday scenario. Based entirely on PA population data, the Left insists that Jews will cease to be the majority west of the Jordan River almost immediately if we aren’t already the minority.
Consequently, leftists charge that anyone who recognizes that the two-state formula and the unilateral withdrawal option have failed is the moral equivalent of an anti-Zionist.
The Right argues that the Palestinian population data are deliberately fabricated. In 2005, the independent American-Israeli Demographic Research Group published its first in-depth assessment of the Palestinian data. That study, and follow- on studies in subsequent years demonstrated that the Palestinians exaggerated their population size by 50 percent, adding some 1.5 million people to their population rolls that simply do not exist.
Based on the AIRDG’s data, and on the fact that Israel’s fertility rates are higher than Palestinian fertility rates in Judea and Samaria, and that Jewish immigration rates to Israel are rising steeply while Palestinian emigration rates remain high, the Right has concluded that far from being a threat, demographics are a strategic asset for Israel.
Unfortunately, none of this is the least helpful to Liberman, or anyone else, frankly. So long as we don’t have official, accepted Israeli data on the size of the Palestinian population, we cannot have a real debate about our strategic options going forward.
And as Liberman insists, we need such a debate.
We need to conduct a reassessment of our relations with the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria regardless of the results of the municipal elections.
To this end, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should appoint a team to find out just how many Palestinians there are, and, no, Israel won’t need to send census workers to knock on doors in Ramallah or Jenin to accomplish this goal. We won’t even need to rely on PA data.
All we need to determine the size of the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria is a team of researchers capable of analyzing aerial photographs of Judea and Samaria, of interpreting Palestinian electricity and water usage data, and of collecting emigration data from the crossing points to Jordan and from Ben Gurion Airport.
To minimize the danger that the data will be politicized, Netanyahu should appoint representatives of the warring demographic factions to the study group where they will be joined by analysts from the National Security Council.
There are no magic solutions to our problems with the Palestinians. But there are options other than repeating let alone expanding on failed policies.
To develop these options, Israel needs to know the dimensions of the demographic threat.
www.CarolineGlick.com
I re-read the article. Glick recognized the problem in the advice given but rather than reject it out of hand she focused on the need for a census of sorts. This was her mistake.
Turning over zoning and planning to the PA or the Arabs effectively concedes sovereignty to them. That amounts to unilateral withdrawal. Never.
The title to the article underscores her focus. It should have been “Generals advocate abandoning sovereignty of Judea and Samaria.”
@ Ted Belman:
I read it and it sheds the same light I already saw…. that those who wish to achieve their goals will uses any fraudulent tactics in that endeavor. Talking about planning and zoning is a red herring to distract folks from the fact that it is really talking about giving sovereignty over Judea Samaria to the pals. If those “rabbis” supported this then it would demonstrate to me that those “rabbis” are frauds trying to fool jews.
Getting back to Carolines article you should pay attention to the fact that in your prequel, your “editors box” you immediately grasped the huge story in carolines article even though it was buried in a strange haystack with a title, advice to PM and a conclusion that the real problem caroline identified had to do with “counting pals”. I think you should seriously ask your self, taking nothing for granted the following:
1- did Caroline not recognize the huge problem that you, Ted, immediately saw even though she buried it in a haystack of distraction and red herrings?
2- did an experienced writer like caroline overlook this huge “needle” in her haystack… somehow having a “short circuit” like Hillary?
3- Does Caroline have any relationship to BB which might explain why she gave a solution to the “problem”,as she identified it, which involved “counting pals”?
What is your explanation, that could be consideered reasonable, for why Caroline appeared to ignore that which was glaring to the rest of us.
4- Is there a possibility that the article was designed to find out who could find the “needle in the haystack” when subject to misdirection …. a sort of “where’s waldo”?
5- Is there a possibility that if only a few are freaked out by the “needle in the haystack” the conclusion will be… that it is a go to use the tactic described?
The issue of planning and zzoning rights came up before the High Court in Israel in April of last year and it was reported on by Rabbis for Human Rights. We know this to be a far left “human rights” organization that is anti-Israel but the article sheds some light on Glick’s current article..
http://rhr.org.il/eng/2015/04/what-does-planning-and-zoning-for-area-c-palestinian-communities-have-to-do-with-politics/
Ted Belman Said:
my view is that anyone considering this approach is a sly mongoose attempting a crooked maneuver to circumvent the people….. sounds like something someone learned from Obama….. or Alinsky.
