El general de les FDI a la reserva Gershon Hacohen publicà el proppassat 11 d’aqueix mes un interessant report al Perspectives Center, número 890, del Begin-Sadat Center titulat “The Illusion of Israeli-Palestinian spatial separation” on analitza el fracàs resultant de la retirada unilateral israeliana de Gaza. Anteriorment refutà la possibilitat d’una separació equivalent aplicable a Judea-Samària com proposa Ehud Barak en una report titulat “Ehud barak: Blatantly Ignoring Danger“, publicat també als Perspectives Paers del BASE, número 482, de data 31 de maig del 2017: :
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The situation in the Gaza Strip since the 2005 disengagement debunks three fundamental assumptions that have become axiomatic in the Israeli security discourse: that total separation between Israelis and Palestinians will inevitably enhance security and stability; that the IDF will comfortably win any future confrontation in the evacuated territories; and that Israeli military activity in the previously held territories will enjoy massive international legitimacy and support.
Ever since Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, it has been axiomatic among Israeli decision-makers that spatial separation between Israelis and Palestinians is a vital Israeli interest, even if not accompanied by a peace agreement. In line with this thinking, Israelis have been repeatedly promised that the implementation of spatial separation, including the removal of Jews from these territories and the construction of a security fence, would reduce daily friction and create a safer and more stable security situation.
Thirteen years after the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, there is empirical evidence with which to identify the location where a more workable security situation has developed. Is it in the territory where complete separation has been effected, or in the West Bank, where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s vision of partial separation prevails?
Since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the Israeli security forces have been conducting regular counterterrorism activities throughout the West Bank as a matter of course. Generally authorized by the Central Command and the Shin Bet without the need for the approval of the political echelons, this routine activity has given the security forces freedom of action and operational flexibility, which, together with other factors, has ensured relative calm and stability in the West Bank.
Imagine, for example, the launch of kite/balloon firebombs from Jerusalem’s Tzur Baher suburb into the city’s Jewish neighborhoods. The IDF or the Israel Police would send a couple of Jeeps to the neighborhood and neutralize the incident. In stark contrast, the total spatial separation between Gaza and Israel as of the summer 2005 disengagement has denied the IDF freedom of action beyond the border fence. Not that the IDF’s overall capabilities have been reduced, but by transforming the Strip into an ineradicable terror entity that can exact a heavy price from invading Israeli forces, Hamas has succeeded in placing a strategic “price tag” on a wide range of activities short of overall confrontation.
For example, the effectiveness of Israel’s Iron Dome system notwithstanding, Hamas’s rocket/missile arsenal constrains Israel’s daily operational routine as IDF commanders must consider its possible employment in various confrontational scenarios. It is no secret that the balance of costs, risks, and opportunities that accompanies the decision to act in Gaza has become infinitely more complex since the disengagement.
Nor should it be forgotten that a border fence can also benefit Hamas. The fence does indeed help Israel in its effort to prevent hostile infiltration of its territory; but it also enables Hamas to grow stronger and to organize safely under its protective wing. Indeed, under the auspices of the spatial separation, Hamas has managed to build a regular military force comprising battalions and brigades, armed with a large below-ground rocket/missile arsenal and supported by an effective command and control system. None of this would be possible without the full realization of the Israeli leftwing concept of “they are there and we are here.” This is the source of the glaring difference between Hamas’s formidable military position in Gaza and its difficulties in building its strength in the West Bank.
The situation that has developed in the Gaza Strip since the 2005 disengagement thus debunks three fundamental assumptions that have become axiomatic in Israeli security discourse over the past two decades: that total separation between Israelis and Palestinians will inevitably enhance security and stability; that the IDF will comfortably win any future confrontation in the evacuated territories; and that Israeli military activity in the previously held territories will enjoy massive international legitimacy and support.
These are but some of the major considerations that should be seriously weighed by Israeli policymakers before they commit themselves to even more disastrous “spatial separations” in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Post Scriptum, 15 de novembre del 2018.
Gershon Hacohen publica avui un report (BESA Perspectives Paper número 1007) analitzant la resposta israeliana als atacs llançats contra la població civil amb coets des de Gaza assenyalant críticament la manca d’un full de ruta estratègic per tal de fer front a una amenaça davant la qual l’exèrcit ha respost de manera continguda per indicació del govern Netanyahu enmig del descontent de l’opinió pública: “The Israeli Security Concept: Wandering Through a Maze”.
Post Scriptum, 22 de febrer del 2019.
El general Gershon Hacohen publicà el proppassat 18 d’aqueix mes una anàlisi crítica de les propostes del candidat que aspira a substituir Netanyahu respecte de l’evacuació de Judea i Samària: “Benny Gantz Dangerous Ambiguity on West Bank Disengagement”, aparegut als Perspectives Papers número 1.090 del BESA Center.
