Conflict with Iran inevitable, Ya'alon says
Former IDF chief of staff criticizes West's weakness, preventing it from handling Iranian regime
"The question of who won the war in Lebanon has yet to be determined," former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said at a lecture in Tel Aviv Tuesday.
He stated that conflict with the Iranian regime was inevitable. "The Western world is avoiding it because it is weak and that is only bringing it closer."
He said that Iran had declared war on the West and its culture. "In the last war we fought their agent." He added that this battle is also against such organizations as el-Qaeda and could take decades and will have many secondary wars.
Ya'alon described the battle as being fought on many fronts simultaneously: "In Lebanon between Hizbullah and the Christians and Druze; in the Palestinian Authority, the fight between Hamas and the other factions; in Iran, the fundamentalist regime against the majority of the population that would gladly forsake the ayatollah regime but has not yet been able to translate that into political power."
Ya'alon agrees that "we can and should talk about the weakening in Israel's deterrence," because of the war in Lebanon.
He said it was a direct result from creating very high expectations during the fighting, probably due to the successes of the very first days. The objectives were impossible to achieve and more moderate goals should have been set, for example aim to lessen Hizbullah's potency in the Lebanese internal scene. We missed the opportunity to end the war so it would better suit our political goals
Today's wars have different character: "It is the endurance of Israeli society that is put to test and it is no longer the IDF, our military might, on the front line."
Ya'alon criticized the "Palestinian culture of death" that is bringing about self destruction. "I think that standing by the Palestinian Authority in the last few years was clearly non-ethical.
"As long as Palestinian school books educate for death instead of life, and fail to mention Israel, we must continue fighting," he concluded.