Bear Klein Said:
who does have control of area C zoning and planning and is there anything to prevent them from subcontracting that responsibility?
Ted Belman Said:
using such phrases makes it seem innocuous, a bureaucratic detail, something lost in the bigger story of counting pals… when in fact it is tantamount to giving them area C. I doubt this is a coincidence considering Caroline is an experienced writer who considers both the details, titles, conclusions and overall theme and message of what she writes. According to Caroline the big news in her article is that we are not sure how many pals there are and in conclusion….. BB should count pals.
Really? I think not.
bernard ross Said:
It’s no coincidence… and perhaps a harbinger that things are getting closer to the crunch
It’s been going on for years, the gaza cease fires, the egypt support against hamas, etc
bernard ross Said:
Hmmm, have they been reading Israpundit?
@ Ted Belman:
I agree that the coalition would not allow the PA to have control of Area C zoning and planning. There is something not in-congruent about the whole article. She is asking lots of questions and making suggestions.
Ted, Do you have what Fishman wrote that Caroline is referencing?
Glick does not yell and scream about this. She is far too measured and controlled for my liking. This is earth shattering news. Liberman may have been brought over but he can’t make changes such as giving the Arabs, Fatah or Hamas it makes no difference, control over planning and zoning. I do believe that the coalition will prevent this from happening.
Bear Klein Said:
I found this statement of yours very interesting and thought provoking and in the end came to the conclusion that she is doing the opposite. If she were ringing the alarm bells then the list of “highly alarming” issues exposed in her article would be the cause of alarm. If she were ringing alarm bells the title would more likely read:
“GOI(or BB) is considering to transfer authority over YS to the Pals” rather than:
If she were ringing alarm bells she might be advising BB to immediately condemn this notion, reprimand the IDF rather than:
If she were ringing alarm bells her conclusion of this incredibly revealing major bombshell would not be this:
Caroline has buried and obfuscated the postulation of a HUGE tactic to give away YS covertly without needing a knesset vote or especially a referendum. Caroline has shown us how it can be done and then disappeared to a long bloviation of hamas, fatah, if this, if that, counting pals, blah blah blah. In the end she buried a bombshell under a pile of trivia. The title, advice to BB and the conclusion make it clear that the bombshell is not alarming but the need to count pals is.
To me the preponderance of the evidence leans toward the possibility that this is indeed a trial balloon couched in a package with red herrings to see how Israelis will react, or even more especially if they will notice the bombshell for what it is. It has all the trappings of previous trial balloons which separate BB from the goings on which leaves him with plausible deniability.
Bear Klein Said:
I really hope you are right, but there are too many questions here as to the purpose of this article and why Caroline wrote it the way she did… hiding the biggest story.
Bear Klein Said:
continuing with listing the “highly alarming” issues revealed in Caroline’s article:
7-
what I find alarming AND startling is that the military is even involved with creating political plans outside their portfolio…. that they work on political and diplomatic strategies. My understand of a military in a democracy is that the military has NO political and diplomatic activity. Yet here Caroline and others just accept it as normal. Apparently the real gov in Israel is the IDF who is busy incubating far reaching political plans. Does COGAT take plans from the IDF for Liberman to implement? How is this not alarming?
8-
I find it alarming that Caroline accepts the authority of the military to make any political and non military strategic suggestions at all. The military makes suggestions to give them political powers… since when is that a military sphere?
9-
Wow, generals supporting political goals from their military positions? This should be cause for dismissal of those generals.
10-
ah yes, here we can see that the narrative is advanced that other than security there is no reason to own it or control it. This has been the BB mantra, this is why he never supports Jewish settlement in area C outside the ghetto boundaries designated by the euros. It is alarming when Caroline is advancing the same notion.
11-
this is the first that I have heard this from Caroline, I thought she always spoke for annexation of YS. From here the discussion goes into for the 100th time the demographic narratives…. thus burying and obfuscating the most alarming issues of the article.
12-
In other words it is the narrative of demographics which should determine Israels control and ownership of the land. I find this alarming.
13-
In other words, Carolines reaction to the IDF suggestion to give Judea Samaria to the pals is to conclude that we need demographic information. I find that reaction to the IDF suggestion enormously alarming because it is basically accepting the suggestion AND the IDF intransigence as something to be considered subject to demographic info.
