By Muhammad Ali Siddiqi
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly suffered great humiliation during his fourth meeting with Barack Obama on March 7. The Israeli prime minister was kept waiting for a long time, and when finally the president came there was no media.
There must have been a handshake, but since there were no cameras, leaked reports said there was none. No joint statement was issued, no press conference was held, and the president left his Israeli visitor high and dry and proceeded to eat his dinner.
For a country whose leaders are used to pampering in Washington, this was indeed humiliation, and gave much ammunition to the Likud leader’s domestic critics to go after his skin and call the visit a disaster. What the media didn’t bother to advertise, perhaps deliberately, was that in spite of the snub, the Israeli prime minister had not surrendered on what mattered to him — an end to the colonisation of the West Bank.
The media hype about Netanyahu’s reported humiliation, it now appears, was basically intended for Obama’s political benefit to shore up his macho image — that he was a tough president who had the gall to snub, of all persons, an Israeli prime minister.
The March 7 encounter was their fifth meeting since Obama moved into the White House, and in every meeting — and in the historic June 4 address to the Muslim world last year — the president declared in unambiguous terms that Israel must halt settlement activity in the West Bank. Each time Netanyahu held on.
Their meeting on July 6 was an entirely different affair. After all, a congressional election is around the corner, and Obama would not be a politician worth his salt if he didn’t realise that without Jewish votes and without the support of America’s powerful Israel lobby, with its limitless funding lucre and monopolisation of the American media his Democrats will be rudderless.
Just as George Bush had called mass murderer Ariel Sharon “my friend”, Obama said Netanyahu wanted peace, held his hand firmly and long enough for the cameras to record and declared “I have trusted … Netanyahu since I met him before I was elected president”. Then he reaffirmed that the bonds between the two countries were unbreakable.
The end-result was Netanyahu’s unadulterated victory, for the Israeli leader made no commitment, despite the conferment of the “man of peace” honour, that he would halt the construction of new housing units in the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, or extend the freeze beyond September.
There was plenty of diplomatic rhetoric — read nonsense — enough to cloud and obfuscate the one issue of which settlements are just one dimension: Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for the last 43 years, its perpetuation of tyranny on the Palestinian people, and the Zionist wehrmacht’s periodic forays into Gaza to slaughter Palestinians.
Both Obama and Netanyahu spoke of the need for direct talks between Israel and Palestinians, the president emphasised the need for negotiations to begin before the settlement freeze ended, and the Likud leader spoke in a vein which suggested as if it was the Palestinian side which was dragging its feet and that it was he who in his magnanimity was offering parleys. The truth is Israel has no intention of quitting the occupied territories, and if anyone has any doubts, let him know what Israel’s strategic doctrine and its implications for the “peace process” are.
One of the finest studies of Israel’s war strategy is that conducted by Yaov Ben-Horin and Barry Posen for the Rand Corporation. A massive, well-documented 70-page report, it charts the evolution of Israel’s war philosophy out of the experiences gained during the 1948-49 fighting and the three subsequent wars — 1956, 1967 and 1973 — and dwells on their impact on Israeli strategic thinking. Briefly, it points out that one of the principal aims of Israeli war planning is to have “defensible borders”.
If peace means Israel has to give up its lebensraum and settle for “indefensible borders” then peace is not worth it. All Arab armies and air forces, so the doctrine goes, must be kept as far away from Israel’s borders and its population centres as possible, so that in case of a surprise attack Israeli armed forces have the time to mobilise and counterattack with overwhelming force to not only throw the enemy back but to destroy the attacking armies in a way that the enemy will not be able to mount another war for a long time.
Realising, however, that the Arabs have the advantage of a large landmass, higher populations and, thus, the ability to mobilise again for a war after defeat, the Israeli strategic doctrine believes the Israeli people and leadership must be ready for war after war. The only way for Israel to survive was, therefore, to have “defensible borders”. Israeli generals, the Rand study says, do not think peace is worth it if peace means borders that leave Israel vulnerable. In other words, Israel would rather not have peace than have “indefensible borders”. In short “defensible borders without peace” are preferable to “indefensible borders with peace”.
Translated into geopolitics and seen in terms of the peace process that has dragged on since Oslo and the signing of the Declaration of Principles in Washington on Sept 13, 1993, the strategic doctrine means Israel must hold on to the West Bank because it gives Israel strategic depth. The Jordan river, the Israeli military thinks, is the Jewish state’s “natural” border in the east. For that reason, Israel will hold on to the West Bank, even if it means prolonging the present no-peace situation.
During their five meetings, and the “warm” handshake that took place on July 6 at the White House, Netanyahu has conveyed to Obama in categorical terms — without uttering a word — that Israel has no intention of giving up its defensible borders and going back to the pre-1967 war “indefensible” frontiers.
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