In the past 50 years, no one has served as head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee more times than Tzachi Hanegbi, who has racked up a total of more than six years in the position. Two weeks ago, the members of the committee bade him farewell. Members of both the coalition and the opposition praised his fairness in handling the discussions of the only Knesset committee that holds all its meetings behind closed doors, if not in absolute secrecy, and wished his successor, former Shin Bet security agency head MK Avi Dichter, the best of luck. Hanegbi's role as chairman of the Intelligence Subcommittee provided him with access to the highest security issues: meetings with senior officials in the Shin Bet and the Mossad; written and spoken briefings by Military Intelligence officials; and tours of the IDF's secret facilities and production plants of Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as the nuclear reactor in Dimona. Hanegbi, 59, has been active in politics since 1988 and is one of the longest-serving current Knesset members. In an interview summing up his time in office, the first issue to come up was the sharp criticism leveled at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week by two former defense ministers, Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya'alon. "It's infuriating to hear baseless criticism of the government from Ehud Barak, who decided not to run for the Knesset after polls suggested that he wouldn't pass the electoral threshold," Hanegbi says. "And that's only a year after a clear public decision that gave Netanyahu his third straight victory. It's also sad to hear Ya'alon, who characterizes the Likud party as an extremist movement that creates divisions among the people, while he himself called Breaking the Silence [a nonprofit group that publicly and anonymously criticizes IDF conduct] 'traitors' and Peace Now a 'virus.'" Q: Do you think the recent terrorist shooting at the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv demonstrated that preventing lone-wolf terrorism still poses a challenge for us? "The wave of terrorism committed by individuals involves terrorists who are no different in their lust for murder and their willingness to die than any of the terrorists sent by Hamas or the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine]. The only difference is that rather than receiving their orders from a framework that [also] creates the mechanism for the attack, they are guided by their emotions. People get up one morning and decide to kill Jews. We've seen a wide range of motivations, but the significant thing is that they aren't connected to any [terrorist] infrastructure and there is generally no one who helps them or provides them with guns. Therefore, 90% of these attacks aren't committed using guns, just any weapon at hand," Hanegbi says. "The attack on Dizengoff Street was extremely unusual in that it was committed by a terrorist possessing Islamic State-like zealotry who was an Israeli citizen. But with all the difficulty, the wave of terrorist attacks has declined by every parameter in the past four months. Since the current wave of terrorism began, on Oct. 1, 2015, the three first months were the worst, but after that there was a steady drop, and in recent weeks there has been almost no terrorist activity." 'An investigation without politicians' Hanegbi's stance on the Hebron shooting -- which has IDF soldier Elor Azaria currently standing trial for fatally shooting an incapacitated terrorist following an attack -- is complicated and sober. "I look at this matter from two perspectives -- the pragmatic one and the moral one," he says. "From the pragmatic perspective, it's better for us to interrogate a terrorist after an attack than to kill him. The only value in killing [terrorists] is to create deterrence, so terrorists who set out to attack and murder know that they won't come out of it alive. "But statistically that's the result anyway. Thus far in the current wave of terrorism, 134 attackers have been killed over the course of about 200 attacks. In other words, a person has less than a 50% of still being alive after making the decision to commit an act of racially motivated murder. We also know from interrogation sessions with terrorists who were apprehended alive that they were prepared to die, and most of them were disappointed that they didn't, because their goal was to become shahids [martyrs]. Q: Do you think it is just to bring criminal charges against Azaria and accuse him of manslaughter? "From the start, I criticized the flood of chatter by people who had no bearing on the outcome of the event. Politicians -- ministers and MKs -- and also the chief of staff and senior IDF officers shouldn't interfere in a legal investigation. Everyone is presumed innocent by law and they have the right to hire a defense [team] to prove their version of events. The excess chatter surrounding this case has done us all great damage." Q: Your detractors on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee claim that you stopped the committee from putting together a report on the failures of Operation Protective Edge. Is that true? "First of all, there wasn't any report by the committee before my time. The chairmen at that time, current Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Immigrant Absorption Minister Zeev Elkin, decided to try and investigate Operation