General John Allen’s Plan Is Dangerous
By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen
BESA Center Perspectives No. 504, June 21, 2017
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/general-john-allen-plan-dangerous/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Trump White House is currently reexamining the Allen
Plan, an Obama-era proposal that calls for a Palestinian state in the 1967
borders with no IDF presence whatsoever. This plan is dangerous. If it is
implemented, Israel will have to rely on foreign forces for its security, a
situation that has not worked in the past. More than that, it is
antithetical to the Israeli ethos of self-defense and self-preservation in
the Jewish homeland.

Col. Kris Bauman’s appointment as Israel adviser to the US National Security
Council is a noteworthy event. He assisted Gen. John Allen in formulating
recommendations for security arrangements for Israel in the context of a
permanent settlement, to which then-Secretary of State John Kerry aspired.
This set of recommendations came to be known as the Allen Plan.

Gen. Allen’s vision was detailed in a comprehensive document prepared at a
US research institute by two Israelis and two Americans: Gen. (res.) Gadi
Shamni and Nimrod Novik, along with Ilan Goldenberg and Col. Kris Bauman.

The plan envisages a Palestinian state with full sovereignty inside the 1967
borders, its capital in east Jerusalem, with minor modifications for
settlement blocs. The plan is based on complete acceptance of the
Palestinian demand for full sovereignty. This means no IDF soldiers anywhere
in their state, which would extend from the Jordan River to the 1967 line.

In lieu of Israel’s demands regarding defensible borders, which include an
Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley to ensure the Palestinian
state’s demilitarization, the plan proposes a varied and complex security
solution. One element would be a US military force that would operate in the
Jordan Valley. As the document’s Executive Summary states,


The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that well-thought-through
security measures in the context of the two-state solution can provide
Israelis and Palestinians with a degree of security equal or greater to that
provided today by Israel’s deployment into the West Bank…

The basic problem is the notion that Israel will rely for its security on
foreign forces. Not only is it difficult to ensure that such forces would
fulfill their duty successfully, but it is uncertain whether or not they
would stay in place – particularly after they have suffered casualties like
those they have suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade.

Recall that during the waiting period before the Six-Day War, the security
guarantee given by President Eisenhower to Ben-Gurion after the 1956 Sinai
Campaign evaporated. When he demanded that Israel withdraw unconditionally
from the Sinai Peninsula, Eisenhower promised that if the Straits of Tiran
were ever again closed to Israeli shipping, the US would intervene. Yet when
Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban came to Washington in May 1967, President
Johnson candidly explained to him that Eisenhower’s promise – however
estimable – was no longer a practical proposition. With his army bogged down
in Vietnam, Johnson apparently could not have gained the nation’s or
Congress’s support for an intervention in the Straits of Tiran even if he
had wanted to.

The main concern is that the existence of the Greater Tel Aviv area –
indeed, the daily routine of the State of Israel – will come to be dependent
on the goodwill of foreign forces. That is the heart of the matter. Do we
want Israel to be no more than a haven for persecuted Jews where they can
subsist under foreign protection? Or do we want Israel to be a place of
freedom, a homeland, in which we alone are responsible for our own security
and sovereignty?

The authors of the Allen document emphasize that Israel’s security would
continue to be based on the IDF’s power. But it is hard to imagine under
what circumstances Israel would attain the international legitimacy to
pursue an offensive deep within the Palestinian state, should the need
arise. Regarding the conditions that could justify an IDF operation in
Palestinian territory, the document says:


The Palestinians will never agree to an Israeli right of re-entry, but there
could be a side agreement between Israel and the United States on the
conditions under which the United States would support unilateral Israeli
action. Ultimately, Israel is a sovereign state that enjoys the right of
self-defense. Thus, it can unilaterally violate the sovereignty of another
state, but with the attendant risks that would have to be weighed by Israeli
leadership.

Should the IDF evacuate the territories completely, as envisaged by this
plan, the Palestinians would certainly employ their carefully honed tactical
and strategic talent for nonaccountability and ambiguity. They would take
care to ensure that the Palestinian state cannot be defined as a hostile
entity against which a “just war” can be declared. Whether deliberately or
not, they would be able to let “rogue,” non-state forces do their work for
them, and avoid taking responsibility. What then?

There is also good reason to doubt whether conditions for demilitarization
can be maintained. In an era of global arms proliferation, and of forms of
smuggling that elude surveillance (as in the flow of weapons to Hamas in
Gaza and to Hezbollah in Lebanon), along with increasingly sophisticated
local arms manufacture, there is no way to guarantee real demilitarization
without a constant effort to keep the territory fully isolated and to
operate within it.

We must also take into account the possibility that war could erupt in more
than one arena at at a time. If war were to break out with the state of
Palestine in the West Bank, it could happen simultaneously in Lebanon, Gaza,
and so on. The IDF would be unable to concentrate its efforts in the West
Bank arena – which, because of its geographic proximity to Israel’s
population centers, could inflict a heavy blow. Under the new conditions of
war, which are fundamentally different from those that prevailed in June
1967, reconquering the territory would be incomparably more difficult.

And what of the document’s validity under changing conditions? The security
solution the document proposes must be weighed in terms of the time
dimension, and in circumstantial contexts that are subject to change. If a
solution is responsible and workable, what time span is envisaged? Who knows
under what evolving circumstances the solution will be required to provide
protection to a state of Israel that has been trimmed down to the coastal
plain? Is there not also a need for responsible risk management regarding
contingencies that are still beyond the horizon?

We must ask to what extent we ourselves, with the excessive emphasis we have
placed on security concerns in recent decades as a key criterion by which to
assess any prospective solution, have laid the groundwork for Gen. Allen’s
plan. His security document is, after all, intended expressly to offer a
technical solution to all the familiar security issues. It would leave the
Israeli leadership without the faintest possibility of invoking a security
pretext to ward off the “peace solution.”

In describing Kerry’s efforts, Thomas Friedman asserted (The New York Times,
February 17, 2013) that in light of Gen. Allen’s solution for Israel’s
security concerns, the Israeli government had reached a juncture where it
would have to choose between peace and ideology.

Perhaps we have forgotten that protecting the national existence, in terms
of how the IDF defines national security, does not pertain solely to
ensuring the physical existence of the citizens of the country but also to
safeguarding national interests. A national interest – such as the
sovereignty of the people of Israel in their capital, Jerusalem – can go far
beyond the technical contents of a plan for security arrangements, however
worthy. Security is only a means, not an end in itself.

From a practical, professional standpoint, Gen. Allen’s plan leaves much to
be desired. But on a deeper level, it completely ignores the possibility
that the people of Israel, in renewing their life in their homeland, are
motivated by something much greater than the need for a technical solution
to security concerns.

This article was first published in Israel Hayom on June 8, 2017.

Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat
Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for forty-two years. He
commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps
commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the
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