16 MAGAZINE June 17, 2011

INTERVIEW

DORE GOLD is heavily involved in Israel’s diplomatic affairs and has taken his key messages to international forums.

‘Guardian of Zion’ is a grand title. Epic, almost. Images of ancientcrusader knights come to mind, adorned in full armor andstanding at the entrance to Jerusalem, swords in hand, preparedto lay down life and limb for the honor of the Holy City and allthat it stands for.

Sitting at his desk in the pleasant environs of the capital’s leafy German Colonyneighborhood, former ambassador Dore Gold notably lacks shining armor. Butdespite his more modern attire, he was still the recipient this month of the annual“Guardian of Zion” award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies atBar-Ilan University, an honor given to those who have “dedicated their lives tostrengthening Jerusalem.”

And Gold has certainly spent his career doing exactly that. An adviser to then-deputy foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the Madrid peace conference in1991, he has been heavily involved in Israel’s diplomatic affairs ever since. A nego-tiator in the lead-up to the signing of the Wye River Memorandum in 1998, Gold wasalso an adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon at the Aqaba summit in 2003,

Jerusalem of GoldAs president of the Jerusalem Center forPublic Affairs, former ambassador to theUN Dore Gold, this year’s recipient of the‘Guardian of Zion’ award, focuses ondefending Israel’s security. A self-described‘occasional consultant’ to the primeminister, he tackles Israel’s multifariouschallenges in an interview with ‘The Jerusalem Post’

• JEREMY SHARONPhoto: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM

MAGAZINE www.jpost.com 17

and served as Israeli ambassador to the UNfrom 1997 to 1999.

At his office in the Jerusalem Center forPublic Affairs, he explained how his work inthe last 10 years as president of this thinktank has been geared toward tackling some ofthe most serious challenges the countryfaces.

“Israel is engaged in a war of ideas,” he says“with adversaries who seek to manipulateinternational law, make historical argumentswhich are highly questionable and distortthe policies of regional players.”

So, to counter this ideological onslaught,Gold has gone about assembling an elite unitof legal, diplomatic, military and academicexperts, and establishing an infrastructurewithin which they can do battle against thefoes arrayed against the Jewish state.

Citing some of the center’s most qualifiedassociates and contributors, such as Israel’sformer ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel andformer ambassador to Canada Alan Baker,along with reserve IDF generals and colonelsand academic experts, Gold says the JCPA isuniquely placed to provide analysis on thesituation in the Middle East, especiallyregarding the recent upheaval in the region –much of which he views with concern.

“While one hopes that the new regimeswhich will arise will be based on democracyand accountable government, one has torealistically understand that the best organ-ized groups in the Sunni Arab states and thebest placed to inherit control are related tothe Muslim Brotherhood, which is still anextremist organization, advocating a globalcaliphate and supporting the concept ofjihad.”

Dismissing rose-tinted analyses of a MiddleEast that will soon blossom into a liberal,democratic Eden, Gold bluntly advocates ananalysis of the current turmoil “not based onconjectures of what makes political sense forwhat you as a Westerner would do if youwere running an Arab country, but on whatthe leaders of groups like the Muslim Broth-erhood are actually saying.

“The general guide of the Muslim Brother-hood in Egypt, Muhammad Badie, issues reg-ular statements that talk of continuing thestruggle against Israel. So if he loses influ-ence, then great, but if he gains influence,we’ve got a problem.”

AND GOLD, a self-described “occasional con-sultant” to Netanyahu, is still on the frontlines of the idea battlefield, having beeninvited – along with other foreign policyexperts – to accompany the premier on hisrecent visit to Washington, where the primeminister’s address to a joint session of Con-gress was rapturously received.

But what was the whole “1967 lines”brouhaha with President Barack Obamaabout? What was so offensive about Obama’sspeech to the US State Department?

“The US view suddenly became closer tothe Palestinian view,” says Gold curtly. “Thatwas why so many people were surprised.”

Be that as it may, most would agree that allnegotiations up until now have been basedon the assumption that any Palestinian statewould approximate the pre-1967 lines, andeven George W. Bush referred to the “1949lines” (practically the same as talking of the1967 lines).

“No, he said Israel will never return to the’49 armistice lines,” Gold rejoins. “It’s a huge

difference. The Bush letter, the 2004 letterwhich was approved by both houses of Con-gress, negated the ‘67 lines, it didn’t affirmthem. It negated the old lines rather thansaying they were a basis, and the words ‘landswap’ didn’t appear.”

Israel’s requirements for its physical securi-ty are at the heart of Gold’s enterprise at theJCPA, and he has sought to develop long-term strategies for Israel’s manifold chal-lenges, a task he clearly relishes.

One pet project, related to the encumberedborders question that has received so muchattention of late, has been the drive to putthe issue of defensible borders front and cen-ter in any negotiations Israel conducts withthe Palestinians.

“Up till now, most of the thinking on thepeace process has started with some model ofpermanent-status arrangement conceived byforeign policy experts, as happened in theOslo agreements, and to then go to the armyand say, ‘Given the arrangements we justworked out, you have to go figure out how todefend Israel.’”

