EDITOR: What they think in the Israeli Defence Ministry
Just read the following comment in Haaretz from a former Defence Ministry Adviser – see at bottom of this piece what his area of responsibility was…
Gaza is the fuel for Muslim world’s anti-Israel struggle: Haaretz
By Haggai Alon
The events of the past few days have created two illusions. One is that Israel and the United States are equal; the other is that the problem is Jerusalem. These illusions are dangerous for Israel, in that they create a dangerous diplomatic perception and self-image.
The United States is a superpower; it is doubtful whether Israel is even a regional power. And the problem is not Jerusalem, or even the holy places, but Gaza. Finally, it is in Israel’s best interest that the Quartet’s decision to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state within two years not be implemented unilaterally.
Gaza is Israel’s big problem. Because of the political, security and civic failure of the disengagement, the road to a solution of the problem of Gaza runs through Ramallah and Jerusalem. In Ramallah, it is in the hands of one man – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s government refuses to accept that fact. So Abbas is preparing a surprise for it in the form of a “no-partner” declaration.
American bayonets will not bring Abbas back to Gaza, and the Israel Defense Forces certainly will not. He will resume ruling in Gaza – just as he proved, to the chagrin of many in the defense establishment, that he could in the West Bank – on the shoulders of the Arab world, and perhaps also of a joint NATO-Arab force. Such a force would first establish itself in the West Bank, after the IDF evacuates that territory, and at the border crossings with Jordan in the Jordan Valley.
In this way, without negotiation and without the need to explain why there are no negotiations, Abbas could dispel the charges that he is a “pet Palestinian” and get around his domestic problem with his prime minister, Salam Fayyad.
Gaza is the fuel for the anti-Israel struggle. It is the symbol of that struggle throughout the Arab and Muslim world, even among those who live in Western countries. And it is up to us to uproot the anti-Israel cells the flourish there. Gaza’s hunger is the fuel of the struggle. We must dry up this fuel. It is not a tool for getting Gilad Shalit back, or for toppling Hamas.
Perhaps we acted like a responsible power in Haiti, and we deserve praise for that. But in the Middle East, it would be best for us to simply behave as a responsible country. For its own security, and to protect its own interests, Israel must seek negotiations that will deal with the issues of borders and security as a single unit, with the involvement of a multilateral Arab military force and with major involvement by NATO.
Not so long ago, such a formula would have drawn disparagement from the security establishment and even accusations of “internationalizing” the conflict – that is, forfeiting Israel’s security. When senior reserve officers raised the idea of such a force as part of a solution to the problem of Gaza’s northern border, both during the serious clashes that preceded the disengagement and thereafter, they received chilly telephone calls from “the establishment.” Meanwhile, the American force in Sinai was ignored, as was the high quality of the UN force on the Syrian border, and the fact that while the IDF is not satisfied with UNIFIL’s performance in Lebanon in the wake of UN Resolution 1701, no one has come up with a better solution.
The defense establishment is beginning to understand that it is better to redeploy. We need the world, including the Arab world. Several think tanks are thoroughly studying the insertion of a force of this type.
The road to the Arab world will require Israel to treat itself like a country that is not a world power and not one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, but rather a regional or a local power. It was that road that led to Israel’s previous victories. We must not give it up. We are getting closer to a situation in which if we do not act, Abbas will invoke his no-partner thesis.
The writer was a political adviser in the Defense Ministry, responsible for the Palestinians’ “fabric of life”
Gilad Shalit video from Hamas pushes for release deal: Haaretz
Israel condemns animated clip depicting father of captured soldier waiting in vain for his release
Hamas has produced an unusually sophisticated animated film apparently pressing for a deal that would bring about the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza nearly four years ago.
The Israeli government reacted angrily to the film, describing it as “deplorable” and blamed Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, for the failure to agree a deal for the release of Shalit, who was captured in June 2006. He is alive and believed to be held somewhere in Gaza.
The three-minute film depicts Shalit’s father, Noam, walking empty streets clutching a photograph of his captured son. He passes advertising hoardings that show several Israeli leaders promising to arrange Shalit’s release and then finds a newspaper discarded in a rubbish bin showing on its front page a $50m reward for information on his son’s case.
As time passes without his son’s release Shalit’s father grows old, with a beard and a cane. Eventually the soldier is returned, delivered in a coffin draped in the Israeli flag at the Erez checkpoint at the entrance to Gaza. Shalit’s father then wakes up from his dream to find himself sitting at a bus stop. The words “There is still hope” appear in Hebrew and English.
It is the latest product of an increasingly sophisticated Hamas media operation, including a movie studio of sorts on the site of a former Jewish settlement in Gaza.
The animation was broadcast on Israeli television to an audience that is by now familiar with Noam Shalit, the dignified father who has long campaigned for his son’s release and has urged both Israel and Hamas to make a deal.
In a statement, Noam Shalit dismissed the film as “psychological warfare”.
“Hamas leaders would do better if instead of producing films and performances, they would worry about the real interests of the Palestinian prisoners and the ordinary citizens of Gaza who have been held hostage by their leaders for a long time,” he said.
