Three weeks ago, we reported on an agreement reached by an Israeli senior official and the secretary general of the PLO's working committee, Hussein al-Sheikh, in a meeting in which the head of Palestinian intelligence, Majid Faraj, also participated, regarding the arrest of wanted persons in the West Bank cities. We didn't know who the Israeli senior official was, and we didn't know what the essence of the agreement was. We knew that even on the same day when the Palestinians entered Nablus to fulfill the agreement that had been reached, and even before they left it, according to a senior Palestinian security source, Bnei Gantz violated the agreement, when he did not prevent the entry of the forces into Palestinian cities as agreed (23.09 issue 61). According to the Palestinians, Gantz also violated on that day a written agreement with them from 2007 regarding payments to prisoners.

The Palestinian source told us this week that, in his opinion, the senior Israeli who reached the agreement with A-Sheikh and with Faraj is Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Since the Palestinians discuss security matters with the head of the Shin Bet or with the Minister of Defense, and since the Minister of Defense, in our estimation, would not have violated an agreement reached by himself, a few hours later, and from our knowledge of the terminology in which the source is expressed, the above regarding the identity of the Israeli senior official is journalistic information and not only Journalistic assessment.

From this it appears that the Shin Bet's position is that the IDF should not enter Palestinian cities in the northern West Bank to arrest wanted persons and should leave the task to the Palestinian Authority. If this is indeed the position of the Shin Bet, which Benny Gantz rejected when he violated the agreement with the Palestinians, a question arises: was this a political decision by Gantz on the eve of the elections, out of fear that he would appear soft in the Palestinian security arena, and especially absorb the criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu who tries to portray himself as the strong man of Israeli policy. Another question arises from this: Does the Chief of Staff's silence regarding what is happening in the West Bank in a value sense stem from the fact that he agrees with the Shin Bet's position and not with Gantz's position, but in his position as a soldier, he cannot openly criticize the political and security echelon.

We note that the IDF does not cooperate with the newspaper (see today's editorial), contrary to a basic rule of a democratic regime which obliges the army to respond to questions from Israeli media, answers according to its wishes and decisions, of course, which include refraining from any response, etc. As mentioned in the editorial column, tipp is considering turning to the Supreme Court with a request to compel the IDF to respond to the newspaper's questions, in the appropriate way in his opinion as stated.