Someone to watch more closely over them
By Gideon Alon
Haaretz, December 13, 2004
The Rubinstein committee warns that government supervision over the security apparatus is partial and defective, and it has made its recommendations to change this.
After more than a year of concerted efforts, at the end of this month, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Yuval Steinitz, will be handed the recommendations of a public committee regarding moves to enable the Knesset - working through the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee - to increase parliamentary monitoring and supervision of the defense system.
Rivlin and Steinmetz initiated the establishment of the committee, headed by former minister Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, because of complaints that the Knesset lacks the tools to supervise the various branches of the security apparatus (the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security services and the Mossad intelligence agency). Although the plenum of the committee convenes weekly to hear reports by the prime minister, the defense minister, the chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence and other senior members of the IDF, and twice a year receives reports from the heads of the Shin Bet and the Mossad, this system does not enable the Knesset to seriously carry out its task as a supervisor and monitor of the security apparatus.
There was a certain improvement in the area of supervision and monitoring in 1977, when at the initiative of Moshe Arens, at the time the chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, several subcommittees were established (in order to overcome the problem of leaks from the committee's plenary discussions), which carry out the monitoring and supervision of the security services with great discretion. But this supervision is not sufficiently close.
The main recommendations of the "Rubinstein committee" - whose members include former chiefs of staff Dan Shomron and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, legal expert Prof. Yaffa Zilbershats of Bar-Ilan University, and chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, MK Michael Eitan - are being revealed here for the first time.
The committee reached the conclusion that the status of the subcommittees should be formalized by amending the Knesset regulations to recognize them as permanent committees. At present their status is not anchored in law or in the Knesset regulations, and any committee chair can increase or reduce their number. The Rubinstein committee recommends that only official and permanent members take part in the proceedings of the subcommittees and that no other members be invited in their place.
The Rubinstein committee also concluded that Knesset supervision over the approval of the defense budget is very weak. This is currently being dealt with by a joint committee of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Finance Committee, but it does not have the ability to carry out a serious examination of all the components of the defense budget, which amounts to NIS 42 billion. The Rubinstein committee recommends that the Finance Committee approve the overall sum of the budget, but that afterwards the issue be transferred to a special foreign affairs and defense subcommittee, which will examine all the paragraphs of the security budget and check the costs of the major projects, in coordination with members of the security apparatus.
One of the most important recommendations of the Rubinstein committee is the establishment of a permanent Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee subcommittee for the territories. The committee believes the establishment of such a subcommittee is essential, because the laws of the Knesset do not apply to the occupied territories (with the exception of the laws that apply to the Israeli settlers).
It is recommended that the role of the subcommittee be to receive regular information about IDF activities in the territories, activities being carried out to preserve human life, activities for preventing harassment and looting by soldiers, a regular report on what is happening at the checkpoints, transmission of information about the illegal outposts and the steps being taken to dismantle them. Although the plenum of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee receives reports on these subjects at present, it is not done in an orderly manner, and therefore the level of supervision and monitoring is also limited.
VIPs before the committee
The reverberations of the controversy that erupted about a year ago between Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon and MK Steinitz regarding the obligation of VIPs to appear before the committee find expression in the Rubinstein committee report. Last year, Steinitz's committee established an examining committee on the subject of intelligence assessments before the war in Iraq. The establishment of the committee was resented by the heads of the security establishment, who wanted to postpone the start of its work and to determine the order of appearance of the VIPs who would testify before it.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Ya'alon threatened not to cooperate with the committee if Ya'alon was not the first witness to appear before it. Steinitz wanted chief of Military Intelligence Major General Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) to testify first. He firmly declared: "We will decide who will be asked to come, what he will talk about and how the committee will supervise the bodies to be monitored." In the end, the Knesset speaker initiated a meeting between Ya'alon and Steinitz, in which a compromise was reached.
The Rubinstein committee justifies Steinitz's approach, according to which members of the security establishment are obliged to appear before the Knesset committee and the defense minister is obliged to order his subordinates to respond to the call to appear, to reply to questions and to provide all the required material. Moreover, it is recommended that in urgent cases the committee be able to invite the chief of staff or his deputy for an urgent discussion within 48 hours.
On the other hand, the Rubinstein committee did not accept the recommendation of Steinitz - who testified before it twice - to grant the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee the authority to conduct a hearing, like the U.S. Senate, for candidates for senior positions in the security establishment and the foreign service. Steinitz recommended that before the appointment of a new chief of staff or head of the Mossad or the Shin Bet, the candidate would be required by law to appear before the committee and present himself and his credo. The Rubinstein committee does not believe that there is justification for having the Knesset involved in appointments in the top echelons of the IDF and the secret services, for fear of politicization.
Should we learn from Begin?
During the course of the 13 sessions held by the Rubinstein committee - during which the defense minister, the chief of staff, the heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, former defense minister Moshe Arens, director general of the Defense Ministry Amos Yaron, and former chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Uzi Landau and Dan Meridor appeared before it - it also discussed the question of whether the members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should receive a report about secret planned IDF activities. Among those to appear before the committee were some who claimed there should be a distinction between an operational activity (such as Operation Defensive Shield), which should not be reported because it is a routine operation, and an operational activity with far-reaching strategic implications (such as the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq), which should be reported to one of the subcommittees.
Rubinstein told the members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the late Menachem Begin, while he was serving as prime minister, consulted with opposition leader Shimon Peres before bombing the reactor, and before the IDF embarked on the Lebanon War, he consulted with the heads of the Knesset factions. The Rubinstein committee came to the conclusion that the decision should be left to the prime minister as to whether to report to one of the subcommittees (or alternatively, to the leader of the opposition) about an initiated military operation of a strategic nature.
The Rubinstein committee warns in its report that even government supervision over the security establishment is partial and defective. It points out that paragraph 6 of the Basic Law on the Government determines that there should be an interministerial committee for defense issues in the government, and it spells out its composition, but not its powers. The committee brings as an example the IDF operation in Rafah this past spring, which resulted in the UN Security Council decision to condemn Israel, and which was not brought for approval of the political-security cabinet at all. It recommends that, six months after the publication of the report, the government be required to present to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee a detailed code on the subject of cabinet powers, so that the Knesset will be able to ensure that there is government supervision over the security apparatus and that this will not be dependent on the whim of the prime minister.
The Knesset speaker, who will be asked to approve the recommendations of the committee at the end of the month, hopes they will help in the implementation of a series of legal and regulatory steps that will enable the Knesset to increase its supervision of the security establishment in order for the Knesset to be more relevant. "I have no doubt that 56 years after the establishment of the state, there is a need to refresh the system of work relations between the Knesset and the security apparatus," he says.
