IDF chief: No link between IS and Palestinian issue
Gantz says conflict with PA is a red herring, criticizes Abbas for turning to the international community
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Sunday chided those who would link the Israeli Palestinian conflict to the battle against Islamic State jihadists, and warned against using the Palestinian issue as an excuse for tensions roiling the region.
Gantz, who is set to retire in two weeks, said the Arab-Israeli conflict had no bearing on the fight in neighboring Syria and Iraq against extremists who have seized vast swaths of territory.
“There is no connection, no connection between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the struggle that we are seeing in Iraq and Syria,” he said at a conference in memory of former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who died in December 2012, at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
Gantz explained that the Palestinian issue was being used as a red herring to rally people to a range of causes. It was used as a “strategic excuse,” he said.
He added that Israel was currently in a very sensitive time because of the elections, and as he was still in uniform he did not want to go into details.
That caveat, however, did not prevent Gantz from expressing his displeasure with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The chief of staff said the PA leader’s recent unilateral decisions come with the danger of “eliminating the responsibility to deal with the issue head-on,” and criticized Abbas for leaving the argument to international intervention and taking on a spirit of “whatever will happen will happen.”
However, he stressed, dealing with the current state of global affairs, specifically the violence in Egypt and the situation with Iran, did, on the other hand, require that very same international intervention. “The world cannot allow itself not to intervene,” he said.
“We can’t leave this untreated,” Gantz said. “And I think the world, overall, understands that.”
The recent tension in the Golan Heights, which is more directly within the IDF chief of staff’s purview, was also discussed.
“We are prepared and ready,” Gantz promised. “We dealt with the latest developments throughout the entire weekend, and will continue doing so in the coming days. We cannot allow the northern arena to be active with terrorist activities against us.”
The Times of Israel Community.