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Yossi Melman / Israeli spies don't work just for Mossad
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Hezbollah, Mossad, Lebanon 

During the course of less than a year, foreign sources say, Lebanon's security services have uncovered three spy networks working for Israel. As is customary in such cases, the Mossad has not reacted to these reports. Even if the claims are correct, no one expects Israel's secret service will confirm that its agents have been captured, thereby deciding their fate.

Therefore, Israelis can only rely on what is published in the Lebanese media or Arab news outlets, which base their reports on information obtained from the Lebanese security services. Hezbollah is always a partner, often a senior one, to such investigations.

In November last year, the Lebanese authorities arrested Ali Jarrah, from the town of Al-Marj in the Beqaa Valley. His brother Yusuf and several other people were also detained. Sophisticated photographic equipment was found in Jarrah's possession, as well as a video camera and GPS devices, concealed in his vehicle. The charges against him include the allegation that he had been sent to surveil, photograph and report to his handlers about the places they sent him to scout in the Beqaa Valley. The investigation found that Jarrah had also been sent on a tour of the Damascus neighborhood that served as the hideout of Hezbollah "defense minister" Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in the Syrian capital in February 2008. Lebanon's prosecutor general has announced that he will ask for the death sentence for the Jarrah brothers.
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In January 2009, Marwan Fuqiya, a car dealer from the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, was arrested and questioned on suspicion of having helped the Mossad install electronic eavesdropping equipment in the vehicles of Hezbollah members whose cars were serviced at his garage. He, too, is expected to receive the death sentence.

And now there are reports of the capture of a third network of 12 members, the most senior of whom is Adib 'Alam, a retired colonel in Lebanon's military intelligence. Lebanese media reports allege that 'Alam, who was arrested at the beginning of the year, has confessed that he was recruited by the Mossad 11 years ago. According to the reports, his handlers persuaded him to retire from the army and helped him establish a business to import foreign workers. Using this business as cover, 'Alam traveled to meetings with his handlers in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. The network's goal was to gather information about Hezbollah's top echelon and to follow events in the Lebanese Army.

A garage, a company for importing foreign workers, electronic eavesdropping equipment, photographic equipment, missions to trail top Hezbollah people and meetings outside of Lebanon - all these ostensibly constitute operational patterns characteristic of Mossad conduct. However, the truth of the matter is that the Mossad did not invent the wheel. Many other espionage organizations operate with similar methods. As far back as the 1950s, Egyptian intelligence infiltrated Rif'a 'Ali al-Gamal, aka Jacques Bitton (his Jewish identity), into Israel and helped him establish a travel agency in Tel Aviv. And in the 1960s, Egyptian intelligence recruited Sami Baruch, a failed textile manufacturer, and offered him financial help to rebuild his factory in return for his willingness to serve as a spy.

As a relatively small organization, the Mossad strives to obtain high-quality sources in the target country's top echelons. Immediately after the Iranian nuclear program and efforts to thwart it (so far unsuccessful) became the number one target for intelligence-gathering, the fight against terror organizations - first and foremost Hezbollah - has been the main priority.

The Arab media like to describe everyone suspected of spying for Israel as working for the Mossad. However, the work of gathering information about targets is in fact a joint effort, in which the three branches of the Israeli intelligence community cooperate with each other: the Mossad, the Shin Bet security service and the two major Military Intelligence units - electronic surveillance Unit 8200 and Unit 504, which runs agents.

Gathering intelligence involves Sisyphean work, linking one parcel of information to another. It also depends on luck and involves taking more or less considered risks. The nature of the work environment means there are frequent hitches. For the most part we hear about what goes wrong and not about successes.

In recent years foreign newspapers have attributed to Israel's espionage community a number of rather considerable successes with regard to Hezbollah and its patron Iran: the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the revelation of Iran's involvement in smuggling weapons to Gaza via Sudan and the claim that Tehran was involved in exposing the Hezbollah espionage and sabotage network in Egypt.

If the Lebanese media reports are correct, the fall of three spy networks should not be taken lightly, especially if the discovery of the first led to the fall of the others. If this is what happened, then someone was clearly careless in running the operations, the basic rule of which is complete compartmentalization between networks and between one agent and another. In such cases, handlers tend to lower their profile and reduce future operations until the storm blows over.

It also seems Hezbollah has become more alert in the wake of suspicions that the organization was infiltrated. However, in the end, the uncovering of an espionage network or the fall of an agent, with all the regret these entail, are part of the way the game is played. These are the facts of life in clandestine activity.

Related articles:
  • 3 arrested in Lebanon for allegedly spying for Israel
  • Lebanon charges ex-general with spying for Israel
  • Report: Israeli spy ring in Lebanon infiltrated Hezbollah
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      1.   Yeah... They `catch` Israeli spies every Tuesday and Thrusday 06:26  |  Dan 26/04/09
      2.   it would make no sense whatever 08:43  |  Cipora Julianna Kohn 26/04/09
      3.   I disagree about Iran. 10:47  |  Stephen. 26/04/09
      4.   #3 re Iran 12:20  |  Andita 26/04/09
      5.   Why this story?It seems to me that Hizbollebanon now in the midst 20:11  |  ks 26/04/09
      6.   Why Jarrahs if Israel has sateliltes and drones? 08:31  |  Fortuna Benmayor 27/04/09
      7.   Israel existence makes the world safer #5 no no no think not 20:50  |  justis 23/05/09
      8.   #2 Put on your thinking cap, Cipora. 04:29  |  Johnboy 12/06/09
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