A deal between Israel and Hamas, negotiated by German intelligence officials, appeared close at the end of last year but fell through at the last minute. Each side blamed the other. Hamas was to release Shalit and in return Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. About 6,600 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, more than 200 of them without charge.
Shalit was last seen in a video released by his captors in October. He appeared tired but unhurt.
Last week the Israeli authorities allowed the daughter of a Hamas interior minister, Fathi Hamad, to leave Gaza through Israel to reach a hospital in Jordan for urgent medical treatment. She was allowed out reportedly after the intervention of the Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah.
In a separate incident on Sunday night Israeli troops killed a Hamas militant in Hebron on the occupied West Bank. Ali Swaiti was suspected of shooting dead an Israeli border policeman in 2004. The Israeli military said Swaiti was killed when he refused to surrender.
Why does the IDF allow officers to live in illegal outposts?: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
The death of Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was killed in an action in an operation in the Gaza Strip, brought the Givat Hayovel saga back into the spotlight.
As in the story of the heroism of his neighbor in the illegal outpost in the settlement of Eli, Roi Klein, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War while saving his troops, his settler friends and his patrons on the right have enlisted the Peretz family’s tragedy in the fight to save his widow’s home from demolition.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was required to inform the High Court of Justice by May 1 of last year about when he intends to demolish the houses in the outpost (which Palestinians claim is built on private land). He has now announced he will ask the court to postpone the execution of the order.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the officers’ supreme commander, has also promised to lend a hand. Even the left-wing Peace Now movement has evinced the appropriate sensitivity and has agreed to cooperate.
Strangely, in all this no one has wondered how it is possible that the IDF, the body charged with imposing the law on the West Bank, never lifted a finger against its officers who settled in an illegal outpost in the first place.
Moreover, how can an officer in the career army who breaks the law and ignores a court order serve as a model for his soldiers? How should a private deal with an order to evacuate an illegal outpost from a colonel who has made his home in a similar community? And what can anyone expect of an officer who is squatting on property when his commander, who is himself a squatter, orders him to evacuate his own home?
After it emerged that dozens of career army officers are living in outposts, I sent these questions to the military spokesman. I wanted to know what the army’s policy is with regard to officers who are living in outposts.
After a thorough clarification, according to the spokesman, with the Military Advocate General’s Office, he sent the following response:
“In the unapproved outposts, for many years now thousands of citizens have been living, among them state employees including army people. As of today, to the best of our knowledge, there exists no general policy concerning state employees, including military people, living in the outposts.”
Obviously the absence of a policy means a policy of tacit agreement. When they are in uniform, the officers are charged with enforcing the law. When they take off their uniforms, they are breaking the law.
The military prosecutor’s acceptance of this phenomenon shows something about the special relations that have developed in recent years between the cat and the cream.
Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, a specialist on military and constitutional law, was also surprised to hear the IDF’s response. The absence of a policy with respect to officers living in illegal outposts, he said, is blatantly unreasonable and also encourages the phenomenon.
“The IDF is the sovereign and charged with enforcing the law in the territories,” explained Kremnitzer, who in the past was a military judge. “Therefore, the army must have an unambiguous policy against breaking the law in those territories.”
According to him, it is impossible to be a member of an organization responsible for the rule of law and to break the law without that having a negative effect on the organization’s status. Kremnitzer says the IDF has a clear policy concerning members’ conduct even when they are not in uniform.
The Civil Administration has responded that none of their people live in an outpost and they do not accept lawbreakers into their ranks.
Four years ago the police investigations department summoned a police officer who had built a house in the Mitzpeh Yair outpost in the southern Hebron Hills. After it was made clear to him that he had to decide on which side of the law he chose to stand, the officer called a moving company.
A police spokesman said that in the wake of this, a policy was established to the effect that a lawman cannot live in an illegal outpost.
The Shin Bet, which is also charged with enforcing the law and security in the territories, told Haaretz that it is not their intention to answer the question of their policy with regard to their people settling in outposts.
How much do they really love Zion?
Before Independence Day, the Emek Yezreel College commissioned a survey of the attitude of young Jewish Israelis (Hebrew-speakers aged 20 to 30) toward the national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
A large majority (82 percent) reported they know how to recite the anthem in full. Another 17 percent said they know just part of it and about only 1 percent admitted they don’t know the words to the national anthem at all.
A larger majority (85 percent) said the anthem represents them to large or very large extent.
Prominent among those who said the anthem does not represent them were people with low incomes (8 percent) and religious respondents (11 percent), as compared to 2 to 3 percent among people with average and high incomes and 1 percent among people who define themselves as traditional.
The vast majority of the respondents are interested in keeping the national anthem as it is; only 14 percent would prefer to replace it or modify it.
The initiator of the survey, Dr. Ruth Amir, head of the interdisciplinary studies department at the college, asked the Teleseker company to examine the percentage of Israelis who would be prepared to leave the country and move to the United States to live if they were able to obtain a residence visa quickly and easily.
The finding revealed a considerable gap between the “yearning Jewish soul” in the anthem and the desire for a green card. No less than 60 percent at all income levels responded in that they would take off if given the chance.
The title Amir chose for her study: “I love you, homeland, but I want to leave.”