amanpour | Six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secretive internal
security service, have spoken out as a group for the first time and are
making stunning revelations.
The men who were responsible for keeping Israel safe from terrorists
now say they are afraid for Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish
state.
Israeli film director Dror Moreh managed to get them all to sit down for his new documentary: “The Gatekeepers.”
It is the story of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories,
as told by the people at the crossroads of some of the most crucial
moments in the security history of the country.
“If there is someone who understands the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, it’s those guys,” the director told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Against the backdrop of the currently frozen peace process, all six
argue – to varying degrees – that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
land is bad for the state of Israel.
The oldest amongst the former chiefs, Avraham Shalom, says Israel
lost touch with how to coexist with the Palestinians as far back as the
aftermath of the Six Day War of 1967, with the occupation of Gaza and
the West Bank, when the country started doubling down on terrorism.
“We forgot about the Palestinian issue,” Shalom says in the film.
A major impediment to a meaningful strategy, they say, are the Jewish
extremists inside Israel – people like the Jewish Israeli who
assassinated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, or the 1980 plot to blow up
the Dome of the Rock Islamic shrine in Jerusalem.
A central theme of the documentary is the idea that Israel has
incredible tactics, but lacks long-term strategy. That is to say, the
security apparatus is able to pacify terrorists, but if operations do
not support a move toward a peace settlement, then they are meaningless.
Moreh said he was shocked to hear Avraham Shalom, Austrian-born and a
refugee of the Nazis, compare the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian
Territories to Germany’s occupation of Europe.
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