Halevy's conclusion is particularly striking because he is no way a stereotypical Israeli dove. In his memoirs last year, "Man in the Shadows," he had scathing things to say about current Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak when he was prime minister, and prepared to put more concessions on the table with the Palestinians at the Camp David II peace conference than any other Israeli leader before or since (They were not enough, but that is another story.). By contrast, Halevy wrote extremely warmly about his relations with and assessment of, Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, Halevy has now gone public with blunt advice that will be unwelcome in the current ruling circles in both Washington and Jerusalem. It often seems today that the current U.S. and Israeli leaders are deliberately trying to talk themselves into a frenzy of fear and shoot-from-the-hip "decisiveness" toward Iran, and although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has hinted at hopes of starting a dialog with Syria, he has been drawn out by a loud chorus from the Bush administration and pro-Israel armchair hawks in the United States.
On this editorial board, we make no secret of our agreement with that neoconservative and Bush icon Winston Churchill when he said, "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war." Contrary to the much nonsense that has been written about him by his supposed admirers, Churchill in the decades after World War I was no war monger but someone who, having seen the horrors of modern war at first hand, wanted to avoid it. Halevy has now clearly decided that he wants to belong in the same company.
With more than 160,000 troops dependent on land lines of supply through Shiite-controlled southern Iraq, the last thing the United States should want to do is to blunder into any avoidable war with Iran that could turn the Shiites of Iraq against America. And with 60 percent of its population concentrated in a tiny 60-mile-long by 12- to 20-mile-wide coastal strip – less than 240 square miles in all, the last thing any Israeli government should want to do is risk testing the proposition that Iran already has one or two usable nuclear warheads smuggled in from North Korea or from poorly monitored Russian stockpiles that it would use only as a last resort.
In these columns, we have been skeptical of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's real commitment and seriousness about reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. We would be a lot more generous about assessing her competence if she made any real move to defuse the continuing tensions between Washington and Damascus and Tehran, or if she recognized that no real movement in the peace process is feasible unless Syria and Iran are given some real incentives to support it too.
When even the long-time head of the Mossad gives the Bush administration the same advice that wise Arab friends of the United States have been giving, surely it is time at last for Bush and Rice to sit up and take notice?