Israel: former adviser warns Netanyahu government ‘insanity’ threatens peace deals

A former Israeli prime ministerial adviser warned on Wednesday of a real danger to the peace agreements signed with Arab countries, due to what he described as the “insanity” of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“The damage caused by the irresponsibility of Israel’s government has been so rapid and extensive that it is difficult to sound a warning each time another layer of our national security infrastructure is about to fall,” said Nimrod Novik, who was an adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He made his comment in an article in Haaretz.

“Much has been written about the direct damage — from the north to the south — of the tendentious procrastination meant to thwart a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the hostages and to pacify both arenas. The contribution of provocative Temple Mount [Al-Aqsa Mosque] visits, settler violence and the suffocation of the Palestinian economy as contributing to the escalation in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] has also been widely noted.”

However, added Novik, the next potential victim — “relations with Israel’s peace partners near and far” — has not received the same attention. “Egypt and Jordan will be the first to be hit and to react,” he claimed. “Peace with Egypt was a historic achievement for Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the most important strategic move in Israel’s history. It removed the most powerful and important Arab state from the conflict.” Over the years, he explained, bilateral security cooperation has exceeded all imagination and serves the vital interests of both. “But the government’s decision to perpetuate the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, which means occupying the Gaza Strip and controlling two million people indefinitely, has provoked an unprecedented Egyptian response.”

He added that Egyptian security officials warn, in talks with their Israeli counterparts and with Israel’s political leaders, of the grave consequences of remaining in the Philadelphi route. “They say a continued Israeli presence in Gaza will be bloody, entail heavy casualties for both sides, destabilise the entire region and harm Egypt’s security interests.”

The former adviser also pointed out that, “Jordan – whose peace agreement with Israel continues to constitute an irreplaceable national security asset, providing strategic depth for air and land operations against Iran and other malefactors east and north of Israel – is not as strong as Egypt and is more vulnerable than it both at home and abroad.”

It is not for nothing that Jordan is transmitting signs of distress, he noted. “The prolonged war in Gaza, the repeated provocations on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the effect of settler terrorism and the economic strangulation of the Palestinian Authority have all helped push young Palestinians into the arms of terrorists and force the Israel Defence Forces to intensify its responses. This escalation threatens the stability of the Hashemite Kingdom.”

He concluded that, “If an end is not put to the insanity that guides our government, the damage to Israel’s security and welfare being will be felt not only now but for decades to come.”

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