Reuven Berko
Special to IPT News
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4276/the-importance-of-the-jordan-valley-corridor
The Israeli demand for a security presence along the Jordan River was again raised last month
in the Kerry-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Its objective would be to stop Palestinian and global jihad terrorists
from infiltrating into Israeli territory and to prevent the smuggling of
rockets, explosives and other weapons which would be used by the
Palestinians to attack Israel along its eastern border.
The Jordan River border east of Israel becomes especially important,
as the Arab Spring fades into a Winter of Chaos, creating uncertainty
about future in neighboring Arab states to the east of Israel. These
Arab states likely will be destabilized and their identities will
change, influencing their objectives and leading to an increase in
hostility and preparations for future aggression against Israel.
The threat is worsened by the rise in power of radical Sunnis in the
Arab countries seeking to take over regimes whose hostility toward
Israel is legendary, but still less than that of the Sunni extremists
trying to overthrow them. The regimes (among them the monarchies like
Jordan and the Gulf States that survived the Arab Spring) are uncertain
and worried by dissent and the threats to their stability, and are
currently preparing for the worst case scenario, that is, a putsch.
That situation brings Israel into the equation, especially in view of
Iran's ongoing threat to destroy it. Israel cannot ignore the axis of
hostile Shi'ite regimes – from Tehran and Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut
– currently forming and closing Jordan and Israel from the north and
east. For years, Israel's threatened eastern border has been in a state
of military preparedness, fearing the arrival of forces from Iraq and
other Islamic countries..
Israel's eastern border is difficult to defend because of its
geostrategic structure, being Israel's "narrow waist" of 12 kilometers,
or barely 7.5 miles. Israel's center, which is its most densely
populated urban area, has no depth. A military or terrorist attack
against Israel from the east would expose not only most of the
population but main strategic facilities (military, industrial and
civilian) to an unprecedented threat.
Controlling the Jordan River corridor, demanded by Israel as part of
the peace agreement with the Palestinians, would provide a partial, but
insufficient solution by creating a buffer zone which would prevent
Palestinian terrorists and offensive weapons from entering the area, and
increased response time in the event of a future ground attack.
Israel's demand for control over the Jordan valley is the result of
Egypt's recent bitter experience with its Gaza Strip border in Rafah.
Despite the Oslo Accords with their provision for the cessation of
hostilities, and despite the negotiated peace agreement, and despite
Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (now not subjected to
any form of occupation whatsoever), Palestinians attack civilian
Israeli targets with rockets, anti-tank missiles, mortar shells, sniper
rifles, assault rifles, knives, cars, front loaders, stones, Molotov
cocktails, IEDs and EFPs, car bombs, pipe bombs and remote-controlled
bombs. Attacks against Israel from both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula
increased exponentially once the PLO's rule of the Gaza Strip collapsed
and was replaced by an independent Palestinian regime run by the
Islamist terrorist organization Hamas.
What happened in Gaza can easily happen again in Judea and Samaria.
According to their rivals, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority
do not enjoy a legal consensus, and their opponents in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza claim that any agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority
isn't worth the paper it is written on because the Palestinian Authority
does not enjoy either legal status or grassroots support. Egypt, in
spite of its peace agreement with Israel, turned a blind eye to the
passage of terrorists and weapons streaming into the Gaza Strip to
attack Israel. Currently the Egyptian government is trying to eradicate
terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, but its questionable success makes it
imperative to ask about the ability of Jordan, a friendly country, to
prevent terrorists and weapons from entering Judea and Samaria from the
east. Jordan was one of Israel's worst security headaches during the
1970s, and the IDF pursued hundreds of terrorists from Jordan who
crossed the river to carry out atrocities against Israeli civilians.
Members of the Israeli security establishment disagree regarding the
value of the settlements strung along the Jordan River corridor and
their contribution to the defense of Israel. Veterans of the old "tower
and stockade" settlements that founded the Jewish Yishuv in a sea of
Arab hatred and hostility before the State of Israel was established
in1948 claim that the settlements are themselves a permanent defensive
system, based on agriculture and peopled by idealists with tremendous
motivation to withstand the perils of confrontation. Their basic
assumption is that settlers provide an initial operative military
response in halting attacks. That approach relates to the settlements as
a fundamental, critical asset in the daily logistics of military forces
operating in a supportive environment instead of a hostile region which
will immediately be created in the vacuum left by the evacuation of the
settlements.