Gold sees this as a dangerous approach thatneeds to be reversed; first identify therequirements for defending Israel, he says,and then send the diplomats out to obtainthem.

He certainly does not subscribe to the pointof view that the establishment of a Palestin-ian state would create a utopian Middle Eastin which Israel is universally accepted and itssecurity concerns completely obviated. Suchan analysis, he says, “is based on the suppo-sition that Israel and the Palestinians arestruggling over the Seychelle Islands.”

By which he means that Israel has, since1948, had to “provide for its security againstcoalitions of countries around it who haveexploited the Palestinian issue and invadedIsrael as a result,” and therefore the broaderregional situation needs to be taken intoaccount – along with the proclivity of terror-ist-supporting regimes to provide increasing-ly technologically advanced weaponry inincreasing quantities to groups such asHamas and Hezbollah.

Control of the Jordan Valley is therefore acrucial component of the JCPA’s defensible-borders project, and one that also has a promi-nent place in the Netanyahu government’svision of any future peace deal, as he outlinedin his speech to Congress last month.

“The Jordan Valley is the functional equiv-alent of the Philadelphi corridor [the strip ofland between Gaza and Egypt],” Goldexplains. “Were Israel to lose control of theJordan Valley, it can be expected that theweaponry which would become available toarmed groups in the West Bank wouldincrease greatly in terms of quality and quan-tity. Even if just one shoulder-launched mis-sile is fired at a commercial airliner from theWest Bank towards Ben-Gurion [Airport],even if it misses, all commercial traffic toIsrael would cease.”

ASKED WHETHER Israel’s security require-ments therefore demand that a Palestinianstate not share a border with Jordan, hedefers to the position he says was held byformer prime minister Yitzhak Rabin dur-ing his time in office (and originally pro-posed by the deputy prime minister in1967, Yigal Allon): that, as Rabin stated,“the security border of the State of Israelwill be located in the Jordan Valley, in the

broadest meaning of that term.” The JCPA under Gold’s direction has

sought to address not just the physicalthreats facing Israel, but the more intangibleissues relating to the delegitimization cam-paign led by some of the country’s mostvociferous and ideologically driven detrac-tors.

“We’ve broken the issue down into severalprongs,” he says. “There’s the track whichseeks to deny Israel the right to self-defenseand another track which denies the historicrights of the Jewish people in their home-land. But you also have to identify who thedelegitimizers are.”

Gold points to what a recent JCPA studytermed a “red-green alliance,” a network ofhard left and Trotskyite organizations thathas allied with Muslim Brotherhood-associat-ed groups “whose principle concern is notwhat Israel is doing in the West Bank or Gaza,but the existence of Israel itself.” Of equalconcern are those who enable or “main-stream” the messages of this radical alliance.

“So if The Guardian carries an op-ed by amember of Hamas, that becomes a problem.If the BBC gives them a voice, it becomes aproblem. If some members of the Anglicanclergy join in, that’s a problem.”

Asked if Israel has lost the West, he suggeststhat the West might have lost itself. ChristianZionism informed the thinking of people likeArthur Balfour and David Lloyd George, hesays, and the shrinking role of religion inEurope is a factor in the continent’s growingdiscord with the Jewish state.

Above all, Gold is keen to stress the proac-tive nature of the JCPA’s efforts to dissemi-nate the messages gleaned from the in-depthstudies it commissions and conducts. In Aprilof this year, he was invited, along with Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan and Brig.-Gen (res.) UdiDekel, to address the US House ForeignAffairs Committee regarding Israel’s narrowborders and the country’s security require-ments.

Gold has also taken his work and its keymessages to other august forums, such as theHouse of Commons in the UK and the Ger-man parliament. His 2007 book onJerusalem, he says, has just been translatedinto Hungarian, and he has received an invi-tation to speak to the Hungarian prime min-ister and foreign minister. Offers to translateit into Chinese have also been received, andthis is critical to maximizing the impact ofthe work he and his center are doing.

The institute is also increasingly active inthe realm of new and social media.

“Our defensible borders YouTube videoreceived hundreds of thousands of hits. Ifyou can convert a long study to a four-minute clip, that’s very important,” Goldsays, although he emphasizes the serious aca-demic work that has to precede such anitem’s production.

Defending Israel is at the forefront of whatGold has sought to accomplish during hiscareer in public service and during his time asa “private citizen” with the ears of influentialpolitical elites and decision-makers.Although his influence has, to some extent,fluctuated in parallel with the political for-tunes of the Likud Party, the work done atthe JCPA during his tenure as president hascertainly provided insights into the multifar-ious challenges that confront the Jewish statetoday, and will provide an important plat-form for answering them in the future. !

‘Israel isengaged in awar of ideas,’Gold says ‘withadversaries whoseek tomanipulateinternationallaw, makehistoricalargumentswhich are highlyquestionableand distort thepolicies ofregionalplayers.’