Shin Bet ex-chiefs speak out

Four retired chiefs of Israel’s fearsome and ultra-repressive Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency have now added their voices to those in Israel calling for more reliance on realistic diplomacy with the Palestinians, and less reliance on brute force.
This speak-out is very important, since the Shin Bet plays a major role in administering the harsh control system that the Israeli authorities maintain over the three million Palestinian residents of the occupied West bank and Gaza. It also comes just two weeks after Israel’s highest-ranking military officer, IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, also publicly urged the government to ease up on the harsh administrative violence (my term, that) that it imposes on the Palestinians.
It seems the four Shin Bet veterans spoke together to one or more reporters for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. One key quote picked up and highlighted by the WaPo in its front-page story today was this, from Avraham Shalom (SB head, 1980-86):

We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully… Yes, there is no other word for it: disgracefully.

The group spoke out forcefully against the Sharon government’s long-sustained attempt to marginalize Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
(Arafat, it should be noted was democratically elected by the Palestinians of the occupied territories in 1996 in the only territories-wide elections the Palestinians there have ever been allowed to hold under Israel’s now 37-year-long military occupation. Those elections were deemed free and fair by US and other election monitors. If they were repeated today, he would once again win. Sharon, of course, would prefer a Quisling figure to “negotiate” with, but hasn’t found one yet.)
The WaPo piece, by Mollly Moore, reported of the SB veterans as follows:

The group was particularly critical of Sharon’s attempt to sideline Arafat and declare him “irrelevant” — also a key tenet of President Bush’s Middle East policy.
“It was the mother of all errors with regard to Arafat,” said Shalom, who has worked as an international business consultant since leaving the government. “We cannot determine who will have the greatest influence over there. So let us look at the Palestinians’ political map, and it is a fact that nothing can happen without Arafat.”

The group also criticized Sharon’s insistence that all Palestinian violence should stop before the Israelis even consider moving toward a negotited settlement. They called for Israel to make the “painful concessions” needed for a permanent peace– and to do so unilaterally, if necessary.
Those concessions, they said, should include evacuating at least some of the Jews-only settlements Israel has (quite illegally) planted inside the occupied territories. They did not specify how many of the roughly 400,000 settlers should be taken back to Israel’s own land.
Moore reported that “several” of the former chiefs also criticized the massive barrier that israel is building in and around several key areas of the West Bank. Once again, Shalom seemed notably outspoken on this, saying:

It creates hatred, it expropriates land and annexes hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the state of Israel. The result is that the fence achieves the exact opposite of what was intended.

In addition to Shalom, those who participated were Yaakov Peri (SB chief 1988-95), Carmi Gillon (1995-96), and Ami Ayalon (1996-2000).
To me, the participation of Ayalon is not at all surprising. He has also been publicly engaged in a very forward-looking joint project with Al-Quds University President sari Nuseibeh to gather signatures from both Israelis and Palestinians in support of a statement calling for “two states for two peoples” with a shared Jerusalem, etc etc.
Nor is the participation of Peri totally surprising, since I think I’ve seen his name associated with some previous faintly pro-peace moves.
That of Carmi Gillon surprised me a lot, however. Isn’t he the person behind the creation of “Memri”, a very intelligent but very skewed attempt to “explain” to westerners that most Arabs are anti-Semites and can’t be trusted? If that is the same person, then perhaps he should look to changing the basically inflammatory and blood-libellous slant of “Memri”. On the other hand, if it IS the same person, it is also really great to see people changing their minds and their public positions in the light of overwhelming physicial and moral facts.
What bugs me, as a taxpaying US citizen is why our President and Members of Congress are still so far from speaking these same kind of home truths (and, let me add, backing such words with a smart reallocation of US economic incentives.)
Since when did one side in a conflict get to veto the leader legally elected by members of the “other” side? Where would we be if the Palestinians and Arabs all went from saying “We don’t like Sharon” (which is probably true) to saying “Because we don’t like him we refuse to negotiate with him”?
Sharon’s insistence on marginalizing Arafat has been outrageous, all along. But instead of simply telling him that, and reminding him of the old home truth that “You don’t make peace with your friends– you make peace with your enemies!”– the US administration and nearly every single member of Congress has just indulged Sharon and gone along with his bullying attempt to tell the Palestinians who can and who cannot represent them.
Well, at least now Prez Bush has said he’s for full democracy in the Middle East. That’s a relief! Now, maybe, he can “persuade” Sharon to let the Palestinians make their own choice about who gets to lead and represent them?
What do you think? Is it about to happen? Hey, I’m sitting on the edge of my chair here…
Actually, what all of us who are US citizens can and should do is write our representatives, enclose a copy of Moore’s article, and tell our representatives that democracy and true representativity for the Palestinians, fair and balanced negotiations on the Palestinians’ many claims, and the committed use of US aid dollars to promote a just and sustainable outcome, is the only way forward.