You said that the second existential threat to Israel was the nuclearization of the Middle East.
"If a hostile state acquires nuclear weapons, that will have three implications. First, it will be able to use them against Israel. Second, it will be able to make use of biological and chemical weapons without fear, in spheres where we have so far achieved deterrence. Third, under a nuclear umbrella, a hostile state will certainly also dare to act in additional - conventional - areas. The appearance of hostile nuclear weapons will also violate the balance that exists today in the region between moderates and radicals."
Is your conclusion that Israel should adopt the Begin doctrine of using operational force in order to prevent hostile states from going nuclear?
"I will not go into that."
Let me put it another way: Is it in Israel's supreme interest to prevent hostile nuclearization in any way?
"Yes. Unequivocally. All efforts have to be made so that no hostile state will achieve nuclear capability."
Are you not concerned about the possibility that in the event of an American attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein will attack Israel with nonconventional weapons?
"If Iraq feels its survival is under threat, it may definitely want to demonstrate force against Israel along the lines of `Let me die with the Philistines.' However, Iraq's capabilities are shallow compared to what they were in the Gulf War. They are not capabilities that give me sleepless nights."
Iraq today does not constitute an existential threat to Israel?
"No. Obviously, we have to prepare for the possibility that they will launch a missile or a plane. But we have good answers to that threat, and the threat itself is limited. It might be unpleasant, but not terrible."
And the situation on the northern border, where Hezbollah has deployed thousands of rockets, doesn't disturb you either?
"The situation in the north cannot not be disturbing. But Israel will never say die. The problem there is less severe than in the Palestinian arena."
Is the threat from the north more serious or less serious than it was before the withdrawal from southern Lebanon?
"The potential that exists today in Lebanon is far graver than it was in the period when we were in the security zone [an Israeli-controlled strip on the Lebanese side of the border]. Hezbollah, together with the Syrians and the Iranians, has created a strategic threat to the north of the country, which consists of a combination of rockets of various types and various ranges that are threatening Israeli population centers in the north."
How tangible is that threat?
"If the Hezbollah potential is unleashed against us and we meet it with an appropriate response, it is possible that the response will, in fact, have the effect of strengthening Israel's deterrent capability. If it is unleashed and our response is inadequate, it will hurt us. So, if the threat materialized, we will have to exact a heavy price from those who are responsible for its development."
Who are they?
"First of all Syria, then Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Iranians in Lebanon."
What you are saying, then, is that if there is a significant rocket and Katyusha rocket attack from Lebanon, we will have to react against all those parties?
"We have to confront them with a price that will make the realization of the potential not worthwhile: not for them and not for anyone who is thinking about using similar weapons against Israel in the future."
But isn't it the case that a reaction of that kind could bring about a general deterioration in the north?
"What is a general deterioration? There will be a certain period - not very long - in which we will have to learn to be on the receiving end, but then immediately to set a price that will make them understand that it is not worthwhile. All told, we have a crushing answer to Hezbollah. And if the Syrians try to take us on in the field of army versus army, we have a crushing answer to that, too - they know it and that's what deters them. Therefore, I do not think that a confrontation in the north is inevitable. But if they decide to escalate, we will be obliged to exact a very heavy price from all the bodies I mentioned."
Is Bashar Assad really more adventurous than his father was?
"As the Arabs wrestled with the problem between agreements and the armed struggle, Hafez Assad sat on the fence with both his legs and both his hands in the direction of a settlement. Bashar Assad is sitting on the same fence with both his legs and both his hands on the side of the armed struggle. There is a dramatic difference between the father and his son."
Does that mean that Syria is turning toward confrontation with Israel?
"Syria is turning toward support for terrorism. It is not interested in an army versus army clash - under no circumstances. Part of the difference between Bashar Assad and his father is due to the fact that Bashar's formative experience is not the military defeats of 1967 and 1973, which his father experienced personally. Bashar's formative experience is the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which occurred shortly after he assumed power. His conclusion from that was that terrorism is victorious.
