JISS conference on “Iran and Israel – The Confrontation.”

Ted Belman. I attended this 4.5 hour conference and found all the talks very informative and interesting.
Watch this fascinating 40-minute interview (in Hebrew) with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman from Sunday’s JISS conference on “Iran and Israel – The Confrontation.”  (I have asked for an English version.)

He discusses Israel’s confrontation with Iran in Syria (“Israel will not allow IRGC bases on its northern border”), the need to hit Hamas in Gaza hard (“I do not believe in a ceasefire with Hamas”), the defense budget (“the IDF needs another NIS 5 billion a year”), the selection of the next IDF chief-of-staff (“I have made my choice; the candidate with the personality to best lead Israel in war”), and new legislation to regulate Ultra-Orthodox draft exemptions (“the bill currently before Knesset is the best compromise for all sectors of Israeli society”). He also relates extensively to the controversy over removing the Bedouin encampment Khan Al-Ahmar (“the cabinet’s decision to evacuate the shantytown is final, although a short delay for negotiation is reasonable”).

You can also read on the JISS web sites a long series of Israeli media reports in Hebrew and English about lectures given at the conference. JISS Rosshandler Fellow General Yaakov Amidror, JISS vice president Colonel Eran Lerman, and JISS fellow Miki Aharonson are quoted in this The Jerusalem Poststory about the Russian S-300 challenge (Amidror: “Israel can overcome this system”); breaking Russian-Iranian ties (Aharonson: “Russia can be incentivized to push the Iranians out of Syria”); and US defense policy (Lerman: “Keeping US troops in Syria is critical”).
Gilad Erdan, Minister of Strategic Affairs and Minister of Public Security
Also speaking at the conference was Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who said that Israel must widen its targets in Syria to include Iranian communication units and not just weapons transfers to Hezbollah and Syria. Erdan also spoke at length about the important contributions of JISS to strategic and realist diplomatic discourse in Israel.
October 23, 2018 | 1 Comment »

Leave a Reply

1 Comment / 1 Comment