Israel’s Control of Judea & Samaria – a Prerequisite for Security

The mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) – 3,000ft above the Jordan Valley and 2,000ft above Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain – constitute the “Golan Heights” of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, the key north-south transportation artery Highway 6, critical commercial and defense infrastructures and 80% of Israel’s population.

The eastern mountain ridge – facing Jordan and Iraq – is the most effective tank barrier in the war-ridden region. The western mountain ridge could become a platform to intensified Palestinian terrorism, targeting Israel’s 9-15-mile soft belly along the Mediterranean, and dooming this congested area to worse terrorism than the one inflicted by the Gaza-based Hamas.

Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria – rather than a Palestinian state – is a pivotal national security prerequisite in view of the 14-century-old intra-Arab Middle East reality: extreme volatility, violent intolerance, lack of peaceful-coexistence, repressive tenuous regimes, shifty policies and precarious agreements.

Such a tectonic reality requires Israel’s secure boundaries to respond to bad, worse and worst-case unpredictable scenarios. Therefore, Israel’s national security cannot be based on peace accords, which could be as fragile as the regimes which conclude them. Israel’s national security must be based on the capabilities to withstand unforeseeable and violent regime change (e.g., Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq) and the potential abrogation of peace accords. Thus, in 1979, Iran was transformed from a close ally of the US and Israel to their most ferocious enemy. Similar turbulence in Jordan – which must be avoided with the assistance of the US and Israel – could transform Jordan into a chaotic platform of regional and global terrorism, which would critically upgrade the significance of the dominant mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

Moreover, secure boundaries must generate a posture of deterrence, while providing Israel with the 48 hours required – upon a surprise attack, as in the 1973 War – to deploy the country’s reserve units, which amount to 70% of Israel’s military corps. The critical reliance on reserve combat units highlights the strategic difference between the Sinai Peninsula (22,000 square miles and bordering the sparsely populated high grounds of the Negev, providing Israel with 50 hours to mobilize the reservists) and Judea and Samaria (2,200 square miles and adjacent to Israel’s major population centers, providing Israel with 5-10 hours). Therefore, Israel could afford to retreat from the Sinai Peninsula, but cannot afford to give up control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

Furthermore, in 1967, Israel destroyed the military infrastructure of Egypt, Syria and Jordan; but in 1973, Israel escaped annihilation by the surprise Egypt-Syria offensive, largely, due to its control of the high grounds of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria.

Israel’s lack of geographic depth has dramatically enhanced the role played the topographic high-ground of Judea and Samaria in the era of high military technology. For instance, while a technological edge is tenuous and could be jammed and overtaken by superior technologies, the topographic edge is permanent and cannot be jammed. While advanced combat planes and missiles can cause much destruction to enemies (but have been unable to destroy terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza), armored units and ground troops vanquish enemies, as was demonstrated during the two Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003. Moreover, the more advanced the military technologies of one’s enemies, the higher the importance of one’s high grounds to minimize terrorism and fend off swift unexpected military attacks.

In an August 14, 2008 memorandum for the US Joint Forces Command, US Marine General James Mattis wrote: Israel’s failed 2006 war against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon was a derivative of a flawed assumption that terrorists could be defeated by heavy precision air bombing and a small ground force. “This type of thinking runs contrary to historical lessons and the fundamental nature of war.”

The control of the over towering mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria bolsters Israel’s national security and its posture of deterrence, as well as being a major force-multiplier to US national security and all pro-US Arab countries.

A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would transform Israel from a national security producer to a consumer of national security; from a strategic asset of the US to a liability; from a deterring entity to a most vulnerable entity, plagued by unprecedented terrorism in its soft belly of Jerusalem and the densely-populated coastal plain.

*The US’ co-sponsorship of an anti-Israel UN Security Council Statement reflects the return of the State Department’s worldview to the center stage of US foreign policy-making. This was the first time, in six years, that the US enabled the UN Security Council to act against Israel.

*This is not merely a worldview, which is highly critical of Israel, as has been the case since 1948, when Foggy Bottom led the charge against the re-establishment of the Jewish State.

This worldview has systematically undermined US interests, by subordinating the unilateral, independent US national security policy (on Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian issue, etc.) to a multilateral common denominator with the anti-US and anti-Israel UN and international organizations, as well as the vacillating and terrorists-appeasing Europe.

*It has sacrificed Middle East reality on the altar of wishful-thinking, assuming that the establishment of a Palestinian state would fulfill Palestinian aspirations, advance the cause of peace, reduce terrorism and regional instability; thus, enhancing US interests.

*However, the reality of the Middle East and Jordan and the rogue Palestinian track record lend credence to the assumption that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-US Hashemite regime east of the River, yielding traumatic ripple effects, regionally and globally:

^Replace the relatively-moderate Hashemite regime with either a rogue Palestinian regime, a Muslim Brotherhood regime, or other rogue regimes;
^Transform Jordan into a chaotic state, similar to Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which would be leveraged by Iran’s Ayatollahs to intensify their encirclement of the pro-US Saudi regime;
^Convert Jordan into a major arena of regional and global Islamic terrorism;
^Trigger a domino scenario into the Arabian Peninsula, which could topple all pro-US, oil-producing Arab regimes;
^Imperil the supply of Persian Gulf oil, which would be held hostage by anti-US entities, catapulting the price at the pump;
^Jeopardize major naval routes of global trade between Asia and Europe through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal;
^Intensify epicenters of regional and global terrorism and drug trafficking;
^Generate a robust tailwind to US’ adversaries (Russia and China) and enemies (Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS) and a powerful headwind to US economic and national security interests.

*The State Department assumes that Palestinian terrorism – just like Islamic terrorism – is driven by despair, ignoring the fact that Palestinian terrorism has been driven (for the last 100 years) by the vision to erase the “infidel” Jewish entity from “the abode of Islam,” as stated by the charters of Fatah (1959) and the PLO (1964), 8 and 3 years before the Jewish State reunited Jerusalem and reasserted itself in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

*Aspiring for a Palestinian state, and viewing Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria as an obstacle to peace, ignores the Arab view of the Palestinians as a role model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism, corruption and treachery. Moreover, the State Department has held the view that the Palestinian issue is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a central to Arab interests, which has been refuted by the Abraham Accords. The latter ignored the State Department, sidestepped the Palestinian issue and therefore came to fruition.

*The State Department overlooks the centrality of the Palestinian Authority’s hate education, which has become the most effective production-line of terrorists, and the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian Authority’s worldview and vision.

*The State Department has also taken lightly the Palestinian Authority’s mosque incitement, public glorification of terrorists and monthly allowances to families of terrorists, which have documented its rogue and terroristic nature (walk), notwithstanding its peaceful diplomatic rhetoric (talk).

*The State Department’s eagerness to welcome the Palestinian issue in a “red carpet” manner – contrary to the “shabby doormat” extended to Palestinians by Arabs – and its determination to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state, along with its embrace of Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood, have been interpreted by rogue regimes and organizations as weakness.

Experience suggests that weakness invites the wolves, including wolves which aim to bring “The Great Satan” to submission throughout the world as well as the US mainland.

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