Daily Alert Archives

The West Bank's Airspace - The Forgotten Factor of Israeli Security

(Yisrael Hayom-Hebrew, 28Jan11) Dore Gold - In the WikiLeaks documents, Maj.-Gen. Ido Nechushtan, as head of the IDF Planning Branch, explained in 2007 to U.S. Gen. Jim Jones that Israel's security requirements in the event a Palestinian state comes into existence would include "control" of the West Bank's airspace. Indeed, Israeli security experts insist that no matter where borders are ultimately drawn, Israel must control the airspace over the entire West Bank in any future peace arrangement. The reasons are simple. Israel, together with the West Bank, is only 70 km. wide. Modern combat aircraft, like the Russian MiG-29 or the Su-24, can cross that distance from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean in less than 4 minutes. The minimal time Israel needs to scramble Israeli fighters in order to intercept incoming enemy aircraft is about 3 minutes. But if Israel no longer controlled the West Bank's airspace and it had to defend Israel from the air along the Green Line, it would only have 2 minutes or less to respond to an air threat. In short, in that narrow space, Israel could not be defended from an air attack. Would Jordan allow hostile aircraft into its airspace that could pose a threat to Israel? In 1989, pro-Western King Hussein allowed Saddam Hussein's aircraft to enter Jordanian airspace so that they could fly right up to the Jordan River and photograph potential targets inside of Israel. Today there are many regional air forces in the Middle East who would seek to do the same.
2011-01-28 08:37:55
Full Article