http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010501/wl/mideast_israel_shinbet_dc_1.html
Tuesday May 1 10:21 AM ET
Former Israeli Spymaster Takes Palestinians' Side
By Howard Goller
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Ami Ayalon once headed the Israeli security
organization the Palestinians despise the most, but now the former
chief of the Shin Bet says his country must learn to understand their
pain.
Israel's Channel Two broadcast an interview with Ayalon late Monday
that revealed a sympathy for the Palestinians' plight and a readiness
to blame Israelis rarely seen from a member of the security
establishment past or present.
For nearly four years starting in 1996 Ayalon headed the Shin Bet
intelligence service, set up with the state's founding in 1948 with
the twin purposes of fighting secret hostile activity and protecting
Israeli leaders.
In the interview, he acknowledged permitting the Shin Bet to use what
he said others would call torture -- he prefers to call it ``physical
pressure'' -- to coerce information from Palestinian prisoners. He
said it was justified to save lives.
After leaving the Shin Bet, he acted as go-between for former Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Now 55, Ayalon is known for his contacts with Palestinian officials.
Normally taciturn, Ayalon said he wanted Israelis to know he rejected
the ``ethos'' of the present right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
which he said dated back to the 1950s when Israel believed it had ``no
choice'' on how to deal with Palestinians.
Says Israel Has A Choice
Ayalon said that since a 1993 breakthrough peace deal with Arafat,
Israel had another choice. But he said Palestinians had lost faith in
Barak, ousted by Sharon in a February election.
``We never manage to understand their pain just as they to a very
great extent don't understand our pain. I believe we don't understand
their fears. We speak of our fears, we speak of our fear of being
thrown into the sea. We don't understand that all of the Palestinians
are afraid of being thrown across the (Jordan) river,'' Ayalon said.
Chief of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammad
Dahlan, told Reuters: ``We have differed greatly with Ayalon, and we
also agreed with him when he was still in his job, and he dealt with
the Palestinians as a people with dignity and he always admits his
mistakes.
``Other Israeli leaders are still dealing with the Palestinians from
the occupier mentality,'' Dahlan said.
Ayalon denied having political aspirations of his own.
The interview, with Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan, was a nearly
no-holds barred exchange of views in the thick of more than seven
months of raging violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel.
Ayalon said Palestinians feared a repeat of what they call the
``Nakba'' or ``Great Catastrophe'' of Israel's creation in formerly
British-mandated Palestine when many left or were forced to flee their
homes never to return.
Israelis Must Understand
``Until we understand what a Palestinian child draws when he looks at
an Israeli, what is the meaning of an Israeli soldier, what is the
meaning of an Israeli checkpoint, what is the meaning of humiliation,
we won't truly understand what they are going through or where we want
to go,'' he insisted.
He said the Palestinian Authority had in the past arrested thousands
of Islamic Hamas group militants opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian
peace deal and had even killed, interrogated and tortured them in
order to ensure Israeli security.
He said they did this believing it would help them reach their goal of
a Palestinian state next to Israel.
Violence had erupted, he said, because Palestinians lost hope. ``What
they are saying is that 'we will reach our aim in another way'. They
haven't given up on the aim and so naturally we have no choice but to
give them a state,'' he said.
``We are so strong, so strong from a security standpoint -- and I
personally want to believe also from a societal standpoint -- that we
can live with the reality of there being a Palestinian state beside
us.''
He likened the Palestinians to Israel's Siamese twin. Separation was a
complex surgery which must offer the Palestinians a full life, he
said. ``When this twin will feel he has no life whatsoever, he will
cause us very deep suffering.''
