From the “most moral army in the world”: Mr. Pundak believes it wasn’t “unnecessarily cruel” to raze Palestinian villages but he drew the line with Ariel Sharon on “killing enemy fighters” in exchange for “a glass of champagne.”

Last June, Israel’s Supreme Court reached a ruling that some saw as a compromise to a legal battle that had lasted nearly a decade. Beer Sheva’s Big Mosque that has been closed to prayer since 1948 would be converted into a museum of Islamic culture.