Efraim Sneh

Sneh was born on September 19, 1944, and grew up in Tel Aviv.[1] He performed his regular military service in Nahal before studying medicine and returning to the IDF as a doctor with the Paratroopers.[3] He studied at Tel Aviv Medical School and specialized in internal medicine.[1][2]

His medical training became central to his military service: he served as a medical officer in the Paratrooper Corps, including during the Yom Kippur War.[1] During that war, he commanded a Paratroopers medical unit at the Chinese Farm and in fighting west of the Suez Canal.[3]

During the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation in Uganda, Sneh commanded the medical team.[1] The operation freed 102 hostages, and Sneh was among the Israeli personnel who took part in their rescue.[4] Recalling the mission in 2009, he described being asked whether the hostages could be brought home: “Seventy-two hours later I was with them in the airplane flying back home.”[5]

Sneh established and commanded the Air Force’s 669 rescue unit, leading it for two years; his command ran from 1978 to 1980.[3][1] In 1981 he was appointed commander of Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon, a command he held in 1981 and 1982.[1][6] He subsequently headed the Civil Administration in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — from 1985 to 1987.[1] He retired from the IDF in 1987 with the rank of brigadier general and then directed the Golda Meir Association for the education and promotion of democratic values.[1]

Sneh returned to military medical service as a volunteer after entering politics, serving with reserve forces in Lebanon in 1997.[3] During the 2006 Lebanon war, he left his Knesset office to join a Paratroopers medical company near Israel’s northern border as a reserve doctor.[3] He requested assignment to the same company he had commanded during the Yom Kippur War.[3]

Because he was a Knesset member, chaired his party’s parliamentary faction, and was older than the usual reserve age, Sneh required special authorization from the defense minister to serve.[3] At the time of the report, he said he had not treated anyone and hoped to remain “unemployed.”[3] Declining to discuss the war politically, he explained: “I’m now a soldier wearing a uniform—you can’t be both a soldier and a politician.”[3]

Sneh became actively involved in the Labor Party in January 1988 and was elected to the Knesset on its list in 1992.[1] He served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee during his parliamentary career.[7] An associate of Yitzhak Rabin, he also served as a channel for an approach from the Palestine Liberation Organization: in October 1992, emissaries of senior PLO official Mahmoud Abbas sent a proposal to Israel through Sneh.[8] The approach formed part of efforts to open secret negotiations with the PLO, although Rabin at that stage preferred the Washington talks framework.[8]

As a new Labor MK, Sneh examined Iran’s nuclear ambitions using open sources, including media reports and think-tank publications, and submitted the issue for Knesset debate.[9] On January 26, 1993, Rabin responded in the Knesset, describing Iran as a “strategic threat for the State of Israel.”[9]

Sneh served as health minister from 1994 to 1996.[1][8] On his first day in office in June 1994, he was asked when he would sign a pending smoking-law amendment and replied that he had a nurses’ strike to address.[10] He signed the amendment about a month later, and it took effect on October 19.[10]

In the 1997 Labor leadership primary, Sneh received 6 percent of the vote, finishing behind Ehud Barak, Yossi Beilin, and Shlomo Ben-Ami.[11] The official results gave Barak 51 percent, Beilin 29 percent, and Ben-Ami 14 percent.[11] Sneh remained with Labor until 1999, moved to One Israel, and returned to Labor before the 2001 elections.[1]

From 1999 to 2001, Sneh served as deputy minister of defense and was responsible for the Iran dossier under Ehud Barak.[8][9] In 2000, during debate over the cancellation of Israel Aircraft Industries’ Phalcon early-warning aircraft sale to China, he defended the decision against criticism by former defense minister Moshe Arens.[12] Sneh said that Arens would have made the same decision in the circumstances, while acknowledging damage to the defense industry’s reputation and the need for greater efforts to improve its competitiveness.[12]

Sneh became minister of transportation in March 2001 and remained in the position until 2002.[7] In 2002, he participated in a civil-aviation security conference in Washington.[13] He chaired the Knesset subcommittee on defense policy and planning in 2004.[7] By 2006, he headed Labor’s Knesset faction and served on the House Committee and the Labor, Welfare, and Health Committee.[14] The cabinet appointed him deputy minister of defense again in 2006.[15]

In May 2008, Sneh left Labor, resigned his Knesset seat, and announced the establishment of Strong Israel.[2] Explaining his resignation from parliament, he said: “My Knesset seat is not my own, it belongs to Labor, which I no longer represent.”[2] The new party’s name drew on Rabin’s slogan, “Israel is strong with Rabin.”[2]

Sneh outlined four priorities for Strong Israel: a welfare state, stronger Israeli military capabilities with particular attention to Iran, a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and environmental conservation.[2] He said he had wanted to remain in Labor for another 20 years but believed the party had lost its will to lead.[2] His departure ended a period of Knesset service that had begun in 1992.[1]

