ISRAELI SECURITY AND THE RULE OF LAW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807340002-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

-Declas i d and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807340002-1
WASHINGTON POST FIL? UMLY
8 June 1986
6
What Did Its Leaders Know of Two Murders, and When Did They Know It?
By Lally Weymouth
T EL AVIV-Israeli Attorney General
Yitzhak Zamir stood alone last week
fighting both the prime minister and
the Israeli Cabinet in the name of law, order
and democratic values.
Zamir was attacked-and labeled every-
thing from square-minded to unpatriotic-
because he insisted on investigating the role
of the super-secret Israeli security service
known as Shin Bet in the killing of two Pal-
estinian terrorists who were taken prisoner
in 1984. It would be hard to imagine a less
popular cause in Israel.
Zamir appeared to lose his battle and was
fired last week. But conversations with Cab-
inet ministers, military officials and Israeli
journalists make clear that the Shin Bet se-
curity scandal isn't over yet. Like the Lavon
affair of the 1950s, it is likely to provoke a
continuing political and moral crisis for Is-
rael-one that could challenge the current
Israeli government and determine the bal-
ance struck in Israel between security and
the rule of law.
What Zamir has said is that the rule of
law must predominate, no matter how se-
rious Israel's terrorism problems may be.
The Israeli public appears to have little
sympathy for Zamir and his insistence on
proper legal procedures. According to one
poll, at least 70 percent of the public stood
squarely behind Prime Minister Shimon
Peres and against Zamir. Facing a choice
between security and the law, they chose
security. They couldn't understand why an
attorney general would want to investigate
the head of the Shin Bet, Avraham Shalom,
for his alleged role in the deaths of the two
captured Arab hijackers and for the cover-
up he allegedly arranged later to hide the
truth from two commissions of inquiry.
Israelis feel an understandable loyalty
and gratitude to the Shin Bet for allowing
them to sleep safely at night, work by day,
and travel without fear by air.
Z emir believed, however, that the pub-
lic wou come to understand a e
Skim Bet case was more than a matter
oLkillin two captured terrorists but a ques-
tion of whether the secret services could
take the law into t eir own han s. s one of
Israel's most famous intelligence officers out
it: "If they are allowed to do this, tomorrow
the~+'ll take your son and do the same. You
don t 've these authorities excess power.
Moreover, the charges were true and
Shalom had ordered the killing of the cap-
tured hijackers, he had broken not only the
law but also the Israeli Defense Forces' code
against killing prisoners. If a new precedent
were established that prisoners would be
killed, future hijackers would resist to the
bitter end rather than surrender.
Zamir believed that as the guardian of law
and civil liberties in a country that lacked a
constitution, he had a duty to fulfill, no mat-
ter how unpopular it might be. Several years
ago, against similar political and popular
pressure, he had prosecuted Jewish settlers
on the West Bank for plotting terrorist at-
tacks against Palestinians.
The Shin Bet scandal landed in Zamir's lap
last February, when several of his assistants
told him they had received new evidence
about the fate of the two Arabs who had hi-
jacked a bus going from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon
in 1984 and had later died during interroga-
tion. The evidence included testimony from'
three Shin Bet members who claimed that
their boss had ordered the killings of the two
Arabs and then arranged a cover-up.
Zamir had no idea when he began that the
scandal might involve two prime ministers:
Yitzhak Shamir, who held the post in 1984,
when the two hijackers were killed; and
Peres, who was prime minister during much
of the alleged cover-up.
Soon after he began his investigation,
Zamir learned that the three Shin Bet mem-
bers had already presented their case to
Prime Minister Peres. Peres had dismissed
the three, convinced that they just wanted
Shalom's job, and they were fired from the
service.
But Zamir disagreed with Peres' assess-
ment. He concluded that the three Shin Bet
agents were men of good character and, after
reviewing the facts, he decided it was his
duty to go to the prime minister and inform
him there was sufficient, reliable evidence to
bring a case against Shalom. If the allegations
were correct, he told Peres, then Shalom had
broken the law.