"Bashar Assad understands our advantage in the face of his army, but he sees a possibility of vanquishing Israel by means of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. As a result, he is daring to do things that his father never dared: He is arming Hezbollah and directly supporting Palestinian terrorist organizations. Recently, as a result of Operation Defensive Shield and the effects of September 11, he is showing signs of restraint, but the element of risk he embodies is far higher than it was in Hafez Assad."
Strategic Achilles heel
Do you think the withdrawal from Lebanon was a mistake?
"Leaving Lebanon was a matter of time. The question was when and how to leave. We have to investigate this: Was the timing of the departure correct when we knew that the process with the Palestinians would be completed in September 2000, or should we have restrained ourselves for another half a year? It is also right to ask whether there was a way to execute the withdrawal in a manner that would not strengthen Hezbollah and the Iranians. Today the withdrawal from Lebanon is perceived in the region as the major success of the export of the Islamic revolution. That is why it has a strategic price. It had implications for the Palestinian arena and in the long run, it also has implications with regard to the Syrians. It greatly reinforces the theory of the spider web."
Why do you attribute such a decisive weight to this perception?
"After the Six-Day War, we succeeded in burning into the regional consciousness the fact that it is impossible to destroy Israel by military means. Our ability to withstand the harsh opening conditions of the Yom Kippur War only reinforced that regional impression. That was the root of the tendency toward settlements with Israel - the peace with Egypt and the peace with Jordan.
"However, since our first withdrawals from Lebanon after Operation Peace for Galilee [the official name of the 1982 Lebanon War], that accomplishment was increasingly eroded. For nearly 20 years, the feeling developed in the Middle East that even though the Israeli army is strong, the unwillingness of the Israeli society to make sacrifices is creating a strategic Achilles' heel.
"That perception affected all the process of armament and the military and terrorist thinking in the region. The conclusion was that because it is impossible to cope with the Israel Defense Forces, ways have to be found to get around its might in order to strike directly at Israeli society, which is incapable of absorbing casualties. Hence the emphasis on surface-to-surface missiles and hence also the emphasis on terrorism. The assumption was that a direct strike at Israeli society would set processes in motion. And it worked.
"That is what happened, first in 1983-1984, and then in the Jibril deal [the exchange, in May 1985 - following negotiations with Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command - of three Israelis taken prisoner in the Lebanon War, for 1,150 terrorists who were imprisoned in Israel], and then in what was interpreted as Israel's bending in the face of the stones and terrorism of the intifada. It continued after Oslo and South Lebanon, when it appeared that Israel was unable to bear a situation of 20 to 30 [army] deaths a year.
"Therefore, in terms of the person who is supposed to provide security, I can say that whereas in the sphere of army versus army, and in the nonconventional sphere, we created effective deterrence, we did not succeed in creating that kind of deterrence in the face of the surface-to-surface rockets or terrorism. Israeli society was marked by many in the region as a target which, if struck at, could bring about Israel's capitulation."
Blaming the media
Some people say that you have become right-wing.
"One of the problems that is making our public debate shallow is the tendency to label people and not listen to them. Personally, I see myself as a Jew, an Israeli, a humanist, a liberal, a democrat and a seeker of peace and security. But I know that I am facing a cruel reality and that I have to defend myself. In the face of cancer, one has to defend oneself. It worries me that when it comes to the Palestinian question, people here are constantly going back to the argument about the narrative and the diagnosis. Despite everything that has happened, people are still arguing about the diagnosis. And without agreeing on the diagnosis, there is no chance that the prognosis will be correct."
Do you see in Israel, over the past decade, that people are locking themselves into a conception the way they were on the eve of the Yom Kippur War 29 years ago?
"I think the problem of the conception is far more severe today. There is a deep psychological problem here: Because it is difficult for people to apprehend a reality that they do not control, it is more convenient to blame the Israeli side. Or the army. Or the chief of staff. Or whoever is reporting to them that the reality is not exactly the way they would like it to be. In addition, there are people for whom the conception has become their whole world, so they entrench themselves in it and refuse to let it go.
"I have to say that I am concerned about the part played by the media in creating this conception. Before the Yom Kippur War, the media were less investigative and more engaged. Today, the media seem to be investigative, open and safeguarding democracy, yet they are nevertheless part of the conception. Even though they are seemingly not engaged, the media had a major part in building the conception. They led the process."
