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Last update - 22:14 02/10/2007

The state always comes first

By Jonathan Lis

Late on Sabbath eve, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter strapped on his pistol, grabbed a phosphorescent vest with the word "Police" on it, and set out for the police station in his hometown, Ashkelon. As he waited for his patrol partners, Inspector Avi Hashash came over and shook his hand. "His grandfather made the best falafel in Ashkelon," Dichter said.

Once a month, Dichter goes on patrol as a Civil Guard volunteer, from 11 P.M. until 5 A.M. He is probably the only volunteer who reports for duty escorted by two bodyguards, and in a vehicle of the Shin Bet security service's VIP protection unit. He requests that we not talk about politics or about the performance of the police commissioner while riding in the van, because his subordinates are present.

That request is understandable. In a few days, officers from the Police's National Fraud Investigations unit will question Prime Minister Ehud Olmert about alleged improprieties in the sale of Bank Leumi, during a time when Olmert served as finance minister. Last week, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz instructed the police to investigate the terms of Olmert's purchase of a house on Jerusalem's upscale Cremieux Street. Two additional cases may also develop into criminal investigations against the prime minister, involving the Small Businesses Authority and the Investments Center, dating from the period when Olmert was industry and trade minister and in charge of both units.

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As a senior cabinet minister from Olmert's Kadima party, Dichter is concerned that the clouds of suspicion engulfing Olmert and several other ministers and MKs in the party will tarnish its image. As the minister responsible for the Israel Police, he authorizes the promotion of senior police officers, including those who will question Olmert.

Dichter maintains that the attorney general should suspend the investigations against Olmert until he concludes his term as prime minister. He urges the enactment of legislation that will create a special procedure under which the attorney general or a professional committee will be able to formulate clear criteria for distinguishing between offenses police will investigate while a senior official is still in office and those that will be investigated after he leaves office.

The prime minister is currently being investigated for his actions in three, possibly four, different affairs. Can you say which ones should be suspended and which should be pursued?

"I am not familiar with the particulars of the various cases, so I can't really say. But in any event, I am not the legal authority that should determine the severity of the alleged offenses. When the Israeli public goes to the ballot boxes, they're not electing a superman to lead them, but a man of flesh and blood. You take that man and you chain a ball to his leg. Now he has to deal with leading the country, and also devote attention to this other private matter."

Does this diminish his performance as prime minister?

"That's just it. We pick him for this triathlon called the premiership, but he has to get through it with dead weight."

Should Olmert step down for as long as the police are investigating his actions? Can he go on like this?

"Olmert is the only man who knows how credible the suspicions against him are. So if he feels he is being wrongfully suspected or accused, he has no reason to step down. Nor should other officials."

Would you step down if you faced three criminal investigations into your actions?

"That's a very personal question. If I had an investigation launched against me for something I was sure I did not commit, I would not step down from a ministerial position unless the law required me to do so. A politician who's certain of his innocence has no reason to step down from office. It's a very clear distinction. Either the law obliges you, in which case you have no discretion in the matter, or there is no such article in the law, in which case it is a debate between you and yourself. If you are convinced of your innocence, there is no reason for you to suspend yourself."

Dichter draws a distinction between suspected offenses committed during a senior official's tenure and earlier ones. With regard to the former type, he says, the police investigation should continue.

Given all the ministers and MKs from Kadima - Olmert, Haim Ramon, Avraham Hirchson, Ruhama Avraham - who have been or are under investigation, are you worried about the party's corrupt image?

"That image is shared by the three big parties. The leaders of each of them have been under investigation of one kind or another, involving suspicions of one kind or another. If you replace one leading party with another leading party you will not end up with a party composed of righteous people. You will get more or less the same thing that regrettably now exists in Israeli politics, which is due either to poor leadership, unhealthy norms, or an absence of clear definitions of what is permitted and what is not. The very fact that this bothers us more nowadays means that in the future, fewer and fewer politicians will come into office dragging some kind of tail behind them."

The plot that never was

The first task of Civil Guard volunteer Dichter is to help man a position to check driver's licenses on a side street where the police are looking for drunken drivers. A man who is stopped because he was talking on his mobile phone while driving says he is from Be'er Sheva and implores Dichter, "I was in a restaurant. I didn't drink anything. I swear to you that the phone was on my legs." Dichter asks, "You're from Rahat, aren't you?" - referring to a Bedouin town. Surprised, the driver confirms this. "A lot of Bedouin come to Ashkelon to have a good time and they get involved romantically with Israeli girls," Dichter says. "The relationships are based on enticements, mainly of a financial character, and usually involve girls from the Russian sector. There is no violation of the law here, but frequently confrontations develop against that background and escalate into violent brawls." The head of the shift, Chief Inspector Lior Misrafi, agrees: "The girls like the cash flow of the Bedouin. The parents get very anxious, but we are a democratic society."

