How To Secure Borders

During coming weeks, we are sure to be hearing more and more about Israel's security needs, as talks on President Reagan's peace plan gain momentum. We hope our readers will forgive us for harking back to two comments pertaining to Israeli security which were made by Administration spokesmen back in early September. We never got around to discussing them at the time there is always so much more to comment about than we can fit in—but we never intended to allow either of the statements to go unchallenged indefinitely.

The first spokesman was President Reagan himself, who in his speech of September 1 outlining his peace plan included these words:

In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.

In an age when missiles can hurl their destruction for thousands of miles, it seems odd to be assessing the degree of security of a country by measuring how wide it is. Yes, ten miles is a very narrow waist for a country to have. On the other hand, if Israel fattened its waist to include all the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, it would still only measure 38 miles. That would still be a pretty narrow country, vulnerable to attack by all sorts of weapons (as is our own 3000-mile wide nation). Of course, to guarantee Israel a waist of 38 miles would mean eliminating virtually all of the West Bank, which is presumably not what the President has in mind—since his peace plan calls for a return of the West Bank to Jordan sovereignty. So how many miles wide will Israel's waist have to be for the President to fulfill his pledge that Israel will not have "to live that way again?" If you made the waist 24 miles wide, you would still have to let Israel annex about half of the West Bank. So should it be 20, or 15 miles to give Israel the security it needs? The whole exercise, of course, is pointless. The only way to get rid of the "hostile Arab armies" that the President refers to is to work out and implement a peace settlement that both Israel and its neighbors find acceptable—and one which is backed by guarantees from the major powers. If this does not happen, an extra five or ten miles of waist is not going to solve Israel's problems with "hostile Arab neighbors," nor the Arabs' problem with an expanding Israel. The fact that the President allowed himself to get hung up on the question of Israel's waist at this juncture—to the extent of making a U.S. commitment to widen it—makes one wonder if he really understands this.

We were more surprised, and no less perturbed, when Secretary Shultz told a group on September 12 that Israel should have "defensible" borders. To us, it seemed a reflection of the same kind of hangup as Mr. Reagan's: the idea that Israel needs more territory to allow it to defend itself. We hope that Mr. Shultz did not think he was quoting U.N. Resolution 242—which refers to "secure" borders, not "defensible" ones. In our view, there is a big difference. "Defensible"—capable of being defended has a distinct military flavor, and when used in connection with borders strongly implies a need for the right kind of terrain. Borders that are "secure"—i.e., free from danger or risk—do not need depth or hilly vantage points. They need the recognition of the international community and acceptance by the people on both sides. Who would argue that Canada's borders are "defensible" against the military might of the U.S.? Yet they are as secure as any nation's borders could be, because the U.S. has no intention of trying to change them.