Were there years in which you felt alone because of the gap between your perception of reality and the perception of the media, the political echelon and a large part of the public in Israel?
"I don't want to praise myself unduly. I only punctuated Arafat's intentions with an exclamation mark a month after the Sharm el-Sheikh conference - a month after the outbreak of the present confrontation. Before that, since August 1995, I had thought only in terms of question marks. But I remember that when I appeared before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the beginning of October 2000, people asked me whether the peak of the confrontation was already behind us. Suddenly, I understood the gap that exists between the world I live in and the world they live in. Because, since November 1999, I saw the confrontation taking on flesh and bones and I tried to prepare for it.
"I also remember a meeting with a group of American researchers in July 2000, in which I said that we are headed for war, and I saw from the look in their eyes that my interlocutors thought I had gone out of my mind. They looked at me and listened to me and thought I was a warmongering general who doesn't know what he's talking about. But it's not just a matter of being alone. Sometimes it's worse. You stand and try to contain [the other side], but they are shooting at you from all directions, and people from your side come and undermine you. Absolutely undermine you. That is frustrating. Very frustrating. Sometimes it drives me crazy."
Can you give me an example of some particular thing that drives you crazy?
"The incident of Salah Shehadeh was a tragic event in the context of harming innocent people [referring to the death of 15 civilians, many of them children, when a one-ton bomb was dropped on a building in Gaza in order to kill Shehadeh, a top Hamas activist]. There is no question of that. There was a hitch here, a serious hitch, and that is something that must not be allowed to happen to us. But to come and say that the attack on Shehadeh torpedoed a cease-fire that was supposed to come into effect is to take half-truths and build a lying narrative out of them. Simply lying.
"There was a discussion about a cease-fire, I don't deny that. But it was decided in the negative by Hamas on July 15, a week before the bombing. It was decided in the negative by the Tanzim four days before the bombing. The decision of the Palestinians was not to embark on a cease-fire, because they understood that Arafat didn't want it. Whereas here, a story was built up to the effect that the army torpedoed a cease-fire, and those who built up the story were not Palestinians. It was Israelis who conceived the idea of accusing us of `torpedoing' a cease-fire. That is an Israeli idea that the Palestinians took a ride on afterward."
Is there an Israeli pathology at work here?
"Of course there is a pathology. You have to understand that we are in a combined campaign - military, political, civilian, media, economic. In order to build a defensive wall, all those elements have to work in synergy. You have to understand that if you build a military wall but there is no political wall, then there is no wall. If you build a wall of the Shin Bet [security service] but there is no publicity wall, then there is no wall. And it is absolutely clear that there is no wall if Israelis come along and break it or undermine it."
A happy childhood
Lieutenant General Ya'alon, where do you come from? What are the sources of your Israeliness?
"I suppose it begins with my parents. My father fled Bolshevism in 1925. One of his brothers was murdered because he was a Jew and another brother was arrested for Zionist activity, and then their father decided to pack up the property and the factory in Ukraine and come to this country. My mother is a Holocaust survivor. She fled the Nazis and survived. She joined the Partisans and, in the end, reached Italy and from there came here after the war and was imprisoned [by the British] at Atlit, but she managed to get away from there, too.
"Our home was a typical one in Kiryat Haim [a Haifa suburb]: an Israeli-Zionist-workers' home with all that Kiryat Haim of the 1950s and `60s reflects. My father was a worker in the Shemen factory [which manufactures cooking oil and soap] and we lived a very modest life. At the time, I didn't understand that we were poor, but today I understand that we were poor. But I didn't feel any lack; I had no idea that there was any other kind of life. [There was] no bicycle, no car, not even a telephone in the house. Once every few months, we had felafel. Most of the time, we drank water and ate black bread because it was cheaper. Everything was on a modest scale. Our good time was the beach. Still, for me, it was a happy childhood."
Was there a sense of the Holocaust in the background?
"It wasn't talked about. But there was no [extended] family. Nearly the whole family on my mother's side was murdered. Finally, you understand that even though no one talked about it, it was a formative experience. You understand that you imbibed it."
