Monday, November 22, 2010

Outgoing MI Chief: in Next War, Tel Aviv is Front Line

Gil Ronen

Major-General Amos Yadlin, the outgoing head of the IDF's Intelligence Branch, told the cabinet Sunday that Iran is the major threat against Israel, and not only with regard to its nuclear ambition. “Iran is reaching out with octopus-arms to anyone who acts against Israel,” he said. "In the next confrontation, there is a chance that war will break out on more than one front, and that Tel Aviv will become a front,” Yadlin warned, as he has before. “There is also a struggle against the very legitimacy of Israel's existence,” he added, “and to face it we need intelligence and to mobilize the nation.”

"Israel's deterrent power is very strong,” Yadlin told the ministers in his final briefing as Military Intelligence Head, “but the quiet should not deceive us – to the contrary. Our enemies are getting stronger and arming themselves.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bid Yadlin farewell and said: "I met with him every week, sometimes several times a week. We discussed the difficult problems and new challenges that face us, from the Iranian nuclear threat through the threat of missiles and rockets against the State of Israel, the development of Hizbullah and Hamas, as well as various developments in the countries of the region. I believe that Amos succeeded in giving us the tools with which to assess these dangers and to prepare to meet them."

Yadlin will be replaced Monday by Brigadier-General Aviv Kochavi.

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