 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
Three Cheers for the Spooks
Ehud Ya'ari
And as the details emerge, the secret battle being waged by Israel now against the Palestinian terror networks will be studied in the future by every self-respecting intelligence agency. True, intelligence plays an important supporting role in every successful campaign, to both political leaders and generals in the field alike. This time, though, the roles have been reversed. The heads of the security services are, essentially, calling the shots, while in many respects, the field commanders are serving them.
Moreover, the political leadership, independent of its ideological leanings, has become highly dependent on the raw material provided by the information-gathering agencies, and also on the intelligence community�s assessments and quite often its recommendations on how to operate. And so, for the first time in the history of the state, the Shin Bet (internal security agency) headed by Avi Dichter, and to use the jargon, the humint, visint and sigint branches of Military Intelligence under the command of Gen. Aharon Ze�evi, are at the vanguard of the fight against the Palestinians. It is due to them that the elite units that carry out special operations and the other formations are able to work round the clock, according to an intelligence picture that is being constantly updated.
The IDF is providing the muscle that the intelligence agencies lack. The army penetrated deep into the cities of the West Bank, for example, to get to the targets that the intelligence services had pinpointed -- whether capturing wanted terrorists, raiding explosives laboratories and arms caches, breaking into information banks or exposing the plants of the terrorism industry established by the Palestinian Authority in partnership with the alliance of Fatah, Hamas & Co.
Even before Operation Defensive Shield, the intelligence community had a wealth of information about the other side and a reasonably intimate knowledge of the personalities and the networks that export suicide bombers to Israel. Yasser Arafat, even before being imprisoned in his Muqata�ah HQ, was swimming in a goldfish bowl. The lists of wanted men that Israel handed over the past year to CIA director George Tenet and his team, and later to Gen. Anthony Zinni, showed that Israel has better intelligence today about its Palestinian adversary than it had before Oslo, when it was in full control of the territories.
And yet it became clear during the course of the operation that there were still some areas into which Israeli intelligence hadn�t yet delved, such as the extent and ramification of the PA�s links with Saddam Hussein. Israel�s reliance on a nimble, integrated system of intelligence nevertheless allowed its forces to deal in those three weeks also with areas that were not planned for in advance.
From a purely professional point of view, Israel has written the textbook of how to set up a modern intelligence system rich with advanced technologies in a short period of time -- a system that works with admirable accuracy for the most part, and without any competition over who gets the honors.
The whole story cannot be told just yet, but the Palestinians have already reached certain conclusions. Primarily, they realize that their Achilles heel is not, as was previously thought, Israel�s overwhelming advantage in the balance of forces, but rather, their transparency in the face of an aggressive intelligence effort. In this war of shadows, they find no cover of darkness.
It was intelligence that first provided Israel with incontrovertible evidence that the terror onslaught was driven, coordinated and funded by Arafat, thus spoiling his attempt to create the illusion that so-called "irregular forces" were responsible for the violence while he himself was having difficulty controlling them. These proofs were gradually accepted in Washington, and later, in a string of European capitals, the first of which, incidentally, was Moscow.
Then came a major intelligence coup in the form of the Karine A bust, and the cooperation between Arafat, Hizballah and Iran. The seizure of the ship pushed Arafat into a corner that he was almost unable to get out of. Even after he has been partially forgiven by the Americans, he remains up to his neck in that mess.
Finally came the series of well-aimed blows at the five main suicide-bombing production lines, and the surrounding apparatus that supported them. Of the 107 most wanted men topping Israel�s list, over half have been killed or arrested. The rest have fled deep underground. The networks have ceased functioning to a large extent, and will need months to recover. The terrorist campaign that saw 5-7 suicide bombing attempts per day in recent months has been broken for the time being. The operational commands of Hamas and Jihad have been largely shattered. The same is true of the dominant echelon of Fatah�s "Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades," including the arrest of its leader Marwan Barghouti. The interrogation of over 2,000 militants detained from the various factions sheds more light every day into the dark nooks and crannies.
There is another important lesson to be learned here: Where there is quality intelligence, there is a political will to make use of it. And when an army is ready to jump to the orders of the spymasters, it scores better results than usual.
In the 1970s, the PLO was served a critical blow by means of the aggressive measures known as "offensive frustration" initiated by the legendary Shin Bet chief Avraham Ahitov, the mentor of his heirs in the current service. Thirty years later, the updated method of "offensive targeting" is similarly bearing fruit.
From the moment that intelligence set its own offensive goal beyond just keeping things in check, and started seeing itself as the spearhead that goes ahead of the army instead of giving advice from the wings, there came a turning point on the battlefield. The credit is theirs.
So three cheers to the district commanders of the Shin Bet, to the agent handlers of the unit the Arabs call "504," to those whose job it is to put all the pieces together into a single, comprehensive intelligence picture according to which the helicopters can take off and target a safe house just minutes after a wanted terrorist has arrived there.
l
(May 20, 2002)
Columnists
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2004 |  |