Top Israeli Officer questions anti-Palestinian tactics

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Top Israeli Officer Says Tactics Are Backfiring

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 31, 2003; Page A01

JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 -- Israel's senior military commander told columnists
for three leading newspapers this week that Israel's military tactics
against the Palestinian population were too repressive and were
fomenting explosive levels of "hatred and terrorism" that might become
impossible to control.

In remarks that suggest a dramatic split with the approach of the
current government, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the Israeli
armed forces, said that crackdowns, curfews and roadblocks in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip were crippling the lives of innocent Palestinians
and that the military's tactics were now threatening Israel's own
interests.

The military chief directed most of his complaints at restrictions
imposed on the West Bank four weeks ago, after a suicide bomber from the
West Bank city of Jenin killed 21 people in a restaurant in the Israeli
port of Haifa. Yaalon said the current curfews and travel restrictions,
some of the tightest since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in
September 2000, were preventing Palestinians from carrying out critical
olive and other agricultural harvests, hampering thousands of children
from attending school, increasing hatred for Israel and strengthening
terrorist organizations.

"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic
interests," Nahum Barnea, columnist for the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper,
quoted Yaalon as telling him.

Yaalon also said he believed the Israeli government contributed to the
failure of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister because it was
too "stingy" and was unwilling to make concessions to bolster his
authority.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44374-2003Oct30.html

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