Mossad agent with false information on Syria might face trial for high treason
Israel, Politics, 12/5/1997

A Mossad agent with right wing inclinations who stood behind the false information that reached the Mossad and onward to the Israeli government over the past few years is likely to face trial in Israel, but opposition figures have already called for the formation of an official commission of inquiry to investigate how such an agent acted and whether his deeds caused strategic damage to Israel. Once put on trial, this agent might face charges of high treason, according to police minister Avigdor Kahalani.

This agent had knowingly misled his colleagues in the Mossad and the political leadership about Syria¹s political and military intentions towards Israel. But also, it so seemed, the Mossad head at the time, Shabtai Shavit, and the head of the assessment branch in the Mossad, Uzi Arad, were also in favor of his assessment and brought it forward to their superiors in the government. Shavit left the Mossad last year.

What is not certain now is whether Arad himself was the one who initiated this false information, being so close to the right wing that he later became political advisor to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But the way similar scandals hit Israel, it has become normal that junior operatives might be blamed while leaders remain untouched.

The information contributed to the formulation of the Mossad¹s position on the Middle East, in particular with respect to Syria, and thus, in one way or another, influenced political decision-making, mainly in two crucial periods, the 1993 talks between Syria and Israel and the June 1996 threat of an open military confrontation between the two.

In winter 1993, negotiations were being conducted in Washington between Syrian and Israeli delegations. The Israeli government under Yitzhak Rabin, equivocated about whether the negotiations had a chance; in the background, false information was reaching the political leadership about how Syria wasn¹t interested in peace.

The head of the military intelligence corps at the time, Major General Uri Saguy, declared that Assad had reached a strategic decision to make peace with Israel. In contrast, then Mossad chief Shavit said he was not convinced that Assad had undergone a strategic turnaround in favor of peace. Rabin eventually adopted the military intelligence view but when he found the talks with Syrian negotiators in Washington were becoming exhausting and problematic for him, he decided that the emphasis should be placed on the Palestinian track.

In the summer of last year, daily newspaper headlines in Israel spoke of a Syrian decision to abandon the peace process and to prepare for a possible military blitz on the occupied Golan Heights. Those reports were later backed by the redeployment of the Syrian Commando 14 brigade in the Golan Heights opposite the Israeli army. Syria insisted its move was meant to prepare against mounting Israeli military buildup in the area while Israel's Mossad claimed the move had offensive objectives.

When defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai and his chief of staff, Amnon Shahak, decided to adopt the military intelligence view and therefore refused to reinforce their army in the Golan, they were both criticized by influential circles in Israel. The defense minister assessed that the reinforcement of Israeli forces on the Golan Heights was likely to cause a steep escalation.

Mordechai then ordered increased intelligence efforts and a short time later, he visited Cairo where Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told him he had received at least five telephone calls from Syrian President Hafez Assad who said that Israel was about to launch a surprise attack on Syria. Surprised by the revelation, Mordechai asked President Mubarak to call President Assad and tell him Israel had no intention of attacking Syria. At the same time, Mordechai made many declarations to the media in which he called on President Assad to return to the negotiating table.

Sources in the left yesterday openly expressed their suspicions that the motivation behind the passing-on of the false information regarding Syria was political. ³I have difficulty sleeping at night, knowing that false information was passed on by this person as a result of ideological-political considerations,² said opposition Labor Party Knesset Member Benjamin Ben Eliezer (Fuad). ³This thought haunts me. The whole establishment must do a thorough house-cleaning. They need to check the filters and levels of information so that an affair of this type will never happen again," he said. But the right responded angrily to what was defined as ³an attempt to cast responsibility on the right for the embarrassing affair.²

The prime minister¹s office strongly denied that the passing on of the false information was related to political views. PM deputy Moshe Katsav called on the Labor Party not to turn the issue into a political matter and said that it is better for Labor Knesset Members not to fish in troubled waters.

National Religious Party chairman Hanan Porat, said that the attempt to tie the affair of the false information to political tendencies was a two-edged sword. "Actually, in the summer of 1996, when there was a prevailing atmosphere of war between Syria and Israel, the spokespeople of the Israeli left were quick to demand that the Netanyahu government respond to the demands for withdrawal from the Golan Heights, out of suspicion that a war with Syria would break out, and so the false information was actually created to serve the interests of the left,² said Porat.

Previous Stories:
  How the Mossad almost started a war between Syria and Israel   (12/4/1997)
  Former Mossad officer sought by Norway   (11/29/1997)
  Mishal-Gate inquiry panel as Israel tries better relations with Jordan   (10/14/1997)

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