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terms with the Palestinian inhabitants, offers an important
basis for a strategy-oriented dialogue.
b.
Obtaining the optimal Military Capacity
Here, the Israeli political leadership and civil society have
two complementary tasks: To convince the wider public that
Israel’s military capacity cannot stand alone, but has to take
full account of the four other criteria, defining a comprehensive
security approach. As it is feared that losing security control
over the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem will deteriorate
Israel’s security situation and open the door to terror attacks,
this fear must be met by suggesting and defining a security
approach that will minimize the potential for terror. In this
context, maintaining and reinforcing security cooperation
with the Palestinian Authority, as well as with Jordan, Egypt,
and other Arab states, has become a most essential enabling
condition for achieving a two state solution.
c.
Understanding the Limits of Military Power and Moral
Obligations
The most dangerous emotional stumbling block for achieving
a two-state solution, is the desire for immediate and drastic
revenge in return for any terror act or other act of aggression
directed against Israel. This tendency is being amplified by
religious argumentation that inclines to sanctify war, prohibits
negotiations for giving up any part of Eretz Yisrael, asserts all
too effective political pressure, and at times even legitimizes
murder (see above).
In this context, an important but by no means a sufficient
activity is to educate the public, optimally by Israel’s political
leadership, the media, academia, and civil society, to
understand moral obligations of Israel and the limits of
power in the modern world, particularly under conditions of
asymmetric warfare that are imposed upon Israel by Hamas,
Hezbollah and other radical militant Islamic state- and non-
state actors. What is essential to obtain the commitment of
Israel’s religious leadership to a policy of military constraint. In
this context, the emerging Jewish-Islamic religious dialogue
(as described by Roie Ravitzky) is of decisive importance.
Dialectically, the criminal radicalization within extremist Islamic
groups, and the criminal acts of Israeli youth influenced
by radical rabbinical leadership created and important
constructive backlash and an atmosphere for dialogue and
cooperation.
d.
Seeking Allies in the Region and among the International
Community
Israel’s political leadership at large, actually from wall-to-wall,
definitely understands the need to build alliances in the region
and beyond. However, the emotional and psychological
stumbling block based largely on the collective historical
experience of the Jewish people, as well as upon the personal
experience of political leaders, is at best expressed by the
sentence “The world is all against us, andwemust demonstrate
that we cannot be bullied by anyone, otherwise we lose our
deterrence capacity”. Israel’s right wing leadership, Begin,
Shamir and Netanyahu, have always been tempted to seek
refuge against external political pressure, by adopting this
approach, and gaining hereby, as a rule, substantial majority
support.
Yet, whenever these moments of populist action pass, the
need for seeking allies in the region and beyond is fully
understood. Under present conditions, this definitely opens
important enabling conditions for moving towards a two state
solution. The political statements of President el-Sisi of Egypt,
and parallel statements of leading Saudi personalities, as for
instance Prince Faisal al-Turki, have opened the way toward
a supportive regional role for an ongoing Israel-Palestine,
and wider Israeli-Egyptian-Jordanian-Saudi-UAE, negotiating
process. Moreover, Israel’s leadership understands perfectly
well, that regional support cannot come instead of negotiations
with the Palestinians, but must be centered on coordinated
headway towards an agreed two-state solution.
e.
The Necessity to Stop or Minimize Violence by Signing
Agreements
Israel’s experience in repeated wars with Egypt was of
essential importance to reach at first partial agreements (in
January 1974 on disengagement; on September 1, 1974 for
an interim agreement providing for non-belligerency) and
then sign a full Treaty of Peace (March, 1979). It was fully
understood in Jerusalem that each and every Israeli military
success, in fighting during the early fifties Fedayeen terror
acts, in defeating Egypt in the Sinai Campaign of 1956, in the
Six Day War of 1967, in the War of Attrition of 1968-1970, and
in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, only led – after a time lap – to
the escalation of violence and war. The only way to stop the
escalating curve of violence was to sign a Treaty of Peace,
and withdraw from the entire Sinai Peninsula; a move that was
opposed by Israel’s right wing, but has provided Israel, so
far, with forty years of peace and quiet on the Egyptian front.
The problem is that in the Israeli-Palestinian context, the
Israeli narrative of the experience is very different: following
the signing of the Oslo I Agreement in September 1993,
terror has risen, rather than decreased. This fact is even
worsened, by the tendency of the international media, to
adopt an “even-handed” approach and put the blame on
both sides, even when the aggressive action clearly has been
launched by the Palestinians, or other militant actors, such
as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and others. This is a most serious
stumbling block for any future attempt to renew negotiations
and seek an agreement.
Recent history has provided us with an important counter-
narrative: Since the summer of 2008, Israeli-Palestinian
security cooperation was developed on the basis of what
General Ashkenazi called “they do more, we do less”, and
clearly contributed to relative stability.
Maybe it is possible to learn from the Irish experience. After
the conclusion of the Good Friday Agreement, in 1998, the
“Real IRA” launched a devastating terror attack at Omeagh.
In response all parties, joined together in demonstrations and
actions against those criminal perpetrators and spoilers of
the peace-building effort.
