Gil Hoffman , THE JERUSALEM POST
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made many people on the Left happy when he told Yediot Aharonot in a pre-Rosh Hashana interview that he was wrong all along for opposing dividing Jerusalem and withdrawing from the West Bank, Jordan Valley and Golan Heights.
He said that his beliefs over the previous 35 years were wrong and that during that time he was unwilling to face the reality that a decision had to be made to divide Jerusalem that contradicted the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years. "We face the need to decide but are not willing to tell ourselves that yes, this is what we have to do," Olmert said. "We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories."
The interview angered many people on the Right who supported Olmert when he advocated policies that he now says were mistaken. It also made them realize that the Right needed someone who went in the opposite direction, a man who - just as new Kadima leader Tzipi Livni capitalized on her image as the anti-Olmert due to her lack of corruption - could be the anti-Olmert on the diplomatic issue.
Luckily for the Right, they may have their anti-Olmert in retired Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, who turned heads when he joined the Likud three months ago, following many years in which he was considered part of the Left and conducted key negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria.
As head of the IDF's Planning Branch in the mid-1990s, Dayan headed the security committee in talks with the Palestinians, Syrians and Jordanians. He later served as OC Central Command, deputy chief of General Staff and chairman of the National Security Council in the Prime Minister's Office.
Dayan negotiated the "Gaza-Jericho first" deal with the Palestinians in Egypt and a deal that never came about with current Syrian foreign minister Walid Moallem at Wye Plantation in Maryland. He nearly convinced current Labor chairman Ehud Barak to run with him on his Tafnit ticket in the last general election. He is the nephew of dovish former defense minister Moshe Dayan and cousin of leftist former Meretz MK Yael Dayan and extreme leftist film actor/director Assi Dayan.
And now, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, he is willing to admit that the diplomatic process with both the Palestinians and Syria has been a complete failure.
"After 18 years of Oslo, we have to realize that although it was a nice try, it hasn't worked out," Dayan says. "There is no peace or security. We tried to be generous and then even more generous, but that didn't work either."
Dayan says he warned former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin when Oslo began that promises were not enough to guarantee the country's security and that he needed to insist on the rule of law. He said he advised Ehud Barak when he was prime minister not to go to Camp David to offer Yasser Arafat a take-it-or-leave-it deal. And that looking backward, the disengagement from the Gaza Strip that he advocated strongly was also a mistake.
"The conclusion is to stop the policy of land for peace, which has really been concessions for terror," Dayan says, starting to sound like a Likudnik. "We need to say clearly that there is a military solution to Hamas, that Syria must be isolated and that any big decision on a diplomatic agreement must be brought to a vote in a national referendum."
Dayan quantifies his statements by saying that he still thinks the country is stronger without the Gaza Strip (though he opposed relinquishing the northern Gaza settlements and the Philadelphi corridor) and that it shouldn't control the Palestinians because he does not want it to become a binational state. He says the fact that he conducted negotiations as a military man makes it different than if he was reaching diplomatic agreements as a politician and was now renouncing them.
"I didn't say Oslo was a mistake," Dayan says carefully. "I said that it failed, and not because of our side."
DAYAN'S POLITICAL change of heart has been embraced by some Likudniks and viewed skeptically by others. He was accused of "political prostitution" by hawks in the Likud who assumed that he merely joined the party just because it was rising high in the polls and that he would eventually leave for a less right-wing party like many former generals before him.
But Dayan says he has been received warmly at the Likud central committee's most hawkish ideological forums. The mostly elderly Likudniks who attend such events apparently like hearing a politician tell them that the left-wing establishment is mistaken and that they have been right all along - the opposite of what Olmert said.
"What Olmert did is something that is simply not done," Dayan says. "It was a Rosh Hashana present to all of our enemies and a slap in the face to our friends. He made it look like everything was all our fault and that if we would only give everything up, we would have peace. He even suggested that he could achieve peace if only he wasn't being forced out of office by inconsequential allegations of corruption. We can see now how dangerous a prime minister Olmert really was."
Dayan has been a thorn in Olmert's side since shortly after he became prime minister. He was among the first to criticize his handling of the Second Lebanon War and he organized the protests in its aftermath that called upon Olmert to resign.
