http://tinyurl.com/3mk7csz
Israel's Borders and National Security
May 31, 2011 | 1413 GMT By George Friedman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said May 30 that
<javascript:launchPlayer('sc85ln5v',%20'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roXoq
_s8uYY',%20640,%20360)>
http://media.stratfor.com/stratfor_images/playbuttonsmall.gifIsrael could
not prevent the United Nations from recognizing a Palestinian state, in the
sense of adopting a resolution on the subject. Two weeks ago, U.S. President
Barack Obama, in a speech, called on Israel to return to some variation of
its pre-1967 borders. The practical significance of these and other
diplomatic evolutions in relation to Israel is questionable. Historically,
U.N. declarations have had variable meanings, depending on the willingness
of great powers to enforce them. Obama
<http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/20110519-obama-democracy-and-mid
dle-east> 's speech on Israel, and his subsequent statements, created enough
ambiguity to make exactly what he was saying unclear. Nevertheless, it is
clear that the diplomatic atmosphere on Israel is shifting.
There are many questions concerning this shift, ranging from the competing
moral and historical claims of the Israelis and Palestinians to the internal
politics of each side to whether the Palestinians would be satisfied with a
return to the pre-1967 borders. All of these must be addressed, but this
analysis is confined to a single issue: whether a return to the 1967 borders
would increase the danger to Israel's national security. Later analyses will
focus on Palestinian national security issues and those of others.
Early Borders
It is important to begin by understanding that the pre-1967 borders are
actually the borders established by the armistice agreements of 1949. The
1948 U.N. resolution creating the state of Israel created a much smaller
Israel. The Arab rejection of what was called "partition" resulted in a war
that created the borders that placed the West Bank (named after the west
bank of the Jordan River) in Jordanian hands, along with substantial parts
of Jerusalem, and placed Gaza in the hands of the Egyptians.
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1949_armistice_800.jpg
>
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1949_armistice_800.jpg
> Israel's Borders and National Security
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1949_armistice_800.jpg
> (click here to enlarge image)
The 1949 borders substantially improved Israel's position by widening the
corridors between the areas granted to Israel under the partition, giving it
control of part of Jerusalem and, perhaps most important, control over the
Negev. The latter provided Israel with room for maneuver in the event of an
Egyptian attack - and Egypt was always Israel's main adversary. At the same
time, the 1949 borders did not eliminate a major strategic threat. The
Israel-Jordan border placed Jordanian forces on three sides of Israeli
Jerusalem, and threatened the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor. Much of the
Israeli heartland, the Tel Aviv-Haifa-Jerusalem triangle, was within
Jordanian artillery range, and a Jordanian attack toward the Mediterranean
would have to be stopped cold at the border, since there was no room to
retreat, regroup and counterattack.
For Israel, the main danger did not come from Jordan attacking by itself.
Jordanian forces were limited, and tensions with Egypt and Syria created a
de facto alliance between Israel and Jordan. In addition, the Jordanian
Hashemite regime lived in deep tension with the Palestinians, since the
former were British transplants from the Arabian Peninsula, and the
Palestinians saw them as well as the Israelis as interlopers. Thus the
danger on the map was mitigated both by politics and by the limited force
the Jordanians could bring to bear.
Nevertheless, politics shift, and the 1949 borders posed a strategic problem
for Israel. If Egypt, Jordan and Syria were to launch a simultaneous attack
(possibly joined by other forces along the Jordan River line) all along
Israel's frontiers, the ability of Israel to defeat the attackers was
questionable. The attacks would have to be coordinated - as the 1948 attacks
were not - but simultaneous pressure along all frontiers would leave the
Israelis with insufficient forces to hold and therefore no framework for a
counterattack. From 1948 to 1967, this was Israel's existential challenge,
mitigated by the disharmony among the Arabs and the fact that any attack
would be detected in the deployment phase.
Israel's strategy in this situation had to be the pre-emptive strike. Unable
to absorb a coordinated blow, the Israelis had to strike first to
disorganize their enemies and to engage them sequentially and in detail. The
1967 war represented Israeli strategy in its first generation. First, it
could not allow the enemy to commence hostilities. Whatever the political
cost of being labeled the aggressor, Israel had to strike first. Second, it
could not be assumed that the political intentions of each neighbor at any
one time would determine their behavior. In the event Israel was collapsing,
for example, Jordan's calculations of its own interests would shift, and it
would move from being a covert ally to Israel to a nation both repositioning
itself in the Arab world and taking advantage of geographical opportunities.
Third, the center of gravity of the Arab threat was always Egypt
<http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110207-egypt-israel-and-strategic-reconsid
eration> , the neighbor able to field the largest army. Any pre-emptive war
would have to begin with Egypt and then move to other neighbors. Fourth, in
order to control the sequence and outcome of the war, Israel would have to
maintain superior organization and technology at all levels. Finally, and
most important, the Israelis would have to move for rapid war termination.
They could not afford a war of attrition against forces of superior size. An
extended war could drain Israeli combat capability at an astonishing rate.
Therefore the pre-emptive strike had to be decisive.
