Analysis from Israel
In the world’s eyes, what is good enough for Israel is not good enough for the Palestinians.

Following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, an issue that had been dormant for five years suddenly reappeared at the top of international community’s agenda: the creation of a physical link between Gaza and the West Bank, along which Palestinian people and goods could travel without Israeli interference. The United States, the European Union and international agencies such as the World Bank all argue that without such a link, Gaza cannot survive economically in the post-disengagement era, and therefore, its establishment is now urgent.

Earlier this month, the US agreed to finance a study on various options for creating such a connection; the study is due to be completed by January. But the two leading options appear to be the World Bank’s proposal for a sunken road between Gaza and the West Bank and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposal for a railroad between them.

Either option creates obvious security problems. While border crossing arrangements between Gaza and Egypt have still not been finalized, Israel will certainly exercise much less control over who and what enters Gaza than it did before the disengagement. Thus if the Palestinians are allowed to move people and goods from Gaza to the West Bank with a similar lack of Israeli interference, Israel will have no way of preventing a massive flow of arms and terrorists via Gaza to the West Bank. Sharon’s willingness to countenance such an idea while violence still rages in the West Bank therefore seems grossly irresponsible.

But beyond the security implications, both options have something else in common: Either the road or the railroad would run straight through the Negev, effectively slicing Israel in two. The physical connection between northern and southern Israel would be reduced to a series of overpasses spanning the West Bank-Gaza link.

Even if the security problem could somehow be solved, for Israel to agree to cut itself in two in the absence of a comprehensive peace treaty would constitute a major concession that ought to be conditioned on a suitable quid pro quo. But what makes the idea particularly outrageous is the world’s hypocrisy over this issue: While the international community views a few overpasses as a sufficient link between northern and southern Israel, it has adamantly rejected Israel’s contention that a similar link is sufficient between the northern and southern West Bank.

THIS HYPOCRISY has been particularly evident in the world’s reaction to an Israeli plan to link Ma’aleh Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement, with Jerusalem by building some 3,500 apartments along a narrow corridor known as E-1. Despite Sharon’s repeated pledges that disengagement would enable Israel to strengthen its hold on the West Bank settlement blocs, the government has thus far not even dared to submit this plan to the zoning board, much less actually start work, due to vehement opposition from the international community, and particularly the US.

The world’s argument is that since Ma’aleh Adumim lies about half the width of the West Bank from Jerusalem, Israel’s proposal would effectively cut the West Bank in two, forcing Palestinians to make a wide detour east of Ma’aleh Adumim in order to travel between the northern and southern West Bank. Sharon’s response is that this problem could be solved by building tunnels or overpasses under or over E-1 to create a transportation link between the northern and southern West Bank – a link identical to the one that the international community has proposed between northern and southern Israel.

But it turns out that in the world’s eyes, what is good enough for Israel is not good enough for the Palestinians. Even the Bush administration – the same administration that, according to Sharon, agrees that Ma’aleh Adumim should remain part of Israel under any final-status agreement – has adamantly rejected Sharon’s idea; so, needless to say, has the rest of the international community. As far as the world is concerned, Israel can make do with a mere transportation link between its northern and southern halves – but the Palestinians must enjoy full territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank.

IF SHARON were serious about leveraging the disengagement to strengthen Israel’s hold on the settlement blocs, the Israeli response to this hypocrisy should be obvious: Jerusalem will not agree to a West Bank-Gaza link that reduces the connection between northern and southern Israel to a series of overpasses unless the Palestinians and the international community agree to similar links between Israel and the major West Bank settlement blocs, with the connection between various parts of the West Bank being similarly maintained via tunnels and/or overpasses. In practice, this means at the least allowing Israel to enclose such connecting corridors within the security fence – a project that, due to international opposition, has remained a dead letter despite Sharon’s repeated declarations of intent to execute it.

However, Sharon has made no such demand for reciprocity – just as he has not built the fence around the settlement blocs, authorized large-scale construction within the blocs or taken any other concrete step to strengthen Israel’s hold on them. Instead, he agreed to the principle of the West Bank-Gaza link without a murmur; his only request is that the link take the form of a railroad rather than a road.

Due to the grave security implications of the West Bank-Gaza link, Israel must condition actual construction on an end to the violence – which, as Sunday’s terror attacks made clear, is not yet in sight.

But since discussion of this link has already begun, a diplomatic campaign for eventual reciprocity on this issue should be launched now. Jerusalem must make it clear that if mere “transportation contiguity” is sufficient between northern and southern Israel, it is equally sufficient between the northern and southern West Bank.

10/19/2005
Jerusalem Post
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Why Israel Needs a Better Political Class

Note: This piece is a response to an essay by Haviv Rettig Gur, which can be found here

Israel’s current political crisis exemplifies the maxim that hard cases make bad law. This case is desperate. Six months after the coronavirus erupted and nine months after the fiscal year began, Israel still lacks both a functioning contact-tracing system and an approved 2020 budget, mainly because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more worried about politics than the domestic problems that Israel now confronts. The government’s failure to perform these basic tasks obviously invites the conclusion that civil servants’ far-reaching powers must not only be preserved, but perhaps even increased.

This would be the wrong conclusion. Bureaucrats, especially when they have great power, are vulnerable to the same ills as elected politicians. But unlike politicians, they are completely unaccountable to the public.

That doesn’t mean Haviv Rettig Gur is wrong to deem them indispensable. They provide institutional memory, flesh out elected officials’ policies, and supply information the politicians may not know and options they may not have considered. Yet the current crisis shows in several ways why they neither can nor should substitute for elected politicians.

First, bureaucrats are no less prone to poor judgment than politicians. As evidence, consider Siegal Sadetzki, part of the Netanyahu-led triumvirate that ran Israel’s initial response to the coronavirus. It’s unsurprising that Gur never mentioned Sadetzki even as he lauded the triumvirate’s third member, former Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov; she and her fellow Health Ministry staffers are a major reason why Israel still lacks a functional test-and-trace system.

Sadetzki, an epidemiologist, was the ministry’s director of public-health services and the only member of the triumvirate with professional expertise in epidemics (Bar Siman-Tov is an economist). As such, her input was crucial. Yet she adamantly opposed expanding virus testing, even publicly asserting that “Too much testing will increase complacence.” She opposed letting organizations outside the public-health system do lab work for coronavirus tests, even though the system was overwhelmed. She opposed sewage monitoring to track the spread of the virus. And on, and on.

Moreover, even after acknowledging that test-and-trace was necessary, ministry bureaucrats insisted for months that their ministry do the tracing despite its glaringly inadequate manpower. Only in August was the job finally given to the army, which does have the requisite personnel. And the system still isn’t fully operational.

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