Netanyahu’s row with spy boss pulls back the curtain
The future of Shin Bet, Israel’s MI5, has become political after the PM tried to sack its chief, Ronen Bar, who accused his boss of political interference.
In a rare unguarded moment, the Hamas bombmaker put the burner phone against his ear and answered his father’s call. Israeli wiretappers who were listening in to the call in Gaza recognised Yahya Ayyash’s voice and pressed a button. Ayyash’s hand and part of his head were blown off by the explosives hidden inside the device.
Assassinations such as this in 1996 have been the most audacious and deadly hallmarks of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, who were trusted for decades to protect the nation and its citizens.
The failure to detect and prevent Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, dented the Shin Bet’s reputation and led to a public row between its director, Ronen Bar, and the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
The acrimony has blown open apparent secrets between the two and led to a battle over the integrity of the agency which was once so secretive it was forbidden to utter its name.
“As director of the Shin Bet, you are in a very, very sensitive post and you are very, very close - intimately close - to the prime minister,” Yaakov Peri, the director between 1988 and 1994, said. In effect, the Shin Bet acts under the direct command of the prime minister, in parallel but not dependent on Israel’s democratic institutions, he explained.
The Shin Bet were in the midst of investigating large sums of money from Qatar landing in the bank accounts of Netanyahu’s close aides - even during the war with Hamas in Gaza - raising the prospect of foreign penetration deep inside the highest corridors of political power. Israel’s high court froze Bar’s sacking, pending a ruling.
“Relations are so intimate and so close, that I couldn’t understand what happened between Netanyahu and Ronen Bar and the idea that Netanyahu asked Bar to do things forbidden by the code,” Peri said of Bar’s accusations against Netanyahu, including that the prime minister tried to solicit powerful espionage and intelligence tools available only to the Shin Bet to be used against anti-government protesters.
Bar said Netanyahu expected the Shin Bet to obey him and not the courts, should such a conflict arise, and tried to push Bar to help delay the veteran leader’s rolling criminal trial on corruption charges.
The broken code escalated into a Supreme Court battle between the pair, who both issued contradictory signed affidavits, effectively asking the court to pick a side.
“I know the guy [Bar]. I know his integrity and I know that he’s not telling all kinds of stories. From the other side, I also know Mr Netanyahu. And Netanyahu is really able to set a scene to show that Ronen Bar is not telling the truth - and that is not true,” the former spymaster added, in typically coded fashion.
Peri, 81, believes that Bar’s subsequent resignation last month, which takes effect on June 15, may relieve the court from having to adjudicate.
It has been reported that Netanyahu, 75, has frozen Bar out of essential security meetings after appointing his replacement - and then reneging on that appointment.
While the Supreme Court deliberates whether it will rule on the issue, the court proceedings over Bar’s dismissal are seen as a predictor for the independence of future intelligence heads.
“I’m happy that Ronen Bar resigned and I hope that the court will have no need to make the judgment on who is telling the truth ... because I am sure that Ronen is the right one,” Peri said.
Bar, 59, has in turn become an unlikely champion for the left, who see him as standing up to Netanyahu’s efforts to turn the security agency into his personal security service, and the country into a surveillance state.
In his resignation letter, Bar said chiefs of intelligence must be able to carry out their duties “free from pressure,” in order to draw a “clear line between trust and personal loyalty”.
In the late 1960s, with an increase in terrorism attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, the Shin Bet doubled down on counterterrorism, with its intrusive methods of interrogation and surveillance coming under heavy scrutiny, including allegations of mass torture. Peri insists that the agency’s means of recruitment and intelligence gathering are all legal.
The targeted phone assassination of Ayyash, known as the “Engineer”, was regarded as one of the agency’s biggest successes as it only targeted the bombmaker and not innocents, he noted. “He was killed two or three months after I left. I tried to catch him but he managed to run away every time. He had a very tight inner circle protecting him.”
He laments that on October 7 there was a failure by the Israeli intelligence community, who did not pick up on the warning signs. “No recruits spoke up. We had a concept, led by the government, that Hamas does not intend war. Hamas wants to settle. Instead of bringing the right information, we were caught in this concept that led Israel to failure,” Peri said.
The question of who is responsible for October 7 is at the core of the fight between Netanyahu and Bar. Netanyahu has tried to delay the opening of a state commission of inquiry until after the war on Gaza ends, while Bar and the Shin Bet admitted to its limited response that allowed Hamas to mount such a large-scale attack.
Peri says he is optimistic Bar’s resignation has saved the Shin Bet’s autonomy. With Netanyahu backtracking on a full expulsion of the attorney-general, who appeared to be next in the firing line, Peri believes the premier will look to avoid more public outcry and appoint a successor who will uphold the country’s security needs above his own.
“After the crisis between Netanyahu and Bar, Netanyahu will be too scared to make the wrong move,” he said.
It has brought the country to a fork in the road, whether it will be a state obedient to Netanyahu, or a state dictated to by security needs, led by the Shin Bet.
The Times
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