Amir Drori

Amir Drori was born in Israel in 1937.[1] After completing his schooling at the military boarding school in Haifa, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 1955 and joined the Golani Brigade.[1] Following officer training, he commanded the brigade's engineering platoon and participated in the 1956 Sinai Campaign.[1]

From 1957 to 1960, Drori held a succession of command and staff roles in Golani's 51st Battalion, including service as operations officer and as a company commander.[1] In 1960, he led troops in an IDF operation at the Syrian village of Tawfiq during Operation Hargol, for which he received the Chief of Staff's Citation, later converted to the Medal of Courage.[1] He went on to command Golani's 17th Battalion from 1961 to 1964.[1]

Drori served as deputy commander of the 51st Battalion during the 1967 Six-Day War, including its breakthrough battle in the Golan Heights.[1] He later returned to the northern theater as commander of the Golani Brigade and, eventually, Northern Command.

Drori commanded Golani's 13th Battalion from 1968 to 1970 and then served as operations officer of Southern Command before receiving command of the Golani Brigade, a post he held from 1972 to 1974.[1] His brigade command included the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, during which Golani fought Syrian forces on the Golan Heights.

During Operation Kinuach, the effort to recapture the Israeli Hermon outpost, Drori was wounded while his forces completed their mission.[1] A Ynet account records that more than sixteen hours elapsed between Drori's order to liberate the Hermon and Battalion 8 commander David Katz's announcement that the mountain was in Golani's hands; 55 fighters and commanders were killed and many dozens were wounded.[5] After recovering, Drori returned to command the brigade in fighting in the Syrian enclave.[1]

Following the Yom Kippur War, he commanded Division 36 and held senior General Staff roles before serving as head of the IDF's Training Branch from 1978 to 1981.[1] He was subsequently appointed commander of Northern Command.

Drori was appointed commander of the IDF's Northern Command in 1981, a post he held until 1983.[1] The central event of that tenure was the 1982 Lebanon War. Under his command, Israeli forces entered Lebanon, fought Palestinian terrorist organizations and Syrian forces, and captured Beirut.[1]

Drori's time as Northern Command chief also involved the administration of Israel's Golan Heights. During a Druze strike on the Golan, the IDF sealed off access to the area on February 25, 1982; Drori stated that the approximately 13,000 Druze residents would be provided with food and medicine.[6] In early May, he was appointed coordinator of government operations on the Golan and chairman of a coordinating committee, while Interior Minister Yosef Burg clarified that civilian authorities retained their powers and that the arrangement did not restore military government.[6]

After commanding Northern Command, Drori went on to head the Ground Forces Headquarters and then served as deputy chief of staff and head of the General Staff Branch from 1986 to 1987. He left regular service in 1987 with the rank of major general.[1]

Drori's most scrutinized military actions concern the events of September 1982, when Lebanese Phalangist fighters entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut and carried out a massacre. The Kahan Commission, the Israeli government's official inquiry into those events, identified Drori as G.O.C. Northern Command and examined his conduct in detail.[2]

On September 16, 1982, Drori met with Phalangist commanders and helped coordinate their entry into the camps together with Brigadier-General Amos Yaron.[2] At the initial coordination meeting, the plan called for a company of approximately 150 Phalangist fighters to enter the camps, moving from south to north and west to east; Yaron warned them not to harm civilians.[2] The Commission reported that Drori was "not at ease" with the plan and that he tried to persuade Lebanese Army commanders, and Lebanon's prime minister, to have the Lebanese Army enter instead.[2]

On Friday, September 17, after hearing accounts from Colonel Duvdevani and Brigadier-General Yaron about what was occurring inside the camps, Drori ordered Yaron to stop the Phalangists' operations and advance no farther. He reported to the Chief of Staff that the Phalangists had "overdone it."[2] The Commission noted that the evidence did not establish that Drori had been told of reports about 45 people or 300 people killed, or given a specific death toll.[2]

Drori continued pressing for the Lebanese Army to enter the camps after the Phalangists' activity was halted. He pressed a Lebanese Army representative on September 18; approval was received later that evening, and the Lebanese Army entered the camps on September 19.[2] The Commission acknowledged that Drori had served through a week of difficult and complicated missions after a long period of warfare.[2]

Testifying before the Commission on October 31, 1982, Drori said that "somewhere in his mind" every Israeli had feared a Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps. The account contrasted this with Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's assertion that "no one in his worst dreams" could have foreseen such an outcome.[6] On November 24, the Commission notified Drori, along with eight other people, that its findings might harm them.[6]

The Kahan Commission delivered a differentiated verdict on Drori's conduct. It found that he initially acted "properly, wisely, and responsibly, with sufficient alertness," taking account of the information shown to have reached him and crediting his order halting the Phalangists' advance.[2]

Nevertheless, the Commission concluded that after the Chief of Staff arrived in Beirut, Drori failed to press for the Phalangists' immediate removal or for safeguards for the camp population, and did not raise their conduct at a meeting with Phalangist commanders.[2] It determined that this inaction breached his duty, but stated that determining his responsibility was sufficient and made no further recommendation against him.[2] The findings recognized the difficult operational circumstances while holding that Drori should have continued acting once he had recognized the danger posed to civilians.

