Israel to face terror war after pullout

From an article "Ya'alon: Israel to face terror war after pullout",
By Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent

Moshe Ya'alon, leaving the post of army chief (earlier this month) after three years, warned in ...that unless Israel commits to further withdrawals after this summer's disengagement from Gaza, the pullout will be followed by an outbreak of renewed violence ...and ...that the establishment of a Palestinian state would lead to war at some stage.

...Ya'alon said that it was Israel's military efforts that brought the Palestinians to cease their campaign of terrorism, at least for the present.... Ya'alon told the ceremony."There is no doubt in my heart that the military achievements were what brought our enemy to the awareness, for the moment, that terrorism doesn't pay."

In (an) interview, published earlier ... Ya'alon said "If there is an Israeli commitment to another move, we will gain another period of quiet.""If not, there will be an eruption ... Terrorist attacks of all types: shooting, bombs, suicide bombers, mortars, Qassam rockets." Without an additional withdrawal, "there is a high probability of a second war of terror," which will begin in the West Bank.

Asked whether Ya'alon intended to say that, following the disengagement, Kfar Sava's situation will be like Sderot's today, he responded: "And Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, too. There will be suicide bombings wherever they can perpetrate them."

...Ya'alon said that recent statements by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas show that Abbas "has not given up the right of return. And this is not a symbolic right of return, but the right of return as a claim to be realized. To return to the houses, to return to the villages. The implication of this is that there will not be a Jewish state here." Therefore, he said, the establishment of a Palestinian state will lead to war "at some stage," and such a war could be dangerous for Israel. The idea that a Palestinian state can be established by 2008, and will then produce stability, is "divorced from reality" and "dangerous," as any such state "will be a state that will try to undermine Israel."

Asked about the current situation in the PA, Ya'alon responded: "For the Palestinians it is still convenient to maintain a gang-based reality rather than a state foundation."When [the PA] permits Hamas to take part in the elections without abandoning its firearms, is that democracy? It's gangs. Armed gangs playing at pretend democracy," he said. "If Fatah continues to behave as it does now, Hamas will eventually take over the Gaza Strip," he added.

...Asked for his views on the general concept of two states for two peoples, he said: "In the present reality, I see difficulty in producing a stable situation of end-of-conflict within that paradigm." A two-state solution, he continued, is simply "not relevant. It is a story that the Western world tells with Western eyes. And that story does not comprehend the scale of the gap and the scale of the problem. We, too, are sweeping it under the carpet."Asked whether he fears for Israel's existence, Ya'alon responded: "A combination of terrorism and demography, with question marks among us about the rightness of our way, are a recipe for a situation in which there will not be a Jewish state here in the end."