The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

by Ami Pedahzur

  Another explanation for military innovations, according to Adam Grissom, relates to the struggle among the various organizations and units over scarce resources. New security challenges force branches of the armed services to compete and innovate in order to remain relevant and protect their resources. Terrorism is no different. However, since policymakers are eager to find a response that will reassure their constituents, they upgrade the struggle against terrorism to the top of their agendas. This opens a window of opportunity for different security branches that aspire to contribute to this struggle. The more importance that policymakers attribute to the campaign against terrorism, the more eager the heads of the organizations are to increase the potential role of their respective organizations in this campaign. Successfully persuading policymakers carries the potential of enhancing the reputation of the organization and securing resources. However, the immediate outcome of such competition among intelligence organizations is the unwillingness to cooperate and share knowledge and information. This can have a devastating impact on the struggle against terrorism. In operational units that place emphasis on status symbols and esprit de corps, the problem is by no means less complicated. Unlike most security branches, elite units whose goal is to undertake complicated scenarios take pride in their ability to think and operate outside the box. Hence, as military analyst John Nagl suggests, while the commanders of other units serve as gatekeepers who are usually reluctant to approach new challenges, the commanders of special units are eager to engage and thus prove their superiority over other units, as well as enjoy glory and secure resources. On certain occasions, this enthusiasm may affect the presence of mind required by the officers who lead these units. Consequently, commanders may insist on taking on operations that do not entirely conform to the training or particular skills of its members. A prominent example in this regard is the conduct of the heads of the security system in Nachshon Wachsman’s case in 1994. While Sayeret Matkal was selected to carry out this rescue operation (and hostage rescue is not its main designation), the Yamam unit, whose specific designation is hostage rescue, did not take part in the operation.11

  This fits into Stephen Rosen’s explanation regarding the structure of military innovations.12 He contends that an innovation requires an alignment of senior and mid-level officers who will introduce and promote it as well as the supportive institutional arrangements necessary to protect it. The senior officers who present and advocate a new paradigm gather around them successful young officers who are enthusiastic about the novel approach and opportunities that may be associated with it. Such a process is very likely to happen among intelligence and special-operations officers. Through their highly specialized training and clandestine operations, such officers are more open to creative ideas and at the same time are less visible to the higher echelons of the security establishment, which lessens their prospects for promotion to commanding roles beyond their own units. The nature of terrorism and its perpetrators opens a window of opportunity for such officers. As intimated earlier, highly technological minor tactical warfare is considered more suitable for counterterrorist operations than the use of traditional military doctrines and troops. The adoption of the tactics that these officers advocate is liable to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The heads of their organizations as well as policymakers will embrace these officers for their counterterrorism expertise. This is likely to result in the promotion to key roles in the security establishment. From this position, they are likely to reject alternatives to their doctrine and at the same time act to increase the importance of counterterrorism operations within the army, subsequently creating more functions and filling them with their peers.

  The main arguments that I will raise in this book are as follows (see figure 1.4). Terrorism, in most cases, should not be considered a major threat to the national security of a country. Yet it has a much stronger impact on the public in comparison with other threats. When adopting a counterterrorism policy, elected officials are highly aware of this fact. Public officials are very much interested in mitigating the psychological effect of terrorism and in reassuring their terrorized constituents that they are taking action in order to solve the problem. This leads them to put more emphasis on the war model, which has been proven to be effective in offering immediate relief to the psychological impact of terrorism, rather than the defensive model, which offers better results in the long run. Leaders of security organizations, which traditionally have been in charge of other duties in the state’s national security framework, see the struggle against terrorism as a window of opportunity for enhancing the reputation of their organizations, obtaining resources, and gaining promotion. Thus, even if the options advocated by policymakers do not seem to be highly effective in responding to the problem, they will be hesitant to seek alternative routes. Rather, they will introduce innovations within their own frameworks. Moreover, for the reasons mentioned earlier, organizations will compete with one another rather than cooperate. While the continuous attempts to find offensive responses to terrorism serve the interests of both the policymakers and the organizations, they offer only a partial solution to the problem itself. At the same time, these attempts distract security organizations from their original roles in the state’s national security framework and thus undermine strategic interests.

  FIGURE 1.4 SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT

  SOURCES OF INFORMATION

  My purpose in writing this book is twofold. First, I want to assess the Israeli counterterrorism policy in terms of its effectiveness and test the ability of the aforementioned hypotheses to assess the outcomes of intelligence and military innovations in the realm of the struggle against terrorism. Second, I am interested in telling the story of Israel’s counterterrorism endeavor. My aim is to reach both academics who are interested in conceptual issues related to counterterrorism and readers from different walks of life who simply have an interest in the Israeli story. To do so, I highlighted the main theoretical issues in this introduction as well as in the conclusion, while the rest of the chapters will focus upon offering a detailed account of this interesting and challenging effort.

