To find a solution for Gaza, Israel needs long-term, strategic thinking - opinion

• Published date: 09 April 2024
• Author: JASON SILVERMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The United States and its Arab partners, among them Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia, have proposed a few ideas. Some have spoken about a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority (PA) and others about an Arab peacekeeping force as it is part of a track towards a long-term, comprehensive deal

Yet the Israeli government is still lagging behind, having remained mostly quiet on the matter, to the detriment of its allies, with the exception of a brief document released by the Prime Minister's Office laying out general principles for deradicalization and civil governance by undefined "local actors."

This is due to a lack of strategic vision and the avoidance of discussing options for a long-term political settlement. As a result, we see the Israeli tendency to provide tactical answers – mostly military-based – for strategic questions. The absence of serious strategic, long-term thinking permeates significant areas of Israel's political culture, such as the inability to write a constitution or to reform the status quo on issues of religion and state.

The reason for this has to do with a broad feeling of existential fear in Israeli society. The feeling is that Israel has yet to secure its existence in the region and that we have yet to get past the threshold of a permanent Jewish state surviving in the Arab-dominant Middle East.

Such fear serves as a barrier to being able to take calculated risks for solving long-term problems to national security. We've succumbed to the almost obsessive desire for "quiet," to neutralize the immediate security threat, and then move on, until the next time.

Instead of acting to address the core problems and to ensure that these threats don't return in the future, our policies are reactive and consider only the symptoms. This subsequently creates a cycle that produces, and then constantly reproduces, tactical thinking and the postponement of serious discussions in government on strategic, long-term planning for security issues.

Israel does not excel in long-term strategy

Israel is superb in providing tactical, military answers to security challenges. Throughout its history it has invented world-renowned tactics for urban warfare and hi-tech military technology that is used by many foreign armies around the globe. The country excels less in long-term strategy.

This kind of thinking became embedded in Israeli culture during the initial years of statehood. Israel entered international society as a small...