Protective Edge. They tried to get to the bottom of what happened in various committee meetings. I came to the committee eight months after Protective Edge and asked if there was a report, and was told there wasn't. I was told that there were protocols of discussions that had been held, and that none of the professional team thought that after the IDF completed work on its own investigation, the committee would start probing the operation in hindsight." "I wanted to figure out something that was bothering me. I wanted to ascertain whether there was any merit to the public claim that was floating around that the government has somehow misread the threat posed by the tunnels from the Gaza Strip. I remembered that in the years prior to Protective Edge, when I was committee chairman, we received spoken and written reports about the tunnels, and that I had read dozens if not hundreds of documents of intelligence material [about them]. "It seemed very strange, and I didn't understand why these claims were being made. For months, I read all the protocols including reports by defense officials like the IDF chief of staff, the deputy chief of staff, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, the GOC southern command, Shin Bet operatives in Gaza, and commanders of units deployed in the region. I found that the protocols revealed unequivocally that the political and military echelons were well aware of the strategic significance of the tunnel threat. Q: Why did you submit the report to the Knesset speaker, of all people? "I hesitated about whom to submit it to, because it's a top-secret report. I decided to do it. If I had sent it to the prime minister, people would have said it was a political move. I submitted the report to the Knesset speaker because he is a government figure who regularly sits in on meetings of the Subcommittee on Secret Services. At the same time, I asked the director of the committee to allow all committee members to peruse the document in the committee room. The director emailed the committee members, but only two showed up [Yair Lapid and Ofer Shelach of Yesh Atid.] They were both so diligent they couldn't keep it to themselves, and 15 minutes later the story was leaked to the media. It's a shame, but since there was nothing in the leaked information that could damage state security, I forgive whoever did it." Q: In principle, do you believe that the public has a right to know what happened during Operation Protective Edge? "First of all, the results of a military operation are the most obvious thing there is. When it comes to Protective Edge, the success is impressive and strong from more standpoints than we can count. All the lessons that needed to be learned from a past war were learned, and the results of attacks on terrorists were proportionate in a manner that doesn't exist in any other war on terrorism." Q: Members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee claim the information they received during the operation was much more extensive than that given to the cabinet members, and that they were the ones who made the decisions. Is that not absurd? "I'm not sure it's absurd. I was a member of the cabinet for six years out of the eight years I served as a minister. The cabinet was and is seen as an entity that leaks. A lot of what is said there finds its way out due to the political reality." Q: Why do you think the operation was a success, given the failures that have been exposed? "Because this is the first time that Hamas makes a huge effort to prevent escalation. They are using everything in their power to keep the rebel organizations quiet. They're also in real trouble, because since Protective Edge, they've made zero political gains. They're in a tough situation with the Egyptians, there is no reconstruction in Gaza, and even so they are preventing a flare-up by the skin of their teeth. It shows that deterrence works. Unfortunately, we know that in the Middle East the concept of 'deterrence' is always slippery, and the longer the period of calm lasts, the more people realize that Operation Protective Edge was extremely successful." When it comes to the Iran nuclear deal, Hanegbi sticks to the government line, arguing that in the short term, the threat to Israel has decreased, but in the long term Israel and the entire region could find themselves tackling a major problem. "The Iranian issue has dropped way down on the agenda, since the Iranians have stopped moving ahead on nuclear weapons. But in the long term, it's an immense danger, since after the agreement is up in another 15 years, Iran will have the legitimacy to develop an unlimited uranium enrichment program." Q: We are now marking 10 years since the Second Lebanon War. For now, the northern border is quiet, but are Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's threats still valid- "The Middle East has turned into a bloodbath of brutal slaughter. The 'Arab Spring' has turned out to be a chilling winter of inhumanity, but there are two bright spots when it comes to pure Israeli interests. One, Hezbollah has been sucked deep into the fighting in Syria to save [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and they are not capable of simultaneously waging a war on two fronts. They prefer the Syrian one, and are withdrawing from any conflict with Israel. So the northern border is calm. No one in Israel is so deluded as to thing that the