Post Scriptum, 22 d’agost del 2019.
El general retirat de les FDI Gershon Hacohen insisteix en les seves anàlisis precedents en aqueix report publicat el proppassat 16 d’aqueix mes als Perspectives Papers, número 1.257, del BESA Center, titulat: “What Should Be Learned from the Gaza Disengagement”.
Post Scriptum, 2 de setembre del 2019.
La qüestió de Judea i Samària (Cisjordània o West Bank, en terminologia internacional convencional) és el punt clau del conflicte palestí/israelià: pendents del pla de pau que presentarà el president dels EUA passades les eleccions israelianes del 17 d’aqueix mes, l’ANP ha declarat que es desvincula de la divisió en tres zones prevista als acords d’Oslo i pretén impulsar l’edificació salvatge amb el suport de la Unió Europea (com avui explica Hillel Frisch en un report al BESA Center), una actuació que el govern israelià no permetrà (com explica també avui al mateix centre Gershon Hacohen). Aqueix estratega militar ja va advertir el proppassat 27 d’agost que l’increment de la violència terrorista àrab té com a objectiu impedir un estat hebreu viable amb continuïtat territorial: “The Fight for Israel’s Open Spaces“.
Post Scriptum, 31 de juliol del 2020.
Gershon Hacohen, el general que va dirigir la retirada de Gaza, publica avui al Jerusalem Post un article punyent: Gaza Disengagement was ‘absolute mistake.
Post Scriptum, 19 de maig del 2021.
El general, a la reserva, de les FDI, Gershon Hacohen, publica avui aqueix punyent report al BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,042, Israel’s Existential Struggle:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The carnage wrought by Israel’s Arabs in support of Hamas, at a time when the Islamist terror organization is raining thousands of missiles on Israel’s population centers, is nothing short of a nationalist (and Islamist) attempt to subvert the Jewish state.
The Israeli government and politicians are afraid to characterize the hordes of Arab rioters rampaging across Israel’s cities and towns as an enemy. After all, they are fully-fledged Israeli citizens.
The main obstacle to this characterization lies in the asymmetry created over the years between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Succumbing to decades of systematic brainwashing by the “human-rights religion” champions, many Israeli Jews have substituted the aspiration for an egalitarian civil society for their national and patriotic sentiments at a time when their Arab compatriots have become ever more nationalistic and radicalized. Misattributing their own worldview and values to their Arab counterparts, many educated Jews view the current carnage as a corollary of the Arab sector’s frustration with its (supposed) discrimination and marginalization. This echoes the conclusions of the Orr commission of enquiry, which investigated the roots of the October 2000 mayhem wrought by Israel’s Arab citizens in support of Yasser Arafat’s freshly-waged war of terror (euphemized as “al-Aqsa Intifada”).
This prognosis couldn’t be further from the truth, not least since the current explosion of violence comes after a decade of unprecedented government efforts to enhance the Arab community’s socioeconomic condition, which culminated in a 15 billion-shekel ($3.8 billion) five-year comprehensive aid plan. Within this framework, large swathes of state land in the Negev and the Galilee were sold to Arab localities at a fraction of their selling price to Jewish localities, and substantial resources were invested in the Arab social and education system.
And yet it is difficult for many Israeli Jews to acknowledge the mass Arab violence for what it is and what it portends: a nationalist (and Islamist) rising stemming not from the lack of rights or opportunities but from the rejection of a minority status that is regarded as unlawful domination by an alien invader who must be supplanted. In this respect the current explosion, far more than its October 2000 predecessor, throws Israeli Jews back to November 1947, when they had to fight for their sovereign existence.
Far worse. For many Jews, the sights of burning synagogues and religious seminaries, desecrated Torah scrolls, ransacked shops and plundered homes, not to mention the wanton violence inflicted on peaceful citizens, just because of their being Jews, echo painful memories of dark periods in recent Jewish history: from the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, to the 1938 Nazi Kristallnacht, to the 1941 Baghdad Farhud.
But whereas these past atrocities reflected the perennial weakness attending the millenarian Jewish exilic condition as a permanent minority susceptible to the whimsical brutality and rapacity of the dominant majorities, no such excuse exists in the present situation where Jews constitute the majority in their own reconstituted state in the ancestral homeland.
That Israeli Jews now have to fear for their physical safety, if not for their lives, while moving around their own towns and cities, at a time when their state possesses a formidable security system and one of the world’s most respected armies, is not only an unacceptable personal and national humiliation but a total loss of sovereignty that puts the entire Jewish national revival at risk.
