Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: The story of the Oslo experiment is choc a bloc
with examples of senior Israelis military and intelligence officials who
were so entranced by the novelty of sharing meals with former/current
terrorists at swanky Israeli restraints that they were no longer able to
function rationally.

Dr. Sela's interview published in Haaretz Magazine last Friday serves as an
important - and perhaps critical - reminder that despite all that has
transpired since the heady Oslo days, there are still people who are not
only profoundly naive and shallow when it comes to their analysis, but are
willing to share their observations with the public and policymakers.

Someone without any knowledge of Sheikh Yassin and Hamas might not realize
that Hamas takes a virulent stand against not only Israel's existence but
against Jews altogether.

But Dr. Sela isn't "someone". He was chief intelligence officer of the
Israel Prisons Service and met regularly with Yassin.]

'Israel could have made peace with Hamas under Yassin'

By Kobi Ben-Simhon Haaretz Magazine Last update - 12:05 18/04/2009
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078849.html

Dr. Zvi Sela, a former senior police officer and a psychological consultant
at present..works at home as a private therapist and is a consultant to the
municipalities of Netanya, Or Akiva and Ramat Hasharon. From the mid-1970s
until the end of the 1990s, he held a variety of positions at the Israel
Police, including chief of detectives in the Sharon District, head of
intelligence-gathering at national headquarters, commander of an
intelligence officers' course, drugs and intelligence advisor to the
minister of police, and chief of police in Hadera. His last position with
the police (1995-1998) was as chief intelligence officer of the Israel
Prisons Service, in which capacity Sela was in charge of collecting criminal
and security information. He held two-hour weekly meetings over a three-year
period with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin when the Hamas founder was incarcerated in
Israel.

"It was riveting," he says, adding, "There was no terrorist attack or
abduction in those years that was not planned, managed and commanded from
within the prisons. That is where the senior figures were, including Sheikh
Yassin. He was paralyzed in the legs and arms, and was capable only of
moving his head, but he was a very powerful figure. He exercised tremendous
control over what went on in the prison and outside, too."

Adding that this was a turbulent period of terror attacks, Sela explains
that his goal in the encounters was "to collect information about the
Palestinian cells and organizations, to thwart the attacks outside. In that
capacity I met with Yassin. We held him in Hadarim Prison [near Netanya] on
the third floor in harsh conditions. We gave him a very hard time. He was
not allowed visits and we kept him tightly locked up for almost five years.
He was held in a narrow room where the temperature was 45 degrees [Celsius]
in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. His blankets were dirty and
smelled. That's how he lived. I found him to be a very smart man, and also
very decent. We engaged in a war of minds. We knew that after every battle
between us someone would die, either on my side or on his side."

What did you talk about?

Sela: "Business - intelligence. When the biggest adversaries sit down to
talk face to face, it's a different ball game. I always told him, 'Stop
blowing up buses, stop murdering women and children.' He replied: 'Tzvika,
listen, we had good teachers: You established a state thanks to your
military power. The dead I take from you are for the sake of establishing a
state, but you are killing women and children for the sake of the
occupation. You already have a state. You are dirty and hypocritical. I have
no interest in destroying you - all I want is a state."

So the father of the Hamas movement told you he recognized the State of
Israel?

"Yes. He was smart and brave. Cruel, but credible. He gave his life in the
war for the freedom of his people. I tend to think that if we had tried for
an agreement with him, we would have succeeded. He thought the reason the
Israelis were dealing with [then PLO leader] Yasser Arafat is that they were
very smart, because we knew we would get nowhere with him. In his opinion,
Arafat was thoroughly corrupt."

Did your conversations produce anything concrete? Did he ever provide you
with vital intelligence?

"After I held conversations with him for two years, the powers-that-be told
me: 'Go to Yassin and ask for the body of the missing Israeli soldier Ilan
Sa'adon. In return Israel is ready to release him.' Yassin knew where the
body was. He told me, 'There is no Jew in the world who knows about my
grandchildren, my children, my yearning for freedom. You, Zvika, are the
only one who knows the truth about how I live and how much I want freedom.
But to offer me freedom in exchange for a body is humiliating. I will give
you the body because you are asking, I understand the family's pain, but
promise me you will not release me in return for it. Promise me that if I
die in prison, you will be sure to tell my family how much I loved them, how
much I dreamed of being able to smell their scent.'"