situation will last forever. Hezbollah is more powerful than any other organization or any Arab state, with the possible exception of Egypt. Iron Dome has made part of the threat irrelevant, and soon the IDF will have another tier of defense with the David's Sling anti-missile system, but Hezbollah still has strength that is unprecedented in the Middle East. "The second development has to do with Egypt. Our interests have somewhat merged in terms of the war on terrorism, which is claiming countless victims in Egypt and in the Sinai Peninsula, and that in itself strengthens our cooperation with Sunni Arab countries. Today, it's Egypt and Jordan, and I hope that in the future, it will also include the Gulf states." Q: Does the Islamic State group pose a threat to Israel? "Of course. ISIS is already here. They're in Sinai, a few hundred meters from the Israeli border, fighting the Egyptian army. They could easily aim their guns at Israel. They're also on the Golan Heights looking to wage a war against Assad, but there, too, they could turn their guns on Israel. We're hearing a loud and clear message from the Islamic State leadership that they see Israel as a primary target. We should also note with satisfaction that only a few Arab Israelis are cooperating with the Islamic State. It's certainly a badge of honor that nearly all the 1.8 million Arab Israelis understand that joining ISIS would be a tragic mistake." Q: Does the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee have the tools and the ability to supervise the IDF and the defense establishment- "The committee has become stronger than any other Knesset committee, in terms of personnel and authority, and also through the move I spearheaded to increase the power and responsibility of the subcommittees." Q: Can you give an example of a case in which the committee prompted a shift in the defense establishment's policy or conduct- "The defense budget. The defense budget joint committee that I headed is the one that approves the budgets of the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, and the Atomic Energy Commission. Unlike the budgets of other government ministries and institutions, which aren't seen by the public. This year, we did something unprecedented when we voted against the 2016 defense budget. We did something that wasn't easy for any of the members of the coalition by leading the uproar over the defense budget. I'm proud that we made a very meaningful contribution by increasing the defense budget by NIS 3 billion [$79 million] this year, and it will grow by the same amount in the next few years." Q: What made you decide to step down as head of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and go back to serving as minister without portfolio in the Prime Minister's Office? "There wasn't any deliberation. The government is the main decision-making entity in Israel. I was in charge of six different ministries. In the years I was in the government, I did more for the public in a week than I did in my role in the Knesset in a year. "My understanding with the prime minister was that I would receive an 'active' portfolio. At this stage, it hasn't happened, because he's still holding various portfolios for the Zionist Union, even though there's not much chance they'll join the coalition. It would be very self-interested of me to shout about it or fight with him about it or resign my government role. I'm still strong in my belief that appointing a minister without assigning [him] an active portfolio, when there are four ministries that are currently unstaffed and being held by the prime minister, is unjustified, but I can live with it for a time. I hope that the day isn't far off when I will head a government ministry. In the meantime, I'll deal with the matters the prime minister doesn't have time for, mainly in foreign policy."
"Moreover, there is no doubt that the moral aspect has great importance. That's what IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot meant when he said that we don't shoot terrorists who have surrendered and we don't lynch people. I think that fewer Palestinians being killed has an effect that dampens the flames and creates less desire for revenge. Of course, that doesn't need to come at the expense of aggressive pursuit of someone to stop a terrorist attack, but after the terrorist is subdued, I wouldn't want to see an unjustified shooting."
Q: Why did you decide to prepare a document of your own about the terror tunnel threat before your departure?
"They classified the tunnels as a strategic threat, and made it clear that they were sparing no effort, including spending massive sums of money, to provide a three-tiered solution: a technological solution that lead to a breakthrough that could locate tunnels being built; an intelligence solution, which so long as there was no technology in place, enabled us to understand how the threat was developing, what it meant, where it was located and what its targets were; and third, an operational solution -- in other words, how, based on the provided intelligence, you go about ambushing and destroying the target. The team also supplied me with a table of the instructions that the political echelon gave the military throughout that period, and I concluded unequivocally that the threat was known, understood, and that an appropriate response was found. At that time, the solution still wasn't a technological one."
