When Ami Ayalon’s parents, who had moved to pre-state Israel in the 1930s, helped start a kibbutz after Israel’s War of Independence, they situated it near the Syrian border in order to help claim that land. Two decades later, after the Six-Day War in 1967, he saw many of his friends build and live in settlements in the Golan Heights.
Yet Ayalon, who went on to become commander-in-chief of the Israeli navy and head of the country’s Shin Bet security service, is now a peace activist who questions the continued building of Jewish settlements.
He shared his views on that topic and others during a talk this week in San Francisco titled “Israel at the Crossroads: Where Do We Go from Here?” Co-sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council and the American Society of the University of Haifa, the Nov. 16 talk drew a full house to a JCRC conference room.
“The whole idea [of settlements] was based on a very simple concept of Zionism which was, ‘We are going to build a state for the Jewish people [that] is in great danger,’ ” the retired admiral said. “Its future borders will be wherever we can build a settlement, work the land and defend ourselves. It’s almost a simplistic concept.”
If it were not for the demands of his military career, Ayalon too would have been a settler, he said.
“The first time when I realized that there was probably a problem [with settlements] was during the first intifada,” Ayalon said of the long Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. “This was the first time when I realized that the concept of Zionism that my parents created brings us to a dead end. It creates a paradox, a conflict, between us as Zionist people who want to build the State of Israel as a liberal democracy based on the spirit of our declaration of independence and us as occupiers of millions of people.”
Ayalon was born in 1945 in Tiberias, in the British Mandate of Palestine, and was raised on Kibbutz Maagan, founded in 1949 by Romanian immigrants. He was in the Israel Navy from 1963 through his tenure as commander-in-chief from 1992 to 1996, and after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, was named head of the Shin Bet. Now 70 and a member of the center-left Labor Party, he is a prominent Israeli voice in favor of reaching a two-state solution with the Palestinian people. He also was a big part of the 2012 film “The Gatekeepers,” a documentary that consists of interviews with six former Shin Bet chiefs.
Ayalon told the San Francisco audience that the key to moving forward on a peaceful solution is to rewrite the Israeli narrative. Instead of achieving the Zionist dream through securing and controlling the land, Israelis should focus on creating a just Zionist democracy in which Jews have the right of self-determination, in accordance with Israel’s founding principles.
This is a goal that will be accepted by the international community, he said, and, crucially, allow Israel to be a true Jewish democracy by maintaining a sizable majority of Jewish residents within its borders.
“We are fighting two wars,” he said. “One is a war to defend … This is a just war. Everybody understands it. The world understands that this is a just war.
“But during the last 48 years, we are fighting another war, which is to expand our eastern border, to build more settlements and to expand the Israeli state. This is not a just war, and if you ask me, I do not want to win this war.”
If Israel reverted to 1967 borders, there would be about 120,000 settlers in Palestinian territory, Ayalon said. Polls show that more than 30,000 would return immediately if Israel compensated them, he added. Settlers should be honored for what they have built, he said, but more than anything, securing a resolution to the conflict is crucial for Israel’s future.
“If we shall not achieve an agreement, we will get Hamas. And after Hamas, al-Qaida. And after al-Qaida, ISIS,” Ayalon said. “After ISIS, I don’t know what will come, but it will not be better … We create the humiliation and despair that create tunnels, that create rockets.”
Asked by an audience member to “explain” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ayalon responded, “He was elected by people who believed that he means what he promised them. If he changes his policy, he will lose his political platform and he believes that he will not be elected again. I don’t know of many politicians who would behave differently.”
Ayalon supports the Iran nuclear deal, in contrast to Netanyahu. This summer, he was quoted in the Daily Beast as saying, “When it comes to Iran’s nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option … When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. Now it will be 12 months … Israelis are failing to distinguish between reducing Iran’s nuclear capability and Iran being the biggest devil in the Middle East.”
Asked about a nuclear Iran by an audience member in San Francisco, Ayalon replied, “We have to create a coalition that will face [the situation] under the assumption that [Iran’s] nuclear capability is a threat not only to Israel but to many other states in the region. People in the region understand that Arabs are killing Arabs, Muslims are killing Muslims. So they understand the nuclear capability [of Iran] will be a threat to all of them and even to Europe.”