AN ISRAELI army general who has played a key role in peace talks with the Palestinians was yesterday suspended by the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, from participation in further negotiations. He had been caught holding unauthorised meetings with the Labour Party leader, Mr Shimon Peres, and other senior opposition politicians.
Gen Oren Shahor, the overall co-ordinator of Israeli army activity in the West Bank and the long-time head of the negotiating team on civilian aspects of the Hebron pullout, insists that his late night meeting earlier this week at Mr Peres's house, like eight previous meetings over the past three months with Mr Peres and other former members of the previous Labour-led government, was "a chat between friends", and that he did not divulge any classified information.
But Gen Shahor is not known to have maintained such deep social contacts with Mr Peres and his opposition colleagues prior to the change of government last June. He had not received the necessary Defence Ministry approval to hold the meetings, and is suspected by Mr Netanyahu of having provided Labour with up-to-the-minute insights into the progress of the protracted and acutely sensitive talks on the Hebron withdrawal.
A few days ago, Mr Moshe Shahal, a minister in the former Peres government, claimed to have received a copy of the nearly completed Hebron deal. He then derided Mr Netanyahu's government over its content - asserting that the new accord was, in some ways, inferior to the deal Labour signed a year ago, and insisting that Mr Netanyahu's insistence on renegotiating the accord had proved a worthless time-wasting exercise that had done nothing but strain relations with the Palestinians.
It might be that Mr Netanyahu suspects Gen Shahor was the source of that leaked documentation. And it seems likely that someone in the government tipped off the Hebrew press about the general's secret late-night meetings. He was caught "with his trousers down", as one Hebrew reporter put it.
Mr Jamil Tarifi, Gen Shahor's Palestinian counterpart at the peace talks, yesterday praised the suspended officer as an "honest and straight" negotiating partner.
He noted, accurately, that it would take a long time for his successor to master the complex material. Gen Shahor had been one of the last few survivors of the Labour government's negotiating delegations.
Since the civilian aspects of the renegotiated Hebron accord have already been wrapped up, however, his suspension should not affect the course of the talks. What the affair has done, though, is underline the growing mistrust in Mr Netanyahu's government of many of the most senior officers in the army, who are regarded as "tainted" by their ties to the previous government.
Meanwhile, Mr Nachum Kolman, a West Bank Jewish settler, was charged yesterday with the killing of Hilmi Shawash, an 11-year-old boy from the village of Hussan, who died on Sunday from a blow to the head. Mr Kolman is alleged to have kicked the boy and then hit him with his pistol butt, fatally injuring him.
It has emerged that the dead boy held Israeli citizenship.