A classified report by the Knesset Foreign Affairs Defense Committee warning in 2004 about the existence of a nuclear reactor in Syria was ignored by Israel's intelligence services for over two years, political reporter Amit Segal revealed Tuesday on the Hadashot evening news.
According to the report, a group of Knesset members warned the defense establishment that Syrian President Bashar Assad was trying to develop a nuclear bomb.
The story of Israel's 2007 strike on the Syrian reactor began in Libya, after Israeli intelligence failed to expose the nuclear plan of then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
"A nuclear project was growing in a hostile Arab state under a madman like Gadhafi, and we didn't know about it until we were informed," recalled Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who at the time served as chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and who in conjunction with other MKs established a subcommittee of inquiry to probe the intelligence failure.
The investigative subcommittee infuriated the defense establishment. Then-IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon instructed IDF officers not to participate in committee meetings and sent letters to MKs opposing the committee chair.
But the subcommittee continued to work. Officially, it was charged with investigating intelligence failures on nuclear programs in both Libya and Iraq, but its secret mission was to prevent similar failures in the future. The ensuing report, issued in July 2004, demonstrates that more than three years before the Mossad presented a smoking gun, Israel already suspected that Syria had built a nuclear reactor.
Only nine copies of the 2004 report were issued and its findings have never been publicized until Hadashot requested that the Military Censor approve Segal's report.
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, then-director of Military Intelligence, said in response, "I don't remember any conversations similar to what was described in the report."
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein tweeted on Wednesday that Segal's report "proves once again the immense importance of Knesset oversight of the government and its debates. Much respect to my friend [Energy] Minister Steinitz for his staunch stance and the example he should set for everyone in the Knesset."
Education Minister Naftali Bennett called the report a "lesson in how vital doubt is," and said that Steinitz had bucked against the prevailing conception that Syria had no nuclear reactor.
"World military history is rife with conceptions that led to disasters and the role of the political echelon is not only to support, but also to challenge," Bennett tweeted.