Opponents claim that the settlements lying along the Jordan River
corridor have no operative value, and in a military confrontation will
only burden the security forces, which will have to defend and secure
them, and evacuate the civilians (women and children). That is what
happened in 1973 when the Syrians invaded the Golan Heights settlements
during the Yom Kippur War. All the Israeli civilians in settlements
would have to be evacuated from their own country being, unfortunately,
the designated targets of Islamist terrorism, as are Tel Aviv and the
Ben-Gurion International Airport.
As part of a proposed final status agreement, the Palestinian state
will be demilitarized and not have military security forces. But the
Palestinians are trying to ensure that their future state will have all
the trappings of sovereignty, including weapons for "self defense." One
way or another, they do not accept Israel's demand to control the Jordan
River crossings, the skies over Judea and Samaria, and the eastern
border, and continue to plot a political campaign that will isolate
Israel and represent it as an obstacle to peace. All the signs indicate
that neither Jordan nor Israel is eager to place the Jordan River
corridor in Palestinian or international hands. The Jordanians have not
forgotten how the Palestinians under Arafat tried to depose King
Hussein, and the fierce battles waged against them during the "Black
September" of 1970, which led to the expulsion of the leaders of the
Palestinian terrorist organizations from Jordan to Lebanon. Jordan, most
of whose population is Palestinian, is aware of the potential dangers
of a Jordanian-Palestinian contact line along the Jordan River.
Likewise, the Israelis have not forgotten how the Palestinians crossed
the Jordan on foot to slaughter Israeli families, their creativity in
putting weapons and explosives in double doors and car tires.
Thus the Israelis will not agree to Palestinian or international
oversight of the Jordan River corridor. They learned the hard way that
only the IDF can provide security. The collective memory of Israel's
leaders is hard-wired not to forget the conduct of foreign observers in
various past conflict arenas, and how they fled at the first hint of
fighting, abandoning their posts and jettisoning the mandate they had
received. Israel and Jordan have a mutual interest in overseeing the
water line between them in its present form as they consider the
pretensions to sovereignty of the planned Palestinian state, which so
far has proved itself as generally unreliable.
Many long years of building trust have to pass before terrorism,
cynically referred to as "resistance," ceases to serve as a realistic
and legitimate option for the Palestinians. Many long years of building
trust will have to pass before the series of defaults, lapses. Many long
years of building trust will have to pass before Israel forgets that
the first thing Yasser Arafat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, did when
he set foot in the Gaza Strip after the Oslo Accords was to smuggle
terrorists and weapons in his own car, in direct violation of the
agreement. Abbas's Palestinian Authority continues to sanctify
terrorism, to name town squares for "martyrs" like Dalal Mughrabi (one
of the terrorists who murdered 38 Israeli civilians on a bus in 1978),
and to joyously receive released terrorist prisoners as "heroes." Can
that Palestinian Authority leadership seriously be expected to patrol
the Jordan River corridor and stem the tide of Islamist terrorists and
their weapons who come from all over the world to wage jihad against
Israel?
Israel is deeply mourning the death of former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, a war hero and a daring political leader who devoted his life to
serving the State of Israel. Before he lapsed into a coma eight years
ago, George W. Bush wrote him saying that the solution to the problem of
the Palestinian refugee camps was to settle them only in the future
Palestinian state, that the border of that state should be determined
according to Israel's security needs with an eye to Israel's main
population centers, and that Israel not be required to withdraw to the
Green Line.
Abbas says that he will control security in the Jordan River
corridor, but what he more likely will do is give a free pass to
terrorists and weapons on their way to the Palestinian Authority
targeting Israeli civilians and territories. There is an old Arab
saying, hamiha harmiha, "The guard and the thief are one and the
same." The "miracle of peace" Abbas is trying to market to an
unfortunately gullible international community is nothing but fraud and
slight-of-hand. He continues to harp – endlessly – on the so-called
"right of return" of the Palestinians to the territory of the State of
Israel, refuses out of hand to recognize the State of Israel as the
homeland of the Jewish people, and has added a snag to the already
twisted Gordion Knot of negotiations by demanding control of the Jordan
River corridor.
He doesn't intend to end the conflict and he is not planning to
establish peace and coexistence with the State of Israel. He is planning
to inundate it with a tidal wave of terrorism.
Dr. Reuven Berko has a PhD in Middle Eastern studies, is a
commentator on Israeli Arabic TV, writes for the Israeli daily newspaper
Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel's top experts on Arab
affairs.
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