EX CHIEFS OF ISRAEL SECURITY CALL FOR PEACE WITH PALESTINIANS
Paris, IPS
15th of Nov
PARIS, 15 Nov. (IPS) As the Turkish 30.000 to 35.000 Jewish community was hit Saturday by a devastating bomb explosion carried out by islamist terrorist fundamentalists, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service warned of a "catastrophe" if a peace deal is not reached with the Palestinians.
Two Jewish synagogues, one of them the historic Neve Shalom, were targets of car bombs almost simultaneously, killing a total of 23 people and wounding some 300 others, most of them ordinary Turkish passer by or neighbours.
The cars exploded by remote control device as hundreds of Jews were praying inside the synagogues on the shabat.
Though a little known islamist extremist group, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders,-- widely believed to be backed by Iran -- claimed responsibility for the twin attacks, but senior Turkish, Israel and European experts immediately pointed out at "well-organised’ terrorist organisations, possibly al-Qa’eda or affiliated groups.
Turkish officials said al-Qa’eda might have had a hand in the blasts. "This is a terrorist event with international links", Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Abdullah Gul said as emergency services struggled to treat the victims.
One of the largest and strongest of Muslim nations, Turkey has close military, security and intelligence cooperation with the Jewish State and for this reason is the subject of harsh criticism from its two major neighbours, the Islamic Republic and Syria, but also other Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan that have also diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv.
Though the present Turkish government is Islam-based, yet Prime Minister Recep Teyyeb Erdogan has kept its ties with Israel.
The terrorist operation was immediately condemned by most Western leaders, with French President Jacques Chirac calling on the international community to take "stern measures" to combat terrorism, but there were few words of condemnation in the Muslim and Arab world.
Meanwhile, Yaakov Perry, a former Head of Israel security service told the mass-circulation daily "Yedioth Ahronoth" that "if nothing happens and we go on living by the sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and destroy ourselves".
According to the influential daily "Haaretz", Perry’s warning reflects a consensus among his three colleagues – Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom and Carmi Gillon.
The four said that Israel need to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip even if it entails an inevitable clash with the settlers.
"The only way forward was for Israel to take unilateral steps, such as withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. Doing so could help draw the Palestinians to peace talks, minimize terror and help Israel improve economically. It would also raise Israel's status in the eyes of the world", Perry latter told Israel Radio.
"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", said Perry, who headed the agency for seven years, including during the 1987-1993 intifada. If Israel fails to take such steps, he said, it would remain under a constant threat of terror.
He was joined by Ayalon, a left-leaning former general who directed the Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000, urging the government to act unilaterally and pull troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, a position, which Peri told the newspaper he also supported.
"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 was quoted by the same Yedioth Ahoronoth newspaper.
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.
Shalom, who served as Shin Bet head from 1980 to 1986 and is the veteran of the group, 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 behaviour is the result of the occupation", Shalom told the newspaper.
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.
"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, quoted by Haaretz.
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.
But 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.
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Nov-2003/israel_palestine_151103.htm