Considering the closeness of Caroline to BB and evaluating this as a possible trial balloon of an intended fraud to be perpetrated on the Israeli people… I am deeply alarmed but not necessarily surprised.
I have been saying for years that BB’s understandings with the gulf arabs have influenced every important decision he has made in war and peace related to the pals, the settlers, YS, “negotiations”, etc. and if this is true it would simply be the exposure of another demonstration that BB has goals agreed of which he does not mention to the public but which influence everything. If this article is accurate then I would say that I have no further doubt that BB has already worked it out with the arabs, that all this is just about how to get Israelis and pals to accept the deal AND that the way it is to be done is NOT through a major high profile peace agreement but with tactics such as the one suggested here. I have always wondered how it would be done and this is a brilliant plan for that goal because it would give pals something real and big without a need to go to a referendum. In fact, such a move would likely be reflected with a GCC move… even opening up in stages to Israel. I am of course not for the deal, or any deal with those who teach their children that Jews are sons of apes and pigs.
Bear Klein Said:
I must agree with you,indeed, if “accurate this would be highly alarming.” But what exactly about it would be highly alarming?
Here are the points revealed in Caroline’s article which I find “highly alarming”
1-Giving planning zoning and building control is a defacto transfer of area C to the pals. If they decide what, and who, builds there then they also decide who lives there. The only thing it does not involve is security arrangements and the actual transfer of sovereignty. It would probably include the enforcement authority as usual which goes with zoning, planning and building authorities and likely the PA police to police the pals living there. I assume until transfer of “title” the soldiers would stay to maintain “security”
2- giving the authority over who builds and lives there while retaining “title” and “security” sounds uncannily like all the mooted plans which call for giving them YS but retaining security over the valley and borders to Jordan for a period of some years. However, what it is not, is an actual treaty or agreement to give them YS legally. I have always wondered how they would implement such a plan over years… whether it would be preceded by a high profile agreement…. perhaps my wondering is answered here.
3- Not being a treaty to give them YS legally but merely a quiet giving of zoning, planning and building authority is a stealthy way of bypassing the knesset and the people because there is no actual giving of land nor a treaty. The alarming part being that it would be a brilliant maneuver by those who believe they know whats best for the people and have no need to consult them.
4- Such a tactic of giving the land without treaty and bypassing the people is so brilliant that it reinforces the notion that it might be accurate, a trial balloon. In fact it brings to mind the same tactics used for obama’s iran deal and immigration.
5- If accurate, I doubt that it could be tabled and discussed without the 100% approval of Netanyahu…. in fact, if this were accurate I would submit that the proposal would be his submission, but advanced by others so as to allow him to say that it is not happening or it is not his idea or policy: plausible deniability.
6- If accurate, very alarming, is the idea that Netanyahu would be attempting to use deceitful strategy to implement the giving away of YS without consulting the people OR using this as a trial balloon deceitfully to see if there would be much opposition to simply handing over zoning to the PA using COGAT and Liberman rather than the coalition, knesset or referendum
these are the first alarming issues which immediately spring to my mind… next post, some more.
Approval of Arab settlements in Area C without a Peace Treaty is a fundamental mistake. All unsafe structures should be subject to building inspectors and if out-of-code, fixed or demolished without final approval. TAXES need to be paid on these land improvements, even if they are not in code or approved; its value added and needs to be self-sustaining in terms of inspections and services. Put those liberal generals to work as tax farmers in this regard.
If the article is accurate this would be highly alarming. Caroline is ringing the alarms bells.
Her source is Alex Fishman a person not to be trusted but to be taken with a grain of salt. He is operating from a leftists view of the world and tries to get things to happen from that viewpoint.
I fully believe that the top IDF requires a housecleaning.
I was fully involved with a left-wing NGO during the Jenin incursion. The PA lied about Palestinian casualties and the UN and the State Department accepted their deceptions and condemned Israel
The IDF ,to spare Palestinian civilian casualties, used frontal assaults instead of thoroughly pulverizing the buildings that the Palestinians were using as fortifications. At that time I estimated that 15 or maybe as many as 30 IDF soldiers died to satisfy a mythical moral code.
Mowing the grass does not deter Hezbollah or Hamas.
My Islamic sources maintain that deterrence is gained by a promise of brute force to be exercised as a multiple of the provoking insults. [In Mafia terms: you put one of my guys in the hospital; I put five of your guys in the morgue.]