In late 1986, while serving as a major general and deputy chief of staff, Drori became embroiled in a public dispute over the succession to Chief of Staff Moshe Levy. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin chose Major General Dan Shomron as Levy's successor, a decision that Drori publicly opposed.[7] He told the media that appointing Shomron "would cause more damage to the State of Israel than was caused by terrorist organizations."[7]

Rabin responded by ordering Levy to dismiss Drori.[7] Drori objected on legal grounds, and the confrontation escalated into an institutional crisis.[7] Ultimately, Drori apologized, and the crisis passed without his dismissal being carried out.[7] A later account of Ehud Barak's memoir reported that Levy had preferred Drori for the top post and that Drori was appointed second deputy chief of staff while Shomron became deputy chief and later succeeded Levy.[8] Drori left regular military service in 1987.[1]

After his military career, Drori entered public service in the administration and protection of Israel's archaeological heritage. In 1989, the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums became the Israel Antiquities Authority under Drori's directorship.[3] Another account places the Authority's formal establishment in 1990 and attributes the initiative to Drori, with the support of Education Minister Yitzhak Navon, Israel's fifth president.[9]

The transition was substantive as well as nominal. Drori's leadership was associated with an expansion of salvage excavations across Israel, including larger projects at Beth Shean and Caesarea and smaller ones at Beth Shemesh and Modi'in.[3] Development, including new roads and neighborhoods, created a growing need for excavations to be completed before construction began, a challenge Drori described to the Knesset.[10]

At a Knesset State Control Committee meeting on July 11, 1995, Drori was identified as director-general of the Authority. Discussing a State Comptroller's report, he stated that the Authority accepted its findings and was working on improvements to site protection and supervision, rescue excavations, treatment of excavation finds, and registration of state antiquities.[10] He noted that universities were increasingly carrying out rescue excavations prompted by development, citing Highway 6 as an example where five universities were involved in fieldwork.[10] The Authority had taken on some of the more difficult work as a public service and hoped university participation would expand.[10]

Drori led the Israel Antiquities Authority for approximately twelve years and announced his retirement in mid-2000.[4] During his tenure, he grappled with a series of structural challenges in Israeli archaeology that his 1995 Knesset testimony illuminates in detail.

One persistent difficulty was the scientific publication of excavation results. Drori acknowledged before the State Control Committee in 1995 that this was an unresolved weakness, saying the Authority could not yet point to substantial progress in that area.[10] He described a significant backlog of unpublished excavation work and outlined measures being taken, including setting deadlines for researchers and, in some cases, refusing to issue new excavation licenses to those with outstanding publication obligations. He also warned that denying licenses across the board could halt much of academic archaeology in Israel.[10] The committee asked the Authority to report on its progress implementing the State Comptroller's findings by the end of December 1995.[10]

Enforcement against antiquities looting was another challenge. Drori told the committee that the Authority's anti-looting unit had caught 140 antiquities looters in the act in 1994, but that only approximately three to five of those caught had been convicted.[10] He explained that suspects had to be caught during the act of theft for a conviction to be feasible and described bringing cases to court as a major operational difficulty.[10] He also reported that the Authority had transferred approximately 550 containers of human remains for burial to the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1994, compared with about six containers several years earlier, which he presented as evidence of more systematic collection and handling.[10]

Disputes also arose over institutional boundaries. During Drori's tenure, some archaeologists argued that the Authority should supervise excavations rather than conduct them, objecting to its dual role as regulator and operator.[4] Opposition from Haredi members of the public to excavating graves created recurring friction.[4] A High Court of Justice ruling approximately two years before his departure found that the Authority could not charge private developers for excavations it performed on their behalf.[4] Near the end of his tenure, Drori secured a government decision regulating how developers would be charged for rescue excavations, addressing the resulting funding problem.[4]

Drori explained his retirement by saying that he felt he had exhausted himself in the post and believed that public positions should be subject to rotation.[4]

Among the most politically sensitive episodes of Drori's tenure as director-general was the question of antiquities protection on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. At a Knesset Education and Culture Committee hearing on July 25, 2000, Drori reported that monitoring by the Antiquities Authority on the Temple Mount had improved and satisfied the Authority, while also stating that work then underway had not been coordinated with it.[11] He stated that there were no archaeological excavations beneath the mosques or the Temple Mount itself.[11]

Drori asserted that antiquities had been damaged at Solomon's Stables, al-Aqsa al-Qadima, and in work associated with a new opening at Solomon's Stables. He said material removed by three tractors had not been under archaeological supervision and that finds in some of the examined material included Second Temple-period architectural elements, first-century coins, and pottery from several periods.[11] Other participants at the hearing disputed aspects of the damage and monitoring claims; the Jerusalem police district commander stated that full archaeological supervision had never existed there.[11]

Drori also described a 1999 excavation at the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount, conducted while he directed the Authority, as "an archaeological crime."[12]

Drori's institutional legacy included directing the transition from the Department of Antiquities and Museums to the Israel Antiquities Authority and overseeing its early years as Israel's archaeological regulatory body.[3][9] His tenure also coincided with expanded salvage excavation activity and efforts to regulate funding for excavations required by development projects.[3][4]

Amir Drori died on March 12, 2005.[1] His career had spanned senior military command and the establishment of the organizational framework that administered much of Israel's archaeological work.

The most significant controversy surrounding Drori concerns his role during the Sabra and Shatila events. The Kahan Commission distinguished between his initially responsible actions and his later failure to continue pressing for the Phalangists' removal or adequate protection for civilians.[2]

A 2022 Ynet article reported that Drori attended a secret Beirut meeting on September 19, 1982, with Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, Mossad official Nahik Navot, and Phalange leaders.[13] It characterized Drori's reported suggestion that the participants mention the earlier massacre at Damour and fighting among groups inside the camps as an attempt to advance a false account of the massacre. That characterization is the article's interpretation of the reported meeting and should be treated as such.

Drori's 1986 public attack on Dan Shomron's appointment as chief of staff led Defense Minister Rabin to order his dismissal before Drori apologized.[7] Accounts of the appointment process also rely partly on Ehud Barak's retrospective memoir.[8] Drori's statements about antiquities damage and archaeological monitoring on the Temple Mount were likewise disputed by other participants in the 2000 Knesset hearing.[11]