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Israel Trip Report – Sharon Outlines Peace Plan to JINSA

- Wednesday, January 31, 2001 |

A delegation of JINSA leaders recently returned from a week long visit to Israel, Jan 15-21. Meetings were held with the following: candidate for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; MKs Uzi Landau (Likud Party senior member) and Natan Sharansky (Israel B’Aliyah Party leader); Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron; former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu; former Golani Brigade Commander Brig. Gen. Effie Eitam (res.); and high level IDF intelligence officers.

Ariel Sharon, with whom the delegation met at length, said Israel must step back from the negotiations and move to what he calls “a non-belligerency accord without specific deadlines but with mutually agreed expectations.” This would include joint efforts to combat terrorism; development of joint projects that create interdependence such as large-scale seawater desalinization; an end to media incitement and creation of a whole host of programs that “teach peace to both sides.”

On the questions of land and sovereignty, Sharon would negotiate with the Palestinian Authority (PA) to provide uninterrupted access between the now separate areas of Palestinian control. At present, the PA has control of about 50 percent of the West Bank (and all of Gaza), and more than 80 percent of Palestinians live under the PA. Sharon’s additions would add another 10-12 percent of West Bank territory but far less than the 90+ percent that Barak has offered.

In the event a Palestinian state is unilaterally declared, Sharon said he would order the IDF to deploy to the Jordan Valley security zone, the Judean hills, and to take control of all major water resources.

The military intelligence briefings focused on PA attempts to goad the IDF into a major, bloody reprisal, which would decisively turn American and world public opinion against Israel. The PA would then demand an international force to be inserted in Jerusalem and along the “Green Line” 1967 border. What the PA wants is another “Sarajevo market bombing.” And so the IDF has to “walk a very thin line between protecting Israeli citizens and themselves and not doing something that would fall into the PA trap.”

Israel is concerned about the restarted Iraqi programs on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Our briefers said Saddam is well “out of the box” and there can be little doubt that he will use WMD when acquired. Entirely aside from commercial considerations on the part of countries like France, Iraqi progress on WMD and American inaction has forced Turkey to mend fences with Iraq. Others in the neighborhood will follow suit.

IDF sources believe that Arafat is about 100 percent in control in Gaza, but somewhat less so on the West Bank where several PA and Fatah chiefs are becoming increasingly independent. IDF intelligence reported in March 1999 that Arafat was seriously considering violence as an option. Hezbollah propaganda after the IDF retreat from Southern Lebanon had a major effect on the Palestinian masses, pushing the PA leadership to shift violence from an option to a policy. It also allowed them to transfer blame from Arafat to Israel after Arafat’s “No” at Camp David last summer.