Everybody Does It
U)
z
z
Binyamin Netar.yahu: Coming down hard.
N
o one can claim that there's been any lack of
turmoil and recriminations flying between the
Israeli government and the opposition during
the 4 1/2 months since Binyamin Netanyahu
became Israel's prime minister. But it wasn't
until last week that what at first appeared as
another tempest in a teapot burgeoned into a major po-
litical scandal.
It began with a blazing front-page headline in Ma'ariv
that Maj. Gen. Oren Shahor — the coordinator of activ-
ities in the territories, head of the negotiating team on
Palestinian civil affairs — was caught "red handed" at a
secret "middle-of-the-night" meeting with opposition head
Shimon Peres.
On the face of it, such contact wasn't a problem — as
long as Maj. Gen. Shahor had obtained permission for it
from his superiors. He has a number of those, in line with
the various hats he wears. As a member of the general
staff, he is subordinate to Chief of Staff Amnon Shahak.
As coordinator of activities in the territories, he is directly
responsible to Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. And
as the Israeli head of the subcommittee on civil affairs in
negotiations with the Palestinians, he is an emissary of
Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The problem was that Maj. Gen. Shahor had received
the requisite permission from none of them. Questioned
by a reporter as he left Mr. Peres' house at 11:30 p.m. last
ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
Wednesday, he said that his meeting with the former prime
minister was a social one and later stressed that he had
not divulged any secret information on the negotiations.
But Mr. Netanyahu wasn't buying it. Instead, after
consultation with Mr. Mordechai, the prime minister de-
cided to suspend Maj. Gen. Shahor from the negotiations
pending an investigation of the nature of his contacts
with opposition leaders — it turned out that he has met
with more than one.
He was not suspended as coordinator of activities in
the territories, though Mr. Netanyahu told the press that
one of his associates wanted the general summarily
sacked from the IDF. Maj. Gen. Shahor, for his part, has
offered to undergo a lie-detector test to prove his version
of events.
The flap has filled the media for days. At one point,
Mr. Netanyahu described the Shahor incident as "an ex-
ception" whose "gravity must be understood. It is the op-
position's right to be updated," he said, adding that he
would respond to any request from Mr. Peres for infor-
mation. "[But] here we are speaking of ... an officer who
has held meetings with party leaders in secret, without
reporting on them to his superiors, in the midst of sen-
sitive negotiations in which safeguarding information is.
essential to the success of the talks."
But other, more veteran politicians have argued that
informal meetings between generals and politicos have
been the norm in Israel for decades. "Senior members of
the political and military echelons meet all the time at
friends' houses, at receptions, over the phone," Nachum
Barnea, Yediot Acharonot's chief political commentator
explained last week. 'The price is the leak of information.
It is a negligible one considering the enormous benefit of
such contact. This is the Israeli military's way of airing
EVERYBODY page 110
109