- "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.
-
- 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 Israelâs
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.
-
- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/360916.html
-
-
-
- Comment
- From Jim Mortellaro
- 11-15-3
-
- There was a story in a long ago science fiction novel
about a planet which was thought to be the ideal place for mankind to inhabit.
Luxurious, with magnificent weather, trees and plants which provided healthful
and delicious nutrition. It was almost perfect for man.
-
- Once mankind arrived on the planet, strange things began
to occur. They were quite bizarre. Plants, Animals and Climate changed.
And it changed for the worse. Day by day, week by week, the planet reacted
against the intruders which were human. Men, women and children were attacked
by animals which had been friendly and gentle. Plants suddenly became poisonous.
People began to die and in great numbers. It was almost as if the planet
were rejecting something foreign to itself; as if we were a virus which
had to be illuminated. And it was the planet which was rejecting that virus.
-
- Of course the men reacted powerfully against the attacks
on them, their women and children. They developed weapons which jumped
into their hands and led the target without the men having to point and
aim. As time passed, the weapons became smarter. But so did the planet's
violence against man, become more powerful. Smarter.
-
- It appeared to be a no-win scenario for both sides. Each
time the planet developed a new way to kill men, the men developed a newer
way to protect themselves and kill better, faster, smarter ... cleaner.
-
- This went on for decades until finally, the hero came
onto the scene. A man who did not take a long time at all, to recognize
what was happening. Like an old StarTrek story line, the planet was reacting
to man's violent nature by evolving rapidly to protect itself. And men
did the same.
-
- The violence subsided only when man learned to suppress
his violent nature. Then the planet went back to normal and everyone lived
happily ever after. See, they learned to live with each other.
-
- "The moral of this story, the moral of this song,
is that one should never be, where one does not belong."
-
- Bob Dylan wrote that.
-
- Until and unless we learn to suppress our violent nature;
until and unless we learn to stop hating; until and unless we begin to
see each other as brothers and sisters ... until then, we will continue
to fight and kill. And no one may solve the problem of hatred except those
who hate.
-
- I wrote that.
-
- Jim Mortellaro
-
- "All truth passes through three stages. First, it
is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted
as self-evident." --Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
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