 |
People enjoy the Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv,
Israel. The freewheeling seaside oasis of Tel Aviv has long served as an escape
from the troubles of everyday Israel. Now, it is also the target of rockets
fired by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. (Photo credit: AP/Ariel Schalit)
|
The
largest-ever protest by Israeli top brass has taken place, with at least 105
retired generals and intelligence chiefs writing a letter to premier Benjamin
Netanyahu, urging him to “initiate a diplomatic process” for peace with
Palestine, Haaretz reports.
"We,
the undersigned, reserve IDF commanders and retired police officers, who have
fought in Israel’s military campaigns, know firsthand of the heavy and painful
price exacted by wars…. Here we are again sending our children out onto the
battlefield, watching them don their uniforms and combat vests and go out to
fight in Operation Protective Edge,” the letter read.
A
few of those who signed the letter told the state Mako-Channel 2 News that, in
their opinion, Israel had the strength and means to come to a two-state roadmap
to get out of the current crisis.
The
agreement wasn’t reached due to “weak leadership,”
the country’s top brass added.
“We’re on a steep slope toward an
increasingly polarized society and moral decline, due to the need to keep
millions of people under occupation on claims that are presented as
security-related,” reserve Major General Eyal Ben-Reuven
told the channel.
“I have no doubt that the prime
minister seeks Israel’s welfare, but I think he suffers from some sort of
political blindness that drives him to scare himself and us,”
he added, Haaretz reported.
The
idea of writing the letter belonged to reserve Major General Amnon Reshef, who
said in an interview he was “sick and tired of a reality of
rounds of fighting every few years, instead of a genuine effort to adopt the
Saudi initiative,” Ynetnews.com quoted him as saying.
He
referred to the Saudi peace plan adopted in 2002 that offered full peace for
Arab states and Israel. Tel Aviv, in turn, was to withdraw to borders based on
the pre-1967 armistice lines.
Among
the signatories to the protest, 101 are IDF veterans with the rank of brigadier
or major general, two are ex-chiefs of the Mossad intelligence agency and three
former commanders of Israel’s National Police, Haaretz reported.
It’s
not the first collective effort of the Israeli top brass to urge the country’s
leadership to step up the peace drive.
For
instance, almost three years ago, 52 former generals signed a petition calling
for a law to make military or equivalent national service compulsory for men
who practice Haredi Judaism.
And
in November 2011, 19 ex-top brass urged the IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz to
fight against increasing religious extremism in the military forces.
The latest letter comes a
week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans for around 1,000
new settler homes to be built on occupied Palestinian land. This triggered an
alarmed response from the Palestinian authorities.
No comments:
Post a Comment