Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

Reports suggest that America’s new National Security Adviser, General James Jones, favors the deployment of NATO forces to the West Bank to alleviate Israel’s security concerns and facilitate the IDF’s withdrawal from the area. Regardless of the merits of this plan, it touches on an underlying tension in Israel’s National Security Concept – the clash between military and political interests.

Israel’s ‘Military Logic’ dictates that it prevent rocket fire, the emergence of an eastern front, and the presence of enemy troops in the West Bank. In other words – maintaining control of territory, or only agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state after its security requirements are guaranteed.

Israel’s ‘Political Logic’ meanwhile requires avoiding retaking responsibility for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as stopping the erosion of the two-state option and the Jewish state’s legitimacy in the international community. This logic thus requires further withdrawals from territory and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

NATO troops may not be the answer, but alleviating this tension remains critical.