Several opinion pieces published by Israel Hayom recently warned of a strategic turnaround in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the intelligence available. Experts Yossi Kuperwasser and Reuven Berko, among others, warn that an internal process has reached its end. They focused on the dynamics on the enemy side and not coincidentally, as the security briefings the IDF gives the Diplomatic-Security cabinet usually open with a rundown of the enemy's current situation.
The crucial question absent from intelligence experts' research, however, is what our national aspirations are, how we plan to realize our national vision, and how both are reflected in the interests we strive to achieve. The debate, as former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stressed, must be spearheaded by the national leadership, not professional experts.
National security considerations spread far beyond their technical security aspects. As the IDF doctrine says, "National security is the subject that deals with securing the national ability to deal with the existing threat against the country and its national interests effectively."
Indeed, the root of division between Left and Right regarding our future is embedded in what our national interests are and should be in Judea and Samaria. As there is a disagreement on the nature of our national aspirations, we passed the debate over to security experts and trimmed down our list of interests in Judea and Samaria to just security requirements.
The only interest that goes beyond technical security efforts is the separation from the Palestinians, which has become a national interest of the highest importance. The repeated need for separation denies the fact that separation was mostly implemented by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as part of the Oslo Accords. In May 1994, Israel's control over the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip ended, and in January 1996 Israel's civil administration over the Palestinian population in areas A and B of Judea and Samaria ended.
According to the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria was divided into three different areas, known as A, B and C. Area A is administered exclusively by the Palestinian Authority, Area B is under Palestinian civil control and shared Israeli-Palestinian security control, and Area C is under Israeli control.
The manner in which Rabin demarcated the areas A, B and C reflected the need he saw for keeping a hold on area C. As such, after withdrawing from most of the populated areas, further separating from Palestinians means Israel's effective withdrawal from almost all areas of Judea and Samara under its control, including the Jordan Valley, as settlement blocs comprise only 4% of the total area.
From this vantage point, terrorist attacks, like last week's murder of Rabbi Raziel Shevah near the Samaria outpost of Havat Gilad, prompt the advocates of separation to ask familiar questions: Even if the IDF must operate in the area, do Israeli citizens really need to live there?
Our national interests in Judea and Samaria go beyond mere security. The Palestinians have stated more than once that if they succeed in pushing us to Israel's thin coastline, thereby causing us to lose our connection to the land of Israel as our birthright, it will only be a matter of time until Israel disappear, just like the Crusaders.
In addition, Israel has been downsizing to a narrow coastline, becoming one overcrowded urban megalopolis stretching from Nahariya in the north to Ashkelon in the south, which is both an ecological and a territorial catastrophe that has already reached the boiling point.
The manner in which Rabin demarcated Area C, with personal attention to every road and hill, expresses the territorial interests the State of Israel has in Judea and Samaria. This requires the settlement enterprise to develop three principal areas: Greater Jerusalem, specifically eastward to the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley, and the "security corridors" running between the coast to the Jordan Valley. This, among other things, is the reason Havat Gilad is of vital importance, as it lies on one of these corridors running from west to east. This is, of course, something we can achieve only through our pioneers in the settlement enterprise.
