The Dangers of a Unilateral Israeli Withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem

The Dangers of a Unilateral Israeli Withdrawal from the West Bank and East
Jerusalem
Hirsh Goodman
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs January 22, 2017
http://jcpa.org/the-dangers-of-a-unilateral-israeli-withdrawal-from-the-west-bank-and-east-jerusalem/

The stalemate in the Middle East peace process is leading some in Israel and
elsewhere to claim that the status quo is untenable and to push for a new
unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Yet
while the current situation in the West Bank may not be desirable,
unilateral moves represent a flawed and counterproductive response.

The potential consequences of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal are likely to
harm Israel’s security rather than enhance it. The security cooperation
Israel now has with the PA will dissipate and the security advantages
provided by Israel’s physical military deployment in the territories will be
lost. Israel’s ability to contain, pre-empt, or respond to threats
effectively and surgically will be limited, and the intelligence benefits
afforded by the current deployment will be adversely affected. Moreover,
from an international legal perspective, a partial Israeli withdrawal from
the West Bank will not end Palestinian claims against Israel but is likely
to intensify them.

Any unilateral moves involving Israeli withdrawal from Arab neighborhoods of
Jerusalem is likely to cause much worse security problems for Israel, would
clearly damage the existing urban fabric of Jewish-Arab cooperation in the
city, and is likely to lead to a reduction in the city’s Jewish majority.

What the unilateralists propose is the creation of a festering wound, a
pocket of Palestinians surrounded by Israel, pending a Palestinian decision
to end the conflict. In all previous Israeli attempts at unilateralism,
expectations, results and
reality seldom coincided. “When standing on the edge of a cliff, it is wiser
to keep still than step forward,” Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, a former
head of the Israel National Security Council, wrote in June 2016. “It is
wiser to defer action than to take unilateral steps that threaten to make a
bad situation worse.”

Click here to read the Goodman study.
http://jcpa.org/the-dangers-of-a-unilateral-israeli-withdrawal-from-the-west-bank-and-east-jerusalem/

Hirsh Goodman established the program on media strategy at the Institute for
National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. He was a former military
correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem
Report, and a strategic fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. His Jerusalem Center publications include The Gaza War 2014: The War
Israel Did Not Want and the Disaster It Averted (2015) and The Knife and the
Message: The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising (2016).