The 1949 borders actually gave Israel a strategic advantage. The Arabs were
fighting on external lines. This means their forces could not easily shift
between Egypt and Syria, for example, making it difficult to exploit
emergent weaknesses along the fronts. The Israelis, on the other hand,
fought from interior lines, and in relatively compact terrain. They could
carry out a centrifugal offense, beginning with Egypt, shifting to Jordan
and finishing with Syria, moving forces from one front to another in a
matter of days. Put differently, the Arabs were inherently uncoordinated,
unable to support each other. The pre-1967 borders allowed the Israelis to
be superbly coordinated, choosing the timing and intensity of combat to suit
their capabilities. Israel lacked strategic depth, but it made up for it
with compact space and interior lines. If it could choose the time, place
and tempo of engagements, it could defeat numerically superior forces. The
Arabs could not do this.
Israel needed two things in order to exploit this advantage. The first was
outstanding intelligence to detect signs of coordination and the massing of
forces. Detecting the former sign was a matter of political intelligence,
the latter a matter of tactical military intelligence. But the political
intelligence would have to manifest itself in military deployments, and
given the geography of the 1949 borders, massing forces secretly was
impossible. If enemy forces could mass undetected it would be a disaster for
Israel. Thus the center of gravity of Israeli war-making was its
intelligence capabilities.
The second essential requirement was an alliance with a great power.
Israel's strategy was based on superior technology and organization -
airpower, armor and so on. The true weakness of Israel's strategic power
since the country's creation had been that its national security
requirements outstripped its industrial and financial base. It could not
domestically develop and produce all of the weapons it needed to fight a
war. Israel depended first on the Soviets, then until 1967 on France. It was
not until after the 1967 war that the United States provided any significant
aid to Israel
<http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100322_netanyahuobama_meeting_context> .
However, under the strategy of the pre-1967 borders, continual access to
weapons - and in a crisis, rapid access to more weapons - was essential, so
Israel had to have a powerful ally. Not having one, coupled with an
intelligence failure, would be disastrous.
After 1967
The 1967 war allowed Israel to occupy the Sinai, all of Jerusalem, the West
Bank and the Golan Heights. It placed Egyptian forces on the west bank of
the Suez, far from Israel, and pushed the Jordanians out of artillery range
of the Israeli heartland. It pushed Syria out of artillery range as well.
This created the strategic depth Israel required, yet it set the stage for
the most serious military crisis in Israeli history, beginning with a
failure in its central capability - intelligence.
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1967_800.jpg>
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1967_800.jpg>
Israel's Borders and National Security
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_1967_800.jpg> (click
here to enlarge image)
The intelligence failure occurred in 1973, when Syria and Egypt managed to
partially coordinate an assault on Israel without Israeli intelligence being
able to interpret the intelligence it was receiving. Israel was saved above
all by rapid rearmament by the United States, particularly in such staples
of war as artillery shells. It was also aided by greater strategic depth.
The Egyptian attack was stopped far from Israel proper in the western Sinai.
The Syrians fought in the Golan Heights rather than in Galilee.
Here is the heart of the pre-1967 border issue. Strategic depth meant that
the Syrians and Egyptians spent their main offensive force outside of Israel
proper. This bought Israel space and time. It allowed Israel to move back to
its main sequential strategy. After halting the two attacks, the Israelis
proceeded to defeat the Syrians in the Golan then the Egyptians in the
Sinai. However, the ability to mount the two attacks - and particularly the
Sinai attack - required massive American resupply of everything from
aircraft to munitions. It is not clear that without this resupply the
Israelis could have mounted the offensive in the Sinai, or avoided an
extended war of attrition on unfavorable terms. Of course, the intelligence
failure opened the door to Israel's other vulnerability - its dependency on
foreign powers for resupply. Indeed, perhaps Israel's greatest
miscalculation was the amount of artillery shells it would need to fight the
war; the amount required vastly outstripped expectations. Such a seemingly
minor thing created a massive dependency on the United States, allowing the
United States to shape the conclusion of the war to its own ends so that
Israel's military victory ultimately evolved into a political retreat in the
Sinai.
It is impossible to argue that Israel, fighting on its 1949 borders, was
less successful than when it fought on its post-1967 borders. What happened
was that in expanding the scope of the battlefield, opportunities for
intelligence failures multiplied, the rate of consumption of supplies
increased and dependence grew on foreign powers with different political
interests. The war Israel fought from the 1949 borders was more efficiently
waged than the one it fought from the post-1967 borders. The 1973 war
allowed for a larger battlefield and greater room for error (errors always
occur on the battlefield), but because of intelligence surprises and supply
miscalculations it also linked Israel's national survival to the willingness
of a foreign government to quickly resupply its military.
The example of 1973 casts some doubt around the argument that the 1948
borders were excessively vulnerable. There are arguments on both sides of
the issue, but it is not a clear-cut position. However, we need to consider
Israel's borders not only in terms of conventional war but also in terms of
unconventional war - both uprisings and the use of chemical, biological,
radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.
There are those who argue that there will be no more peer-to-peer conflicts.
