May 5 2025
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Q. Head of Shin Bet Ronen Bar has resigned after leveling unprecedented accusations against PM Netanyahu. No fewer than 21 former heads of services publicly back Bar. Why this crisis? What is it about?
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A. The Netanyahu-Bar clash is symptomatic of Netanyahu’s attempt, over a period of years, to politicize Israel’s security establishment and bend it to his ideological and personal-political goals. This has generated a crisis in civil-security relations that is at least as dangerous as Netanyahu’s ‘judicial revolution’ that preceded and in some ways catalyzed the events of October 7, 2023.
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Nor is the crisis confined to the Shin Bet domestic security service. Netanyahu and his minions have also lately attacked the heads of Mossad and the IDF.
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This is a crucial test of the viability of the governance system in Israel. One of the first signs of creeping fascism is when the security services are called upon to serve the regime rather than the wellbeing of the country and the public. Or when, alternatively (e.g., Watergate; January 6, 2021), the leader sets up his own security arm.
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To be sure, in the past there have been problematic relations between the prime minister and/or defense minister (on occasion the same person, e.g., Ben Gurion, Rabin, Barak) and security chiefs. But they never became full-fledged public crises and never threatened the viability of governance like the present crisis, for at least three reasons.
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For one, in the early years everything in Israel was smaller and ‘cosier’, Prior to 1977 only one party (Mapai) ruled, and service heads did not benefit from Knesset legislation that fortified their independence. Then too, the Palestinian issue--which is at the heart of the current tensions--was not nearly as central as it became after 1967 and particularly as it is since October 7.
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Third, the identity of Mossad and Shin Bet heads and, indeed, the very existence of these intelligence arms, was secret: government-security relations were to a large extent hidden from the public. The ‘Lavon Affair’ of the 1950s, which had nothing to do with the Palestinians, was not public knowledge for decades. As a Mossad official in the 1970s, my kids and my neighbors knew only that I worked for the “security establishment”. The only Mossad that the public-at-large was aware of was the ‘Mossad LeBituach Leumi”, the government’s social security arm.
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Moreover, then as now, that same security establishment shunned politics. I still recall how, as I was briefing a Knesset delegation in Mossad headquarters regarding the soon-to-erupt revolution against the Shah of Iran, the Head of Mossad cut me off when I chanced to compare a branch of Iran’s Islamist revolutionaries to an Israeli political party.
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Then, as now, the heads of the security branches took responsibility. They admitted and analyzed their failures. The difference is that, back then, Israel’s heads of government--Begin, Rabin--did the same. Not so Netanyahu, who in recent years has presided over a broad strategic failure (October 7) and a major domestic disruption, while remaining set in his megalomaniacal ways.
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Yossi Alpher's Death Tango: Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and Three Fateful Days in March
"Anyone seeking to understand how Israelis and Palestinians traded the hopes of Oslo for something approaching hopelessness is well-advised to read this book. With penetrating analysis and elegant prose, Yossi Alpher has told the gripping story of three days nearly two decades ago that continue to haunt would-be peacemakers. Yossi’s faithful readers will not be disappointed with his latest effort."
Ambassador Frederic C. Hof, Bard College
"A riveting account of the crucial days in March 2002 when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was profoundly changed for the worse. The peace camp has never recovered from those wrenching days, and we live now without any hope of a just settlement. Alpher is a highly respected expert who has spent decades studying this conflict from both sides."
Bruce Riedel, Director of the Brookings Intelligence Project
"A critical assessment of a key period in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never before presented in such detail. The best and most capable players at the executive and political levels proved unable to forge any resolution, final or partial, because both parties continued to maintain an insurmountable gulf between themselves. This is a MUST read for anyone daring to tackle the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Israel-Arab relations in general."
Efraim Halevy, former Head of the Mossad (1998-2002)
Oraib Khader and Avi Bar-On are youngish Palestinian and Israeli bachelors with security experience, readiness to do business with one another, a shared fondness for women and money, and total cynicism about the lack of peace between their two peoples.
Oraib and Avi can never become true friends: the cultural and political gaps are too wide. But as they confront a failed peace process and a bleak peace future, they readily become business partners: shady business that exploits a lot of naïve international peace aspirations.
As Oraib sums up on a visit to Sarpsborg, Norway, where the ultimately-failed Oslo peace talks were held, “There is a lesson here for those who still doggedly and hopelessly pursue a two-state solution in the Middle East. Get smart. Get out of the Israeli-Palestinian peace business. Step back and let the Jews and Arabs screw one another while making money.”