Director of Israeli Spy Agency Resigns

The head of Israel’s spy agency quit Tuesday after an official investigation blamed him for a botched attack on a Hamas leader that humiliated the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and damaged relations with neighboring Jordan.

Danny Yatom, director of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, became the most senior casualty in a scandal that chilled Israelis’ confidence in their vaunted national security system.

A government-appointed commission, concluding a four-month inquiry, last week accused Yatom of mishandling the conception of, and the planning and training for, a Mossad operation launched to assassinate Khaled Meshaal, a leader of Hamas, a militant Islamic group, in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Two Mossad agents were dispatched to Amman, where they confronted Meshaal on a city street Sept. 25 and injected him with poison. But his bodyguards pursued and caught the agents, and the hand of Israel was revealed. At the insistence of Jordan’s infuriated King Hussein, the Israeli government eventually supplied the antidote to save Meshaal.

Although Netanyahu signed off on the mission, the government investigation absolved him and instead singled out Yatom. The Mossad chief initially dug in his heels and refused to step down. But with the government eager to repair its relations with Jordan and salvage Mossad’s sullied reputation, Yatom’s resignation seemed inevitable.

Many in Israeli political circles approved of the resignation as an important step in clearing up what is widely regarded as one of the worst blunders in the history of Israel’s daring, once-revered intelligence services. But opposition leaders were quick to charge that Netanyahu was using Yatom--a holdover from the previous, Labor Party government--as a scapegoat.

“I’m sorry to say that, once more, [Netanyahu] has put the responsibility on someone else, cleansing himself, as it were,” said Eli Ben Menahem, a Labor member of the parliament, or Knesset.

Turmoil in the Mossad may have forced Yatom’s hand. The Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported Tuesday that his refusal to quit was triggering mutiny in the agency, with senior deputies refusing to speak to their boss or threatening to walk out.

Yatom gave his resignation to Netanyahu on Tuesday, and the prime minister accepted it “with regret” but readily. In a letter to Netanyahu, Yatom rejected the inquiry’s findings but conceded that he had to heed them.

“I have no intention of ignoring the [commission] report and, as the one who bears overall responsibility for the Mossad’s activity, I have decided to tender my resignation to you,” Yatom wrote.

Jordan welcomed Yatom’s removal. As Israel’s neighbors and Arab allies, the Jordanians were outraged that the Israeli government had plotted a hit to take place on their territory. After the assassination attempt, Hussein suspended security cooperation with Israel, including the sharing of information on Islamic radicals. There were indications from Amman on Tuesday night that the cooperation might now be resumed.

Yatom’s departure gives Netanyahu a chance to name a successor from outside Mossad in an effort to institute reforms that many in the intelligence community believe are necessary. But traditionally, the leadership at the agency has resisted change, and it is not yet clear that Netanyahu would act differently.