Knesset defense committee no longer privy to secret info

Chairman Avigdor Liberman says meetings over classified material will no longer be held after leak of Shin Bet chief’s testimony

A powerful Knesset committee overseeing foreign policy and defense will no longer have access to classified information, after committee head MK Avigdor Liberman pulled access Thursday in the wake of the leak of sensitive information.

The June 4 leak out of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee ostensibly revealed that the head of the Shin Bet, Yoram Cohen, has come to the conclusion that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas does not believe in peace with Israel.

In a letter addressed to committee members and sent to the media, Liberman said the panel would only hold open meetings from now on, which are attended by the media and do not include discussions of classified material.

“No classified details will be passed on” to the committee, he wrote.

The leaked information, splashed across the front page on Israeli daily Maariv on Wednesday, revealed that Cohen had said Abbas’s rule was stable for the moment, but his leadership was vulnerable if there were to be new Palestinian elections or a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.

Cohen also reportedly said that across the Palestinian territories, there is a “continuous decline” in the belief that a Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement will come to fruition, and that 2012 saw a “clear increase” in terrorist activity in the West Bank.

The Shin Bet denied the accuracy of the report,.

Liberman, a former foreign minister, said the leak was especially “saddening” in light of the fact that committee members had complained to him earlier in the year, when he took over as chairman, that the committee’s meetings had become “a sort of media survey,” devoid of all “significant details relating to the work of the security forces.”

This ban on classified info includes Monday’s upcoming meeting with the prime minister, Liberman wrote, adding that from his many years of parliamentary activity, and his acquaintance with the people in question, along with the mangled nature of the leak itself, “it is clear to me who stands behind this leak and I regret that he has caused harm to the committee’s work and the good name of the Knesset.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.