Commentary

15th March 1998

Mossad spies in Switzerland

By Mervyn de Silva

A Palestinian youth uses a slingshot to hurl a stone towards Israeli troops during clashes in the West Bank March 13. Palestinian protests erupted for another day over the killing of three workers by Israeli troops-Reuters

Swiss Demand Apology For Mossad bungle read the headline. "Switzerland demanded a public apology over a bungled spying operation in which Swiss police captured five suspected Mossad agents. The incident which has strained Switzerland's friendly relations with Israel is a blow to MOSSAD's reputation in the wake of the resignation of the agency's chief, Danny Yatom. What was Mossad doing on neutral territory?

At first, the Swiss authorities chose not to reveal all the information gathered by its own counter-espionage units. Under diplomatic pressure however, the Swiss could not ignore the demands of international media. With the resignation of Danny Yatom, head of Israel's elite spy agency MOSSAD, the truth was soon out ... to make the front-pages of the Swiss papers and a leading item in the day's news agency reports. Mossad had planned to assassinate Khaled Meshal, a ranking member of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. As part of its deep-cover operation, Mossad operatives had tried hard to bug the Iranian embassy. Last September, Mr. Yatom, had planned the "botched" assassination attempt on Khaled Meshal in Jordan!

The sensational cloak-and-dagger aspects apart, students of the Middle-East conflict and the Islamic revival, a global phenomenon, will surely note the desperate steps that Israel is ready to take in its relentless drive to suppress the Palestinian resistance. Equally significant is the expansion of the terrain on which this 50 years struggle (intifada) goes on. From Palestinian Arab it has assumed an Islamic personality so much so that even Egypt, the pre-eminent Arab power, has watched the first serious signs of a popular Islamic resurgence.

President Hosni Mubarak may not have welcomed this tendency but he never forgets that his country is the paramount military power... not Iraq or Iran. Besides, history has defined Egypt's role. Though it was Egypt's Sadat who signed the first "pact" with the Jewish state on the so-called "land-for-peace", the deal was patently dubious - the land "returned" was Egyptian territory seized by the I. D. F., the Israeli army. But there can be no question about Egypt's leading role today in the Arab world, though Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has made a characteristically daring bid for that role. His "secret weapons" present his case best. And yet he is far too mercurial to attract an Arab consensus - from Saudi Arabia to the minor sheikdoms. Iran is not Arab but its claim as the authentic home of the Islamic revival and the Ayatolla Khomeini, has strong merit.

Iran represents the magnetic power of the Islamic renaissance but Israel is the magnet of Arab-Palestinian anger. So we see two centres - Cairo and Teheran - and two flags, Arab and Islamic. So far the Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat has failed to make maximum use of these potentially vital forces.

It is not a failure in perception or intelligence that explains the Arab failure. Leadership or the absence say, of a Gamal Abdel Nasser, is the explanation. It is the Israel of the arrogant Benjamin Netanyahu that serves the cause of Arab mobilisation most.

What do we do with Israel... as long as the United States' President, and his White House advisers, have to bow ultimately to the U. S. Congress and the Jews. Sole superpower yes... but without the authority to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Prime Minister without a secure majority in the Knesset, that the United Nations half a century ago, did admit the Jewish state.

The recent resignation of Mossad chief Danny Yatom has led to the exposure of so many Mossad blunders that the PLO's luck may have turned. First, the Swiss authorities that recently arrested a Mossad agent, held a press conference in Zurich to "brief" the international media. "The suspect is accused of having conducted espionage with eavesdropping devices...", said the Swiss official. At another, perhaps more significant level, Israel has revealed fissures in the nation's administrative and professional elite. It has been presented in the western press as a battle between Orthodox Jews and the liberal, more westernised Jewish groups. Has the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate "a total monopoly of conversions to Judaism"? The Liberals have urged the Courts to rule that non- Orthodox conversions can be registered. The Rabbinate has brushed aside the arguments of the liberal reformers. This is more than a theological question. In Israel, those converted by a non-Orthodox Rabbi are NOT considered Jewish and are NOT eligible to citizenship. What can Mossad of Shinbeth do about these conflicts?

Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's most respected general after Moshe Dayan, claimed that his I. D. F. could claim two and half wars - against Egypt, Syria and P.L.O. within Israel. He did not mention Lebanon because it was not an active front as it turned out to be. A week ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no war hero, admitted that Israel was prepared to pull-out of southern Lebanon which the I. D. F. now occupies. What was significant was the absence of any "conditions".

Israeli leaders, certainly Prime Minister Netanyahu, despite his one-vote majority in the Knesset, always speaks from a position of strength. Israel has lost this war of attrition says Abraham Diskin, Prof. of Political Science at Hebrew University. "Public opinion can no longer absorb 30 Israeli lives per year".

Hulftsdorp Hill

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