In a 1998 discussion of civil defense, Sneh argued that Israel could not assume its adversaries would act rationally or that a stable deterrent balance existed.[16] He contrasted the ability of the United States and Soviet Union to absorb an attack with what he saw as the unequal vulnerabilities of Israel, Iran, and Iraq.[16] In his assessment, deterrence required a degree of symmetry that Israel’s regional circumstances did not provide.[16]

At a September 2006 conference, Sneh again argued that Israel could not rely on deterrence against Iran, judging that the Iranian leadership lacked the reason and responsible judgment on which deterrence depended.[14] To illustrate Israel’s vulnerability, he described Iran’s territory as seventy times larger than Israel’s and its population as ten times greater.[14] He argued that there was no room for diplomacy and that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was crucial.[14]

A rapporteur’s summary of the same conference presented Sneh’s view that consistent Israeli military superiority was an “absolute prerequisite” for Middle Eastern peace processes or national stability.[14] It also recorded his criticism of what he saw as a tendency to relax that priority when regional conditions appeared favorable, citing the period from 2000 to 2006.[14]

In a presentation published in 2007, Sneh characterized Iran’s nuclear ambitions, support for armed groups, and regional influence as serious threats to Israel and advocated stronger international measures, including sanctions.[17] In an interview that year, he argued that Iran was already confronting Israel through organizations he described as its proxies: Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank, and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria.[9] He proposed sanctions on Iranian refined-oil imports as a means of pressing Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.[9]

Although Sneh had said that Israel must stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions “at all costs,” he clarified in the 2007 interview that he did not advocate military action and regarded it as “a last resort.”[9] He used the same last-resort formulation when discussing a preemptive strike at the 2009 AIPAC Policy Conference.[5] At that conference, he argued that a nuclear Iran would damage Israel even without a nuclear attack: he predicted reduced immigration and investment, the departure of skilled and educated Israelis, greater confidence among terrorist regimes, intimidation of regional moderates, and constraints on Israeli action through fear of nuclear retaliation.[5]

Sneh also linked regional security to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.[4] In remarks made while supporting Isaac Herzog, he criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of relations with the United States and argued that an agreement with the Palestinians was necessary to build a regional front against Iran and other radicals.[4] His position paired opposition to Iran’s nuclear ambitions with support for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[4][2]

At a 2012 energy conference, Sneh proposed Israeli-Palestinian cooperation over oil resources near Rentis.[18] He claimed that oil produced by Givot Olam could supply at least 10 percent of Israel’s consumption and said the reservoir extended partly into the West Bank.[18] For a field with an expected production capacity of 24,000 barrels a day, he suggested cooperation that could include a joint pipeline.[18] He also proposed rebuilding the Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline, arguing that the project could benefit Israeli refineries and Haifa Port as well as Jordan and Iraq.[18]

On September 22, 2022, Sneh participated in a virtual forum on Israel’s strategic position and changing Middle Eastern realities, held in memory of journalist and military correspondent Zeev Schiff.[19] The discussion addressed Israel’s relationships with Gulf countries, Iran’s conventional and nuclear power, the Palestinian Authority’s political crisis, and competition among great powers.[19]

Sneh’s career brought together military medicine, operational command, parliamentary service, and responsibility for health, transportation, and defense policy.[1] His participation in the Entebbe rescue and leadership of Unit 669 were followed by service in several Israeli governments and two appointments as deputy minister of defense.[1][15] His later return to a Paratroopers medical company during the 2006 Lebanon war renewed the connection between his medical work and military service while he was still a serving parliamentarian.[3]

Iran remained a subject of his public activity from his early Knesset intervention in 1992 through subsequent government service and strategic discussions.[9][19] Outside elected office, he continued to advance proposals for regional cooperation, including energy projects involving Israel and its neighbors.[18] He is chairman of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue at Netanya Academic College.[20]

Sneh opposed unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon, arguing that it endangered northern Israeli communities and that the Four Mothers movement had not supplied an alternative defense strategy.[6] He favored retaining a security zone with a less visible IDF presence and different military methods; other participants in the debate rejected his assessment, including an interviewee who argued that an earlier withdrawal could have saved lives.[6]

In 1998, Sneh opposed a proposed treaty ending fissile-material production, arguing that inspections could undermine the ambiguity of Israel’s nuclear posture and its deterrent value.[21] Other commentators countered that the treaty would not require surrendering existing nuclear material and could help prevent a nuclear Middle East; one accused him of exaggerating the risks.[21]

His departure from Labor also involved a dispute with Ehud Barak.[2] Sneh said Barak had obstructed peace initiatives and attributed his removal as deputy defense minister to political considerations after he supported Amir Peretz in a leadership contest; Barak’s explanation, as relayed by Sneh, was that the replacement rested on professional merit.[2]