28-07-10 State archives to stay classified for 20 more years

Following pressure from intelligence agencies,Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has extended the period during which material contained in government archives may remain classified by 20 years.The new regulations,approved two weeks ago,mean archived material scheduled to become available to scholars and the public after 50 years will now remain in the vaults until 70 years have passed since they were placed there.The documents in question stem from the first two decades of Israel's existence,and relate to such seminal events as the 1956 Sinai Campaign,the failed intelligence operation two years prior known as the Lavon Affair and the 1967 Six-Day War.Netanyahu's new directive means the first of them will be unveiled to the public only in 2018.The move comes after the Shin Bet and other security services exerted considerable pressure on Netanyahu to prevent the archives' opening.State Archivist Yehoshua Freundlich told Haaretz that some of the material was selected to remain classified because "it has implications over [Israel's] adherence to international law." Netanyahu signed the measure,drafted after months of internal wrangling by Israel State Archive authorities,on July 11,after it had been examined by his bureau's legal adviser.The revised regulations will apply to a series of government bodies that for years violated the 1955 Archives Law by keeping individual archives of their own.These include the Shin Bet,Mossad espionage agency,Atomic Energy Commission,Institute for Biological Research and other organizations directly under the prime minister's authority.The revisions could also produce a situation in which material from the first decade of Israel's existence,including classified intelligence reports,in the IDF archives that had already been made public would again be hidden away.The new directives come after two journalists,Ronen Bergman of Yedioth Ahronoth and Yossi Melman of Haaretz,waged a three-year battle in the High Court of Justice over petitions they had filed to have the government bodies' individual archives opened.The decision to keep the material under wraps will now likely lead the High Court to reject the journalists' petitions.