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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech on June 14 that could have serious implications on the peace process but few people noticed because of the Iranian election and the aftermath of the protests, government crackdown, etc. Netanyahu fundamentally changed the equation of Middle East peace that the United States and Israel had been operating on for forty years prior. Not only does this change create potential problems of its own, but the proposals by Netanyahu are next to impossible to carry out successfully.
The substance of Netanyahu's speech was located in the following paragraph that was translated in Haaretz: (emphasis mine)
I came here tonight to talk about the agreement and security that are broad consensus within Israeli society. This is what guides our policy. This policy must take into account the international situation. We have to recognize international agreements but also principles important to the State of Israel. I spoke tonight about the first principle - recognition. Palestinians must truly recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The second principle is demilitarization. Any area in Palestinian hands has to be demilitarization, with solid security measures. Without this condition, there is a real fear that there will be an armed Palestinian state which will become a terrorist base against Israel, as happened in Gaza. We do not want missiles on Petah Tikva, or Grads on the Ben-Gurion international airport. We want peace. (Applause)
And, to ensure peace we don't want them to bring in missiles or rockets or have an army, or control of airspace, or make treaties with countries like Iran, or Hizbullah. There is broad agreement on this in Israel. We cannot be expected to agree to a Palestinian state without ensuring that it is demilitarized. This is crucial to the existence of Israel, we must provide for our security needs.
The passage in bold indicates the two requirements that Netanyahu has set forth for Israel to agree to peace with a potential Palestinian state: it must recognize Israel's right to exist and it must be demilitarized with no military, no control over airspace, etc. The first condition is not problematic since Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel is little more than a bargaining chip. The second point of demanding demilitarization is the true sticking point.
Demilitarization removes the possibility of establishing a state. A state, going all the way back to when Hobbes penned Leviathan, is defined first and foremost as the originator of legitimate violence. Max Weber called it "monopoly of force" in Politics as a Vocation. The state maintains a military and, if it desires, a police force through which it exercises legitimate violence and it can legally empower private entities to use violence in situations when it is deemed necessary. It is imperative, however, that the state possess sufficient force that no private group or entity within the territory that it claims sovereignty over can ignore the writ of the government nor use force to act in contravention of the law or overthrow the government. Any group that does not meet those minimum requirements is not a state or a government, they are simply one armed mob among many. There can be no law without law enforcement. A contract is a promise subject to the whims of the promise maker without a system of laws deciphered by a system of jurisprudence and enforced by an executive. Rights flow from the barrel of a gun. To insist that Israel will agree to a Palestinian state if, and only if, it is demilitarized is tantamount to saying that Israel will never agree to a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu also talked of making certain that no weapons such as missiles or rockets could make their way into the new Palestinian "state" to insure that it remained demilitarized. As the Soviets found out to their dismay in their satellite states, a border is not an impenetrable line. It is a place where one government's writ ends and another's begins. As such, borders are only as good at keeping out proscribed goods as the border guards are. The balance of history reveals as farce Netanyahu's talk of keeping missiles and rockets out of a new Palestinian state. Whether it is through bribed border guards, long tunnels or the fast boats of gunrunners splitting the Israeli Navy's blockade, they will get there. Netanyahu should take a lesson from the United States' War on Drugs. As of today, June 28, 2009, the federal government and all fifty state governments together have spent $25 BILLION to eradicate illicit drugs in this country. Despite this (and despite the fact that I don't do drugs), I could drive to the rougher part of Hamilton where the motels rent by the hour and it's not a good idea to get out of your car and I could get most of the types of drugs that the government spent $25 billion prohibiting for the right price. If I couldn't get them from a corner, that person would know who to call. The fact is that it is impossible to 100% stop anything from getting anywhere and the job becomes harder when people's determination to carry the contraband to the specific area is unshakable, emboldened by big money for easy work or by religious fervor. Israel's attempts to prevent missiles and rockets getting to a new, demilitarized Palestinian "state" would be confronted by gunrunners willing to risk everything for major profit and, far more problematic, Islamists that would do anything to get the weaponry there because they firmly believe that they are performing God's will.
So, theoretically, what will happen when Israel accepts this new, demilitarized Palestinian "state" and its toothless government and ordnance begins to land on Sderot again? The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) will have no choice but to redeploy to Palestinian territory again, which is the situation they are trying to avoid in the first place by creating a separate Palestinian entity, and conduct operations against those firing the ordnance. Then the terrible cycle that is so lamentable but, sadly, so familiar starts yet again. Israeli soldiers are maimed and killed, Palestinian civilians are maimed and killed, most of the perpetrators escape after drawing the IDF into a fight in an urban environment where it is highly likely that one or more civilians will be killed in the fighting and a certainty that it will get Israel more bad press. Then the IDF will withdraw, in line with its desire to stay militarily disentangled from the Palestinian territories and the perpetrators will filter back into the area and rain ordnance down on the heads of Israeli civilians again.
The true solution to the problem is going to be very unpopular because it will take intensive effort over an indeterminate amount of time and for some Israelis it will require a fundamental reconfiguration of their beliefs about the conflict. The true solution, perhaps the only reliable solution, is for Israel to go out of its way to be a better neighbor to the Palestinian people than Hamas is. Hamas is popular with the Palestinian people because it provides goods and services that they are desperate for. Finding a way to improve the infrastructure of the West Bank is a start since the improvements are less likely to be vandalized. The next step is that they have got to find a workable strategy to root out the corruption in Fatah or they will have to simply abolish Fatah and try to have friendly powers work with the Palestinians to build up a nationalist organization that is about the welfare of the Palestinian people and not about foreign affairs. The key is that a partner must be created that Israel can trust with a military because the entire notion of a demilitarized Palestinian state is basically intellectually bankrupt logic that insures Israel never has to concede to a Palestinian state because a state cannot exist without a military.
Also, if Israel allows a Palestinian state with a military and that state behaves badly with its military, it could give Israel the excuse to defeat the Palestinians outright in a fair military conflict that was not instigated by them. The bottom line is that Israel is either going to condemn itself to be the babysitter of the Palestinian territories forever or it will set them free to become a full-fledged state and then the issue may find a conclusion, be it bloody or bloodless. However, the things that we have learned are this:
- There is chaos that kills Palestinians and Israelis when no one is in control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- Fatah is clearly not a worthy rival for Hamas at the ballot box because the Palestinian people are willing to accept violence and terrorism in return for Hamas' version of a less corrupt and more efficient government that provides life's necessities for them when given the choice
- Occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been proven to be a losing strategy for Israel since 1967
- If there is to be something resembling a peaceful settlement the Palestinian people must form a state with a military that can dominate both the West Bank and Gaza Strip by force and elect a government that will either use that military to suppress groups like Hamas and promote a peaceful co-existence with Israel or use that military to go to war with Israel and the Palestinians can finally take responsibility for something in their lives: being pushed into Egypt and Jordan respectively and having to resettle there because Israel has won their former lands in a war they started and cannot appeal the outcome of.
