JERUSALEM – The architect of a strategy to assassinate Palestinian insurgents
has been selected to head Israel's domestic intelligence service.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has appointed Yuval Diskin the new director
of the Israel Security Agency. Diskin, 49, the youngest chief of Israeli
domestic intelligence and security, was the initiator of the policy of
identifying and targeting Palestinian insurgency operatives in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.
[On Thursday, Israeli officials said Hamas gunners fired 38 mortars,
rockets and missiles toward Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip. Nobody
was injured and Israel's military did not retaliate, Middle East Newsline reported.]
The policy, encouraged by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, led
to the assassination in 2004 of much of the Hamas leadership.
"It's an excellent choice," former ISA director Yaakov Peri said. "This
was a relative rapid promotion."
Officials said the challenge of the incoming ISA director would be to
ensure internal security while renewing cooperation with the Palestinian
Authority. They said Diskin and most ISA commanders have opposed Sharon's
decision to release Palestinian inmates convicted of murder as well a
military withdrawal from West Bank cities.
Under Egyptian and U.S. pressure, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas fired 20
security commanders and declared a state of emergency. Those dismissed
included PA security chief Maj. Gen. Abdul Razik Al Majaydeh, PA police
commander Gen. Saeb Ajez and Col. Omar Ashour, responsible for PA forces in
the southern Gaza Strip.
Diskin, who replaces Avi Dichter, has been in the ISA since 1978 and
spent 10 years in Nablus in the northern West Bank. In 1994, Diskin was
appointed head of the Arab Affairs Branch.
In 2000, Diskin was named deputy director of the ISA, where he formed
the doctrine of using intelligence to
target insurgency commanders and key operatives. Under the initiative, the
ISA played a leading role in a joint operational command that included
representatives from military intelligence, air force.
The command tracked and struck – often by combat unmanned aerial
vehicles – Fatah and Hamas commanders in PA-controlled areas of the Gaza
Strip. In the West Bank – where Israel's military was given complete
freedom of operation – infantry and special forces were used to capture or
kill insurgents.
"During his tenure as ISA deputy director, he [Diskin] built and
established,
along with his counterparts in the IDF, the integrated counter-terrorism
doctrine and an operational concept for foiling horrific attacks and ticking
bombs," a government statement said.
Officials said that by the end of 2004, the ISA foiled 95 percent of
major insurgency attacks. Diskin was said to have been responsible for
destroying Hamas's infrastructure throughout the West Bank. Palestinian
insurgents, however, have retained their infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, Israeli authorities said they captured an insurgent in
Nablus who sought to recruit Palestinians for a suicide bombing in
Jerusalem. The insurgent, identified as 21-year-old Maharan Omar Shucat Abu
Hamis, collaborated with Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"We are currently in a complex time filled with risks and
opportunities," Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told a military
ceremony on Thursday. "The strategic environment in which we live is going
through tremendous changes. In the battle that has been taking place with
Palestinians in the last four years there are clear signs of change."