More details on Israeli spy ring in Lebanon
Lebanon-Israel, Military, 7/9/1998

The Lebanese security services have reported on the exposure of a large spy ring working for Israel, operated by Unit 504 of Israeli military intelligence. Reports from Lebanon said that 77 people were involved, although only 17 have so far been arrested.

Unit 504 belongs to the Israeli army intelligence corps and deals with the operation of agents in Arab states that border on Israel. The unit does not employ Israeli agents, but rather it enlists local residents to work for it. The last time this unit was mentioned was some five years ago, when Major Yousef Amit, an officer in the unit, was taken to an Israeli prison after he was convicted of having offered his services to Syrian and US intelligence services.

Israeli reports on Thursday hinted that the unit has been operating not only in Lebanon but also in other Arab states that border on Israel. The reports said the unit relied only on Arab spies whom the military intelligence recruited to work for Israel without having any Israelis or Jews on its staff. This is the first time such a modus operandi has been revealed in Israel. In past instances, such as the case of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, only Jews who come from Arab states were recruited to spy on the Arab world, and sometimes on the same countries where they used to live before their migration into Israel. Cohen was arrested and hanged in Damascus in the early 60s.

A few years ago, the Lebanese intelligence uncovered another Israeli spy network that was operated by the Mossad. Mossad agents at the time comprised of ex-members and officers of the so-called Lebanese Forces, the outlawed Christian military organization. Because of military censorship rules in Israel, the press could not give more details of the spy ring but referred all reports to either western or Lebanese sources. In Israel, the only way to bypass the military censorship is to quote foreign sources for the same piece of information. Therefore, on many occasions in the past, Israeli journalists preferred to leak the information to foreign reporters only to quote them the following day and print the story in their own respective papers.

According to various sources, the Lebanese group, which was made of spies of various ethnic backgrounds, were all drafted in the Israeli military intelligence unit 504 back in 1995. Their main mission was to gather information on Syrian troop movements in Lebanon and on Lebanese army and military factions. The agents have reportedly compiled reports on the movements of Hizbullah leaders and military forces as well as on various activities of main Lebanese parties.

One of the missions, as quoted from the Lebanese prosecutor general, was to agitate unrest in Lebanon. Israel has been looking for ways to destablize the government in Lebanon because of the continued successful military resistance in the occupied south Lebanon. Israeli officials blame the Lebanese government for not curtailing the activities of Hizbullah and other resistance groups in Lebanon. On a number of occasions in the past, Israeli military and political leaders suggested their air force should pinpoint sites of infrastructure importance to Lebanon in order to incite the government to act against Hizbullah.

The Lebanese prosecutor said in Beirut earlier in the week that those who spied for Israel had received training in Israel itself on how to write with invisible ink and how to collect information. But no details could be obtained in Israel on how those courses were conducted. In the past, Israel had "hosted" members of the Lebanese forces in the two coastal cities of Nahariya in the north and Herzliya in the center where special courses were arranged by the Mossad and other branches of Israeli intelligence. Most of those courses took place late in the 70s and again just before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

In the past few years, as Lebanese resistance groups managed to inflict heavy casualties on Israeli troops in the occupied south Lebanon, Israel decided to increase its espionage effort in Lebanon with the hope of penetrating Hizbullah and other groups. The structural organization of Hizbullah, according to Israel analysts, has made almost impossible to penetrate by Israelis. Israel, therefore, thought that local Lebanese might have better chances to do so.

Israeli papers carried reports originating from Beirut which spoke of some of those arrested who confessed to sending 11 letters written in invisible ink to an address in Athens and receiving in return an amount of US $7,300 from the Israelis. But again, no specific reason was given why and how the cell was uncovered by the Lebanese.

The papers carried two different versions. One said a Druze named Raja Ward, who was a senior intelligence officer in the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia, had turned himself in to the Lebanese authorities after he fled from the occupied south Lebanon and gave his Lebanese interrogators a set of information on the spy ring. Another version said the Lebanese security forces managed to unveil the cell after an aborted attempt to blow up the US embassy in Beirut. The information he provided led to the arrest of 17 agents in the villages bordering Israel's self-proclaimed security zone in south Lebanon.

Lebanese officials suspect the ring is responsible for a series of additional terror attacks inside Lebanon. Reports from Beirut said that one of those arrested had revealed in his interrogation how he and his fellow spy were sent for special training with intelligence unit 504 in Israel. Israel's largest circulation daily, Yediot Ahronot, said this was confirmed by a Lebanese source closely associated with the Lebanese administration. The source told the paper that the members of the spy ring are suspected of having carried out terror attacks in Beirut, shooting at a Syrian bus and of having thrown grenades at Lebanese soldiers.

Once put on trial, spy ring members are likely to be charged with treason, the penalty for which is death, while some of them might face long prison sentences for contacting the enemy and entering enemy territory. And while the Israeli press cannot tell the whole story from their own point of view, they still allow themselves to quote Lebanese sources as saying that this cell is the largest Israeli spy network ever discovered in Lebanon.

Israeli military officials in the northern command refused to comment on the affair. SLA sources expressed worries that Hizbullah might succeed in reaping a political fortune from the affair.

Previous Stories:
  Israel continues shelling against south Lebanon   (7/7/1998)
  Terrorist network cracked in Lebanon   (7/4/1998)
  Updated: Israel's Mossad suffers a major blow by Hizbullah agent   (12/30/1997)

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