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| Volume XII, Fall 2005, Number 3 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan Toward Peace, by Martin van Creveld. St. Martin’s Press, 2004. 165 pages, with notes and index. $21.95, hardcover.
Michael Rubner
Professor of international relations, James Madison College, Michigan State University
One of the major arguments of the opponents of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank
and the Golan Heights has been that these territories and the settlements erected therein are vital
for assuring the country’s military security. In this short and very concise book, Martin van
Creveld, professor of history at the Hebrew University and the dean of Israeli military historians,
effectively debunks this justification and offers instead a persuasive case for an almost total Israeli
withdrawal from these areas, preferably as a result of a negotiated agreement, but unilaterally if
necessary.
The author notes that immediately after Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, a quick consensus
emerged within the country’s leadership that the old armistice lines, established in 1949, failed to
provide adequate national security and hence needed to be drastically modified. The quest for
more defensible borderlines originated with and was most vociferously articulated by Israel’s then-
minister of labor and later deputy prime minister, Yigal Allon, who argued for retention and control
of the Jordan Valley to thwart any potential military threat from the east. Allon’s argument eventually
provided a strategic rationale for the construction of settlements in the territories, whether
officially authorized or not.
As it turned out, neither the territories nor the settlements contributed to Israel’s defense.
Quite to the contrary, these presumed national-security assets became very serious military and
political liabilities. The author notes that on October 6, 1973, at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur
War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the immediate evacuation of civilians from the
settlements on the Golan Heights because they hindered the military operations of the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) against Syria. Furthermore, the settlements failed to deter terrorism; as their
numbers increased, so did the number of settlers who became targets for violent actions by the
Palestinians. As a matter of fact, approximately two-fifths of the settlements were erected on
locations that were not identified on any security map drawn by Israeli leaders.
Van Creveld concludes that “seen from a security point of view, indeed, the entire map of
settlement hardly makes any sense at all.” He believes that the actual justification for the settlements
was to construct a political constituency that would make it more difficult to give up the
territories. Instead of enhancing military security, the settlements and the very occupation of the
territories have become by far the most important cause of friction between Israelis and Palestinians.
Given these arguments, it is not surprising that the author favors Israel’s withdrawal “to a
border so close to the pre-1967 one as to make any changes strategically insignificant.” A lion’s
share of the book is devoted to an analysis of the impact that such withdrawal is likely to have on
Israel’s ability to defend itself against three types of military threats: conventional war, terrorism
and guerrilla warfare, and attacks by long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Van Creveld is convinced that Israel could effectively defend itself against a large-scale
conventional attack following an almost complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Its
armed forces “have grown to the point where, in purely operational terms if not in point of staying
power, they are now probably the third or fourth most powerful on earth.” He notes that since the
1973 war, the military balance has shifted dramatically in favor of Israel, both in quantitative and
qualitative terms, with the addition to the IDF arsenal of a new generation of attack aircraft,
helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and missile-carrying vessels. Specifically,
the difference in offensive power between the Egyptian military and the IDF has grown to a ratio of
5 to 1 in favor of the latter since 1973, while Syria’s military capabilities have deteriorated severely
during the same period.
Van Creveld maintains that, were Israel to withdraw from the territories, it could still gain
intelligence and early warning regarding a potential attack from the east by means of aerostats, or
balloons that are precision-steered by small turbo-prop engines and equipped with various types
of radar. To compensate for the loss of strategic depth, Israel would have to augment its naval
forces. It would also need to ensure that the regular forces of a future Palestinian state would be
sufficiently small to be handled by IDF ground and air forces. The author concludes that, following
withdrawal from the territories, Israel would have to return to a strategic doctrine that had served
the country well between 1948 and 1967: deterrence, with readiness to undertake preemptive
combat against imminent threats, with reliance on superior intelligence and rapid mobilization of
resources. While conceding that a preemptive first-strike might generate political cost, Van Creveld
argues that the probability that any external power would threaten Israel with military retaliation
would be very small.
As for WMDs, Syria, Egypt and Iran either already have or can fairly quickly produce chemical
weapons, and Iran might join the nuclear-weapons club by 2008. All three countries have surface-
to-surface missiles that could hit Israeli population centers with chemical and/or biological weapons.
However, as the author astutely notes, retention of the territories cannot in and of itself
prevent such attacks. On the contrary, Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Territories might
strengthen the credibility of its deterrence doctrine because any future attack would have to take
place against Israel’s own homeland; consequently, it would be more likely to generate an Israeli
response. Israel could enhance protection of its own WMDs by moving most of its strategic
deterrent to sea.
