4 ex-Shin Bet chiefs warn of catastrophe By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press Haaretz, 14 November 2003 In unusually brazen criticism of the government's handling of the conflict with the Palestinians, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service warned Friday of a catastrophe if a peace deal is not reached. "We need to take the situation into our own hands and leave Gaza with all the difficulty that that entails, and to dismantle illegal settlements," ex-security chief Yaakov Perry told Israel Radio on Friday. The only way forward, said Perry, is for Israel to take unilateral steps, such as withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. Doing so, he said, could help draw the Palestinians to peace talks, minimize terror and help Israel improve economically. It would also raise Israel's position in the eyes of the world, he said. If Israel fails to take such steps, said Perry, it will remain under a constant threat of terror. Perry was one of four ex-security chiefs - including Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom and Carmi Gilon - who told the Yedioth Ahronoth mass-circulation daily in interviews published Friday that Israel will be in great danger if the government doesn't set long-term policies to lead to a peace deal with the Palestinians. "We are taking sure, steady steps to a place where the state of Israel will no longer be a democracy and a home for the Jewish people," Ayalon told the newspaper. Ayalon is the author of an unofficial peace plan together with Sari Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian intellectual and president of Al-Quds University. Perry, who headed the agency for seven years during the first intifada, which lasted from 1987-1993, said that "in every aspect that you look at, economic, diplomatic, security, and social, in every one of these facets we are heading to an almost catastrophic decline." Shalom, the veteran among the group having served as Shin Bet head from 1980 to 1986, called the government's policies "contrary to the desire for peace." "We must once and for all admit there is another side, that it has feelings, that it is suffering and that we are behaving disgracefully... this entire behavior is the result of the occupation," Shalom told the newspaper. The four said that Israel needs to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip even if it entails an inevitable clash with the settlers. "There will always be some groups... for whom the Land of Israel nestles in the hills of Nablus and inside Hebron and we will have to clash with them," Perry said. However Ayalon said he expects that only 10 percent of the more than 220,000 settlers would resist an evacuation of settlements. "We have to be capable of facing such a number," he said. Carmi Gillon, whose term as Shin Bet chief was cut short in 1996 when he resigned after agency bodyguards failed to prevent the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist, described the government as short-sighted. Gillon was recently elected head of the Mevaseret Zion council. "It is dealing solely with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack," Gillon said, referring to Palestinian suicide bombings. "It [ignores] the question of how we get out of the mess we find ourselves in today." Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat praised the former Shin Bet leaders on Friday. "It reflects the realistic policy required from the Israeli side," he said. Former President Ezer Weizman called the ex-security service chiefs the "four musketeers" and accused them of bringing a catastrophe of their own upon Israel. "This really makes me furious," Weizman told Channel One. "We have a country that is in a very delicate situation." Two weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon also criticized government policy, saying the roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were fuelling Palestinian resentment and leading to an increase in support for Hamas and other militant groups. Ya'alon also accused the government of contributing to the failure of the Abbas government, claiming that Israel did not take enough steps to bolster Abbas, who ultimately resigned after a failed power struggle with Yasser Arafat. |