The largest protest attracted nearly 200,000 to Tel Aviv's Kikar Rabin for one of the largest demonstrations ever, albeit one of the least successful. Dayan also helped coordinate protests for the families of kidnapped soldiers, which further embarrassed Olmert.
The protests made Dayan a welcome speaker at two Likud central committee meetings even before he had decided to join the party. He was later criticized for taking advantage of his apolitical image to lead protest movements that were intended to be disconnected from politics yet acquired a political slant in retrospect when he joined the Likud.
But Dayan insists that he really only decided to join the Likud shortly before he did so in July, and that at the time of the protests he really was politically unaffiliated beyond his anti-corruption Tafnit Party, that failed to pass the electoral threshold in the last election.
WHILE DAYAN can no longer ascribe to himself the mantle of objectivity in local politics, he insists on it when it comes to politics in the United States. That's one of the reasons he was so infuriated when an organization called the Jewish Council on Education and Research included a five-second clip from him along with what appeared to be testimonials from other former Israeli security officials in an on-line video advertisement for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Dayan says he thought he was being interviewed for a documentary on the challenges facing the next president of the United States. He insists he made a point of not mentioning either presidential candidate in the 20-minute interview, because he believes it is wrong for Israelis to interfere in the politics of a foreign country.
"This is pure and simple deceit," Dayan says. "I never expressed support for Obama, his approach or his opinions. I've also never expressed support for [Republican candidate John] McCain. I think that these are respectable people, but we should not interfere in the American elections."
Dayan received a letter of apology on Sunday from the organization saying that he had been removed from the on-line video, but he says he will not drop his lawsuit against it unless it takes out ads apologizing to him in the Hebrew press.
The main message Dayan tried to deliver in what he thought was an interview about what was confronting the next president was that whoever wins the election could have to make a fateful decision about how to handle the Iranian threat.
Dayan says he already warned about the nuclearization of Iran in an August 2002 report that he submitted to the National Security Council and then in Washington. In what now seems prophetic in hindsight, he also wrote in the report that Israel needed to prepare for a possible war in the North initiated by Iran using Hizbullah as its proxy.
"We should do everything possible to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear capability, because we are a target, such a capability would proliferate to terrorist organizations like Hizbullah and al-Qaida, and it would encourage other countries to join the club," Dayan says.
He favors taking more aggressive non-military action at this stage.
First of all, he says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have been prevented from coming into New York to attend last month's United Nations General Assembly.
Secondly, he supports instituting much more drastic sanctions on Iran such as an international oil embargo, preventing its ships from landing and not giving it bank credit. He points out that Iran imports 60 percent of its refined oil and its unrefined oil exports are only 4% of the world's supply.
Dayan says it is important to implement such stiff sanctions ahead of the June 12 Iranian elections in an effort to influence them. Asked whether he was concerned that America might leave Israel alone to handle the Iranian threat, he says that he is unaware of any recent example of America forcing upon the country anything harmful to its national security unless the government accepted it.
"Using military force is the final, final, final option and it will be up to the next president to decide whether to use it," Dayan says carefully. "I'm worried about there being an American president who would say it's too late to tackle Iran. We need there to be an American president who is ready to make heavy decisions."
Although Dayan opposes engaging Iran diplomatically, he says he understands that an American president might have to do so to convince the American people that he tried everything and had to employ the last remaining option on the table.
Asked whether Israel had the operational capability to attack Iran, he says that it does have what he calls "long-arm potential," but he declined to elaborate.
The Iranian threat is one of many reasons why Dayan believes the country needs an election as soon as possible. He believes that Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu is definitely the most qualified prime ministerial candidate to deal with the threat.
While Dayan believes that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni will succeed in forming a new government, he does not think that it will be stable and he is certain that an election will be held soon. Dayan intends to run for Knesset with the Likud, knowing that Netanyahu will not be able to reserve an automatic slot for him on the party list.
Responding to his critics in the Likud who say that he should not be running immediately after joining the party, he says that unlike some people (referring to former chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon), he decided against waiting for the initiation of a general election.
"I made a point of waiting three and a half years after leaving the army before entering politics, even though I could have easily obtained a top political post, because I think a cooling-off period is necessary," Dayan says. "I joined the Likud while we are in the opposition, and I think my views fit with the center and even the right of the party. Believe me, when a man like me takes a step like joining the Likud, it's not reversible."
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017550913&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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