Since the criticism, last Friday, by a key secret service official of the right-wing Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his wishy washy Labourite defence minister, Ehud Barak, the Israeli establishment appears to be in a serious state of disarray.
Another prominent Israeli casualty has been Tzipi Livni, the former leader of the Kadima Party who, last month, lost her party’s chairmanship to Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army.
She followed that surprising result by announcing her resignation this week from the Knesset, in the wake of the recent damaging charges against Netanyahu and Barak, both seen as “messianic” by Yuval Diskin, considered an “outstanding” head for the last six years of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service.
“Israel is on a volcano, the international clock is ticking, and the existence of a Jewish, democratic state is in mortal danger,” she declared.
“The real danger is a politics that buries its head in the sand,” she said, adding that it didn’t “take a Shin Bet chief to know that” –– a reference to the recent comments made by Diskin on Israel’s policy on Iran and Middle East peace. She stressed that there’s an urgent need to reach “a permanent agreement with the Palestinians as well as with the Arab world”.
The outspoken Diskin hit the nail on the head when he declared: “Forget about the stories (Netanyahu and Barak) are selling you that Abu Mazen [the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas] doesn’t want to talk. They’re not talking to the Palestinians because this government has no interest in talking to the Palestinians.”
According to the liberal Israeli paper, Haaretz, “Diskin’s comments peel off the government’s mask — that it’s constantly striving for peace but coming up against opposition from the other side”.
The former security service chief then turned his guns on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli rule, numbering more than 1.5 million.
“Israel has become more and more racist in the past 15 years,” he underlined.
The paper’s headline read: “Israel should listen to former Shin Bet chief Diskin”.
Equally shocking has been Diskin’s evaluation of Israel’s fracas about Iran’s nuclear potential. Here, too, the recently retired Israeli security chief accused the Israeli government of “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an Israeli aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — a development that could definitely drag the United States into this endless turmoil. In short, he declared that he had “no faith” in the ability of the current Israeli leadership to handle the Iranian nuclear threat.
“I do not believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” Diskin said.
“I have observed them from up close. I fear very much that these are not the people I’d want at the wheel.”
Diskin’s loud salvos echoed similar views by Meir Dagan, the former chief of the Mossad spy agency, and Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the current head of the Israeli army who reportedly had misgivings about “the effectiveness of sanctions and the rationality of the Iranian government”.
The political uproar in Israel over the Israeli government’s unsuccessful policies vis-à-vis the Iranians and/or the Palestinians was also the focus of the first-ever conference hosted by The Jerusalem Post in New York City, attended by over 1,000 individuals, mostly American Jews. (This step ought to be replicated by Arab Americans or Arab publications, to bring Arab views to the American people.)
The key speaker at the conference was former prime minister Ehud Olmert who was joined by other “luminaries”, as the Post put it, from Israel’s diplomatic and military corps, as well as several right-wing supporters. At one point, Olmert said he did not understand why former president George W. Bush, who wanted to divide Jerusalem and spoke of the 1967 lines, was considered a friend of Israel, while Obama was viewed as the enemy, pointing out that Obama did not cut defence aid to Israel despite the US economic crisis. But when Olmert spoke passionately in favour of a two-state solution, the Post reported that he drew ire from the assembled crowd.
The bottom line of these two developments is that there is general agreement in Washington, as The New York Times put it, that “American officials and outside analysts now believe that the chances of war in the near future have significantly decreased”.
But there was no indication anywhere on whether there will be any movement when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, probably because the US is in the midst of a presidential election and Israel may soon be having a national election, in view of the serious dissension within its ranks.
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