Shlomo Brom

One learns from mistakes: while during the Obama tenure the Israeli leadership focused – unsuccessfully – on trying to block the nuclear agreement, now, under the Biden administration, it should adopt a different approach. Jerusalem should accept Washington’s intention to return to the JCPOA, and try to influence the negotiations that will be held afterward

Beyond the political issues surrounding the assassination of the “father of the Iranian bomb,” there are also questions regarding the action’s necessity and value. Will it slow down Iran’s nuclear program to a significant degree? Was it worth the angry reactions throughout the world and the revenge that is expected from the Islamic Republic? Consider these questions from a “less popular” perspective

President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights was well received by most of the Israeli public, but met with disapproval from most of the international community. The American measure clashes with the commonly held position in international law, anchored in the UN Charter, that a country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected, and that wartime acquisition of territory does not confer a right to sovereignty over that territory. Therefore, the international community – as well as countries in the region, including those with relations with Israel – will most likely continue to oppose the American measure. That said, the measure does not preclude a future Israeli government from negotiating with Syria over the Golan Heights, and the measure itself could be be amended by a different American administration. It is unlikely that this measure will lead to any escalation with Syria beyond the existing tensions, and it has no particular security ramifications. It complicates the US administration’s ability to advance the “deal of the century,” and to promote cooperation with countries in the region. The bolstered image of the US administration as unconditionally supportive of Israel and its policies vis-à-vis its Arab neighbors also has implications for the approach in Israel that further territorial annexations are possible.

Strategic Survey for Israel 2018-2019, the latest volume in the annual series published by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), reviews a period marked by distinct changes in Israel’s close strategic environment as well as events in its more distant circle that likewise have had a direct impact on the challenges and opportunities before it. The unfolding dynamics and trends that derive from these developments bring with them threats to Israel’s national security, which could spell military escalation or a standstill fraught with risks. At the same time, this state of affairs includes opportunities for action and policy change that could help Israel face its security challenges and improve its regional and global strategic standing.

The Six Day War, the War of Attrition, and the Yom Kippur War led to a new understanding of deterrence and its place in Israel’s defense policy. Deterrence has been one of the main components in Israel’s defense policy since its independence. The nascent state emerged from the War of Independence understanding that it was only the first stage in the Arab world’s attempts to destroy it. The humiliating defeat of the Arab coalition in the War of Independence and the Arab countries’ recognition of a clear asymmetry between them and Israel, which lacked in territory, population, resources, military forces, and diplomatic power, clearly would lead to additional rounds of war led by the Arabs. Israel assumed that these wars were inevitable and therefore the goal of deterrence was to increase the time between them until—in the spirit of Jabotinsky’s idea of an “iron wall”—the Arabs would give up trying to destroy Israel by military means or, in the language of deterrence, until Israel’s deterrence would convince the Arab world to seek negotiated solutions. In the Israeli perception, the Six Day War broke out supposedly due to a failure in deterrence. Operation Kadesh in 1956 and the defeat of the Egyptian army in Sinai had strengthened Israeli deterrence, after Israel demonstrated its ability to defeat the Egyptian army within one week of fighting and the effectiveness of integrating the maneuvering of its ground forces with its air force. Britain and France’s participation in the fighting in the area around the Suez Canal, however, reduced the effect of Israel’s deterrence since the Arab side attributed Israel’s success partly to the involvement of the two superpowers. In any case, that war resulted in an eleven-year period of quiet on the Egyptian front, due to both the Israeli deterrence and the negotiated understandings that led to the stationing of UN forces in Sinai.

The twentieth anniversary of the Olso process is an appropriate time to take stock of the achievements and failures of the process. The basic premises of the article are that Israel’s goal is to avoid becoming a binational state and that Israel had a Palestinian partner that was willing to reach a settlement on the basis of a two-state solution. Although the Oslo process did not succeed in achieving its main purpose, there were partial achievements that helped advance the goal. Moreover, there was no real alternative to a process involving interim agreements. Many errors were made during implementation of the process, and it is possible that had they been avoided, the results would have been different.