Zamir ran into a stone wall. Peres told him
that he had checked the story and decided
not to reopen an investigation. He advised
Zamir to close the file. To reopen the case
would, he said, damage farael's security.
The political dimension of the scandal-
the possibility that it might involve some of
the highest officials in Israel-gradually be-
came clear to Zamir. He came to suspect that
Shalom might have been acting on orders
from the political level, since Shin Bet re-
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807340002-1
Israeli Security and the Rule of Law
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807340002-1
ports directly to the prime minister-who at
that time was Shamir.
Ezer Weinman, a member of the Cabinet,
explains the likelihood that there was political
involvement: "No military action, whether an
ordinary army type of operation or a covert
action, is undertaken in Israel without the
consent and approval of the civil authori-
ties-the defense minister and the prime
minister. Therefore, I assume if the allega-
tions are true [that Shalom ordered the kill-
ing of the two Arab terrorists and the sub-
sequent cover-up] the actions must have
been approved by the authorities responsible.
The man responsible was Mr. Shamir. So I
point my finger at the then-prime minister,
and I want him to say if he was responsible or
not."
(Shamir's spokesman. Avi Pazner. re-
s nds: "As r' Minister Shamir gave his
fu ackin to the head of the secret ser-
vices. He knew what a prime minister should
know an acte accor ingly_"1
The pressure on Zamir to drop the case
became intense. According to Israeli sources,
Peres formed a troika-consisting of himself,
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Vice
Premier Shamir-to deal secretly with Zamir
on the Shalom affair, without the knowledge
of the rest of the Cabinet. The three men
tried without success to get Zamir to aban-
don the case.
Zamir suggested a compromise. Recogniz-
ing the sensitivity of the investigation, he
offered to drop the case if Shalom would re-
sign. But Peres refused the offer.
When it became obvious that the long
negotiations had reached a stale-
mate, Zamir decided to take the
matter to the police for an investigation. He
believed that Israel's long-term security lay
in making sure that the Shin Bet was free
from corruption and that it abided by the law.
Zamir's foes countered that it is impossible
to fight terrorism effectively within the
framework of the law. "When you fight ter-y
ror, there are many situations that cannot fit
under the laws of democracy," says one vet-
eran intelligence officer. "You must break the
normal rules of democracy when you fight
merciless terrorists who come to kill civil-
ians."
Israel had never seen a confrontation quite
like this, according to Uriel Reichman, dean
of Tel Aviv Law School: "It's a constitutional
drama. Never before was the attorney gen-
eral isolated, fighting the government."
Zamir knew that in theory he could be dis-
missed by the Cabinet, and he had announced
a few months earlier that he intended to re-
sign. But he doubted that Peres would allow
him to be fired. He was wrong. Last Sunday,
at the weekly government meeting, he was
informed that he was being replaced and that
a successor, Yosef Harish, had been found.
But the firing of Zamir may be only a py-
rhic victory for Peres and the Cabinet. Reich-
man predicts that, should the new attorney
general try to sweep the affair under the rug,
he will spark off a government. crisis that
could trigger Cabinet resignations and incite
a public outcry.
If an investigation occurs, Zamir will have
won by forcing the government, however
reluctantly, to live by the law. And if the in-
vestigation establishes the truth, however
unpleasant, Israel also will be the winner-
for it will have proved that, despite living in a
near-constant state of siege, it has a viable
democracy. Even now, with the issue far
from settled, government efforts at censor-
ship haven't stopped the Israeli press from
reporting the story. And that, in itself, is a
kind of triumph.
As for Prime Minister Peres, perhaps he
should remember the lesson of his mentor,
David Ben-Gurion, who insisted that every
detail of the disastrous Lavon affair be
brought to fight, even at the expense of aban-
doning the party he created and going into
the political desert with Shimon Peres to
form the Rafi Party-when his party refused
to go along with him.
Like Ben-Gurion, Zamir is correct in claim-
ing that security cannot be based on lies.
Lally Weymouth writes regularly about
foreign affairs for The Los Angeles Times
Syndicate.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807340002-1