At the end of April, a few days after the Winograd Committee - which is investigating the Second Lebanon War - published its interim findings, reports appeared in the media to the effect that Dichter had tried to recruit two ministers, Shaul Mofaz and Tzipi Livni, and the chairman of the coalition at the time, MK Avigdor Yitzhaki, to join a plan to oust Olmert and install Livni in his place. Mofaz reportedly declined to take part in the would-be putsch, news of which soon reached Olmert. Since then Dichter has consistently denied having been involved in a plot to remove Olmert.

Did the good of the country demand that Olmert resign after the publication of the Winograd Committee's interim report?

"I thought it would be a mistake to call on Olmert to resign," Dichter says. His moves at the time were not aimed at forcing Olmert to leave office, he declares, but only to be ready for the possibility that the committee's interim report would necessitate his unequivocal removal. He tried to reconstruct the talks he held with party members at the time, seeking to erase the rebel image. "I held the same conversation with everyone: I said I was not willing to get to the day of the report's publication without deploying for all possible scenarios. The extreme scenario was that the Winograd Committee report would reprise the report of the Kahan Commission [which investigated the Sabra and Chatilla massacre, in the first Lebanon War] and declare that Ehud was not worthy to continue serving as prime minister. That is a scenario you have to prepare for. It was out of the question to start dealing with that situation only on the day of the report's publication."

Dichter says he informed Olmert in advance about the talks he was holding and that he met with him again after the media reported the "revolt." "I told him, 'Listen, Ehud, if you think you don't have to discuss all the scenarios, including this one, with Kadima, then we will discuss it by ourselves. I am in contact with Mofaz and with Tzipi and with Avigdor. I don't think this scenario will happen. But not to prepare for it?' There is an iron rule that says you should always hope for the best but prepare for the worst."

Is that extreme scenario still valid? What has changed since then?

"If, heaven forbid, the Winograd Committee issues warning letters, and one of those warned is the prime minister, I think we will have to once again ask ourselves what to do. The public can say, 'It will all work out'; the leadership has to prepare for the opposite. But the moment the extreme scenario did not materialize, there was no justification to call on the prime minister to resign. Here I had a serious disagreement with both Avigdor and Tzipi. Regrettably, they each chose to say what they said."

In any event, Dichter sees himself as a possible candidate for prime minister in the coming years. "I certainly see myself in the top leadership of Kadima, and I intend to act on that belief when the time is ripe. I don't see any serious prospect of elections before 2009; we are even approaching the original date of the elections, in 2010. The move by Ami Ayalon [the Labor MK who was defeated by Ehud Barak in the party's internal elections and has now joined the government] was very significant in terms of stabilizing the government. The time we have left is still twice as long as the time we have been in power."

You enjoyed a meteoric rise in Kadima, after a successful stint as head of the Shin Bet. There were expectations that you would quickly become the party's number two and the leading candidate for the premiership - but in the meantime nothing like this is materializing.

"I am not a star. The only place you find stars is in the sky. I wasn't a star in the Shin Bet and I don't see myself as a star in politics, either. I don't know who entertained thoughts like that and was disappointed. I am not responsible for people's expectations and disappointments."

No monkey business

The Civil Guard vehicle is sent to check out a call from a switchboard operator in the municipality building who thinks there is a thief in the building. Dichter and Misrafi rush up the stairs. A conversation with the caller, who is taken aback by the presence of the minister and the media, makes it clear that there is no thief. So far, in his Civil Guard shifts Dichter has dealt mainly with minor police incidents: "We caught people who were involved in a violent brawl, or we found drunks, or we rescued a woman who was being beaten by her husband," he relates. In the larger picture, he rejects outright the possibility that he will face a possible conflict of interest with regard to the promotion of officers involved in the investigation of the prime minister or of other Kadima figures. Indeed, he finds such notions offensive.

Could there be a situation in which an officer will fear revenge on your part, or will fudge an investigation in order to enter into your good graces?

"When authorizing a promotion I have never considered the question of who the officer investigated. I don't understand the question, because I don't identify the problem. The appointments procedure is very clear. The recommendation for appointments originates from below. It goes to the senior command of the police and is brought to me for approval only after a check is made to ascertain that there are no problems of discipline."

Later, he returns to the subject. "Twisted thinking," he says of the question. "I won't say that I am so naive as to believe that the issue you raise has no basis at all," he admits. "But it is certainly not located on my frequency. I entered politics at the age of 54, after doing two or three things in my life. I have more on my mind than doing monkey business."

