The Gatekeepers

---

As Head of the Shin Bet,

you learn that politicians

prefer binary options.

They don't like having

three or four options.

They want you to

tell them, "Zero or one. "

"Do it. Don't do it. "

As a commander, I find myself

in situations that are

different shades of gray.

Let's say you're

hunting a terrorist.

You can get him,

but there are one or

two people in the car.

You're not sure if they're

part of his gang or not.

What do you do?

Do you fire or not?

There's no time.

These situations last

seconds, minutes at most.

People expect a decision,

and by decision they

usually mean "to act. "

That's a decision.

"Don't do it" seems easier,

but it's often harder.

Sometimes it's

a super-clean operation.

No one was hurt

except the terrorists.

Even then, later, life stops,

at night, in the day,

when you're shaving.

We all have our moments.

On vacation...

You say, "Okay,

"I made a decision

"and X number of

people were killed.

"They were definitely about

to launch a big attack. "

No one near them was hurt.

It was as sterile as possible.

Yet you still say,

"There's something

unnatural about it. "

What's unnatural is

the power you have

to take three people,

terrorists,

and take their

lives in an instant.

The Six

Day War in the Middle East

has echoes along

a second front.

Israeli officials

announce that their victory

voids previous

armistice agreements

and international borders

with their neighbors.

That victory was

swift and total.

The combined Israeli air force and

infantry, artillery and tank corps

swept south across the Sinai

Peninsula to the Suez Canal,

east across the West Bank

to the Jordan River

and north into Syria.

Suddenly, over one

million Palestinians

came under Israeli

military rule

in the West Bank and Gaza.

For Israeli troops, however, the

most moving moments of the war

were the capture of the ancient

biblical sites in Judea and Samaria

and the old city of Jerusalem.

Standing at the

sacred western wall,

Israeli Defense Minister,

Moshe Dayan,

vowed never to give up

the old city of Jerusalem.

How old were you

during the Six Day War?

I was 11.

I remember thinking,

"What is war?"

It's hard to say if

I really understood,

but I remember the feeling

of fear, because

our situation was bad.

Most of all I remember a book.

I read it a lot,

If Israel Lost the War.

It described a very

unpleasant scenario

of us losing the war

and the Arabs

conquering Israel.

It had a profound

impact on me.

I thought about

it a lot as a boy.

In the Six Day

War, I was in Operations.

The Arabs surrendered

and we were suddenly

left without an enemy.

You're like a dog in a race,

looking for the rabbit.

The rabbit goes underground,

and the dog can't find it.

We were like that.

Then we started working

in the West Bank and Gaza

in anti-terrorism, without

knowing exactly what it was

because terrorism

hadn't developed.

We decided to conduct

a census in the Territories

to find out how many people

lived in the refugee camps.

It was important. We used

the information for years.

But you know how it is.

They called up the reserves

and trained them quickly.

What do I mean by quickly?

You knock on the door.

They ask, "Who's there?"

You say, "Soldiers. "

"What do you want?"

"We came to count you. "

That's it. How many words?

It's nothing. Ten words.

The reservist unit comes

and knocks on the door.

They ask, "Who's there?"

What do the soldiers say?

"Soldiers," like they learned.

"What do you want?"

But they made a mistake.

Instead of saying nehsikum

with an unaccented "H"

they used an accented

What's the difference?

"Jinna nehsikum" means

"We came to count you. "

"Jinna nekhsikum" with an accent

is "We came to castrate you. "

We took intensive courses

in spoken and literary Arabic,

reading articles

and manuscripts.

Anyone who took the Shin Bet's

Arabic program seriously

knows Arabic.

He can listen to Arabic

and read between the lines.

He can read notes

from agents...

SHALOM". The Shin Bet looked

for people to talk to

to understand what

motivated the Palestinians.

For the first time,

some Jews raised

the idea of

a Palestinian state.

I loved the idea,

so I went to the

Territories with people

who dealt with

the Palestinians.

We didn't know what

we wanted to achieve.

We received no direction

about our objectives.

When you don't get direction

from the politicians,

you are... just like with

the rabbit... searching.

I started as a coordinator

in the Nablus district.

It was a very pretty area,

full of olive trees.

I liked to get out

of my car and wander

in the field,

refugee camps, alleyways,

visit homes,

sit in cafs, talk...

I really loved the interaction

with the people.

From that exotic encounter

with olive trees,

landscapes, and peasants,

I found myself at the center

of the Palestinian problem.

I was working in

the refugee camps.

Suddenly you see

what refugees are.

Once you look more deeply,

you say, "Wait.

"I'm not an observer,

here to take photos and leave.

"I'm an active participant. "

At first, your security role

is all you care about.

It's easier to

be on that side.

A curfew was

placed on the casbah of Hebron,

where one Israeli soldier was

killed and another wounded.

The two were on patrol

when shots were heard.

One was wounded. The other

chased after the shooters.

He was later

found murdered here.

Gradually there was an increase...

To put it cynically,

luckily for us,

terrorism increased.

Why do I say that?

Because now we had work

and we stopped dealing with

the Palestinian state.

Understand?

Of course.

As soon as we stopped dealing

with the Palestinian state

and started dealing

with terrorism,

terror became more

sophisticated. So did we.

Suddenly we had a lot of work

in Gaza and the West Bank,

and overseas, too,

so we forgot about

the Palestinian issue.

In Nablus then, wherever

you threw a rock,

there was either

a cat or a terrorist.

Some nights we arrested

hundreds of people.

PERY. We'd take

over a village

and gather all the

men in the square,

usually by the mosque

or in a schoolyard.

We used the

"identifier" technique.

Terrorists who confessed

would be put in a vehicle.

The windows had curtains

and they wore masks.

We'd sit them there,

and the villagers passed

beside the vehicle,

and they'd tell us,

"He's a terrorist

who trained in Syria,"

"He's a terrorist who

got back from Jordan. "

Not everyone cooperated,

but we usually

had a good catch.

Back then, most

intelligence was based on HUMINT,

HUMan INTelligence

we got in two ways.

Either from our agents or the

interrogation of prisoners.

On my first day at work,

the person I was replacing

picked me up at home.

He decided that

the best place to train

an inexperienced

security guy like me was

the interrogation

facility in Jerusalem.

I started learning

intelligence there.

I don't know if you've

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