Israeli security chief faces challenge of Jewish extremists
AFP
Date: 05-15-05
JERUSALEM (AFP) - The new head of Israel's Shin Beth internal security service, regarded as the chief architect of the policy to hunt down and kill Palestinian militants, now looks set for a battle of wits with Jewish extremists opposed to a planned pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Yuval Diskin took up his post on Sunday after the outgoing Shin Beth chief Avi Dichter finished his five-year term of office at midnight.
While Dichter's term was dominated by efforts to stop Palestinian attacks during the course of the intifada, or uprising, observers believe that Diskin will have to concentrate much of his resources on extremists closer to home.
The Shin Beth was severely tarnished a decade ago when it failed to prevent an ultra-nationalist Israeli, who was opposed to the recently-agreed Oslo peace accords, from assassinating then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The present day premier, Ariel Sharon, has also become a target of death threats from radicals opposed to his plan to leave occupied Gaza this summer.
In a recent cabinet briefing, Dichter said right-wing extremists had made 70 death threats against Sharon, many of them referring to the fate of Rabin. His conclusion was that the Shin Beth needed to increase its surveillance of Israeli citizens.
"The most important task facing Diskin, at least in his first year in office, will be to deal with Jewish terrorism," said an editorial in Sunday's Yediot Aharonot daily.
The paper said that fears of an assassination attempt against Sharon or a spectacular attack on Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound were growing as the clock ticked towards the mid-August start of the Gaza pullout.
"Diskin is going to have to change priorities and place greater emphasis on combating Jewish terrorism. How? By means of demanding, for instance, permission to deal harshly and to hand down deterring punishment to people who incite and are violent."
Administrative detention orders, routinely used to hold Palestinians without trial, have been used against a handful of Israelis in recent weeks and many observers believe that Diskin will push for more.
If the threat posed by Jewish extremists has increased, Diskin is unlikely to believe that the challenge represented by Palestinian militants has disappeared.
Armed factions such as the Islamist movement Hamas are currently observing a less-than-watertight truce but a similar ceasefire broke down after less than seven weeks two years ago.
The 49-year-old Diskin is seen as the brains behind the strategy to assassinate militant leaders, such as Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdelaziz Rantissi, who both died last year in Israeli air strikes.
The bombings were fiercely criticised by some foreign governments as amounting to little more than extra-judicial killings, although many Israelis credit the strategy as having dealt a major blow to Hamas.
Even Jibril Rajub, the Palestinians' national security advisor, has praised Diskin as a "first-class professional."
"The impression that he gave me was that he was in favour of process of reconciliation" between the Israelis and Palestinians, said Rajub whose contacts with Diskin date back to the Oslo accords.
Diskin is a 27-year veteran of the Shin Beth, heading the counter-terrorism department for much of the 1990s.
He was made deputy head of the service in 2000 and has also recently served as an advisor to Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad overseas intelligence agency.
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