Until now it was thought that the information about the location of
Sa'adon's body came from Arafat.

"That is not true."

You also met with Samir Kuntar of the Palestine Liberation Front, who
murdered members of the Haran family in Nahariya and was released as part of
the deal with Hezbollah that brought back the bodies of the two abducted
soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

"We turned Kuntar into God-knows-what - the murderer of Danny Haran and his
daughter, Einat. The man who smashed in the girl's head. That's nonsense. A
story. A fairy tale. He told me he didn't do it and I believe him. I
investigated the event within the framework of the next book I am writing,
about hostage-taking incidents. As far as I am concerned, it was no more
than a newspaper report. I sat with him; he was very intelligent. He was a
squad commander at 17. He told me that his motive for infiltrating Nahariya
was to take hostages. He said [his organization] knew that would both
humiliate Israel and get them media publicity.

"He told me: 'If I had wanted to kill Danny and his daughter, I would have
shot them in the house. I took them to the boat because I wanted hostages. I
had no interest in hurting them. After I got them into the boat, wild
gunfire started and I went back to help my squad on the shore. Danny, the
father, kept shouting, "Stop firing, you crazy people." He and his daughter
were found shot in the boat. I was on a small rise, shooting at your forces,
and the boat was 20 meters away in the water, with Danny and the girl.'"

So you say that Kuntar did not murder Haran and his daughter?

"That is what he says, and in my opinion there is support for the fact that
they were killed by fire from the Israeli rescue forces. You can accuse him
all you like, but it was obviously the rescue forces that opened fire. There
were all kinds of legends about Kuntar. People also said that he would
return to being a terrorist [after his release]. Nonsense. He told me then
explicitly that he would not go back to terrorism, that he was too old to
execute operations - and that's also clear. For the same reason, I see no
problem in releasing terrorists with blood on their hands in return for
[kidnapped soldier] Gilad Shalit. I get the feeling the country is waiting
for his body.

"It is clear to me," Sela continues, "that there are some battles you have
to back away from. There is no reason to kill that kid, to wait for his
body. One way or the other, we will not come out the victors in the Shalit
story. From my experience, most of the terrorists that we release do not
return to terrorist activity. And the prisoners we are quarreling over in
connection with Shalit's release do not constitute a strategic threat to
Israel - only a blow to the ego of our leaders."

...

Haunted by memories

This therapeutic tone permeates Sela's novel, his third book. His previous
two books, one of which was a short-story collection, dealt with Israeli
security bodies. They described the exploits of security men, who
infiltrated the most secret places in international espionage agencies, and
ended up acting as double agents, providing services in return for important
information, money and other benefits.

A well-known psychologist among personnel in the Mossad, the Shin Bet
security service and the army, Sela says that he, too, is waging a constant
struggle with old memories that haunt him.

"The everyday activity in these professions generates anxieties and intense
fears," he admits. "You are always in an unclear world and involved in
existential situations. I remember one case I experienced when I was chief
of detectives and intelligence in the Sharon District in the 1980s. Benny, a
good friend of mine, was a Shin Bet regional commander at the time. At 2
A.M. we received a phone call that a terrorist had been caught after being
seriously wounded in a city in the center of the country. He was taken to
Meir Hospital [in Kfar Sava]. At 2:45, Benny and I and another Shin Bet
interrogator were there. He was about to undergo surgery and was going to be
anesthetized in five minutes, so we could not question him. But he was the
only source who could tell us whether he had planted bombs in the city, or
whether there was a terrorist squad waiting in some school."

They decided to go ahead with the interrogation, Sela recalls: "We kicked
out the doctors, and the Shin Bet interrogator and I started to question the
terrorist, even though we knew he might die because of it. He gave us the
locations of all the bombs he had planted in the city. You carry a pain like
that with you all your life. Questions of morality and legality don't make
much difference. Those are the kinds of materials that security personnel
bring to sessions with me. People live in that nightmarish world." ...