Hi, me back, 4U
How can I be wrong when you confirm with own arguments that I am not? The key flaw in your above statement is your "conditional chance" of Egypt attempting to wage war on Israel. Seen from the Israelis "strategical" point of view, it is indeed a big advantage to not have Egyptian forces stationed close to its borders, "just in case.. if in the future, etc..".
However, considered from the Egyptians angle, why should they care for wanting to have armed forces near Israel's borders anyway, when they per se have declared peace with Israel? Those people have signed a permanent peace in which they do not only declare that war against Israel is over for their part, they are furthermore confirming that also the will to fight future wars against Israel is now scraped for ever, or at least till further notice. Remember, this is the Egyptians perspective, irrespective of what we, the dudes over here, think of such agreement in terms of "cause betrayal, self deception, mud eating etc..". In short, when you declare that you don't want war anymore, demilitarized zones become an obsolete and insignificant factor in any following peace agreement. And this is valid for both sides. Even though the comparison doesn't really stand, the whole western Europe is a demilitarized zone. Demilitarization is the essence and prerequisite for permanent peace between bordering countries, and as such, I don't see how both the Israelis and the Egyptians could have reached a so called peace agreement without this basic premise.
However debatable the territorial gain the Israelis might have pinched from Jordan is, I will demonstrate how the economic relations clause in those peace treaties are of far more vital importance to an entity such as Israel. Keef ma baramta, Israel needs to maintain a steady curve of prosperity and economic development in order for the "promised land" to be able to keep attracting Jews from everywhere, and also to keep gluing the existent ones on spot. Without healthy economic dynamics this can not be achieved.
You wrote previously that the Israeli society is par excellence a militarized society on many levels, which I also agreed to. If wars feed many mouths and bellies in such society, what shall those consume at times of total peace? A significant portion of Israel's economy is nurtured by its military industries and the defense sector. Hear this, an excerpt from an article written by By Sharon Sadeh titled Israel's Beleaguered Defense Industry:
The growth of the Israeli defense industry was a combination of policy and circumstances. The realization that, despite the traumatic experience of the Holocaust, the Jewish state was still subjected to existential threats by the Muslim world, have led to the psychological as well as material institutionalization of the Centrality of Security concept. This perception has been strengthened by various arms embargoes and broken agreements inflicted by foreign suppliers.
Consequently, Israel's policymakers allowed a rapid expansion of the state-owned arms industries and their involvement in the production of indigenous state-of-the-art weapon systems. The industries became the largest manufacturing and technological sector in Israel, employing tens of thousands, most of them organized in strong unions, and contributing enormously to the Israeli military qualitative edge, the nation's diplomatic efforts and its economy.
The shift in the IDF's procurement policy, following the 1979 Camp David peace treaty with Egypt, effectively ended the industry's raison d'être. The growing dependence on American weaponry deprived the Israeli companies of their most important client and sales promoter, and forced them to rely on foreign customers to ensure sufficient revenues. This exposed them to the cyclical nature of the arms exports market and to fluctuations in the official rate of exchange.
Hence plays the military industry and the defense sector a major role in Israels economy. For a foreign body in a hostile environment that so far has relied on the concept of defense as a strategical propeller for its continuous development, peace treaties that do not blow life into its economic veins are therefore completely useless. Being at a state of Peace with its environment will therefore deprive Israel from one of its important engines, in addition to the western foreign economic and other facilities and aid packages it gets for being in a state of war.
To compensate for those estimated losses, a state of peace will have to offer the Israelis something else in return: Normalization of the economical interaction with its neighbors. What has been evident thus far, in spite of its peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, no economic relations worth mentioning did take place between those countries and Israel. The normal arab in those countries is still reluctant to swallow an Israeli grown Orange, and beyond few occasional and one-way bus trips to the pyramids or Tyra, Israelis are still "frozen out" in those arab markets.
Imagine now the same "peace" mistake repeated on the syrian and lebanese fronts. Say we, the syrians and the palestinians are able one day to come to some "Okey" agreement with the israelis. Say some, not all, our, the syrians and the palestinians conditions for peace are met and that the same goes for the Israelis on the other end. We all shake hands and kiss in front of cameras and with large smiles we tell them: Hi and welcome, let us exchange embassies and smoke the pipe of peace and eternal friendship... At home however, we let the average arab's anti-israeli nature take its natural course, and lay back and watch..
There will be no more cries à la "ya mama, we poor jews are threatened to be evaporated by those lebanese/syrians/iranians/jordanians/egyptians/palestinians", addressed at and to be quickly heard by the west's Jew-sensible ears. This means less and less emotional blackmail possibilities for Israel to use in order to get economic artificial oxygen pumped into its lungs. And in addition to the withering of Israels own domestic military sector that naturally would follow, the wheel of the Israeli economy will most probably come to a serious halt within a decade or two.. This, and we haven't even touched yet the demography factor.
21st February 2009
