The Shin Bet Affair

Israel's security chief denies that he quit over a cover-up

"Never was a calumny so odious." Brimming with indignation, the statement from the Israeli Prime Minister's office had the ring of Menachem Begin's personal rhetoric. For the fifth time in 24 hours, the government had issued an outraged denial of an allegation that had the potential for a major political blowup. The object of the Begin government's wrath was a published charge that the chief of the General Security Service, Israel's equivalent of the FBI, had resigned to protest a possible obstruction of the investigation into the attempted assassination last June of three Palestinian mayors in the occupied West Bank.

The controversy broke over a report published in the Washington Star. The newspaper charged that within days of the car bombings that critically injured Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka'a and Ramallah Mayor Karim Khalaf (a third mayor, El-Bireh's Ibrahim Tawil, escaped unscathed), Shin Bet, as the security service is known, turned up evidence that linked six members of the ultranationalist Gush Emunim settler movement to the attacks.

When Avraham Achituv, 54, chief of Shin Bet, learned of the evidence, he allegedly asked Begin for permission to investigate further, using surveillance and wiretap methods. Begin said no. His reason, according to the Star: the police were carrying out a full investigation. Later, the newspaper reported, Achituv learned to his surprise that the police had been told that Shin Bet was in charge.

Israelis first heard of the allegations on television in a live telephone interview from Washington. The next day every newspaper headlined the charges, which the government denied with increasing firmness and wrath. Achituv himself gave four interviews, unprecedented for a security chief, including one on television in which the cameras focused on a tape recorder emitting his voice. (Israeli censorship law forbids the chiefs name or photograph to be published.) Achituv flatly denied that he had encountered interference in his investigation. His resignation, he said, had been a routine request to step down at the end of the year. What is more, he added, it had been submitted "before the attack on the mayors."

The allegations were not the first criticism that had been leveled against the government's handling of the bombing investigation, reported TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Aikman. Questions had increasingly been asked in Israel about the fact that no arrests had been made, and the government had been pressed to make public the details of the case. After the new charges, two deputies, including one from Begin's own coalition, called for an inquiry.

Israel was already at the center of an international storm over the Knesset's passage of a bill the previous week affirming the city of Jersualem as the capital of Israel. In response to that defiant vote, Egypt's Anwar Sadat wrote Begin an 18-page letter in which he laid out a forceful and sweeping denunciation of Israeli actions. Unless Begin "removed the obstacles to peace," Sadat concluded, the Palestinian autonomy talks would once again be put off indefinitely.

U.S. diplomats, who had hoped Begin "would count to ten" before responding and thus avert a total breakdown of the negotiations, were disappointed by the Israeli Prime Minister's brusque response. Begin promptly drafted a "page by page refutation" of Sadat's letter, asserting that Egypt was the real obstacle to peace because of its constant interruptions of negotiations. Begin also charged that Egypt was deviating from the Camp David accords by bringing up the issue of Jerusalem, "which was never mentioned in any stages of the peace treaty."

To Israel's Muslim neighbors, for whom Jerusalem is also a revered religious shrine, the Knesset action seemed not only insensitive but also contemptuous. Rallying round Egypt, Islamic nations in the U.N. drafted a resolution calling on the Security Council to impose strict sanctions on Israel for flouting international laws concerning Jerusalem.

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