Post date: Dec 22, 2013 1:15:49 PM
Israeli officials not surprised by allegations the US and Britain spied on the country's leaders although they say it is not acceptable.
JERUSALEM (DECEMBER 22, 2013) (REUTERS) - Israeli ministers said on Sunday (December 22) spying on their leaders by the United States and Britain was not acceptable but added they were not surprised playing down the importance of any information its allies may have gleaned.
Leaked documents from former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowdenpublished on Friday (December 20) showed the the surveillance agency and its British counterpart at GCHQ had in 2009 targeted an email address listed as belonging to the Israeli prime minister and monitored emails of senior defence officials.Strategic Affairs minister Yuval Steinitz told Israeli Channel 2 television that the government's assumption was that Arab states and world powers, including friendly ones, follow Israel closely.
Though he said it was still not acceptable, Steinitz added Israel takes the necessary precautions and that secret information was never transmitted over "regular phones and email systems".
He was therefore confident the matter could be settled without too much fuss.
"We are not following after the President of the United States or the Defence Minister and I think that we should expect the same relations from the United States. I'm confident we will consider how to settle this issue (Q: how will you settle it?) I don't know, we will consider it but it is not acceptable and I think that the relations between our secret services and between our two countries are such that we shouldn't follow on each other in such ways," said Steinitz ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, in Jerusalem.
The office of Ehud Olmert, who at the time was Israel's prime minister, conferred with Steinitz' view and issued a statement saying the reports, if accurate, referred to a public email address.
"The chances that security or intelligence damage was caused from the breaking in to this email address were minuscule," the statement said.
The former head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, Yaakov Perry, said spying was to be expected.
"I wasn't surprised, because every empire makes its utmost in order to in a way spy or get information even on friendly states. I hope that they didn't find too much," he said.
Tourism minister Uzi Landau seized on the leak to call for the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who has been serving a life sentence in theUnited States on charges of spying for Israel in the 1980s.
"It's quite embarrassing between countries who are allies. I think that at this moment more than any other moment it's just natural that Jonathan Pollard (who was caught spying for Israel) will be released," Landau said.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't refer to the issue directly but said that Israel has been "paying attention" to recent developments and has always sought Pollard's release.
"We don't need a special incident in order to discuss the release of Jonathan Pollard. We handle this, I handle this all the time and also nowadays with every U.S president including President Obama. We hope that there will be circumstances that will enable us to bring Jonathan back home. This is not conditioned upon or related to recent events, though we have paid attention to those developments," Netanyahu said.
Pollard, who admitted to spying for Israel, was arrested in 1985 and sentenced for providing tens of thousands of pages of classified information to Israel. Netanyahu had asked U.S. PresidentBarack Obama to grant him clemency.