In order to stop various types of terrorism, including knifings, shootings, kidnappings and
suicide bombings, Van Creveld supports the construction of a separation wall as close as possible
to the 1967 Green Line. Such a structure, equipped with modern sensing devices and backed by a
strip of 10 meters filled with antipersonnel mines, would effectively seal the border between Israel
and a future Palestinian state and thereby eliminate Israel’s vulnerability to terror. The author
argues that the barrier should be completed as fast as possible so as to enable the government to
announce that it intends to withdraw from those territories beyond the wall by a date certain. Such
an announcement would be followed by various concrete steps, including the dismantling of
military bases, removal of equipment, and the eventual transfer of all settlers left outside the wall
back to Israel. Van Creveld estimates that almost one-third of the 200,000 settlers on the West Bank
would be prepared to leave on their own accord upon obtaining state help in finding new homes
inside the Green Line. Recent polls cited by the author indicate that fewer than 10 percent of the
settlers would actively resist evacuation and relocation.
The plan advocated by Van Creveld goes considerably further than the disengagement plan
currently pursued by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as well as the so-called Roadmap sponsored
by the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union. Specifically, the
proposed route of the partially completed barrier, according to plans most recently revised in
February 2005, would leave approximately 63,000 Israeli settlers beyond the wall, whereas Van
Creveld proposes total evacuation of settlers. Likewise, while Sharon is currently willing to
withdraw from only four small settlements on the West Bank, the plan outlined in Defending Israel
envisions a total withdrawal from the area and concomitant abandonment of all settlements. In
addition, unlike the Roadmap, Van Creveld’s plan can be implemented unilaterally by Israel because
it does not require the Palestinians to meet any preconditions.
There can be little doubt about the merits of the author’s plan. An immediate and virtually total
withdrawal from the West Bank would help pave the way for the emergence of a territorially
contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel. Together with a fortified barrier, the end of the
occupation would not only enhance Israel’s security but would also enable the IDF to recover its
lost prestige and morale.
Yet, on the other hand, Van Creveld tends to both exaggerate the benefits and underestimate or
overlook various costs attached to his plan. For example, the proposed separation barrier between
Israel and the West Bank cannot prevent the undertaking of terrorist actions by Israeli Arabs inside
the Green Line, nor is it very likely that the anticipated decline of terror from the West Bank will in
and of itself make Israeli Arabs feel safer in public places. Even if a feeling of greater safety were to
materialize, would it in and of itself lead to reduced radicalization of Israel’s Arab citizens? Likewise,
while acknowledging that Israel would lose access to the Palestinian market were the proposed wall
to seal the border with the West Bank, Van Creveld fails to recognize that the very existence of
such a physical barrier is unlikely to facilitate any meaningful political reconciliation between the
erstwhile adversaries. Especially problematic is his claim that “by preventing the Palestinians from
coming across the border, marrying Israeli Arabs, and acquiring Israeli citizenship, [the wall] will put
an end to the ‘Right of Return’ as it is being exercised even now.” Surely the legitimacy of the
Palestinians’ claim to the Right of Return is not negated by the mere existence of a physical barrier
that prevents the exercise of such a right. Likewise, it is very difficult to reconcile Van Creveld’s
bold assertion that “Israel will almost certainly be destroyed” if it fails to erect the wall with his
earlier ranking of the IDF as the third or fourth most powerful military in the world.
Van Creveld’s proposals fall short of constituting a comprehensive plan for an Israeli-
Palestinian peace, not only because they do not address the refugee issue, but also because the
author fails to deal effectively with the thorny dispute over the status of Jerusalem. Both sides
claim the city as their capital, and there are currently about 175,000 Israelis and approximately
195,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Even if Israel were to give up control over several neighborhoods
in East Jerusalem with an exclusively Arab population (Kalandia, Shuafat, Beth Hanina and
Abu Dis) -- as the author suggests -- the erection of his favored barrier around these areas would
deny their residents access to the holy sites on or near the Temple Mount.
Thus, the narrow focus of Defending Israel on the military and security dimensions of the
conflict is the source of both the book’s weakness and its strength. While paying very scant
attention to the nonmilitary issues that will need to be resolved if a just and lasting peace is to be
achieved, Van Creveld builds a logically powerful case for the immediate end of the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank. Unfortunately, the most cogent and compelling arguments of this volume
are bound to fall on deaf ears as the Sharon government continues to expand Israel’s presence and
its rule over 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
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