Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saker.

My guest today is a member of Israel's national security elite,

a former Special Forces soldier who took part in the dramatic hostage rescue at Entebbe Airport in 1976,

who then went on to become Director of the Intelligence service Mossad. Tamir Pardo was appointed

to that job by bin Yamin Netanyahu, but the relationship between the two soured as they

differed on how to counter the perceived nuclear threat from Iran. And now, with Pardo, a private

citizen and Netanyahu leading a government fighting a multi-front war,

they've come to represent the depth of division and polarization within Israel.

The Prime Minister is intent on applying overwhelming force to eliminate Hamas in Gaza and

Hezbollah in Lebanon. He's also promised to make Iran pay for the

recent firing of almost 200 ballistic missiles into Israel. For the past year and more, Mr. Pardo

has been one of Netanyahu's fiercest critics, accusing him of pursuing a military strategy

lacking any strategic vision.

Israel's peaceful democratic future, Pardo insists, depends on confronting an unavoidable reality.

The Palestinian people have rights, and those rights must be recognized in a territorial compromise.

Such a settlement, he says, is the only way to safeguard the future of Israel.

With the IDF fighting on multiple fronts, can the country afford the kind of soul-searching that Pardo demands?

Well, he joins me now. Tamir Pardo, welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's start with that concept of a multi-front war. Israel is, of course, at war in Gaza.

It's at war in Lebanon now, and it is in a de facto war with Iran, which is unfolding day by day.

In your view, are any of those fronts avoidable?

You can add the hooties in Yemen.

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