Policy Options: Outgoing
According to Middle East Newsline [MENL], Israel, under U.S. pressure, has created a plan for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to take over security responsibility throughout the West Bank in 2009, as Israel commits to withdrawing from the territories. The IDF would gradually remove troops and roadblocks around major West Bank cities. The model would be the handover of Jenin to PA security forces and Israeli approval to deploy 700 Palestinian troops to Hebron. “The Bush administration realizes that there won’t be any movement during its remaining months in office,” an Israeli source said.
According to Middle East Newsline [MENL], Israel, under U.S. pressure, has created a plan for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to take over security responsibility throughout the West Bank in 2009, as Israel commits to withdrawing from the territories. The IDF would gradually remove troops and roadblocks around major West Bank cities. The model would be the handover of Jenin to PA security forces and Israeli approval to deploy 700 Palestinian troops to Hebron. “The Bush administration realizes that there won’t be any movement during its remaining months in office,” an Israeli source said. “What it wants is a series of commitments that will ensure that we will withdraw from the territories in the next administration, regardless of who wins in November.”
Ha’aretz reports, “Jerusalem sources denied… any knowledge of a U.S. proposal to Syria, to the effect that Israel would pull out of the Golan if Syria severs its ties with Iran,” as reported in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida on Friday. President Bush reportedly made the offer in a secret letter that was delivered to Syrian President Assad by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas… Bush wants to advance the Israel-Syria negotiations before leaving the White House in January, al-Jarida reported. In another Ha’aretz story, PM Olmert reportedly told the Italian Foreign Minister that he “can get the current (US) administration on board as a partner and sponsor for the talks. The prime minister emphasized that his own intensions are serious. ‘The Syrians need to know that now is the time to move forward. There is no reason to wait for anything,’ he said.”
It is an immutable policy of JINSA to leave Israeli security decisions to the Government of Israel, which is responsible to its own people for their safety. What these two stories indicate, however, is that the outgoing Bush administration, the outgoing Olmert administration and the outgoing Abbas (Abu Mazen) administration are trying to manipulate the terms of future security parameters for people who are not yet elected – and in the case of Hamas, would not be acceptable interlocutors if they win an election or take over in a coup.
The larger worry is pressure from the United States on Israel to take actions that have security implications disconnected from political reality. It is one thing for the United States to train Iraqi forces and turn provinces of Iraq over to them (a great thing, actually!). It is another to train Palestinian forces who will report to an ineffectual government that lives under threat of a putsch. The Palestinian reality is that while Fatah does not operate in Gaza, Hamas certainly does in the West Bank. The Israeli reality is that the PA is willing to stop Hamas from upsetting Fatah plans in the West Bank, but it specifically has made no agreement to use its forces to protect Israel. Those nasty checkpoints that the Americans want to remove have, just in the past two weeks, prevented several Palestinians carrying bombs and bomb components from reaching Israel.
A wise Israeli prime minister once said that when it was time to take a big step – whether toward peace or toward war – the government should have the public firmly behind it. None of the three lame ducks could muster a minyan for support right now; all should do their people the service of not playing grand strategy with one foot out the door.