http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B96BD51C-1F92-4869-BF64-E89F55FD0F53.htm
Ex-Mossad chief says Hamas cannot win
By Christopher True
Saturday 14 October 2006, 12:42 Makka Time, 9:42 GMT
Halevy: Europe faces profound challenges from its Muslims
Efraim Halevy was head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence and special
operations agency, from 1998 to 2002. On leaving he assumed the role of
national security adviser to Ariel Sharon, Israel's former prime minister,
resigning a year later.
He played a significant role in negotiating Israel's peace deal with King
Hussein of Jordan, the bringing of Ethiopian Jews to Israel and Israel's
response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
In the second instalment of a two-part interview he discusses his views on
Palestine, the Middle East road map, Hamas and Iran's nuclear programme.
Halevy is currently head of the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Man in the Shadows: Inside the Middle
East Crisis with a Man who led the Mossad was published in March 2006.
Aljazeera.net: You have said that the world should take Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
desire to annihilate Israel seriously. Given the international community's
apparent inability to agree on how to handle the situation, can you see a
long-term failure to act ending up with the US, and perhaps Israel, taking
military action in the form of a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities?
Efraim Halevy: I indeed think that Israel and the world as a whole should take
the threat of President Ahmedinejad of Iran very seriously. I am gratified to
see that this is how the world is indeed approaching this defiant position of
Iran which is flouting international decisions, hitherto with impunity.
I do not think that meeting threats with counter-threats is a useful way of
making progress on this delicate issue. Iran has just suffered a very serious
setback in Lebanon: its quarter of a century investment has been virtually
destroyed; its proxy badly mauled; its strategic missiles supplied to the
Hezbollah wiped out in the first 48 hours of the war; and its frantic calls for
a ceasefire rejected until UNSC resolution 1701 was unanimously approved in the
face of its strong objections.
There are many ways whereby Iran's designs can be foiled and Iran's responsible
leaders would do well to ponder the results of this recent round.
Maziar Bahari, a prominent Iranian journalist and cinema producer, writing from
Tehran on 24th August, had this to say in the concluding lines of an article
published in the New York Times of that day: "The bearded men in the saunas
must be sweating more than usual, even though in public they toast Hezbollah's
'victory' with glasses of pomegranate juice. The Islamic Republic is coming to
the point where it has to choose: destroy itself by repeating the same slogans,
or come up with new definitions for itself, its friends and foes." I could not
state this in better words.
Has Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip been a success?
I do not think that the withdrawal from Gaza has been a success. The notion
that left to their own with all the territory of Gaza restored to the
Palestinians, they would create a viable responsible governmental leadership
has not come about. Instead, the Palestinians have maintained their steady
rocket firing into Israel territory and have resorted to massive smuggling of
tonnes of weaponry into the Gaza strip. The Hamas government is refusing to
meet basic international standards of conduct and therefore the future is not
at all hopeful.
Should Israel repeat the process in the West Bank?
In the light of the above, I do not think Israel should repeat the Gaza
withdrawal in the West Bank.
You have not ruled out an accommodation with Hamas over the West Bank and say
that Hamas is still deciding what direction it wants to take on peace talks.
What would be your strategy if you were leading Hamas?
In recent weeks Hamas has unfortunately taken a direction that is leading to
the possibility of renewed hostilities and confrontation. The local leadership
has bowed to the dictates of the exile group in Damascus and, as a result, the
unity government that Abu Mazen, the Palestinian president, has been striving
to create has little chance of getting off the ground. Hamas has reached the
point where it is forgoing a golden opportunity to establish itself as a
responsible and credible leadership, and it will fail dismally in improving the
lot of the Palestinians in the streets of Gaza, Ramallah and elsewhere.
Hamas is rapidly reaching the stage where it will be publicly denounced as a
failed leadership and this could spell added disaster to the Palestinian
people. I held a minority opinion in Israel that we should try and "do
business" with Hamas; it now appears that Hamas does not wish to act as a
government but to continue with the "armed struggle". This struggle they cannot
and will not win.
You have been extremely critical of the Middle East road map, stating that it
takes the final responsibility for a peace deal out of Israel's hands, and that
it would involve Israel and the Palestinians moving directly to a final peace
treaty, whereas you would prefer an interim agreement so that both two sides
can get used to the idea of co-existence. In the long term, perhaps with
lobbying of the US, do you feel Israel can disentangle itself from the road map?
I think that the road map has become a relic of the past. I never thought it
was feasible and now that the Palestinian leadership is disintegrating before
our eyes, the roadmap is finally no longer relevant.
In the final pages of your book, you pose the possibility of an accommodation
with Hamas and Hezbollah in which these groups could help engage and counter
al-Qaeda. How serious are you about this?
The future of movements like Hamas and Hezbollah is unavoidably linked to the
outcome of the third world war now raging between International Sunnite Terror
and the world at large. This monumental struggle finds al-Qaeda in Iraq not
only fighting against the coalition presence in Baghdad led by the United
States of America but also against the Shia majority in that country. Al-Qaeda
has attempted to spread its patronage over Hamas and Hezbollah and has tried to
move into the entrails of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has listed
Israel as one of its targets and sees it on par with Arab "infidel" leaderships
throughout the Middle East.
In the depth of their hearts, the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah fully realise
that in the designs of al-Qaeda they have no place. There can be no true
permanent partnership between the land-based movements of Lebanon and Palestine
and the internationally orientated movement of al-Qaeda. The Iranians
experienced this when ten of their best intelligence officers were killed in
Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan in September 1998, three years before
the September 2001 attacks, by the Taliban. Hamas and Hezbollah must know that
as far as al-Qaeda is concerned, they are outside the camp. If they do not find
ways of accommodating with the anti-terrorist forces of al-Qaeda, their
ultimate fate is sealed.
In your book you talk about an almost complete absence of professional
initiatives from the political policy-making level and how you became more and
more emboldened in promoting your own ideas and course of action. You state
that you were the main driver behind the creation of an alternative leadership
to Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian Authority, which you described as
"certainly the first time that such a concept was proposed to the political
level in Israel by an intelligence chief". Do you feel in a democratic society
that it is the role of intelligence to dictate such policies?
I think that in a democratic society it is the duty of all office holders in
government administrations to be active and productive in analysing situations
and proposing plans of action. As stated in your question, I related in my book
the process whereby I proposed a line of action to my political master. This is
exactly what my duty was. It was for me to propose and for him to decide if he
wished to adopt my ideas. There was no element of dictation here at all.
You recently said that "by the middle of the century major cities in Germany
will have a Muslim majority and so will many federations in Russia". What do
you see as the potential implications of such a development? I understand you
have made analogies with Arab-Israelis.
I see no analogy between the growing situation in Europe and that in Israel.
There is a steady influx of Muslims from a variety of countries into Europe and
the estimates concerning Europe are those of UN census officials. I think that
the situation in Israel will remain stable and the Jewish majority is assured.
I believe that the challenge that the Muslim communities in Europe will pose to
the future of European society and culture will be profound and the leadership
in Europe will have no escape from facing these dilemmas. I do not think it
possible to forecast the outcome of this cultural and social confrontation. I
have dwelt on these themes in my book.
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