A buffer-zone-all-around for Israel? 

It seems to me most of the commentary about Israel’s offensive in Lebanon is missing the point.

I think Israel recognizes that it can’t destroy or even fully disarm Hizbollah. I believe what Israel wants out of this campaign is simply barrier space along its northern border.

The pretense of responding to the July 12 soldier abduction by Hizbollah gave Israel a chance to launch into the next phase of its overarching project to establish a security zone around its borders. They want to arrive at a point, as quickly as possible, where they have an inviolable zone of five to fifteen miles between the Israeli population and the Arabic populations of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. The wall they are building in the West Bank defines the inner boundary of the buffer zone in that area. The logic of this thinking would be to construct a wall along the entire perimeter of the country.

Israel wants to be able to live without being harassed by a constant drizzle of Qassam and Katyusha rockets (which has been going on for years) and the threat of entry by suicide bombers. The idea of a rocket-free and passage-free buffer area all along its borders has an obvious appeal.

Israel may or may not have a degree of success in implementing this vision. But I think there is a bottom-line question that must be asked: What kind of way is that for a people to live?

First there was the idea that it would be possible to carve out a Jewish state as an island within the vastness of Arabia. Almost a hundred years after the Balfour Declaration, life for the settlers is still markedly unsettled. So there now arises the idea of finding peace and stablity through the establishment of a cordon sanitaire.

It would take enormous national resources to maintain such a zone-all-around. It would heighten the fortress mentality among Israelis and intensify the feeling among Arab populations that the Jews are aliens in the region. It would be another source of antagonism, ever-tenuous and probably not viable in the long run.

What kind of way is that to live?

- SW

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