One cannot emphasize too strongly the urgency of reasserting the state’s authority and governability without delay, first and foremost by clarifying in no uncertain terms the Arab minority’s prerogatives and boundaries in the Jewish state. This is nothing short of a war for national existence.
Post Scriptum, 23 d’agost del 2021.
El general, a la reserva, de les FDI publica avui aqueix report al BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2.132: “The Taliban Victory as a Victory of Faith“.
The American defeat in Afghanistan will have a direct impact on Israel. Like the pseudo-government foisted by the Americans on Kabul, which, despite massive investment, proved a broken reed, the PA and its security mechanisms will collapse in time against its Islamist adversaries, notably Hamas. For all its overwhelming material and technological superiority, the IDF stands no chance of defeating Israel’s Islamist enemies unless its soldiers are driven by a relentless belief in the national cause.
To understand the last 40 years of the Islamic struggle in Afghanistan, it is worth looking at the legacy of Abdullah Azzam. Born in a small village near Jenin in 1941, he moved to Jordan after the fall of the West Bank during the Six-Day War. While there, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and participated in activities of Palestinian terrorist organizations against Israel. He eventually went to Afghanistan, where he was a major factor in helping the mujahideen repel the Soviets. An inspirational figure and a mentor of Osama bin Laden, Azzam would come to lead thousands of volunteers from across the Islamic world as they fought in Afghanistan, earning the title the “father of global jihad.” Azzam was assassinated with his two sons in Peshawar in November 1989.
Unlike the leaders of the pan-Arab movement, from Gamal Abdul Nasser to Hafez Assad to Saddam Hussein, who failed to unite the “Arab nation” on behalf of a common struggle, Azzam managed to bring together large numbers of Muslims from different countries, clans, and tribes to participate in a “holy war”—a jihad —for the first time in the modern era.
Azzam explained his vision in simple terms: We will fight and defeat our enemies and establish an Islamic state on a piece of land in Afghanistan … Jihad will spread and Islam will fight elsewhere. Islam will fight the Jews in Palestine and establish an Islamic state in Palestine and elsewhere. These countries will then be united into one Islamic State.
Echoing the prophet Muhammad’s key message in his farewell address (“I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah’”), Azzam viewed the fighting in Afghanistan as the starting point for a global jihad, the ultimate goal of which was the establishment of a worldwide “Islamic Nation” (or umma). To him, the struggle in Afghanistan was a strategic opportunity for a reconnection between the religion and the military and political spheres that characterized Islam from its inception, and which were cut short with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI and the abolition of the caliphate. Azzam believed achievements on the battlefield could entice millions of believers into participation in the global jihad.
When President Joe Biden expressed his confidence in the stability of the regime in Afghanistan by pointing out that “the Afghan army has 300,000 well-equipped soldiers … and they also have an air force. In contrast, the Taliban has only 75,000 soldiers,” he made clear that he has no understanding of this reality. The victory of the Taliban over the US in Afghanistan is a lesson for the world on the tremendous capacity of spiritual strength and faith to win protracted conflicts against far superior enemies.
In the first years of the war, the Americans had overwhelming superiority over the Taliban and inflicted many severe defeats upon it. But by virtue of their religious faith, the Taliban fighters were able to withstand those defeats. They believed in what is known in the Islamic faith as the “stage of weakness” (Rahlat al-Istidaf), which requires patiently biding one’s time in anticipation of opportunities. Their faith thus served as a strategy enabling them to cope with what might be a long wait.
The Americans, on the other hand, could not bear the burden of a protracted struggle without a solution in the foreseeable future. On a deeper level, they discounted the religious roots of the conflict, which are expressed, among other things, in the rejection of the message of Western-American prosperity. As Mordechai Kedar put it, “August 15, 2021 will forever be remembered in the Islamic world as the victory of Islam over Christianity, the victory of faith over heresy, and the victory of tradition over permissiveness… These events are pumping new blood into jihad arteries and the results are being seen around the world, including in Israel.”
Indeed, the American defeat will have a direct impact on Israel. Like the pseudo-government foisted by the Americans on Afghanistan, which, despite massive investment, turned out to be useless against the forces of jihad, the PA administration and its security forces will collapse in time against its Islamist adversaries, notably Hamas. Its overwhelming material and technological superiority notwithstanding, the IDF stands no chance of defeating Israel’s Islamist enemies unless its soldiers are driven by a relentless belief in the national cause.
Post Scriptum, 14 de setembre del 2021.
Ahir, el general Gershon Hacohen va publicar aqueix report al BESA Center advertint la ciutadania israeliana i el seu govern que cerca l’apaivagament de les tensions amb els palestins i els aliats d’Iran de la manca de realisme dels seus bons propòsits: The Terrorists’ Escape from Gilboa Prison: A Wake-Up Call for Israeli Society.
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