Two takes on James Jones

by Steven J. Rosen  •  Nov 29, 2008 at 8:54 am

http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2008/11/two-takes-on-james-jones

Eli Lake at the New Republic and Helene Cooper at the New York Times assess the impact of James Jones as National Security Adviser. Lake quotes me:

"...In August, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that [Jones'] draft report [on security in the Palestinian territories] challenged Israel's conception of its security interests in the West Bank as being overly broad, and that the IDF in particular was too dismissive of the Palestinian security services. The newspaper quoted one IDF officer as saying he expected the report would be "very harsh, and make Israel look very bad." Steve Rosen, the former director of foreign policy for AIPAC ...told me, "In my experience, when you take a 'deep dive' into security issues in the territories, you very quickly come to tradeoffs between Israeli security and Palestinian rights. Successful counter-terror preventive and pre-emptive measures require highly intrusive intelligence collection that is onerous for the population of the area under surveillance. ... A third party tries to balance Israeli security and Palestinian rights with a different valence than an Israeli security agency."

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