‘Jewish terrorism’ in the occupied West Bank poses a grave strategic threat to the country’s security, top former Israeli spies and generals have warned.
Four former heads of the internal security service responsible for the West Bank (the Shin Bet), eight former police commissioners, four former military intelligence heads, three former Mossad directors and three former heads of the Israel Defence Forces, have demanded an end to a “profound moral failure” by Israel’s government.
“The Jewish terrorism raging in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], with the tolerance — or worse, the backing — of government authorities, constitute not only a profound moral failure, but a grave strategic threat to Israel’s security, especially in a time of war,” a letter published on Thursday said.
The group of 22 of Israel’s most senior former security chiefs said the “acts of terrorism… endangered soldiers already involved in a multi-front war”.
“They inflame Palestinian terror and advance Iranian strategic interests” but also “erode the moral foundations and values of Israeli society” while intensifying international hostility and “weaken Israel’s legitimacy.
“A small but dangerous extremist fringe, emboldened by irresponsible political backing and enabled by the silence of the national leadership, must not be allowed to endanger Israel’s security or erode the foundations of the Zionist project,” the letter continues.
“We call upon Israel’s leaders — and its citizens — to act now, before the black flag irrevocably stains theblue-and-white, our proud national colors.”
The “a black flag” is a clear reference to the flags flown by the so-called Islamic State and other groups violently committed to annihilating Israel.
None of the leaders who signed the letter have been shy of killing to protect Israel. Mossad bosses run overseas assassination programmes, while Shin Bet usually handles “targeted killing” of alleged terrorists.
Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, once dressed as a woman to carry out an assassination plot in Lebanon and commanded Israel’s most elite special forces unit.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, has publicly focussed on attacking Iran alongside the US.
But the Israeli securocrats, many of whom have a long history in trying to end Israel’s conflicts through negotiation rather than outright conquest, accuse his administration of “tolerance – or worse – the backing” for Jewish terrorist attacks against Palestinians on the West Bank.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Stelem has described a systematic campaign of killing and land dispossessions by Jewish Israelis backed by government soldiers as “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian population of the West Bank.
Occupied by Israel in 1967 Palestinians on the West Bank have limited self government in a patchwork of territory mostly centred around the urban areas.
Rural areas, which have profitable olive groves and vineyards and where shepherds have grazed for flocks for hundreds of generations, are coveted by Israel for Jewish resident only settlements.
Illegal under international law, the settlements have exploded across the West Bank for the last 30 years. Their residents are citizens of Israel and are often heavily subsidized and protected by the armed forces.
In the last few years the level of military support for what are considered illegal settlements even under Israeli law, has increased along with attacks by settlers on Palestinians.
“Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has misappropriated more than 2 million dunams of land there for its own purposes, including building and expanding settlements and paving roads for settlers,” B’Tselem said in a recent report. “Some areas have been officially taken over by the state, others through daily acts of settler violence.
“These two seemingly unrelated tracks are both forms of state violence: the Israeli apartheid regime and its representatives actively aid and abet the settlers’ violence as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land.”
Last month the UK and European Union demanded that Israel end a “surge” in settler violence in which six Palestinians, including a family of four, were killed in less than a fortnight.
At least 1,500 people across over 600 communities have been “displaced” – forced from their homes by violence – in the West Bank this year.
Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to annex the West Bank, but not its Palestinian population, to Israel. This would further entrench a system of government described by Israeli human rights groups as “apartheid”.
Earlier this week, Haaretz reported that the chief of Shin Bet David Zini does not see attacks on Palestinians as terrorism, and instead dismisses West Bank clashes as “cases of friction”.
