Now Israel’s new prime minister, Ehud Barak, wants the CIA to back off. The Americans didn’t catch Yasir Arafat’s men secretly abetting the terrorists, as Netanyahu had warned. On the contrary, CIA training and intelligence helped the Palestinian Authority wage a more effective counterterror campaign. Leaders of the militant Islamic group Hamas have loudly complained of being up against the world’s biggest intelligence operation. Still, Barak’s advisers think the agency’s involvement is not helping the peace process. Israeli analysts argue that winning the CIA’s approval has only made Arafat more confident and less open to compromise. “The tougher stance of the Palestinians is because they believe the U.S. is on their side,” says Dan Schueftan, a political consultant in Tel Aviv. “The CIA role is key to that.”
Israeli and Palestinian human-rights advocates also object to the CIA’s involvement. They say the U.S.-approved antiterror crackdown has only worsened the brutality of Arafat’s jails. According to a Palestinian member of the Wye negotiating team, the peace accord included a secret clause requiring CIA visits to Palestinian jails, to be sure alleged terrorists stayed behind bars. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv declines to comment on such reports, but there have been widespread complaints from the human-rights activists that the agency is–at least tacitly–supporting the use of torture, prolonged detention without trial and other human-rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority. “Is the CIA above the rule of law?” demands Raji Sourani, a Gaza lawyer. He represents six Hamas members held without trial in Palestinian jails as long as three years.
Barak’s aides want less interference from the U.S. government as a whole, not only from the CIA. Many Israelis complain that lately Arafat and his aides have devoted most of their energy to manipulating opinion in Washington instead of negotiating directly with Israel for a final settlement. Even so, the agency is the Israeli government’s biggest gripe. The Clinton administration is lobbying Barak to let the CIA monitors stay, but it’s a tough sell. And without them, Abu Shebaak doesn’t know how he can prove to the world he’s serious about fighting terror. “There will be no one to witness the truth,” the Palestinian official says. It’s one of the nicest things anyone has said about the agency in a long time.
