Following the 1967 Six Day War initiated by Arab countries, Israel, by virtue of its resounding victory, expanded the territory under its control. While the Sinai Peninsula was subsequently returned to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace agreement, and whereas Israel in 2005 fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the Jewish State has to date not fully relinquished the West Bank (also known by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria), which for two decades beginning in 1948 was administered by Jordan and, crucially, includes the Jordan Valley.
Historical, religious and legal claims aside, successive Israeli governments have often cited security considerations as a reason for retaining the area, which has been referred to as “Israel’s eastern line of defense.” As such, the issue has often featured prominently in US-mediated peace talks with the Palestinians, who claim the entire West Bank as part of a future state.
In this respect, while newly minted President Joe Biden’s exact policies regarding the West Bank are not yet known, his nominee for secretary of state secretary, Tony Blinken, has asserted that the current administration views Israel’s security as “sacrosanct.” At the same time, he said that the 46th American president would promote the two-state solution and oppose unilateral steps by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Related Reading: How Strong is the Jewish Claim to the West Bank?
Israel’s Need for Strategic Depth
Defense experts have repeatedly acknowledged the need for so-called “strategic depth.” The 1921 journal of the US Infantry Association summarizes this military philosophy: “All essential elements of the defense should be organized in depth. If the forward defensive areas are captured, resistance is continued by those in rear.”
Before the UN Partition Plan of 1947, some prominent members of the Zionist movement warned against establishing a Jewish state in the absence of what they considered defensible borders. In a 1937 address to members of the British parliament, Ze’ev Jabotinsky described such a prospective country:
Most of it is lowland, whereas the Arab reserve is all hills. Guns can be placed on the Arab hills within 15 miles of Tel Aviv and 20 miles from Haifa; in a few hours these towns can be destroyed, the harbors made useless, and most of the places overrun, whatever the valor of their defenders.”
More recently, Israeli leaders have gone so far as to call the pre-1967 lines “Auschwitz borders,” pointing out that Israel is, by comparison, similar in size to New Jersey or Wales and therefore vulnerable to attack. Before the Six Day War, Israel proper at its narrowest measured only 15 kilometers (9 miles) wide across its middle.
As the IDF’s military doctrine puts it: “Given the country’s lack of territorial depth, the IDF must take the initiative when deemed necessary and, if attacked, quickly transfer the battleground to the enemy’s land.”
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From a practical standpoint, many analysts contend that the IDF’s presence in the West Bank protects Israelis from terrorism. From the hilly Jordan Valley, Ben Gurion Airport is well within range of even rudimentary rockets. Moreover, experts have noted that if the airspace above the West Bank was not under Israeli control, the Jewish State would struggle to thwart incoming attacks.
“Today, it would take three minutes for an enemy fighter bomber to cross from the Jordan River over the West Bank and Israel (42 miles) to the Mediterranean [Sea],” Israel’s former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror over a decade ago opined. “If Israel had less than three minutes to react, the provision of adequate air defense by means of fighter interceptors or anti-aircraft missiles would be doubtful,” he added.
US Policy: Defensible Borders for Israel
Immediately after the 1967 war ended, the then-US secretary of defense asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to compile a study outlining Israel’s strategic needs in relation to the territories it captured.
A US government memo from late-June 1967, which was declassified in 1979 but has been mostly ignored by modern-day pundits, described what was concluded as the “minimum territory… Israel might be justified in retaining in order to permit a more effective defense against possible conventional Arab attack and terrorist raids.” According to US military leaders at the time, “accepted tactical principles” permitted for Israel’s ongoing retention of swaths of the West Bank, in addition to portions of the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, parts of which were previously held by Syria.
This reality was revisited in UN Security Council resolution 242, passed in November 1967. The resolution, which is binding under international law, called upon Israel to withdraw from “territories occupied in the recent conflict.” As former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold noted, the language was purposely constructed in order to ensure that Israel would not be required to withdraw from “all” of these territories.
“The decision was taken at the highest level of the US government and was the subject of direct communications between the White House and the Kremlin,” Gold emphasized in an analysis of then-prevailing American policy. Furthermore, Resolution 242 affirmed the right of all states in the region to “live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”
Related Reading: What is UN Resolution 242 and Why Does It Matter?
The Jordan Valley: ‘Critical for Israel’s National Security’
Just days before the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented their findings, then-Israeli minister Yigal Allon proposed what came to be known as the ‘Allon Plan.’ Among others things, the initiative called for Jewish communities to be built in the Jordan Valley to serve as a buffer against potential attacks from the East.
Indeed, the matter has long been a source of deep concern. During the 1948 War of Independence, for example, Arab armies dispatched tanks not just from neighboring Jordan and Syria but also from Iraq, whose closest border to the Jordan Valley is located only about 350 km (215 miles) away.
While critics have argued that Israel’s military presence in the West Bank did not prevent the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Jordan Valley still plays a central role in discussions about Israel’s defense requirements.
Related Reading: The Jordan Valley: What You Need to Know
With respect to the Palestinians, Israeli politicians across most of the political spectrum currently maintain that the Jordan Valley must, in perpetuity, remain in Israeli hands. The most recent US peace proposal, devised by the Trump administration, addresses this near-consensus.
“The Jordan Valley, which is critical for Israel’s national security, will be under Israeli sovereignty,” according to the US plan. “Israeli forces deployed along the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge could hold off a numerically superior army until the State of Israel completed its reserve mobilization, which could take 48 hours.”
Though the matter is far from resolved, it is difficult to envision an outcome in which the strategic territory is not eventually, in some form or another, defined as Israel’s eastern security boundary.
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