Israel Security Chief Resigns Amid Scandal

The head of Israel’s secret service resigned Wednesday as part of an 11th-hour negotiated deal intended to limit the damage of a security scandal rooted in the 1984 killings of two Palestinian prisoners by their Israeli interrogators.

In return, former Shin Bet chief Avraham Shalom and three other officers of the organization--which is comparable to the FBI--received presidential pardons guaranteeing them immunity from prosecution for the killings and for an elaborate cover-up that followed.

And Prime Minister Shimon Peres said he will establish a committee to review Shin Bet procedures “based on the lessons of the past.”

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Beilin announced the arrangement at a hastily called noon press conference outside Peres’ Jerusalem office and said he hopes that it will end the affair.

Described as Necessary

Defenders of the deal, including most of Israel’s political right, described it as necessary to protect the functioning of an organization considered vital in the country’s fight against terrorism.

However, angry critics--including senior figures in Peres’ own Labor Alignment--pledged to fight what one termed “a whitewash intended to allow the political echelon to escape investigation.” Four left-wing parties introduced motions of no confidence in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. And members of the Citizens Rights Movement demonstrated in protest outside Peres’ home Wednesday night.

Several Cabinet members expressed public reservations about the deal, and both Energy Minister Moshe Shahal and Parliament member Chaim Ramon said they will seek a full inquiry into whether Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was prime minister at the time of the incident, knew of the cover-up. Ramon added that while he considers Peres innocent of any wrongdoing, he is ready for Peres’ role to be investigated as well.

According to some Israeli press reports, Shalom has proof that Shamir approved of the cover-up, in which evidence was falsified to shift blame for the deaths of the two Palestinians onto a senior army officer.

Questions have also been raised about Peres’ knowledge of the affair, since the cover-up continued long after he took over as prime minister in September, 1984.

Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc and Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment are joined in Israel’s so-called national-unity government, and under a unique provision of the coalition agreement, Shamir is to exchange jobs with Peres next October.

“If he knew about the cover-up, he cannot be prime minister,” lawmaker Ramon said of Shamir.

Energy Minister Moshe Shahal of Peres’ party denounced the immunity for Shalom, saying, “This arrangement is not the proper move we were obliged to take as a government.” And Communications Minister Amnon Rubenstein, a former law professor, called it “a very undesirable precedent.”

Even if Peres and other government leaders are able to control the immediate political fallout from the affair, independent analysts warned that it may linger, like an unexploded bomb, beneath the surface of Israeli politics.

Impossible to Stop

“You can’t stop something like this from being investigated,” commented Arye Naor, a political analyst and onetime Cabinet secretary in the government of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

“It reminds me of the Lavon affair,” added Naor, referring to an ill-fated Israeli sabotage effort in the 1950s intended to destabilize the late Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government in Cairo and discredit him in the eyes of the West. The plot was uncovered by the Egyptians and Israel’s role exposed, triggering a dispute here over who authorized the plan and disrupting Israeli politics for a generation.

The deal announced Wednesday came as a surprise. Late Tuesday night, even as senior ministers and others involved in the affair met in the prime minister’s office, top aides were saying it was almost certain that Atty. Gen. Yosef Harish would announce a full-scale judicial inquiry into the Shin Bet scandal, despite opposition from Shamir and others.

Underlining the crisis atmosphere, Shamir had cut short a trip to Paris by one day to hurry home for the meeting.

At one point during the session, Justice Minister Yitzhak Modai and Shalom’s lawyer left the room, reportedly to meet with President Chaim Herzog. They returned later with the offer of a pardon, and Shalom, who was also at the meeting, told the ministers that he intended to accept it and resign.

The arrangement was made final at another meeting of senior ministers Wednesday morning.

According to the government statement, “Shalom announced that he wanted to be relieved because the publicity and the revelation of his identity would not allow him to continue fulfilling his job.”

Some critics charged that President Herzog’s decision to grant amnesty to the four Shin Bet officers was illegal under a 1985 ruling by former Atty. Gen. Yitzhak Zamir that no presidential pardon is possible until formal charges are filed.

In a televised address to the nation Wednesday night, Herzog said he had acted within his authority “with the purpose of ending the witch hunt surrounding this affair and to avert additional serious harm to the General Security Service (Shin Bet).”

He praised the secret service’s success in defending Israel against terrorist attacks and added: “A situation was created where (Shin Bet) people would have had to face an investigation without the ability to defend themselves unless they disclosed security secrets of the gravest nature. In this situation I saw before me, first and foremost, the need to protect the good of the public and the security of the country. . . . “

The 1984 incident began with the hijacking of an Israeli bus by four Arab terrorists. The army said at the time that all four hijackers were killed during a predawn military rescue raid, but pictures subsequently published here in defiance of military censorship showed two of the hijackers being led away alive.

Beaten to Death

Two previous investigations have established that they were taken to a nearby field and beaten to death.

Israeli paratroop commander Yitzhak Mordechai, who admitted pistol-whipping one of the prisoners while trying to determine if there were bombs aboard the bus, was cleared of responsibility in a military probe of the incident.

But it was only this spring that allegations first emerged publicly that Shin Bet officers continued beating the prisoners and then tried to make Mordechai a scapegoat for their deaths.

Political columnist Yoel Marcus, writing Tuesday in the independent newspaper Haaretz, reported that nine army men on the scene at the time later described how Shin Bet interrogators smashed the head of one of the terrorists against rocks and threw the other into the air from a stretcher, allowing him to land on the ground.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin personally apologized to Mordechai several weeks ago, and according to an Israel radio report, the paratroop officer said through his attorney Wednesday that as far as he is concerned, the affair ended with the apology.

Others are clearly not ready to let it drop, however. “It’s a black day for the rule of law in the state,” said former Justice Minister Chaim Zadok, a member of Peres’ Labor Alignment. The arrangement, he said, is like sending a message to both the Shin Bet and the political echelon, telling them that they can do whatever they want without fear of punishment.

Lawyers for the Justice Ministry expressed “deep shock” over the deal. Knesset member Mordechai Virshubski, representing the leftist Shinui (Change) Party, called the outcome “a scandal” and said Israel is turning into a “banana republic.”