by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Although Benjamin Netanyahu's next defense minister shares his deep distrust of the Palestinians, the two could yet clash about when - and whether - Israel should go to war with Iran • But the hulking, bespectacled Yaalon, 62, also has a record of breaking ranks when he perceives unreasonable risks.
Newly appointed Defense
Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon.
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Photo credit: Yoav Ari Dudkevich  |
Although Benjamin Netanyahu's next defense
minister shares his deep distrust of the Palestinians, the two could yet
clash about when - and whether - Israel should go to war with Iran.
Ex-general Moshe Yaalon is a loyalist of
Netanyahu's Likud party who, as a senior if sometimes sidelined member
of the outgoing coalition government, routinely boosted the rightist
prime minister and his strategic outlook.
But the hulking, bespectacled Yaalon, 62, also has a record of breaking ranks when he perceives unreasonable risks.
As military intelligence commander in the
mid-1990s he disagreed with the left-leaning government's optimism about
fledgling peace talks with the Palestinians. Promoted to armed forces
chief of staff, he saw his tenure cut short after he opposed Israel's
plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Those objections dovetailed with Netanyahu's,
who cites repeated Palestinian revolts against the Jewish state, and the
Islamist Hamas takeover of Gaza, as justifying his reluctance to give
up the West Bank.
In recent interviews with Israel Hayom,
Ya'alon said "there is no place for a Palestinian state alongside Israel
at the current time."
He addad that, "The goals of Abbas are the same as the goals of Hamas.
"As far as I’m concerned, there is an entity
in Gaza that can call itself the United Islamic Republic and the
Palestinian Authority can call itself the Palestinian Empire," Ya'alon
said, referring to the Palestinian Authority's recent re-branding of
itself as the "State of Palestine."
The ideologue Netanyahu and the plain-talking,
part-time farmer Yaalon have, however, differed in private about
tackling Tehran's nuclear drive, a more remote and formidable challenge.
An Israeli official said Yaalon was among half
the ministers in Netanyahu's inner security cabinet who, in the past,
voted down his proposals to attack Iran in defiance of U.S. calls to
hold fire while international sanctions are escalated instead.
"Yaalon is hawkish about the Palestinians like
Netanyahu, but he is cautious on Iran," said Amotz Asa-El, fellow at
the liberal Jerusalem think-tank Hartman Institute, who has followed the
incoming defense minister's military and political career.
He said Yaalon might serve as a
"counter-weight" to any renewed bid by Netanyahu to go to war - unless
Israel receives hard intelligence its arch-foe is about to build a bomb,
in which case, Asa-El argued, cabinet support could be unanimous.
WELCOME IN WASHINGTON?
The Iranians deny their nuclear projects have
hostile designs and point to Israel's assumed atomic arsenal as the main
regional menace. While advancing sensitive uranium enrichment, they
resumed talks on a compromise with world powers last month.
Yaalon's military pedigree largely mirrors
that of outgoing defense minister Ehud Barak. Before reaching the high
command, they both headed Israel's premier special forces regiment, in
which Netanyahu served as a junior officer, and thus enjoy decades-old
rapports with him. There the similarities end.
Barak, a centrist one-time premier, was crafty
in statecraft and conferred monthly in Washington, though his maverick
views were seldom welcomed within Netanyahu's nationalist coalition.
Yaalon, said Asa-El, "is less impulsive, more low-key, more calculated and generally more modest" than Barak.
He can also be impolitic. That may make it
harder for Yaalon to explain Israel's West Bank settlements, overseen by
the Defense Ministry, to foreign leaders who believe they undermine any
prospect for revived peace talks with the Palestinians.
Whereas Barak consistently voiced trust in
U.S. President Barack Obama, Yaalon last year questioned his resolve to
curb Iran. After the Democrat's reelection to the White House in
November, however, Yaalon took a different tack, noting with approval
U.S. military mobilization in the Gulf.
Dennis Ross, a former Obama adviser on the
Middle East, said that while Yaalon will get American respect for his
experience in uniform, Barak's legacy will be difficult to live up to.
"No successor (to Barak) will come in with that same kind of stature" in the Obama administration's eyes, Ross told Reuters.
Known by his childhood nickname "Bogie",
Yaalon led Israeli commandos in the 1988 assassination in Tunis of PLO
strongman Abu Jihad. As general he favored tough tactics against
Palestinians revolting in the West Bank and Gaza - putting him in the
sights of war-crimes suits by their supporters abroad.
He now faces new domestic fights in the form of defense
budget cuts and a long-delayed review of the exemptions enjoyed by many
ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory national service.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8045
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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