Israel Update for November 2010

David Dolan

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accepted an offer from the Obama administration in mid-November for a new construction freeze in Judea and Samaria that would be in effect for three months. In exchange, the American government has pledged to supply Israel with new military hardware, including twenty advanced warplanes. A vote on the proposal by Netanyahu's Security Cabinet did not take place as expected on November 21 since an assurance note promised to Netanyahu by the Secretary of State had not yet been finalized.

The Israeli Premier's decision to accept the American proposal sparked off a political firestorm in the country. Settlement leaders set up a protest tent near Netanyahu's official government home and also held demonstrations against a new building ban in several locations. Opposition politicians and some Labor party members charged that a three month freeze would not allow enough time for serious negotiations to be completed with the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile the PA itself condemned the American proposal, calling it a cover for further US military arming of Israel. PA leaders again demanded that Netanyahu immediately enact a permanent building freeze which would include the eastern half of Jerusalem.

Tensions remained high in and around the Gaza Strip during the month as a new flurry of rockets were fired by Palestinian Muslim militiamen at Israeli civilian targets. Israeli military forces returned the fire, killing several wanted terrorist activists. This came as a senior IDF official revealed that Hamas now possesses rockets that are able to strike the country's largest urban area in and around Tel Aviv. Tensions also remained high in Lebanon, with IDF officials warning that the radical Hizbullah militia has the ability to capture full control of the fractured country within a few hours of launching a coup.

In a rare act, Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders in the Lord's land joined together to call upon their congregants to fast and pray for much needed rain. This came as Israeli meteorologists forecast that this coming winter's precipitation would probably not end the half decade drought which has plagued the country. On a brighter note, Israel broke its old tourism record in November as the number of foreign visitors topped three million for the first time ever.

The American Proposal

The new construction ban being proposed by the United States government dominated the news in Israel during the month. The proposal was put forward by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a visit by PM Netanyahu to Washington on November 12. The Obama administration reportedly offered to supply Israel with new military hardware including up to 20 F-35 stealth fighter aircraft by the year 2020. The US would also preposition billions of dollars worth of American weaponry in storehouses around Israel, with the understanding that the armaments would be quickly made available to the IDF in the event of a new Middle East war.

Netanyahu and Ehud Barak both publicly maintained that the supply of the advanced warplanes would significantly enhance Israel's military capabilities. A three month building freeze is a small price to pay for the coveted fighter aircraft, they argued. However critics pointed out that the existential threat posed to Israel by Iran and its allies Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas is an immediate one, with a major missile attack expected sometime in the next few years at the most. Some analysts even predicted that a new war on the Korean peninsula could spark off a conflict in the Middle East, with Iran closely linked to communist North Korea. Critics of the US proposal charged that the supply of the sophisticated F-35 jets in ten years time would not aid Israel in its current struggle against the Iranian axis of evil. Some added that if a new round of peace negotiations falters, as many regional analysts predict, this could trigger widespread Palestinian street violence which Iran and its allies might use as a cover for fresh aggression against the Jewish state.

Media reports quoted unnamed Israeli leaders who said Netanyahu agreed to negotiate the final borders of a future Palestinian state with the PA during the proposed three month construction halt. PA leaders have been insisting that final borders must be spelled out before other issues like a potential refugee return can be tackled. However many analysts warned that pushing the border issue to the front of any new peace talks is an almost certain guarantee that the negotiations will fail to end the conflict with the Palestinians. This is because the PA wants the permanent border to run right through the middle of Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest city on earth. Any serious Palestinian concession on this explosive issue could potentially ignite a new Hamas attempt to overthrow the PA in the West Bank, as the extremist group succeeded in doing in the Gaza Strip in 2007. Any major concession by Netanyahu could split his party and prematurely end his days as Premier.

Various Israeli and Arab media reports claimed Mahmoud Abbas is demanding President Obama back the PA insistence that all Jewish residents of two major settlement cities, Ariel in Samaria and Efrat south of Jerusalem, be thrown out of their homes as part of any final peace deal. While some Israeli politicians support the idea that Ariel, located northeast of Tel Aviv and now home to around 17,000 Jews, should be abandoned since it is rather isolated in its location, very few support the destruction of Efrat, which is located in the large Gush Etzion settlement block between Bethlehem and Judaism's second holiest city on earth, Hebron.

Ariel is the fourth largest city in the disputed territories. It was founded in 1978 just months after the late Likud leader Menachem Begin defeated the long ruling Labor party headed by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1977 national elections. Today the thriving city has several large shopping centers, a sports club, 14 synagogues, a public library and two industrial zones where some Palestinians from the area are employed. Twenty seven new factories opened up in the two zones last year. The fact that Ariel is situated 11 miles east of the 1967 Green Line, deep inside territory that the PA claims for a future state, is the main reason that some Israeli political parties say it must be evacuated as part of any final peace deal. Others maintain that the city should remain in place, especially since it is on the main road route to the Israeli coastal plane that military forces from the east would probably attempt to use in any major conflict.

Efrat is a smaller town than Ariel with nearly nine thousand residents. Located just a couple miles southwest of Bethlehem, it is considered a suburb of Jerusalem. Efrat was founded in 1983 by Shlomo Riskin, an American-born rabbi who writes a weekly religious column for the Jerusalem Post newspaper. Rabbi Riskin still serves as chief rabbi in the mainly observant community that is home to many Americans. Named after the second biblical designation for the ancient town of Bethlehem, Efrat has 22 synagogues and several Orthodox Jewish seminaries. Most religious Israeli Jews would probably strongly oppose uprooting the community, although some say they realize that a final peace accord will never be achieved with the PA unless at least a few of the more isolated Jewish settlement communities are eventually abandoned.

PA Pours Cold Water On New Talks

The prospects that a new round of peace negotiations will actually take place seemed to dim in late November when PA President Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech before his Fatah partly leaders in Ramallah spelling out his conditions for resuming the frozen talks. He said his PA autonomy government would only sit at the negotiating table again if Israel declares a complete settlement building freeze which included the eastern half of Jerusalem, and agrees to tackle the thorny border issue first. An unidentified Israeli official told journalists that "It is a pity he is entrenching himself in his pre-conditions, and we don't understand the logic. It is almost as if he is searching for excuses not to negotiate." Some Israeli analysts said that is precisely the case, since Abbas fears a showdown with Hamas and its regional backers far more than he wants a peace deal with Israel.

Israeli officials admit that the touted negotiations are in limbo due to the question of which of the many issues that needs to be addressed would be discussed during the proposed three month construction freeze. PM Netanyahu has stated several times that he wants overall security to be the first issue discussed. This came as indications grew that the Obama administration was backing away from its earlier pledge to give the Israeli government a written guarantee that this would be the final building freeze it would ever demand. Analysts said the Americans apparently want to keep open the possibility of yet another freeze in the future if the peace talks make little progress during the proposed three month ban. It was not clear by the end of November if Netanyahu would go ahead and attempt to seek cabinet approval for a new housing halt without the promised US guarantee.