Israeli Cabinet Rejects Shin Bet Inquiry Panel

JERUSALEM â€”  The Israeli Cabinet, voting along partisan lines in an extraordinary session, Monday rejected a proposal to establish a state commission of inquiry into the 1984 beating deaths of two Palestinian bus hijackers and a subsequent cover-up.

The Cabinet’s 14-11 vote, which had been expected, means there will be a normal police inquiry into what has become known here as the Shin Bet affair, after the acronym for the Israeli equivalent of America’s FBI.

Atty. Gen. Yosef Harish had warned at a regular Cabinet meeting Sunday that he would immediately order what is expected to be a less comprehensive police probe if the ministers rejected his proposal for a full inquiry by a special commission.

No More Proposals

“I will not propose a commission of inquiry any more,� Harish said Monday. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell the police to start their investigation.�

Police investigators will not be able to delve as deeply into the possible involvement of highly placed political figures as could a judicial commission, according to critics of the police-inquiry approach. Such an inquiry will be able to summon Cabinet ministers for questioning, but no charges can be brought against them unless their parliamentary immunity is lifted, a process that would require a vote of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset.

The results of the police inquiry will be delivered to the attorney general, and it will be up to him to determine whether to charge anyone with criminal acts.

Police Minister Chaim Bar-Lev said as he emerged from Monday’s sometimes stormy nine-hour Cabinet meeting that “the first thing tomorrow morning, the police will turn to the court and ask that this inquiry be a secret inquiry.� He said the goal would be to ban publication of all details of the probe, including its scope and the names of witnesses called.

Bar-Lev called the vote a “technical defeat� for Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment, which shares power in Israel’s so-called national unity coalition government with the rightist Likud Bloc and a number of smaller parties.

Labor and its allies, after some early debate, favored a state inquiry. But Likud, headed by Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, voted it down Monday with the support of Israel’s religious parties.

“Nothing has convinced the bloc of the ministers of the Likud (of the need for a commission), and they rejected the idea,� said Energy Minister Moshe Shahal, a member of the Labor Alignment. “I think it is not a good decision.�

Shahal had been a leader in the fight for a judicial inquiry, charging that Likud’s opposition was based not on its concern for protecting vital security interests, as it contended, but rather on protecting Shamir.

Reported to Premier

Shamir was prime minister at the time of the 1984 incident and, in that job, was directly responsible for the activities of the Shin Bet. Moreover, Avraham Shalom, who headed the Shin Bet at the time, has in court documents admitted wrongdoing and said he acted “with permission and on authority� of his superiors. He reported directly to the prime minister’s office.

Israel radio reported that an angry Shamir accused Shahal of character assassination during Monday’s debate.

Shamir has denied that he ordered the two Palestinians slain after their capture and has said he was unaware of the subsequent cover-up of Shin Bet involvement.

Peres, who had contended that a police investigation would suggest that the Shin Bet’s wrongdoing was equated with ordinary crimes, said, “It’s terrible that the same agency (the police) which investigates Nazi crimes should also investigate the (Shin Bet).�

In Return for Pardon

Shalom resigned last month in return for a presidential pardon guaranteeing him and three subordinates immunity from prosecution.

The government had hoped that the resignation and pardons would end public turmoil over the affair.

However, several groups immediately petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to strike down the immunity arrangement, and two weeks ago judges ordered the government to show cause why it had not already launched an inquiry into the affair.

Harish previously called the government’s position “indefensible� but now will be able to tell the court at a scheduled hearing Wednesday that a police investigation has begun.

2 Killed, 2 Captured

The two Palestinians on whom the controversy centers were part of a band of four that hijacked a civilian Israeli bus in April, 1984. They were captured alive when security forces stormed the vehicle and killed their companions.

The authorities originally said all four hijackers were killed in the assault, but photographs published in defiance of the Israeli censor later showed two of them being led alive to a nearby field, where they were beaten to death.

According to court documents, Shin Bet officials are accused of falsifying evidence in two previous, lower-level probes into the affair in order to shift blame onto an army officer who led the bus rescue operation.