We doubt that intensely. However, there is certainly a great deal of
asymmetric warfare in the world, and for Israel it comes in the form of
intifadas, rocket attacks and guerrilla combat against Hezbollah in Lebanon
<http://www.stratfor.com/bekaas_crucial_role_israeli_hezbollah_fight> . The
post-1967 borders do not do much about these forms of warfare. Indeed, it
can be argued that some of this conflict happens because of the post-1967
borders
<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20081229_israel_palestinian_territories_ha
mas_and_israeli_offensive> .
A shift to the 1949 borders would not increase the risk of an intifada but
would make it moot. It would not eliminate conflict with Hezbollah. A shift
to the 1949 line would eliminate some threats but not others. From the
standpoint of asymmetric warfare, a shift in borders could increase the
threat from Palestinian rockets to the Israeli heartland. If a Palestinian
state were created, there would be the very real possibility of Palestinian
rocket fire unless there was a significant shift in Hamas' view of Israel or
Fatah increased its power in the West Bank and was in a position to defeat
Hamas and other rejectionist movements. This would be the heart of the
Palestinian threat if there were a return to the borders established after
the initial war.
The shape of Israel's borders doesn't really have an effect on the threat
posed by CBRN weapons. While some chemical artillery rockets could be fired
from closer borders, the geography leaves Israel inherently vulnerable to
this threat, regardless of where the precise boundary is drawn, and they can
already be fired from Lebanon or Gaza. The main threat discussed, a CBRN
warhead fitted to an Iranian medium-range ballistic missile launched from a
thousand miles away, has little to do with precisely where a line in the
Levant is drawn.
When we look at conventional warfare, I would argue that the main issue
Israel has is not its borders but its dependence on outside powers for its
national security. Any country that creates a national security policy based
on the willingness of another country to come to its assistance has a
fundamental flaw that will, at some point, be mortal. The precise borders
should be those that a) can be defended and b) do not create barriers to aid
when that aid is most needed. In 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon withheld
resupply for some days, pressing Israel to the edge. U.S. interests were not
those of Israel. This is the mortal danger to Israel - a national security
requirement that outstrips its ability to underwrite it.
Israel's borders will not protect it against Iranian missiles, and rockets
from Gaza are painful but do not threaten Israel's existence. In case the
artillery rocket threat expands beyond this point, Israel must retain the
ability to reoccupy and re-engage, but given the threat of asymmetric war,
perpetual occupation would seem to place Israel at a perpetual disadvantage.
Clearly, the rocket threat from Hamas represents the best argument for
strategic depth.
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_present_800.jpg>
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_present_800.jpg>
Israel's Borders and National Security
<http://web.stratfor.com/images/middleeast/map/Israel_present_800.jpg>
(click here to enlarge image)
The best argument for returning to the pre-1967 borders is that Israel was
more capable of fighting well on these borders. The war of independence, the
1956 war and the 1967 war all went far better than any of the wars that came
after. Most important, if Israel is incapable of generating a national
defense industry that can provide all the necessary munitions and equipment
without having to depend on its allies, then it has no choice but to
consider what its allies want. With the pre-1967 borders there is a greater
chance of maintaining critical alliances. More to the point, the pre-1967
borders require a smaller industrial base because they do not require troops
for occupation and they improve Israel's ability to conduct conventional
operations in a time of crisis.
There is a strong case to be made for not returning to the 1949 lines, but
it is difficult to make that case from a military point of view. Strategic
depth is merely one element of a rational strategy. Given that Israel's
military security depends on its relations with third parties, the shape of
its borders and diplomatic reality are, as always, at the heart of Israeli
military strategy.
In warfare, the greatest enemy of victory is wishful thinking. The
assumption that Israel will always have an outside power prepared to rush
munitions to the battlefield or help create costly defense systems like Iron
Dome <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110412-israel-gaza-and-iron-dome>
is simply wishful thinking. There is no reason to believe this will always
be the case. Therefore, since this is the heart of Israeli strategy, the
strategy rests on wishful thinking. The question of borders must be viewed
in the context of synchronizing Israeli national security policy with
Israeli national means.
There is an argument prevalent among Israelis and their supporters that the
Arabs will never make a lasting peace with Israel. From this flows the
assumption that the safest course is to continue to hold all territory. My
argument assumes the worst case, which is not only that the Palestinians
will not agree to a genuine peace but also that the United States cannot be
counted on indefinitely. All military planning must begin with the worst
case.
However, I draw a different conclusion from these facts than the Israelis
do. If the worst-case scenario is the basis for planning, then Israel must
reduce its risk and restructure its geography along the more favorable lines
that existed between 1949 and 1967, when Israel was unambiguously victorious
in its wars, rather than the borders and policies after 1967, when Israel
has been less successful. The idea that the largest possible territory
provides the greatest possible security is not supportable in military
history. As Frederick the Great once said, he who defends everything defends
nothing.
Reprinting or republication of this report on websites is authorized by
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STRATFOR, at the beginning or end of the report.
"Israel's Borders and National Security
<http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110530-israels-borders-and-national-securi
ty> is republished with permission of STRATFOR."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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