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Former Shin Bet Chief Avi Dichter Explains Disengagement

(Maariv-Hebrew) Ben Caspit - Former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Avi Dichter, who retired on May 14, said in an interview: * The Palestinians see the past four and a half years as a catastrophe. They killed 1,042 Israelis and, in fact, achieved nothing. They're on the mat and they lost Jerusalem. The Camp David parameters will not return; no Israeli government could return to them. The Palestinians will have to pay a price for the violence, just as they paid a price for rejecting the UN partition plan. * With the agreement imprisoning those who assassinated Israeli minister Rehavam Zeevi (Gandhi), we know exactly who is sitting in the Jericho jail - the entire leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - who are continuing to operate from there under American-British supervision. * Not a week passes without a visit from a foreign delegation to learn from Israel about targeted interceptions. Its effectiveness and focus is incredible. We can target terrorists who are otherwise impossible to reach, without dramatically endangering our own forces, and they come to understand at a certain point that no one is safe. * To leave the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt would be a conceptual mistake in today's situation, when there is no one who will prevent smuggling instead of us and the Egyptians are not acting. * We disengaged from Gaza in 1994. In the West Bank, the situation is the opposite; we reconnected to the territory in April 2002. Area A became Area B. It's a different situation. There, the removal of settlements should not lead to disengagement from the territory. Our military forces need to remain there. In Gaza the disengagement could reduce terror. If the IDF leaves the northern West Bank, there will be a problematic increase in terror. * Gaza is the land of terrorist capability and the West Bank the land of terrorist possibility. The Palestinians have been trying since the outbreak of the intifada to join the capability of Gaza with the possibility of the West Bank. Through our actions, we have prevented this. In the West Bank their capability has been reduced. This is the real reason for the calm. In Gaza, they want to live, and in the West Bank they want to rebuild the infrastructure. The reason I'm optimistic is that I know that what happened here depended on our actions, not theirs.
2005-06-10 00:00:00
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