Two reports in the Sunday, Jan. 5, papers caught my eye. They were seemingly unrelated, but their combination is essential for understanding the central issue which has been troubling Secretary of State John Kerry on his 10th visit to the region. The solution for which he is aiming is also revealed in combining the two reports.

The first item, published in various media including the Israeli daily Maariv, quoted Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad. Speaking in the city of Kfar Saba, Dagan challenged the claim that the Jordan Valley is essential for Israel’s security, terming it a “manipulation” by politicians who abuse outlandish security arguments. According to Dagan, the Jordan Valley has lost its strategic importance, since “there’s no Iraqi army, there’s no eastern front. There’s peace with Jordan.”

The second item, which ran on the front page of Israeli daily Haaretz, reported that Sunni fighters linked to the al-Qaeda terror organization have taken over the town of Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar province, leading to a mass flight of its residents. The government of Nouri al-Maliki appealed last Thursday, Jan. 2, to Arab and Muslim states, asking them to support his country’s struggle to gain control of Iraq’s biggest province (about one-third of the country’s area), bordering Syria to the north, Jordan to the west and Saudi Arabia to the south.

Dagan is right, but also wrong. True, the demand that Israeli soldiers be deployed in the Jordan Valley as part of a permanent agreement with the Palestinians reeks strongly of politics. None other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself can attest to the marginal, if not irrelevant, contribution of stationing a ground force in the valley. In his September 2011 speech at the UN General Assembly, he explained that Israel’s need for “defensible boundaries” stems from its narrow “waistline” and that it takes no more than three seconds for a fighter plane to cross them. How can Israeli soldiers deployed in the valley stop this plane on its way to Tel Aviv?