Former Shin Bet Head Insists Release of Marwan Barghouti Is Only Hope for Peace
Jan. 8—Admiral Ami Ayalon, former commander of the Israeli Navy and former head of the domestic secret service, Shin Bet, argued for the release of Palestinian Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti as the only hope for peace between Israel and Palestine. The comments were made in an interview with Haaretz’s Yossi Melman and dealt with the “day after” the fighting ends. The Teller Report translated the interview into English on Jan. 8, which we use below.
Ayalon said that Israel must prioritize the release of Palestinian resistance leader Marwan Barghouti in return for Israeli hostages. “This is the right move on both sides, firstly because the return of Israeli hostages is the closest to the ‘image of victory’ in the current (military) campaign in Gaza, and second, because Barghouti is the only Palestinian leader who can be elected within a unified and legitimate Palestinian leadership on the road to a peaceful solution … with the Palestinians.”
Melman asked Ayalon what would be the result if Israel eliminated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and wouldn’t that be a victory? Ayalon replied: “No. Even if the spirit of Sinwar ascends to its righteousness. If anyone thinks the Palestinians will surrender, they don’t know the Palestinians, and they don’t know Hamas and the radical Islamist movements of this century.”
Ayalon sees the current conflict as yet another battle for Israel’s independence. Nonetheless, he made clear that did not have to happen. The 2002 Arab League peace proposal, in which the Arab states agreed to recognize Israel and establish full relations with it on the basis of UN and Security Council resolutions, was a victory for Israel. “We won in March 2002,” he said. “The tragedy is that we refuse to recognize our victory and continue to fight. We have turned war into an end in itself.”
He excoriated Israel’s current policy, saying that the war is a “military conflict with no political goal, a situation in which victory cannot be defined which is always formulated in political terms, and the great danger is that this is the situation in which war becomes the goal.” The failure to address that “is tearing Israeli society apart,” he said, adding that Israel risks “continuing to fight forever” in order “to escape from real debates that we reject or cannot have.”
“Yitzhak Rabin was killed precisely for this reason. Because of the big question about who we are and why we are here,” he continued.
After attacking Netanyahu as responsible for what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, Ayalon then concludes with the alternatives facing Israel. One way out of the war requires Israel "to make concessions and agreements among ourselves. If we go in this way, the Arab signatories to the Arab Peace Initiative, as well as Western democracies, will be on our side. I believe that this path leads us to a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel….
“The second path is followed by those who mistakenly believe that occupation leads to security, and others who believe that we have no right to cede any of the Land of Israel, even if that means fighting an endless war. In my view, this perception does not recognize reality. It is a path that leads to a single state, in a region where 7 million Jews and 7 million Arabs currently live. This reality will cause Israel to lose its Jewish democratic identity. This reality brings us back to the Great Arab Revolt of the ’30s, and to a religious struggle that attracts the most radical and violent groups on both sides.”