You are a person who is constantly demanding of yourself, with a deep feeling of being engaged and committed - is that right?
"Yes, absolutely. I was active in the Noar Ha'oved [left-leaning youth] movement. It was clear that one had to go on to self-realization: to settle the Arava [desert] was part of Zionism as far as I was concerned. I took the whole thing about equality and humanism very seriously. And also making the desert bloom. The hold on the land. I take all that seriously today, too."
Do you still feel yourself to be a kibbutznik?
"It is not only a feeling. I am a kibbutznik. And I am very proud of it. If you ask me where I am from, I am from Kibbutz Grofit [north of Eilat]."
A military life
Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon was born in 1950 in Kiryat Haim, a suburb of Haifa. He was drafted in 1968, serving in the airborne unit of the paramilitary Nahal brigade. Within the framework of the "self-fulfillment" doctrine of his youth movement, he joined Kibbutz Grofit, north of Eilat, of which he is a member to this day.
In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, he fought as a reservist in the Paratroops and took part in the conquest of the Suez Canal. Returning to active service after the war, he completed an officers' training course and served in command posts in the Paratroops. Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg and others who served under Ya'alon remember especially that company commander Ya'alon's wife, Ada, would come to the base on the weekend and stay with him in a pup tent.
In 1978, Ya'alon was the commanding officer of the Paratroops' sayeret (reconnaissance unit), taking part with it in Operation Litani in southern Lebanon. He spent the next three years in the elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit and then was appointed commander of a battalion in the Paratroops. He was sent to England for advanced studies in 1986 and, on his return, was named commander of Sayeret Matkal. He rehabilitated the unit in the wake of a series of crises it had experienced and, among other operations, led it in the liquidation of Abu Jihad. His next appointments were as commander of the Paratroops Brigade (1990), commander of the West Bank Division (1992) and commander of an armored division (1993).
In June 1995, Ya'alon was appointed director of Military Intelligence and already then began to have doubts about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, arousing the wrath of Shimon Peres. In May 1998, he became head of Central Command, where he prepared the command's units for the violent confrontation with the Palestinians that he foresaw. He was appointed deputy chief of staff in September 2000, and on July 9, 2002, took over as chief of staff. For the past few years he and his wife have lived in a small community in the center of the country, even though they are both still kibbutz members. They have three children. (U.S.)n
Dead children
Was the Shehadeh affair hard for you?
"The dead children are hard for me."
Explain to me what happened.
"We went to attack a person who was unprecedented in that he was the commander of the terrorist arm of Hamas both in Gaza and in Judea-Samaria. This is a person who is responsible for the killing of hundreds of people. He systematically clung to the civilian population because he understood our sensitivities. In quite a few cases, we avoided attacking him because his wife was with him, or his daughters. Shehadeh had six daughters. More recently, we made things easier for ourselves and said that even if his wife is with him, we will attack him. Moreover, a discussion began about whether it would not be right to attack him even if his daughters were with him. But we made a decision against that. We decided that we would not harm his daughters.
"On the Saturday evening before the attack, we held a discussion. It was clear to us that in order to knock down the building, we would need a ton [of explosives], and the question was whether we would use one bomb of a ton or two of half a ton. Our experience was of dropping 160 bombs in the Palestinian arena without a single innocent civilian being killed, but the concern was that two bombs raised the statistical risk of a miss.
"So I sent the air force to do its homework and they came back to me with the answer that a one-ton bomb was more certain. The assessment was that the result would be the destruction of Shehadeh's house and damage to the empty neighboring building, and shattered windows in the area and tin siding that would be sent flying from the tin shacks. People wounded, not killed. In retrospect, though, it turned out that the neighboring house was not empty. The execution of the air force was perfect, but the intelligence gap in regard to the neighboring house caused a hitch. Six children were killed in that house."
And how did you feel?
"This is not my first day in the arena. I have been in the profession for 34 years - not by choice, but by necessity. I work constantly with the resolution of a surgeon's scalpel so as not to hurt innocent people. So what do you imagine I feel? I feel that something very heavy fell on my head. It is not pleasant. It is extremely unpleasant.
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