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Israel Opposes International Forces as Part of Peace Deal
(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon and Michael Wilner - International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz made clear Tuesday that Jerusalem would oppose any attempt to introduce international forces into any peace deal. "Some people are speaking about international forces, maybe [in] the Jordan Valley or the hills and border areas, that will take care of Israel's future security," he said at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, adding that he would "vehemently" oppose any deployment of international forces instead of the IDF. "The Palestinians should be able to control their lives, and we should be able to control our security in our own hands. For us, security means survivability, and we have had very negative experiences with international forces so far." He pointed to two examples in the last decade in which international forces failed to provide Israel with security as promised. The massive UNIFIL force that entered southern Lebanon following the Second Lebanon War in 2006 was unable to prevent tens of thousands of missiles from reaching Hizbullah. In Gaza, where the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the EU all had security personnel in place following Israel's 2005 disengagement, they failed to prevent Hamas' takeover of the territory and the introduction of thousands of missiles there. These two negative experiences with international forces "cannot repeat in the West Bank." The only demilitarization Israel could trust would be "supervised and enforced by Israeli forces." He called for "a total demilitarization of the Palestinian state, and our [Israel's] capacity to preserve, control and secure this demilitarization, come what may."