|
 Israel voiced disappointment at the disclosures, which were
published on Friday in three media outlets and might further strain
relations with Washington after years of feuding over strategies on
Iran and the Palestinians.
Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily said the U.S. National Security
Agency, which specializes in electronic surveillance, and its
British counterpart GCHQ spied on Israeli air force missions against
the Palestinian enclave Gaza, Syria and Iran.
The spy operation, codenamed "Anarchist", was run out of a Cyprus
base and targeted other Middle East states too, it said. Its
findings were mirrored by stories in Germany's Der Spiegel news
magazine and the online publication The Intercept, which lists
Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald among its associates.
"This access is indispensable for maintaining an understanding of
Israeli military training and operations and thus an insight to
possible future developments in the region,” The Intercept quoted a
classified GCHQ report as saying in 2008.
That year, Israel went to war against Hamas guerrillas in Gaza and
began issuing increasingly vocal threats to attack Iranian nuclear
facilities if it deemed international diplomacy insufficient to deny
its arch-foe the means of making a bomb.
Asked for comment, the United States and Britain said through
spokespeople for their embassies in Israel that they do not publicly
discuss intelligence matters.
NOT "DEEPEST KINGDOM OF SECRETS"
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, sought to play down the
potential damage but said lessons would be learned.
"I do not think that this is the deepest kingdom of secrets, but it
is certainly something that should not happen, which is unpleasant,"
he told Israel's Army Radio. "We will now have to look and consider
changing the encryption, certainly."
With the Netanyahu government and Obama administration at
loggerheads over the U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran, there
have been a series of high-profile media exposes in recent months
alleging mutual espionage between the allies.
[to top of second column] |
Israel insists that it ceased such missions since it ran U.S. Navy
analyst Jonathan Pollard as an agent in the 1980s.
"We know that the Americans spy on the whole world, and also on us,
also on their friends," Steinitz said. "But still, it is
disappointing, inter alia because, going back decades already, we
have not spied nor collected intelligence nor hacked encryptions in
the United States."
The Intercept report included what it said were images of armed
Israeli drones hacked from onboard cameras' live feeds.
Israel neither confirms nor denies having armed drones, though one
of its senior military officers was quoted as acknowledging their
existence in a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable that was previously
disseminated by WikiLeaks.
Yedioth said that the hacking revelations could hurt Israeli drone
sales to Germany should Berlin worry about the aircraft networks'
security. But Steinitz brushed off that possibility.
"Every country carries out its own encryption," he said.
Germany said on Jan 12 it would lease Heron TP drones from
state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
