Israel cannot allow the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank because it would lead to the destruction of the Jewish state, a study by a Jerusalem-based think-tank warns.
There is a consensus in Israel that for strategic and military reasons, it is “unthinkable” to agree to a Palestinian state, said Robert Loewenberg, president of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
While the study assumes that such a state would be controlled by the Palestine Liberation Organization, Loewenberg said that a Palestinian state would mean that Israel would be held “hostage to the good will even of a benign state.”
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sponsored the English-language edition of the study, said that a similar consensus exists among American Jews. He said no mainstream Jewish leader or organization was “an advocate of a PLO state on the West Bank.”
They spoke at a news conference at the National Press Club Tuesday at which the 164-page study, called “Can Israel Survive a Palestinian State?” was released.
Hier said the report seeks to correct the “false perception” that two states west of the Jordan River are an option rather than a formula for Israel to “commit political suicide.”
Loewenberg and Hier said that the study did not consider how peace could be achieved, including the “land for peace” formula.
“We want first to establish what is ‘no,'” Loewenberg said, “and then we will be able to talk about what is ‘yes.'”
Michael Widlanski, editor of the report and project coordinator of the study, said that a Palestinian state would be a danger to Israel “even if it were ruled by the Boy Scouts of America.”
He explained that it would become the advanced state for such Arab rulers as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Hafez Assad, while “leaving Israel with an indefensible territorial depth. That would be an invitation for war.”
Israel’s main military edge today is the geography provided by the West Bank, Widlanski said. “The West Bank is a natural tank trap, it deters the entrance of troops,” he argued. “As such it deters war.”
Eugene Rostow, undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Johnson administration and one of the contributors to the study, said that the unconventional weapons “are so threatening and so dangerous that a mutual paralysis would set in” similar to one that has existed between the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear weapons.
Rostow, who is one of the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, reiterated the argument that he has continually made that the U.N. resolution does not require Israel to withdraw from the territories gained in 1967 until the Arab countries make peace with it.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