  Writing a book on Israeli counterterrorism, especially from the perspective of the war model, is not an easy undertaking. We are speaking of intelligence and military organizations in which secrecy is a fundamental element of their very existence. These institutions will do everything possible to prevent the disclosure of their various modi operandi. I was aware of this fact from the very beginning of my research for the book. Hence, the book does not purport to provide a full chronology of Israel’s struggle against terrorism by describing each case. Its aim is to assess the counterterrorism models that Israel has chosen to employ. To do so, I included only those case studies that were documented with enough credible and accessible information.

  My research method involved several levels. The bulk of the research material was collected from unrestricted, public-domain sources that any citizen of Israel and abroad has access to without much difficulty. These are academic sources, memoirs by members of the intelligence community, books by journalists and researchers, journalistic investigations, and articles published in newspapers and on the Internet.13 A major challenge was to verify the authenticity of the information. To this end, every item that eventually made its way into the book had to rely on two independent sources. If incongruities were found, additional sources were brought in. At a later stage, one-on-one interviews were conducted with former members of the intelligence community and the army, as well as with policymakers. The aim of the interviews was to inquire into disputed items and to obtain a personal and unmediated perspective on issues discussed in the book. The interviewees were not asked to divulge and did not divulge classified details.

  The reality that some of the facts found in the media and in secondary sources were proven wrong forced me to omit a large number of case studies whose inclusion would have been beneficial for this book. Based on the interviews, I concluded that certain case
s have yet to be explored by either journalists or the academia. It will probably take many more years before the files become accessible for research outside the intelligence community. Therefore, I chose to present a sample of case studies.

  The team of researchers and I, who worked long and hard on the collection and verification of the materials, did our best to present the reader with a portrayal that was as close as possible to the sometimes-elusive reality. Nevertheless, despite repeated processes of gathering and double-checking our facts, I cannot certify beyond the shadow of a doubt that there were no inaccuracies or oversights. Research for this book made me realize—if only to a small degree—the feelings and fears that members of the covert agencies have to contend with on a daily basis. While I can step forward and apologize to my readers for mistakes that might have occurred in my research, members of the counterterrorism community do not enjoy this privilege. At the end of the day, after submitting the information they gathered and the assessments they made on the basis of this information, they must return home cognizant that a mistake on their part, no matter how small, might very well be paid for in human lives.

  Finally, it is worth noting what this book is not about. Although most of the text revolves around violence and counterviolence between Palestinians and Israelis, it does not deal directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict. I am not looking into the root causes of the violence, and I have no intention of putting the blame on someone. The subject is complicated and contentious, and such a discussion is way beyond the scope of this book. Yet I cannot hide the fact that besides my training as a political scientist I am also an Israeli, who, incidentally, never served in any of the intelligence branches. I served in the Medical Corps and became acquainted with the world of intelligence only during my years as a student and then as a lecturer at the National Defense College. My background as an Israeli helped me a lot in completing the research for the book; however, it can also be seen as a cause for bias. This has always been on my mind, and I have tried to control this bias. I truly hope that the book reflects more of my academic side than my national origins.

  A last point: Like most people who follow conflicts in general and the Israeli-Arab one in particular, I also have political views. I think that moral debates about violence are essential. Both Israelis and Palestinians are constantly criticized for using excessive violence and causing harm to innocent civilians. Like so many others, I have opinions and emotions regarding this issue. However, in this volume, in order to focus on the aforementioned research questions and the following debates, I had to leave the moral aspect aside. This does not mean that I find it of lesser importance.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE EMERGENCE OF ISRAEL’S COUNTERTERRORISM DOCTRINE

  THE COUNCIL OF DELEGATES (Vaad Hatzirim), led by Chaim Weizmann, was the board in charge of the daily affairs of the Jewish Yishuv before the establishment of Israel. As far back as 1918, thirty years before the State of Israel came into being, the Council of Delegates founded the Intelligence Bureau, the first Jewish Palestine-based information service. In charge of the Intelligence Bureau was Levi Yitzhak Schneorson, a former member of Nili, the Jewish underground movement that operated in Palestine and assisted the British military forces during World War I, mainly by providing intelligence on the status of the Ottoman Army. The organization first operated out of an office in Jaffa and later relocated to Jerusalem. Intelligence Bureau agents recruited Palestinian informants who, for a certain price, would disclose information on prominent Arab figures, Palestinian nationalist groups, and even plots of land that Arabs had put up for sale. One of the critical subjects was the collection of intelligence regarding groups whose members planned on harming Jews. The information was then passed on to the Council of Delegates and in certain cases to the secret police of the British Mandate authorities.

