The Bush letter and the Gaza withdrawal In the letter from president George W.
Bush to prime minister Ariel Sharon of April 14, 2004, there was one new
element, and the rest was a return to the key elements of US policy since 1967 –
elements that were developed under president Lyndon Johnson – the idea that
there would be no return to the situation before June 1967. The April 14 letter
was a document carefully negotiated between the United States and Israel at
great length, line by line.
The occasion was in response to Sharon’s
announcement in December 2003 of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and four
settlements in the northern West Bank. Sharon was then involved in a political
battle inside his own Likud party. He was receiving no compensation from the
Palestinians for this unilateral move, but he needed compensation, not least for
Israeli political purposes, that was to come from the US in the form of
solidarity with Israel, and the policies expressed in that letter were then
endorsed by the US Congress.
Traditional US policy: Israel has the right
to defend itself The heart of the approach is that Israel has the right to
defend itself, a phrase that was heard many times from Bush after various
incidents of violence. As the letter put it: The US reiterates its steadfast
commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to
preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by
itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.
What is
critical here is that in this letter there is no talk about international
guarantees or international forces. We are all familiar with the experience of
UNIFIL in southern Lebanon. UNIFIL was strengthened and enlarged in 2006 after
the Second Lebanon War and it has now presided over a massive rearmament of
Hizbullah.
What are the key elements in the Bush approach to Israel
defending itself? The first is the continuation of the US-Israel alliance,
including military aid from the US. The second element relates to Israel’s
borders. There were plenty of comments from president Johnson, secretary of
state George Shultz and many others about how the so-called ’67 borders were
incapable of providing Israel with adequate defense and would change. The April
14 letter makes no reference to the ’67 borders. It refers to “the armistice
lines of 1949,” which was another effort to show that these were not borders and
that they would need to be adjusted. This idea was first raised by Johnson in
1967.
A new focus on change on the Palestinian side What was new from
Bush was the clear statement that developments on the Palestinian side were
central, namely the replacement of a corrupt, terrorist leadership with the
capability and willpower “to fight terrorism, and cut off all forms of
assistance to individuals and groups engaged in terrorism.”
The language
of the 2003 road map was even stronger; it didn’t say “fight terrorism,” it said
“dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.”
Bush stated
US policy in a speech in the Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, where he called for
“new Palestinian leadership. I call upon them [the Palestinians] to build a
practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty... If the Palestinian
people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and
Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for
independence.
“And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new
institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United
States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders
and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as
part of a final settlement in the Middle East.
“A Palestinian state will
never be created by terror – it will be built through reform.”
That was
new: the understanding that peace was not going to be made as it had been made
with Jordan and Egypt, because Israel and the Palestinians were more deeply
intertwined.
Security for Israel depended also on what happened inside
Palestinian society.
That is why we are required to be concerned about
whether the PA arrests Hamas or Fatah terrorists and whether they broadcast
vicious libels of Israel and Jews on Palestinian radio and TV.
Incitement
is a security issue This issue, what we’ve come to call “incitement,” is not
trivial or marginal.
To use a historical analogy, England and France
didn’t make peace with Germany at the end of World War I because that was a
Germany with which only a false peace could be made. Only after the changes in
German society after World War II could a real and lasting peace be made. The
same was true for the United States and Japan. In the case of Israel and the
Palestinians, the location of the border and what is on the other side of that
border are equally important.
It is a phony argument to claim that this
is an attempt to impose American political institutions on the Palestinians, or
that it is a demand that perfect democracy must arise in the Palestinian
territories before any negotiation is possible. That is a caricature. All that
Bush said was that the Palestinians needed institutions of statehood that carry
on a serious political and ideological struggle against extremism and terrorism,
not any particular constitution or basic law, but a decent political system
where the terrorists and their supporters are not in control, where those who
are in charge of education policy are not nursing ancient hatreds. And in some
of these areas there has been progress, but Israel should not back away from the
incitement issue because it is a security issue.
Are defensible borders
too much to ask for? Similarly, those who back away from the idea of defensible
borders are making a huge mistake. Presumably they do so because they think
defensible borders are too much to ask for, and that we need to promote peace.
But there will be no peace with the ’67 lines, as has been understood since
1967. Clarity about the fact that those lines will change actually promotes
peace. The point is to reflect the reality on the ground and establish the basis
for a peace that can last.
As I’ve said, the Bush policy was mostly a
return to the policy that the US has had since 1967. I therefore think that
American policy today is a departure. We need to stick to the basics and what is
most basic is security.
Most of those basic elements are found in that
2004 letter endorsed by both houses of Congress.
When it comes to
negotiations with the Palestinians, I think Israel should insist on negotiations
with the Palestinians alone, without US Middle East envoy George Mitchell. We
had several rounds of tripartite negotiations in the Bush administration and
they failed. In addition, there cannot be a time limit on
negotiations.
The problem with the Obama administration has been its
policy, not its explanations of policy, and I think the situation with Israel
has been the exact opposite. Often the policy has been serious and admirable,
and the explanations have been poor, as if somehow many in Israel were
embarrassed to be staking out tough, clear, unshakable positions to defend
Israeli security. Israel will make it far easier to find supporters when its own
positions are clear and its friends can understand that these were positions
taken by all Israeli governments in the past, and supported by American
presidents for decades. Israel should go back to the basics, and with no
apologies.
The writer is former senior director for the Near East on the
US National Security Council, and deputy national security adviser handling
Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush administration. This Jerusalem Issue
Brief is based on his presentation at a conference on “Israel’s Critical
Security Needs for a Viable Peace,” held in Jerusalem this summer at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs