Israel an Embarrassment of Problems

By Michael S. Serrill

Israel's once vaunted security and intelligence services last week suffered through one of the worst weeks in memory. The attacks were political rather than military, but they were just as devastating and came on several different fronts. The agencies faced three situations--two in Israel and one in Washington.

The most serious problem grew out of the 1984 killing by Israeli security forces of two Palestinian bus hijackers. A total of four Palestinians commandeered a bus south of Tel Aviv, and one Israeli woman soldier on board was killed. Officials initially said that two of the terrorists died in an army assault on the bus, and the other two were wounded and died on the way to the hospital. But, in fact, two terrorists were photographed being led away alive. Former senior officials of the internal-security agency, known in Hebrew as Shin Bet, later charged that Avraham Shalom, head of the agency, had ordered the two Palestinians clubbed to death.

Two weeks ago, Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, his Likud partner in the national unity government, hoped for a quick end to the controversy when President Chaim Herzog pardoned Shalom of any crimes committed in the affair. In exchange, Shalom handed in his resignation. Three other officials of the agency were also pardoned.

Instead of deflating the scandal, the Shalom pardon heightened it. Small parties in the Knesset made five separate calls for no-confidence votes, forcing Peres to give in to a gale of protest from members of his own Labor Party and agree finally to the establishment of an official probe. "I am prepared to be questioned before any judicial commission," he said. "I acted in a straightforward and responsible manner."

Peres' concession put the focus squarely on Shamir, who was Prime Minister at the time of the bus hijacking and is scheduled to assume that post again in October under a power-sharing arrangement in which he and Peres are to switch jobs. Some observers are convinced that behind the Shin Bet controversy is a Labor Party wish to keep Shamir from taking power. Shamir denies any wrongdoing, and he has stubbornly opposed an official inquiry. But at week's end he finally acceded to a limited investigation. All the time Shamir continued to maintain that in this case, the rule of law must bow to Israel's security interests. "Who wants law without security?" the Foreign Minister demanded at a meeting of the right-wing Herut Party. "Only people without sense. The best thing we can do is to remove the affair from the agenda."

Shamir's position was complicated when it was disclosed that Shalom had written a letter to President Herzog, pleading that "all my actions in the matter of Bus 300 were carried out by authority and with permission." According to Israeli press accounts, that permission could only have come from Shamir, since the Prime Minister has sole authority over Shin Bet.

The clash between law and security now threatens to become a crisis between the legal and political systems. Responding to petitions from lawyers and public officials charging that the Shalom pardon was illegal, the Israeli Supreme Court last week took up the case. After two days of hearings, a three- justice panel ordered the government to show by July 14 why it should not begin a police probe of Shin Bet. If the court eventually orders an investigation, Shamir and the Likud will be forced to go along.

Several Labor members of the 25-member coalition Cabinet have already threatened to resign if an investigation is not launched. But these defections | are considered unlikely to topple the governing coalition. And while a few months ago the popular Peres seemed to be looking for an excuse to bring down the government, he does not apparently want the coalition to fall over this issue. A recent poll shows that the public, which credits the national unity government with solving many of Israel's economic problems, strongly opposes a breakup of the coalition and early elections.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Israeli officials were trying to limit another investigation. A delegation that included Meir Rosenne, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., met with Justice Department officials in an effort to head off the indictment of Aviam Sella, an Israeli air-force colonel. He has been implicated in the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American naval analyst who has pleaded guilty to turning over suitcases full of U.S. intelligence secrets to Israel.

Pollard has named Sella, one of the Israeli air force's brightest stars, as one of his chief contacts. Sella is now wing commander of Israel's Ramon air base. The Israelis said that U.S. officials could interview Sella, but only in Israel and only if he were given immunity from prosecution. They asked for the same protection for three lesser officials implicated in the spy case. American prosecutors rejected the deal, prompting some Israeli officials to complain that Washington's zeal in the Pollard affair is designed to weaken Israel's political clout in the U.S.

Sometimes the Israeli government seems to clamp down on information as much out of embarrassment as necessity. That appeared to be the situation in a case disclosed first in the foreign press and then in Israel. It involved a major in the Israeli military-intelligence service who is now on trial for serving as a Syrian agent. The reserve officer is accused of transferring to Syria secrets of Israel's military activities in Lebanon. If convicted, he could be sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison.

Though on rare occasions Israelis have been charged with spying, never before has an intelligence figure been tried as a turncoat. The trial would have been the subject of immediate headlines, but Israeli military censors succeeded at first in suppressing all mention of the case in the Israeli press. Ironically, Shin Bet officials, who played the major role in exposing the spy, want to publicize the trial in order to demonstrate anew their prowess as the guardians of Israel's security.

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem