Israel Hayom..
13 September '19..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-jordan-valley-is-waiting-for-zionist-action/
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's promise to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley should be welcomed. The reasons to do so were apparent even to former Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the first months that followed the 1967 Six-Day War, and were fully laid out in the Allon Plan, which states that "the eastern border of the state of Israel must be the Jordan River and the border that divides the Dead Sea … We must annex to the country, as an inseparable part of its sovereignty, a 10 to 15 kilometer [6 to 9 mile] wide strip running along the Jordan Valley."
The plan was presented to the Eshkol government, which in line with its worldview, left it as a presentation without voting it. In the spirit of the time, the plan was immediately moved ahead to the stage of laying down infrastructure for the settlements that have existed there ever since. In accordance with the plan the Alon highway was paved, and the settlements of the Jordan Valley were built in two groups – one along Highway 90 and one along the Allon Highway.
When the Knesset debated the interim Oslo Accords in 1995, Yitzhak Rabin laid out his principles and declared: "Israel's defensible security border will be placed in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest sense of the term." The process of applying sovereignty to the valley has always enjoyed broad public support. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was the first to draw back. The Clinton peace plan and the international community's basic approach to the peace process saw his concessions on the Jordan Valley as a fundamental element of the two-state solution.
After Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, and even more after the army of Saddam Hussein collapsed in 2003, more people began arguing that the threat to Israel from the east had passed, and it was less vital for Israel to hold onto the Jordan Valley as a line of defense. In the words of former GOC Central Command Amram Mitzna: "When long-range missiles can be fired, there is no importance to strategic depth. [Peace] deals will give us more security than strategic depth will."
Even at the time, that argument lacked a basic understanding of war. Since then, having learned the lessons of the Second Intifada, the chaos of the Arab Spring, and seeing Hamas and Hezbollah anchor their rocket strike capabilities, along with Iran's growing regional influence that could see Shiite militias deployed along Highway 6 – the Jordan Valley is a more vital security interest to Israel than ever.
Most of the supporters of a Palestinian state want it to be demilitarized from any weapons that could pose a security risk to Israel. Even the PLO supposedly accepted that demand, but what actually happened what that Judea and Samaria became hotbeds of terrorism. The failure of UN forces in Lebanon to enforce Resolution 1701 to keep Hezbollah from arming itself in southern Lebanon shows why the proposal of having foreign peacekeepers in the Jordan Valley can't guarantee any demilitarization. The valley, as a buffer zone held by Israel and defended by the IDF, is an existential requirement for Israel.
In addition to security and defense considerations, the Jordan Valley in its broad geographical definition is crucial to Israel as somewhere for as many as a million Israelis to live and a space to house national infrastructure that can't be jammed into the dense coastal region. Currently, the north and south, the Galilee and the Negev, depends almost entirely on the packed coastal highways. Israel is becoming more crowded and needs another north-south road – Highway 80 – from Arad to the Gilboa. It's waiting to be built. A well-developed infrastructure of roads in the Jordan Valley will make it possible for Israel to fulfill its role as a bridge between Asia and Africa.
That pioneering vision has waited for years to be implemented. If the declaration of Israeli sovereignty isn't expressed in an immediate upswing in construction and focused government support, it will fizzle out. In one of his articles, David Ben-Gurion wrote: "This is a Zionist nation, commanded to create something out of nothing. That act is twofold: to ingather the exiles and make the desert bloom." The Jordan Valley has been waiting for the Zionist vision for too long.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
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