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Developing an Israeli Grand Strategy toward
a Peaceful Two-State Solution
beach vacations in the Israeli imaginary. In the summer of
2006, however, it became clear that Islamist paramilitaries
had rapidly converted the de-occupied territories of Gaza and
southern Lebanon into bases for a new blueprint of armed
struggle against Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah launched
parallel cross-border raids and rocket attacks against Israel’s
civilian population, triggering Israeli military retaliation that
inflicted mass casualties and obliterated vital infrastructure,
without achieving any decisive military or political result.
The militant organizations used elaborate underground
fortifications, deliberately constructed within areas of dense
civilian population, as bases to store weapons, hold abducted
IDF soldiers, and continued to launch missiles at Israeli cities
for weeks before declaring victory against the backdrop of
an internationally imposed cease-fire.
Conflicts with Hamas in Gaza have erupted in 2009, 2012,
and 2014, costing thousands of Palestinian and dozens of
Israeli lives, driving Israeli civilians into bomb shelters and
leaving the world horrified by images of destitute Gazan
children sifting through the rubble of entire neighborhoods.
The destruction inflicted by the IDF in Gaza, in the name of
deterrence, was condemned by international observers as
disproportionate and resulted in parallel damage to Israel's
international standing, notwithstanding affirmations of Hamas
violations and Israel's right to self-defense. This legacy has
scarred Israeli popular consciousness; withdrawal from
occupied territory is now understood as creating power
vacuums that set the stage for unwinnable asymmetric wars
against Islamist militias.
A strand of Neo-Right revisionism conflates the Gaza and
Lebanon cases with the IDF's 1990s redeployment in theWest
Bank via the Oslo Accords. In this version, the removal of
IDF troops from Palestinian cities bears causal responsibility
for subsequent waves of suicide bombings – in contrast to
Leftist critiques citing Israel's failure to reach instead political
understandings with the Palestinian leadership. In recent
elections, Netanyahu has further resurrected the "narrow
waist" and "strategic depth" arguments to powerful effect –
warning that IDF withdrawal from the West Bank will create
a second Gaza-style "Hamastan," from which terrorists will
tunnel to Tel Aviv and fire rockets on Ben-Gurion airport. A
grim picture indeed – yet it rings true to many Israelis, who
find it a more authentic portrait of their contemporary reality
than the optimistic visions that initially accompanied the
peace process and the Arab Spring. In the harsh political
geography of 2016, Sinai is a destination for jihadists, not
Israeli tourists.
The events of the 21st century have thus, for the moment,
undermined the pillars of the pragmatic case for peace
now – leaving two-state advocates standing, as it were, on
one leg. The fear that withdrawal from the West Bank could
result in a failed Palestinian state, providing fertile ground
for attacks on Israel's coastal metropolis, looms large in the
Israeli mind – and with reason.
It is not enough today to
illustrate the injustice and untenability of the occupation
and demand that it end – effective two-state advocacy
must explain convincingly how the occupation can be
ended securely, and most important, what arises in its
place
.
In this challenging landscape, there are promising track-
two and civil society responses underway. Bilateral Israeli-
Palestinian, tri-lateral Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian and
multilateral working groups have made important headway
on security issues, with support from the EU, from NATO,
and international think tanks. Many of the findings and
proposed solutions are being discussed in a dialogue of
non-governmental experts, with the participation of officials,
who participate in workshops on a “personal” and “non-
official” basis. Similar important work is carried out in regard
to economic issues, where also important headway is being
made in cooperation with official actors from both sides.
On the "no partner" front, for years before Netanyahu
discovered the "regional" track in foreign policy, the MITVIM
think tank has advocated building a supportive infrastructure
for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations through enhanced regional
ties – and engaged in vigorous track-two work to that effect.
In parallel, the Israeli Peace Initiative group has advocated a
positive, official Israeli response to the Arab Peace Initiative
(API) – and marketed the idea in international and Israeli
forums.
Some of these groups' key talking points have recently
been adopted – though hopefully not co-opted – at the
highest level. In June, Prime Minister Netanyahu responded
to public overtures from Egyptian President Al-Sisi by
mentioning favorably, for the first time, the API as a potential
starting point for negotiations – before backpedaling at a
Likud faction meeting (Gradstein, 2016). Recent polling
released by the Israeli Initiative indicates that a regional
framework significantly broadens Israeli support for the
"painful concessions" necessary for a Palestinian agreement.
According to their findings, 84% of Israelis surveyed either
supported or "can live with" a two-state solution anchored
in an official framework of normalized relations and security
cooperation with the Sunni Arab states (Eldar, 2016).
In July, MITVIM drew an SRO crowd to the Knesset for the
unveiling of an initiative of three MKs – from Labor, Yesh Atid,
and Kulanu – to substantively advance the regional track
to which the Prime Minister has devoted much lip service
in recent months. At the session, MITVIM's Director Nimrod
Goren echoed MK's, as well as Arab and international
diplomats in attendance, emphasizing that the "regional"
strategy is not a "bypass road"; meaningful progress on
the Palestinian track remains a
sine qua non
to develop
anything more than clandestine ties with the wider region.
While MITVIM has long advocated such a strategy, the same
sentiment was recently echoed by General Amidror of the
Center-Right Begin-Sadat Center, formerly Netanyahu's
National Security Advisor (Amidror, 2016).
On the security front, parallel groups of Israeli and American
security experts released "two-state security" reports in
June 2016, presenting realistic policy recommendations
