If more evidence were to emerge of Israeli involvement in spying the damage could be huge

Ever since whistle-blower Edward Snowden leaked documents pertaining to the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) programme of mass surveillance, the revelations and diplomatic rifts just keep coming. Last week, there was outrage in France and Germany after it emerged that the US had monitored millions of phone calls made by citizens in the two countries. US ambassadors were summoned; Barack Obama spoke on the phone to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Francoise Hollande; and both countries said they wanted to sign a no-spying deal with the US. Today the focus has shifted to Spain, where a raft of evidence of US surveillance has emerged.

Part of the outrage stems from the fact that it was not just ordinary citizens who were targeted, but officials at the very top levels of government. The German paper Der Spiegel reported that the US had been monitoring Merkel’s phone since 2002. The French newspaper Le Monde also reports that there was an attempt to hack into the president’s communications network in May 2012 – during the last few weeks of Nicolas Sarkozy’s premiership.

The evidence around this cyber attack may cast the net of suspicion wider than just the US. One of the leaked documents is a classified briefing note, prepared in April this year for NSA officials who were due to meet two French intelligence agents. The two French agents were seeking an explanation for this 2012 attempt to access the presidential communications system. The briefing note says that the NSA’s cyber attack branch had not carried out the attack, and that its closest allies – Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand – had also denied involvement.

It goes on to say “Tailored Access Operations [the cyber branch of the NSA] intentionally did not ask either Mossad or ISNU [Israel’s cyber intelligence unit] whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.” Le Monde, which published the note, has interpreted it as an ironic, heavy-handed hint that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was the most likely culprit.

“Israel is a country which is a friend, ally and partner of France and does not carry out any hostile activity which could pose a threat to its security,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office told Le Monde after the report. Yet there has been no explicit denial that Mossad was behind the incident.

The briefing note certainly does not constitute incontrovertible evidence, but it does underscore the fact that the US is not the only country engaging in surveillance of its own citizens and those of other countries. Israel is one of the few allies of America that has yet to appear in the NSA documents as a target of US spies (although it could still). Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom told the Israeli newspaper Maariv that he is confident that America spies on the country. This view is shared by other senior intelligence officials and politicians. Journalists note that Netanyahu and his predecessor Ariel Sharon are cautious about telephone discussions for this reason.

In his column for the Haaretz newspaper, military expert Amos Harel says that “spying among friends is considered an unavoidable fact of life in Israel” and suggests that it was naïve for France and Germany to think that the US wouldn’t have been spying on them. He also says that “what is forbidden for small countries that depend on a superpower’s aid is apparently permissible for the superpower”. It is certainly true that different rules apply to different countries. For all the bluster and rhetorical grandstanding in France and Germany over the NSA leaks, it is highly unlikely that there will be any major shift in either country’s relationship with the US. Quite simply, they need to co-operate with the US on intelligence and political matters and cannot afford to lose the alliance. The same is not quite true of Israel. The allegations against Israel and its role in spying on France are currently fairly flimsy; but if more evidence were to emerge, it would certainly have the potential to cause more damage to the small nation than it would to the US.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.