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Ha'aretz, 10 June 2004
<br>
<br>Military Intelligence presented erroneous assumption on Palestinians
<br>
<br>By Akiva Eldar
<br>
<br>Major General Amos Gilad, head of Military Intelligence's research
<br>division when violence erupted in October 2000, persuaded the cabinet to
<br>accept an erroneous view of the cause of the violence, and hence the
<br>mistaken conclusion that there is no Palestinian partner for peace,
<br>according to Major General Amos Malka, who served as the director of MI
<br>at the time.
<br>
<br>Malka told Haaretz that Gilad, who today heads the Defense Ministry's
<br>diplomatic-security unit, was "a very significant factor in persuading a
<br>great many people... [yet] in all the time that I served as head of MI, the
<br>research division did not produce so much as a single document expressing
<br>the assessment that Gilad claims to have presented to the [then] prime
<br>minister [Ehud Barak]. I assert that only after the Taba talks were halted,
<br>on the eve of the 2001 election, did Gilad begin to retroactively rewrite
<br>MI's assessments."
<br>
<br>Gilad's assessment, which was adopted by the country's political and
<br>defense leadership, was that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat
<br>never abandoned the dream of realizing a right of return for Palestinian
<br>refugees, and that his plan was to eradicate the state of Israel by
<br>demographic means. The current director of MI, Major General Aharon
<br>Ze'evi (Farkash), and former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy share this
<br>assessment.
<br>
<br>But Malka and other senior intelligence officials dispute Gilad's analysis,
<br>saying that it is not supported by any of the documents produced by any of
<br>Israel's intelligence agencies.
<br>
<br>Gilad, however, believes that his verbal assessments trump the written
<br>record. "If I put oral presentations on one side of the scales, and written
<br>assessments on the other, the scales will unequivocally tip in favor of the
<br>oral presentations," he told Haaretz. "What influences the leaders are the
<br>oral presentations - because they don't read."
<br>
<br>Malka's criticism of Gilad, which challenges the conventional wisdom of
<br>both the leadership and the Israeli public, is shared by Colonel (reserves)
<br>Ephraim Lavie, the research division official responsible for the Palestinian
<br>arena at that time and Gilad's immediate subordinate. From what Lavie said
<br>and wrote following his retirement from the Israel Defense Forces, it is
<br>evident that he considers the prevailing Israeli theory of the intifada's
<br>causes to be mistaken. In his view, the theory that the Camp David summit
<br>exposed Arafat as someone who is uninterested in peace and who aims at
<br>Israel's destruction has no basis.
<br>
<br>This view is also shared by Ami Ayalon, who headed the Shin Bet security
<br>service until a few months before the intifada began, and Orientalist Mati
<br>Steinberg, who until last year served as a special advisor on Palestinian
<br>affairs to the head of the Shin Bet.
<br>
<br>Asked about these divergent views, Gilad responded: "I would have no
<br>problem if 1,000 people thought differently than I. That still doesn't mean
<br>that they're right."
<br>
<br>An extened article on the issue is expected in tomorrow's Ha'aretz
<br>
<br>-------------------------
<br>
<br>"With the outbreak of the Intifada it became indisputably clear that Israel is not a state that has a military but rather a military that has a state," wrote Ben Caspit in Ma'ariv describing the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the present Intifada in September 2000 (http://www.jfjfp.org/maariv_caspit.htm).
<br>
<br>According to Caspit there were still negotiations going on between Barak and Arafat and it was the Israeli military who sabotaged them.
<br>
<br>Now with Akiva Eldar's enclosed disclosure about the role of the Israeli military "intelligence" we have a further proof that the IOF was interested in ending the Oslo process by provoking the Intifada through overreacting to the demonstrations on 29.9.2000 against Sharon's visit at Haram al-Sharif.
<br>
<br>It was no coincidence that at the begining of October 2000 the US expert Anthony Cordesman published IOF's master plan under the name "Field of Thorns" ( see in the original http://www.csis.org/stratassessment/reports/IsraelPalestine.pdf or a summary in my own article http://www.law-society.org/Intifada2000/articles/Violence_or_transfer.htm).
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Shraga Elam
<br>
<br>Zurich/Switzerland
<br> <b on></b><!-- 2643 -->
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