Ex-chief of staff Moshe Yaalon: There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Israeli army that the current change in top command cannot remedy

Addressing the Herzliya Conference Monday, Lt. Gen Moshe Yaalon stressed that the difficulties of the Lebanon War were the outcome of high-level political and military mismanagement on the part of the prime minister and defense minister.
He devoted a large part of his lecture to challenging as fallacious the proposition that the Israel-Arab dispute was caused by the “Israeli occupation,” or that Israeli concessions for creating a Palestinian state would end the dispute. On the contrary, he argued, this concept thwarts fresh thinking for a solution.
Yaalon said the confrontation with radical Islam has become a clash of civilizations which did not spring from the Arab-Israeli conflict. Al Qaeda was not the product of this conflict and solving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute will not bring stability to the Middle East. The search for a solution now must stop and make way for far-thinking strategic concepts and vision. We have to win this struggle, he said, but there is a long way to go.
Regarding the threat from Iran, Gen. Yaalon is of the opinion that a confrontation with the Islamic regime is unavoidable. Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and other nations will never achieve stability unless the Iranian regime is crushed. It is now riding how, convinced of victory, because it has never had to pay the price for its rogue behavior. I see no regime change in Iran without a serious shock being administered by an external force,” he concluded.