More Israelis are protesting against occupying the Palestinians’ land

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, November 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Four former heads of the Israeli Shin Beth interior security services warned in interviews published Friday, November 14, of the "disastrous" consequences of Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In the interviews with the top-selling Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot Friday, the four men accused the successive Israeli governments of carrying a large part of the blame for the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock and called for dismantling Jewish settlements.

The four men called for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and dismantle Jewish settlements, or face "disaster," according to the BBC online news service.

"We are heading straight to disaster if we do not give up Greater Israel," said Avraham Shalom in reference to the expansionist project of a far-right fringe in Israel who wants the Jewish state to stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Shalom, who headed the Shin Beth between 1980 and 1986, also predicted imminent disaster if "we do not recognize once and for all that there is another people which is suffering and towards which we are behaving shamefully."

"We are humiliating the Palestinians and they cannot tolerate it, just like we could not tolerate it if we were in their position, while we are incapable of making the slightest move to change this situation," Shalom added.

Shalom called the Israeli 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 was quoted by English daily Ha’aretz as telling Yediot.

Three of his successors were also interviewed by Yediot: Yaacov Peri (1988-1995), Karmi Gilon (1995-1996) and Ami Ayalon (1996-2000).

"We are sinking deeper each day into a bloody quagmire and are paying an increasingly heavy economic and international price," said Peri.

He demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the dismantling of wildcat settlements in the West Bank.

"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," Peri added.

For his part, Gilon emphasized that the Israeli government will not be able to indefinitely put off a direct confrontation with hard-line Jewish settlers living in the Palestinian territories.

Ayalon reckoned that only 10 to 15 percent of settlers living in the occupied territories would use force to oppose a dismantling and that their resistance would not be an insurmountable problem if "the government was resolute on breaking them."

“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,” according to Ha’aretz.

"It is dealing solely with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack," Gillon was quoted by Ha’aretz as saying, referring to Palestinian bombings (and other resistance attacks). "It [ignores] the question of how we get out of the mess we find ourselves in today."

He also slammed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government for dismissing the so-called Geneva initiative, an informal peace plan drawn up by prominent figures from each side, so promptly.

Speaking to public radio Friday, Peri said that "in the end Israel will have no other choice but to withdraw from all the territories" conquered in June 1967 and accept "to share Jerusalem", whose Arab sector was annexed the same year.

Ayalon and Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh recently launched a petition aimed at providing a framework for a future peace agreement and which has already received 100,000 Israeli and 60,000 Palestinian signatures.

The position of the four men is in stark contrast with the policy advocated by current Shin Beth chief Avi Dichter, who opposes easing the pressure on the Palestinian population.