– G –
GAON, HAIM.Major Gaon, an officer in Military Intelligence(MI),
was instructed in 1949 by the director of MI, Colonel Binyamin
Gibli, to create an entire information-gathering apparatus in Paris,
with its own agents and independent communication links to MI in
Tel Aviv. In 1950 such agencies were set up in Paris as well as other
European capitals.GATTMON, ALEX.See MISGERET.GAZIT, SHLOMO (1926– ).Born in Turkey, Gazit immigrated to
Palestine in 1933. In 1944 he volunteered for the Palmah, part of Is-
rael’s prestate militia, and then served 33 years in the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF). During the early 1960s, Gazit was the representative of
Military Intelligence(MI) in Paris, replacing Yuval Ne’eman. After
his return to Israel in 1964, Gazit headed the Research Department of
MI until 1967, and following the Six-Day Warhe became the first
coordinator of Israeli government operations in the administered ter-
ritories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip).
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Gazit, by now a major general,
took over the directorship of MI from the disgraced Major General
Eliyahu (Eli) Zeira. Gazit served in this position from 1974 to 1979.
Early in 1976 Gazit began to feel concern that a change of heart
in the Arab world from belligerency to peaceful intentions would go
unnoticed in Israel. In September that year he approached several
foreign intelligence services, especially the Central Intelligence
Agency, for their views on indicators of such a change, but nothing
came of this. He then turned to the leading Israeli academic re-
search centers. One of these was the Shiloah Institute at Tel Aviv
University. MI asked its experts if they had observed any shift in
the tone of Arab public statements about Israel, and if there were
any normative changes in the Arabs’ stance. On 14 November 1977,
a few days after Egyptian president Anwar Sadat expressed his
readiness to go to Jerusalem in the quest for peace, Gazit gave MI’s
assessment on its prospects to Israeli defense minister Ezer Weiz-
man. He said that regardless of what the Egyptians said, MI be-
lieved that Egypt was planning war once more. This was an over-
estimation of the threat. Under Gazit’s directorship, MI was stillGAZIT, SHLOMO•9506-102 (02) A-G.qxd 3/24/06 7:23 AM Page 95