  A short while after the Haganah was conceived in 1920, its commanders began to create an intelligence department that in due course formed the basis for the Shai (from the Hebrew acronym for Sherut Yediot, “information service”), which was officially established in 1933. The head of the organization was Shaul Avigur, who established a human-intelligence (HUMINT) infrastructure throughout the country. Shai intelligence handlers were appointed in charge of regional districts, and in each district, agents were planted who provided handlers with information. Avigur was responsible for collecting information items and disseminating them to Haganah commanders. However, despite the efforts of Avigur and his people, the Great Arab Revolt, which broke out in 1936, took the Shai and the Yishuv leadership by surprise.1

  THE RESPONSE TO THE 1936 REVOLT

  The revolt began with attacks against Jews in mixed cities, but violence quickly spread to agricultural settlements and transportation routes throughout the country. Unlike previous violence waged against the Yishuv, this time the attacks were well planned. Up until the outbreak of the events, Shai officials assumed that the Arabs in Palestine lacked a central leadership and operated mainly on a regional and familial or clan (hamula) basis. The foremost reason for the failure to identify the development of a new kind of central leadership was that Shai local operatives gathered intelligence only on regional hamulas without crosschecking their items with each other, and they vehemently guarded their own information-collection areas. There was no main intelligence-processing center within the Shai organization, so local operatives worked almost independently. In 1921, Haj Amin al-Husseini was appointed mufti of Jerusalem, the highest-ranking religious ruler in Palestine, and in 1922 he became the head of the Muslim High Council of Palestine, which managed Muslim life there. Al-Husseini brought together the heads of the biggest and most important hamulas in Palestine, as well as intellectuals and political leaders, under the control of a new organization called the Supreme Arab Committee. The mufti’s ability to form and coordinate this committee, which was established in 1936 in order to manage the Great Arab Revolt, was a task unprecedented and hence overlooked.2

  The committee led the events from the second day of the revolt and controlled the uprising for a period of three years. Eventually it forced the Shai to alter its basic assessments and improve its HUMINT network in Palestinian society. One of the lessons drawn from the intelligence failure of 1936 was the need to expand intelligence-gathering efforts among the Palestinian population by installing Shai intelligence handlers in Palestinian communities. This type of agent would have a good command of the nuances and codes of the Arabic language and a deep familiarity with the inner workings of Palestinian society. Ezra Danin, a citrus grower, founded the Shai Arab Department. Most of the handlers he was in charge of did not have a background in intelligence work; they were essentially watchmen and cattle dealers who knew the local language and culture of the residents. The Haganah also rebuilt its Nodedet detachment, a roving field-intelligence corps founded as a special unit of the Haganah during 1933—1935, which spread out into the countryside to locate pockets of organized Arab resistance and neutralize them before they could develop operational capabilities. Even so, the extensive efforts of the Jewish forces did not bear the anticipated results.3

  The British Mandate authorities finally suppressed the revolt. The British forces were experienced in anticolonialist activity and imposed collective punishments on Arab neighborhoods and villages that sheltered the rebels. The British additionally conducted mass arrests and executed more than 150 men found guilty of illegal arms possession or of participating in or aiding violent activities. By the end of the revolt, in 1939, the Arab population was in a state of collapse. More than six thousand people had been killed during the uprising, and another six thousand were incarcerated. More than two thousand homes had been destroyed, and the agricultural infrastructure of most Arab villages had been critically damaged. In addition, commerce with the Yishuv was paralyzed, resulting in extensive unemployment. The mufti of Jerusalem fled in fear of the Mandate authorities; after a long period of wandering, he found refuge in Nazi Germany.4

  In 1940, S
hai underwent additional reforms, which included the establishment of a national headquarters whose function was to centralize the activities of the local branches as well as to initiate a counterespionage department. The purpose of this department, called Ran, was to track down Jews who were collaborating with the British Mandate authorities. Some two years later, under the leadership of Yisrael Zblodovsky (Amir), the Shai began to take shape as a bona fide intelligence organization. Its headquarters started out in an apartment on Melchett Street and later relocated to an ordinary-looking building at 85 Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv. Above the entrance to the building hung a sign reading “Consulting Offices.” In practice, the apartment served as the nerve center of the regional and designated departments of the organization. The General Department functioned as the Yishuv’s secret police, its main job was the surveillance of Jewish offenders. The task of the other designated departments—the Jewish and the Communist—was to gather information on political factions from both right and left that refused to accept the Haganah’s authority. The Arab Department, which would later serve as the foundation for the Arab arm of the Shin Bet (the first letters of “security service” in Hebrew),was in charge of intelligence activities among Palestinian populations all over the country.5