Israel Shouldn’t Forget Yitzhak Rabin’s West Bank Map

Pursuant to the Oslo Accords, the territory liberated from Jordan during the Six-Day War is divided into three zones, apart from Jerusalem: Area A, administered directly by the Palestinian Authority (PA); Area B, jointly administered by Israel and the PA; and Area C, to remain under Israeli control pending further negotiations. Together, Areas A and B are home the vast majority of the West Bank’s Palestinians, while Area C contains its entire Jewish population. Gershon Hacohen explains the different attitudes Israel prime ministers have taken to Area the last zone, and expresses concern over what it might do next:

The main difference between the post-peace deal maps proposed by the late Yitzḥak Rabin and those proposed by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert has to do with the role of Area C. On Rabin’s map, this territory was vital to Israel’s security outlook, whereas Barak and Olmert saw it as a “deposit” for a future agreement, to be handed over at the end of the process.

After more than 25 years, one can cast a critical eye over the vision of security for Judea and Samaria vs. the one that has taken shape for the Gaza Strip. Especially after the disengagement in 2005, Gaza came to be surrounded by a contiguous border that determined the operations of IDF forces deployed along it, with the separation being complete. . . . It has become a difficult military operation for the IDF to cross the border into Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.

This reality has led to the IDF losing its ability to operate deep in the Hamas-controlled area. In contrast, in Judea and Samaria—thanks to Rabin’s creative views, which led to the division of the territory into Areas A, B, and C—the IDF still has almost unlimited freedom to operate. Among other things, this led to the success of Operation Defensive Shield, [which ended the second intifada in] 2002 and still allows IDF forces to pursue terrorists and arrest them without sending in heavy forces.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Israeli Security, Oslo Accords, West Bank, Yitzhak Rabin

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF