‘Jewish terrorism’ in West Bank places Israel’s personal safety in danger, ex-IDF chiefs warn | EUROtoday

“Jewish terrorism” within the occupied West Bank poses a grave strategic menace to the nation’s safety, high former Israeli spies and generals have warned.

Four former heads of the interior safety service answerable for the West Bank (the Shin Bet), eight former police commissioners, 4 former navy intelligence heads, three former Mossad administrators and three former heads of the Israel Defence Forces, have demanded an finish to a “profound moral failure” by Israel’s authorities.

“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 printed on Thursday stated.

The group of twenty-two of Israel’s most senior former safety chiefs stated the “acts of terrorism… endangered soldiers already involved in a multi-front war”.

“They inflame Palestinian terror and advance Iranian strategic interests” but additionally “erode the moral foundations and values of Israeli society” whereas intensifying worldwide hostility and “weaken Israel’s legitimacy”, the letter stated.

“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 the blue-and-white, our proud national colours.”

The “black flag” is a transparent reference to the flags flown by the so-called Islamic State and different teams violently dedicated to annihilating Israel.

None of the leaders who signed the letter have been shy of killing to guard Israel. Mossad bosses run abroad assassination programmes, whereas Shin Bet often handles “targeted killing” of alleged terrorists.

Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, as soon as dressed as a girl to hold out an assassination plot in Lebanon and commanded Israel’s most elite particular forces unit.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s present prime minister, has publicly focussed on attacking Iran alongside the US.

But the Israeli safety chiefs, a lot of whom have an extended historical past in attempting to finish Israel’s conflicts by negotiation somewhat than outright conquest, accuse his administration of “tolerance – or worse – the backing” of Jewish terrorist assaults towards Palestinians on the West Bank.

The Israeli human rights group B’Stelem has described a scientific marketing campaign of killing and land dispossessions by Jewish Israelis backed by authorities troopers 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 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 settlements.

Illegal under international law, the settlements have exploded across the West Bank for the past 30 years. Their residents are citizens of Israel and are often heavily subsidised 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 [quarter acres] of land there for its own purposes, including building and expanding settlements and paving roads for settlers,” B’Tselem stated in a latest 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 finish a “surge” in settler violence wherein six Palestinians, together with a household of 4, had been killed in lower than a fortnight.

At least 1,500 individuals throughout over 600 communities have been “displaced” – pressured from their properties by violence – within the West Bank this 12 months.

Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to annex the West Bank, however not its Palestinian inhabitants, to Israel. This would additional entrench a system of presidency described by Israeli human rights teams as “apartheid”.

Earlier this week, Haaretz reported that the present chief of Shin Bet, David Zini, doesn’t see assaults on Palestinians as terrorism, and as an alternative dismisses West Bank clashes as “cases of friction”.