The Shin Bet, or General Security Service (GSS), is Israel’s domestic security agency. In Hebrew, it is also referred to as the Shabak.
In February 2005, Yuval Diskin was appointed director of the agency.
The Shin Bet engages in extensive undercover operations against Palestinian terror groups and is believed to operate a network of Palestinian informers. Shin Bet agents are also believed to have infiltrated radical right- and left-wing organizations within the country.
Shin Bet duties include: protecting senior officials, counterespionage operations, security for important infrastructure and government buildings, El Al flights and embassies abroad; exposing Israeli (both Arab and Jewish) terrorist organizations, interrogations of terror suspects, and gathering intelligence for counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Despite its successes, many of which are never revealed to the public, the Shin Bet has come under fire in recent years, most notably for its failure to prevent the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir. This led to the resignation of then-Shin Bet director Carmi Gillon.
In 1984, two Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked a bus were beaten to death by Shin Bet agents after their capture. A government report of the “Bus 300 affair” later revealed that then-Shin Bet chief Avraham Shalom had ordered the two killed and then attempted to cover it up.
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