Scandal Invites Rare Scrutiny of Israel’s Shin Bet

Continuing publicity surrounding Shin Bet secret police involvement in the 1984 killing of two Arab prisoners has thrown an unaccustomed spotlight onto one of the murkiest corners of Israeli life: the norms of behavior for the country’s security services.

While details remain among the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, Prime Minister Shimon Peres indirectly confirmed Monday in a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, that the 1984 killings were no isolated incident.

Peres, who was defending his government against five motions of no confidence brought in connection with the Shin Bet affair, said he had originally opposed an investigation into the scandal because Shin Bet officials accused of ordering the handcuffed prisoners beaten to death and then covering up their action would argue that “this was not the first time.”

Revealing Secrets

“This means that I, or the government, would have had to allow the GSS (General Security Services, or Shin Bet) to bring for discussion a very lengthy series of precedents and reveal things that the entire country agreed were secret matters,” Peres told the legislators.

He did not elaborate on the “precedents,” but lawyers and human rights advocates active in the Palestinian cause say they suspect that among the victims are Arabs said to have been shot while trying to escape, “terrorists” alleged to have blown themselves up while trying to set bombs and others who have simply disappeared after apparently being taken into custody by the security services.

Growing Suspicions

“All the evidence is circumstantial,” conceded Felicia Langer, an Israeli lawyer who is handling two such cases. But the 1984 incident and Peres’ comments only deepen suspicion that some of these mysterious deaths and disappearances are part of a pattern pointing to the Shin Bet, she said.

Another lawyer, a Palestinian, said she knows of five cases where West Bank Arabs were reported killed when secret weapons caches exploded. She said she suspects the hiding spots were booby-trapped by the secret police.

Law in the Service of Man, a West Bank human rights group affiliated with the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, has files on three recent, unsolved cases in which Palestinians have disappeared immediately after reported run-ins with the Shin Bet. The mutilated bodies of two of them were found later--blown up, according to the authorities, while preparing terrorist bombs. The third man is still missing.

“It so happens the Shin Bet goes overboard in some cases, but why focus on those?” Raja Shehadeh, co-director of Law in the Service of Man, asked rhetorically. “The number (of fatalities) is not very large, really. More important is the system” under which the agency enjoys “supremacy over the law,” he said.

Identification of an individual by the Shin Bet as a security case is enough for many of his or her rights under both civil and military law to be effectively suspended, according to Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer who has also published a report on alleged Israeli mistreatment of prisoners in a West Bank prison for Arab youths.

Has Enjoyed Wide Latitude

Israel’s principle security services--the Mossad, the equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Shin Bet, the equivalent of the FBI--report directly to the prime minister.

The British journal Jane’s Defense Weekly recently quoted a CIA report as saying that the Shin Bet has about 1,000 employees whose mission is to keep track of “subversive elements in the Israeli society, radical political movements, foreign delegations, terrorist activities and the occupied territories. . . .”

The Shin Bet has apparently long enjoyed wide latitude for its efforts. In his parliamentary address Monday, Peres noted that “every democracy, including Israel,” distinguishes between civil norms and military norms. “The difference is not in the values, it is in the situations,” he said.

In the Shin Bet, Peres added, “we have an operational organization which has no uniform, but which fights a genuine war, day and night. According to which code is it to be judged?”

In a document made public for the first time Monday in connection with an Israeli High Court of Justice hearing into the case, the Shin Bet chief accused of ordering the 1984 killing of the two Arab prisoners stated, “My actions were carried out on authority, and with permission. . . . “

The official, Avraham Shalom, resigned without admitting any wrongdoing last Wednesday in return for a presidential pardon guaranteeing him and three of his senior aides immunity from prosecution in the incident.

Shamir Approval Reported

On Tuesday, the independent newspaper Haaretz reported that Shalom had told unidentified ministers from Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment that Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was prime minister at the time of the incident, had granted Shin Bet general approval to kill terrorists captured after hostage attacks.

Shamir, on a tour of northern Israel, responded to Shalom’s reported allegation by saying Tuesday, “We won’t start an inquiry here. If there will be some kind of inquiry, I will say what I have to say.

“Then everybody will be surprised,” he added. “At most, the press and the media will regret what they say now.”

The two slain Palestinians were part of a gang that hijacked a civilian bus. They were captured when security forces stormed the vehicle, killing two of their companions. The authorities originally said all four hijackers were killed in the assault, but photographs published in defiance of the Israeli censor later showed two of them being led alive to a nearby field. Two subsequent investigations uncovered that they had been beaten to death there by their interrogators.

Among the Israeli public, outrage over the Shin Bet affair is directed not at the way the two prisoners were killed, but at the subsequent cover-up in which Shin Bet officials allegedly falsified evidence and perjured themselves, thereby diverting blame to an innocent army officer.

‘There Are No Rules’

“Who cares?” responded an Israeli Foreign Ministry official when asked about the two slain prisoners.

“Everybody understands that in this fight against terrorism we are really in the twilight area,” added another government official. “There are no rules of the game.

“I’m considered a liberal,” this official added, “but I agree that there should be one organization in this country that will not follow the law as it is written in the books. Maybe some of these guys reported to have blown themselves up trying to arm a bomb were ‘helped.’ I prefer not to know.”

Public opinion polls indicate that those opposed to any further probe of the bus incident outnumber by two to one those in favor of further investigation. They fear a deeper inquiry would compromise the secrecy that the Shin Bet requires to do its job.

Explaining his decision to pardon Shalom, President Chaim Herzog last week credited the Shin Bet with uncovering in the past year “some 320 terrorist gangs, which carried out 379 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Israel.” The Israeli public, he added, “has no idea . . . how many lives have been saved” thanks to these “unknown fighters.”

Only a few hours after the deaths of the four bus hijackers, then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens praised the operation as indicative of the country’s line toward terrorism.

“Every terrorist who undertakes an operation inside Israel should know that he is not going to come out of it alive,” Arens said.

It is unclear whether Arens was aware at the time that two of the four had been killed after their capture.

On the other hand, Israel is sensitive about reports of mistreatment of its Arab prisoners, if only because they might boomerang against present or future Israeli prisoners in Arab hands.