Still, quite a few officers bear a grudge against Dichter for his maneuvering in the appointment of a new police commissioner to succeed Moshe Karadi. Karadi, a decorated officer, realizing that he would not receive the coveted backing of the minister after the publication of the Zeiler Committee report on botched police investigations, quickly resigned "in order to divert the fire away from the organization." On that same day, Dichter declared that his candidate for commissioner was Yaakov Ganot, the head of the Prisons Service, with whom he had coordinated the move even before Karadi's resignation.

Dichter informed all the police major generals that he did not consider them qualified for the top position, but a few weeks later, after Ganot withdrew his candidacy, Dichter appointed one of the major generals, David Cohen, as the new commissioner. Since then, the storm within the senior police ranks has abated somewhat. Dichter says that when he took over as public security minister he found a police department that was riddled with political appointees. "For years, a great many years, so I was given to understand by quite a few senior police officers, the practice of political appointments in the police generated a very unpleasant atmosphere. The very fact that an organization exists under such a cloud is a problem. I made it clear that on my watch there would be no political appointments in the police. No MK, no minister and no prime minister - no one will dare approach me on this subject."

Were you approached to make political appointments?

"At the outset there were some moves, not exactly approaches, something more refined," he says, but declines to elaborate.

A meeting, not a conference

A report about a violent altercation sends Dichter and Misrafi to the seashore. Five police vehicles are already at the site. The volunteers move quickly to conduct a patrol along the beach, which is buzzing with hyped-up young people, some of them under the influence. The brawlers are not found.

Dichter is pessimistic about the ability of the international peace conference due to be held in the United States next month to achieve concrete results. He recalls that when Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat failed to make genuine progress at Camp David in 2000, he was summoned, along with other security chiefs - Jibril Rajoub (West Bank), Omer Suleiman (Egypt) and George Tenet (United States) - to work out "something in the security sphere," as he puts it, that could be described as an achievement. So pessimistic is he about next month's meeting that he cannot understand why it is being referred to as a "conference." "It is not a conference, it is a meeting," he says. "There is something less bombastic and less binding about a meeting, and it generates lower expectations. A conference is a different story." He has no objections to the meeting as such: "It has a declarative aspect that I do not make light of. I hope that the major declaration will be that the world is mobilizing to assist the Palestinian Authority to implement its commitment to the first phase of the road map. That will be a meaningful declaration. For seven years the PA did not lift a finger to stop the terrorism against Israel or against itself. Gaza is now a long story, very long even from the Palestinians' point of view. My mother has more influence in Gaza than the PA - and my mother is 84." The Egyptians are not taking action to stop the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip, he says: "Everyone always says that the Egyptians have an interest in not allowing weapons to enter Gaza. I say: That is not true, because if that were so, they would block the smuggling. It's just a four-kilometer strip in the Rafah sector. The Egyptians aren't capable of putting a stop to the smuggling? On one occasion the Egyptians asked me, 'What do you want from us?' I replied, 'I want you to fight the smuggling of weapons as though it were from Gaza into Sinai and not from Sinai into Gaza."

In how far does Olmert understand this?

"I am convinced that he understands it. He understands it from me. He is experienced enough and knowledgeable enough to take risks without crashing."

Dichter also objects vehemently to the initiative by Labor's Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the national infrastructure minister, to release Marwan Barghouti from prison in a deal for the return of the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, and to the attempt to build Barghouti up as a future leader of the PA. "I saw, according to a headline in Haaretz, that the majority of the cabinet favors Barghouti's release in exchange for Gilad Shalit. But when you actually read the article, you discover that this majority consists of Ben-Eliezer and Gideon Ezra."

The family in second place

"So far it's a boring shift," Misrafi says. "But it's still early. We haven't yet caught any drunks, but they will soon start coming out of the bars and clubs and then we will nab them, one by one."

Dichter wants to position himself as a ramrod-straight politician, an idealist, immaculate. He says he is making only an extra NIS 4,000 in the transition to a ministerial portfolio. "If you take my pension as a Shin Bet retiree and add my salary as a minister, it comes out to NIS 4,000 more than my salary as a Shin Bet pensioner. I did not enter politics for the salary. Believe me, I could have found plenty of jobs that add up to a bit more than NIS 4,000."

In his private order of priorities, he says, the state takes precedence over all else - including family. "One of my toughest arguments with my wife and family is precisely that statement," he relates. "I made that declaration when I concluded my tenure as head of the Shin Bet. I repeated it in a toast to the New Year in Herzliya. My family was in the audience when I said that for me the order is first of all the state and only afterward the family, first the state and after that the party. Anyone who has a different order of priorities is no partner of mine. I don't think one can be a cabinet minister if family comes before state."

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1.	PM always comes first,2nd,3rd,&4th...............	16:52	\|	sam	03/10/07

2.	Just a lot of `Hot Air"	18:11	\|	Dagma	03/10/07

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