Talk of Rift Between Military, Israeli Premier Rattles Nerves

The head of the internal security service known as the Shin Bet this week shrugged off accounts that he considered quitting in the latest crisis between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the nation’s military and security elite.

In fact, said General Security Service chief Ami Ayalon, emerging from a parliamentary committee hearing, he and Netanyahu work together quite well, and there is no reason they cannot do so in the future.

But Ayalon’s rosy public assessment seemed unlikely to dispel growing concern here about reports of deep distrust between Israel’s influential security and military leaders and the prime minister and his senior political aides.

“There have always been differences of opinions between the political and military elites,” said Zeev Maoz, director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. “But it’s the first time in Israel’s history that there is an accusation of collective bias by the political side against the military.”

In a nation with a history of revering its generals and often electing them to political leadership roles, the reports of tension between the two sides have rattled nerves already shaken by the deadlocked peace process with the Palestinians and the chilly state of relations with the Arab world.

Since June, when Netanyahu took power at the head of a right-religious coalition, there has been periodic, occasionally open, tension between the military and the government. As leader of the opposition, Netanyahu fought the previous government’s policy of trading land for peace with the Palestinians and had accused the military of playing too central a role in those negotiations.

Soon after his election in May, Netanyahu announced that he planned to create an American-style national security council, a move widely viewed here as an attempt to sidestep the military in policy decisions. The council was opposed by Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai and never implemented.

Still, Maoz said, senior officers continue to be viewed with some suspicion by Netanyahu and those close to him, who believe the military has a vested interest in the success of the peace process begun by Netanyahu’s predecessors, Labor Party prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

But beyond that, he said, the Netanyahu administration and many top military officers also have a basic difference of belief about Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority and its commitment to pursuing peace.

Since the peace process began in 1993, much of the military establishment has come to believe “that the Palestinians have done a great deal to combat terrorism and control the radical groups,” Maoz said. Netanyahu and his top aides do not agree.

The latest flap between the two sides followed a report on Israeli television news that Ayalon and other senior security advisors had warned the prime minister that any bid to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank could “start a countdown” to violence with the Palestinians.

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The statements, leaked just as the Israeli Cabinet voted last week to increase economic incentives to Jewish settlers, were seen by several analysts here as a preemptive strike by the security elite to avoid recrimination for any conflict that might result.

In turn, Netanyahu, in interviews with Israeli media Sunday, suggested that the security establishment in September all but urged him to take the action that led to the “tunnel crisis,” the gun battles that followed the opening of a new door to a Jerusalem tourist tunnel. At least 75 people died in four days of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ayalon, who rarely makes public statements, was obliged to confirm the embarrassing account. Although he was not consulted about the timing, the Shin Bet chief said, he had recommended that the new tunnel entrance be opened.

With those comments, a truce appeared to be called, at least for the moment. But Maoz warned that the crisis of confidence could cause trouble down the road.

“You can imagine a situation where the security elite say, ‘There are certain things the prime minister does not want to hear, so we’re not going to tell him,’ ” he said. “But so far, there are no signs of that.”