Yadlin: Arab armies do not pose any threat to Israel

Director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies Amos Yadlin has said that the war being waged by the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula is not a confrontation against Israel, but against Egyptians, PLS48 news website reported on Sunday.

Yadlin, who previously served as an Air Force general and head of Israel’s military intelligence department, stressed that in his view, Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi is, exactly like Israel, eyeing the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas an enemy. Al-Sisi led the July 2013 military coup that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Speaking at a conference for the Israeli Kibbutz movement about the armies of the countries around Israel, PLS48 quoted Yadlin as saying that: “Every day, Hezbollah is able to press the button and launch rockets at Israel, but it does not do so,” but without citing the reasons.

Regarding the Syrian army, he asserted that it has had no control over the Golan Heights since 1967 and is not ready to fight Israel.

Thus despite that fact that Israel has lived under a global threat for the last year, Yadlin argued that Israel is no longer the main target of any threat and stressed that the Israeli army is the strongest in the Middle East and North Africa. However, he added that the years of calm that Israel has witnessed since the end of the 2006 war in Lebanon are now over.

The former Air Force general denied that the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip carried out by late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005 was a mistake. “If I could, I would plant a flower each day on Sharon’s tomb because he got rid of 1.7 million Palestinians.”

According to Yadlin, the only mistake was Israel keeping the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip open, as that facilitated weapons smuggling.

On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he said: “It affects Israel’s position before the world … We must be more moderate regarding this issue. Not for the sake of Palestinians, but for the sake of ourselves.”

During his speech, the military intelligence expert also revealed several breakthroughs that his department had achieved when he was on active duty, with the most important being Israel’s penetration into sensitive positions in several Arab states, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine and Syria, as well as Iran.

He explained: “The military intelligence department has spread networks to collect information in Tunisia, Libya and Morocco and they are able to affect positively or negatively all sectors, including the political, economic and social.”

Yadlin did not reveal the nature of these networks; however, he stressed that Egypt is the largest playground for Israeli intelligence, noting that work has developed as planned since 1979 as the political, security, economic and military arrangements have been made in different areas.