Ami Ayalon, director of the Shin Bet security service until 2000, provoked headlines across Israel when he and three predecessors said that the Jewish State faced a “catastrophe” if it continued with its present policies.

The criticism reflects growing concern at the highest levels of the military establishment about whether the hardline policies of Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, might serve to fuel hatred among Palestinians forced to live under Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks and curfews.

Even President Bush — amid harsh words for a corrupt, intimidatory and terrorist-linked Palestinian leadership — this week called upon Mr Sharon to “end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people” and not to prejudice final negotiations with the “walls and fences”.

Mr Ayalon is a key figure in the Israeli debate having gained 185,000 signatories for his Peoples’ Voice movement, which was started last year with Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian intellectual.

The pair’s “Statement of Principles” promotes a two-state solution based on Israel’s June 1967 borders, Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem under Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish neighbourhoods under Israeli. Palestinians would be granted guardianship of the disputed Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif shrine, but give up the right of return of refugees who fled Israel in 1948.

Speaking to The Times before his visit to Britain, Mr Ayalon said he believed that radical changes in thinking were needed to end the impasse that has seen more than 3,000 people killed on both sides. “I think that during the last three years most Israelis and Palestinians are asking themselves where it took us. What should we do in order to get out from this horrible situation?” he said.

“Israelis are preoccupied with what is happening to us. We send our children to these places, to checkpoints and into Palestinian towns. I have three sons, all of them warriors. I see them when they come back and I ask myself whether they understand the value of life, and how dignity is important.”

Israel rebuffs the criticism, saying that Palestininan attacks surge whenever it eases restrictions, and believes that there can be no progress until the Palestinian leadership deploys its own security forces against Hamas.

One senior Israeli official last night said that Israeli deaths along the northern stretch of the newly built fence had fallen from 58 in the 12 months before it was built to just three since. He also cited the restaurant bombing in Haifa last month as evidence of the risks of leniency.

“We are blamed for treating Palestinians not nicely at checkpoints and some of this is probably right, but when we were too soft a Palestinian woman managed to cross an Israeli checkpoint with a suicide bomb and killed 20 people. What is the right policy about how to treat people when you never know who is a civilian?” he said.

In a poll for the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, Israelis appear finely balanced on the issue, 49 per cent supporting the four former directors’ criticisms with 41 per cent opposed. Mr Sharon is unlikely to be moved, angrily telling Israeli journalists that Mr Ayalon and his colleagues had “undermined the confidence of the people in Israel in war time”.

Mr Ayalon’s is only one of several alternative blueprints emerging in the Middle East. Although he supports the most important, President Bush’s “road map”, he believes that the US-backed plan will not work because it is painfully incremental, imposing difficult obligations at each stage.

“The important thing is not what we do tomorrow,” he said. “It is where we shall be in 40 years from now.”

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