Israel's hard men fight for peace

Israel's hard men fight for peace

As campaigners from both sides sign their own draft treaty, Conal Urquhart meets the security chiefs who insist that Sharon is wrong

Sunday November 30, 2003
The Observer

They are Ariel Sharon's trickiest opponents - four former heads of the Israeli security service who have united to accuse the Prime Minister of pushing the Jewish state to the 'edge of an abyss'. Israel, they say, must find peace or perish.

Between them, they served for 20 years at the head of Shin Bet, the nerve centre of the war on Palestinian militants, but now they have dramatically changed tack to spearhead a new movement for peace more powerful than Israel has ever seen before.

Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon and Major General Ami Ayalon have fought the Palestinians with as much vigour as Sharon, who commanded an armoured division in the 1967 Six Day War. Shalom reportedly ordered the murder of two Palestinians who hijacked a bus. Under Ayalon's command, Shin Bet perfected the use of booby-trapped mobile phones for assassinations.

The stocky, shaven-headed Ayalon has fought Arabs all his life, but this pugnacious character is the new face of the Israeli peace movement which, after three years of the intifada, is finally beginning to have an impact.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1096286,00.html