Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Arab Israeli Conflict
[ Israeli-Arab conflict and peace process ] [ Arab Israeli conflict and Israeli territorial expansion into Arab lands ]
The Israeli Defense Force wins wars; the Israeli government is generally good at the conflict negotiations with Arabs. Only the absence of an Israeli grand strategy lets the conflict with Arabs drag on for almost six decades of Israeli existence. There is no end to the Arab Israeli conflict. Israel may choose to shrink her borders, or Israel may choose to expand at Arabs' expense. In the latter case, Israel has the relatively easy military choice of Palestine and South Lebanon, the politically incorrect choice of Jordan, and the hard military choice of taking the Sinai from Egypt. Israel could give in to all Arab demands and end the conflict. She could either abandon the idea of a large standing Israel Defense Forces or sacrifice Israeli economy to Jewish political and military ambitions. Israeli settlers may leave the Palestinian Arab territories, confine themselves to a network of defended Jewish settlements, or maintain control over the whole Palestine, thus perpetuating the Arab Israeli conflict. Jews have the means to sustain any Israeli policy in the conflict with Arabs. Moderately foolish Israeli policy is better than no policy, and would end the Israeli Arab conflict sooner. Nothing is so costly in Jewish lives, material, reputation, and public resolve as Israel's constant wavering in prosecuting the conflict. Israeli policy in her conflict with Arabs must be devised by the government, agreed upon by the Knesset and unambiguously fixed as the Basic Law of Israel.
Israeli vacillation provokes Arabs to heat up the conflict. First, the Israeli wavering curve’s nadirs offer the Arabs clear clues of what Israel might accept to resolve the conflict. Israel's subsequent greater demands to Arab countries are not credible and induce the Arabs to demand ever further concessions from Israel in the current conflict. Second, indecision makes Arabs afraid of Israel. Having a powerful but unpredictable Israeli neighbor leads Arabs to beef up their military arsenals and launches a spiral of violence in the Middle East conflict.
Israel’s errors recall Germany’s before World War I: concentration of military might, regional dominance, absence of clear political objectives, and aggressive, unpredictable policy that threatened potential enemies. Israel’s mistakes have provoked the Middle Eastern arms race, cemented the Arab coalition, obviated internal Arab disputes, and united Arabs to oppose the common Israeli enemy in the conflict. Many Israelis claim they do not intend to threaten the Arabs, but Israeli Arab conflict is not about facts. The issue at hand is Arab perception of Israeli intentions in waging the conflict.
Israelis must state their political objectives clearly in terms of Israeli self-interest, follow a predictable policy in resolving the Israeli conflict with Arabs, and stop panicking Israel's neighbors who never know what Israeli is up to at any given moment. If, however, Israel decides upon the aggressive course in the conflict, do not threaten the Arabs. Attack the designated Arab targets immediately. Do not let the Arabs prepare for Israeli attack and the U.S. intercede. Governments rarely give way to threats, certainly not Arab autocratic governments and not in the religious conflict. To delay aggression would greatly increase the cost for Israel of prevailing in her conflict with Arabs.
Vacillation in prosecuting the conflict damages the Israeli psyche, too. Israeli government officials in office must stop stating their private views on the Arab Israeli conflict publicly. If they do not agree with the State of Israel policy, let them leave the Israeli government and promote their viewpoints on the conflict with Arabs. Israeli government policy should be coherent. People who adopt radical ideological goals may want to adhere to them, though not practice them immediately. People remember the most far-fetched suggestions. In the present case, the conflict is Arab-Israeli peace at almost any cost versus Israel keeping the Palestinian territories at almost any cost. That polarizes and radicalizes Israeli society, both left and right Jews ignoring the middle options, but middle options are the reasonable ones in many conflicts. Though most Arabs did not demand a Palestinian state thirty years ago, now even most Israelis agree to the Palestinian state. Israeli society must agree on a path to solving the Arab Israeli conflict — offense, defense, or peace for territorial concessions to Palestinians and Syrians — and stop wavering.
Jewish oscillations between the desire for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict at any cost and the desire for Israel's expansion create ineffective policy for Israeli government. Israelis today are discussing about the equivalent of Sadat’s 1972 peace solution to Arab Israeli conflict. Menahem Begin was looking to give up the Israeli ownership of Sinai in return for Arab recognition of de facto Israeli jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories and ending the conflict. In the end, Sinai bought Israel a dubious end of the conflict with Egypt, but Egypt was ready to accept Israel anyway, a matter of Arab acceptance of Middle Eastern political reality which now included Israel. Therefore a moderate Egypt asked Israel only for the return of the Sinai, and Islamic fundamentalists disregarded the peace agreement with Israel, anyway, and perpetuated the Arab Israeli conflict. Consequently, Israel would have risked little by keeping Sinai, valuable not only for unprecedented for Israel depth of defense, but also as the approximate extreme of Eretz Israel, theoretically the ultimate goal of Israeli policy in the conflict with Arabs. Egypt would eventually have agreed to divide the Sinai with Israel, if not immediately then after some years, and would hardly choose to perpetuate the Arab Israeli conflict. As almost every country has at one or another point of its history, Egypt acquiesced to force, and would have done so in the conflict with Israel. It lacked sovereignty for millennia, its statehood relegated to a semi-mythical time of the pharaohs. Only decades ago, the British re-shaped Egypt as they wished — look at its straight, arbitrarily drawn borders. In the current conflict, Egypt abrogated its claim to Gaza and the Negev in favor of Israel. Partition of Sinai would have left Israel with oil wells in the isthmus, the reserves the Israelis were exploiting when the Camp David accords transferred the Sinai to Egypt. Israeli leaders submitted to international pressures and lost sight of Israel's primary objective in the Arab Israeli conflict. Concessions have not led either to resolution of Arab Israeli conflict or Israeli dominance.
Long neglected problems, like chronic illnesses, require harsher solutions than were available initially. Although some kind of Israeli coexistence with indigenous Arabs was once possible, now that Israel has given the Palestinian Arabs hope for their own state, Jews have no painless way to end the conflict. Israel must either give Palestinian Arabs the territory or destroy the Palestinian settlements and exile them far away — not to refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries, or the conflict would be perpetuated. Jordan and Lebanon, unhappy with Palestinian refugee camps as a source of anti-government and Palestinian terrorist unrest, would readily accept an Israeli ultimatum to disallow them. Forced cultural assimilation of Palestinians should accompany deportation: Palestinians are not sufficiently different from Arab Muslims to constitute a distinct culture. With demise of Palestinians, Arab Israeli conflict would lose its impetus.