Yisrael Hasson

Yisrael Hasson was born in Damascus.[1] A 2012 N12 profile described him as a resident of Kiryat Tivon, married and the father of four children, and stated that he was 51 at the time of publication.[2]

Hasson spent more than two decades in the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service.[2][4] During that period he held several significant operational posts, including commander of the Northern district, commander of the Jerusalem district, and head of the Lebanon region.[4][7] His final posting within the agency, from 1997 to 1999, was as deputy to Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and head of operations.[2]

Maariv reported in 2023 that Hasson was involved in the operation that killed Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash and in an operation against a Hebron terrorist cell that had carried out attacks inside Israel.[7] He also served as a personal emissary of several Israeli prime ministers to leaders in the Arab world, handling a range of sensitive diplomatic subjects.[4] A 2006 Ynet profile reported that he participated in negotiations with the Palestinians in that capacity.[8]

Hasson left the Shin Bet after Avi Dichter was selected for the agency's chief position over him in 2000.[2]

Hasson's security career intersected repeatedly with Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. He participated in negotiations connected to the Taba, Hebron, and Wye agreements, as well as Ehud Barak's negotiations at Camp David in 2000, though his precise responsibilities in each instance have not been publicly detailed.[7] He was also identified, alongside Mossad chiefs Ephraim Halevy and Dani Yatom, as a Shin Bet figure who appeared publicly in the unusual role of an unofficial peace negotiator during the evolving Israeli-Palestinian process.[9]

In June 2003, Hasson was listed among the lecturers at a Tel Aviv University conference titled "The Camp David Summit 2000 — What Went Wrong? — Lessons for the Future," organized by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. Fellow lecturers included Barak, Danny Yatom, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Gilad Sher, Dan Meridor, Martin Indyk, and Aaron Miller.[10]

Following his departure from the Shin Bet, Hasson moved into the private sector. He established Hasson Energy, a company that supplied fuel to factories and gas stations in northern Israel, and engaged in trade with the Palestinian Authority.[2] He also served as a director at Bezeq and at Bank Leumi Investments.[4]

Hasson entered politics in 2006 and was elected to the 17th Knesset on the Yisrael Beiteinu list.[11] In 2008 he announced his departure from Yisrael Beiteinu and sought a place on the Kadima party list. He secured the 25th position and entered the 18th Knesset after Kadima won 28 seats in the February 2009 election.[2][12]

During his Knesset tenure he chaired the Economics Committee and served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and its subcommittees.[4] In 2012, Hasson said Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz would form a unity government with Likud if he won Kadima's leadership primary. Mofaz's staff denied that joining Likud was an option. Hasson then clarified that he meant Mofaz would offer a unity government to Benjamin Netanyahu after winning the general election, not immediately after the party primary.[1]

For the January 2013 election to the 19th Knesset, Hasson stood second on Kadima's candidate list. The party received 74,735 votes — 2.09 percent of the total — and won two seats, returning Hasson to the Knesset for one further term.[13]

In November 2014, the IAA Council approved Hasson's proposed appointment as director-general of the Israel Antiquities Authority, subject to his resignation from the Knesset, government approval, and review by the appointments committee.[4] A May 2019 Ynet report subsequently identified him as the authority's director-general.[3]

Early in his tenure, Hasson challenged antiquities-theft investigators who were consistently arriving at desert caves after looters had already stripped them. He asked why the authority did not move to reach sites first and urged a strategic shift: "Why don't we stop running after the mosquitoes and start drying up the swamp?"[6] Within months of that challenge, the IAA established the Orange Unit, led by Amir Ganor, to conduct proactive surveys of caves in the Judean Desert.[6]

At the October 2016 opening of the IAA's new Jerusalem headquarters — inaugurated even though the complex was not yet fully complete — Hasson delivered a pointed critique of a UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem's holy sites, comparing the resolution's treatment of those sites to the destruction of cultural heritage by Islamic State. He said UNESCO had joined "this system of destruction by diplomatic means."[5] The new facility was designed to consolidate antiquities stored at warehouses around the country, house agency laboratories and offices, and receive the Rockefeller Museum's rare-books library. A legal challenge to the proposed transfer of library materials from East Jerusalem — on the grounds that international law prohibits removing cultural property from occupied territory — was rejected by the High Court.[5]

Also in 2016, Hasson objected at a Knesset Education Committee meeting to plans to convert part of the archaeological park at the base of the Temple Mount into a pluralistic prayer space. He argued the conversion would compromise preservation and management of archaeological finds, though he indicated the IAA wished to be involved in any government decision to build a non-Orthodox prayer section near Robinson's Arch, in order to minimize damage.[14]

That same year, Hasson publicly defended the IAA's identification of a papyrus fragment as a seventh-century BCE reference to Jerusalem. The authority said paleographic analysis and carbon-14 testing dated the artifact to the end of the First Temple period, with the two-line inscription translated as "From the king's maidservant, from Naharata, jars of wine, to Jerusalem." Hasson explained that the text recorded the sender, place of dispatch, cargo, and destination.[15] The papyrus had been seized during an investigation into alleged antiquities looting rather than recovered in a regulated excavation, a fact that complicated efforts to authenticate it.[15]

In November 2024, Hasson publicly criticized the Prime Minister's Office over a classified-documents leak then under investigation. He questioned how a person without security clearance had gained access to the prime minister's office, described the matter as concerning highly classified military information, and warned against allowing a security investigation to become a left-versus-right political dispute.[16]

In April 2025, Hasson weighed in on the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Hasson recounted that during his own time as acting Shin Bet chief, Netanyahu had asked him to investigate a leak from the security cabinet. He said he told Netanyahu that the attorney-general, state prosecutor, and police commissioner would all be informed before Netanyahu himself — because he did not want the investigation compromised if the suspected leaker turned out to be politically close to the prime minister. Netanyahu then asked him to leave the room and later accused Hasson of causing harm.[17]

A prominent administrative initiative of Hasson's IAA tenure was the shift from reacting to antiquities theft toward proactive cave surveys. His challenge to investigators was followed within months by the creation of the Orange Unit under Amir Ganor, which surveyed caves across the Judean Desert.[6] His tenure also placed the authority in public debates over UNESCO's treatment of Jerusalem's holy sites and preservation concerns near Robinson's Arch.[5][14] He additionally became a public defender of the disputed Jerusalem papyrus.[15]

Several of Hasson's public statements generated significant debate. In July 2011, his opposition to negotiations over the captivity of soldier Gilad Shalit — in which he said that negotiating while Israel was a hostage was "emasculating" the state — drew public criticism.[2]

His comparison of UNESCO to Islamic State at the 2016 IAA headquarters opening was his stated political characterization.[5] The authenticity of the Jerusalem papyrus inscription he championed also became contested: archaeologists Aren Maeir and Christopher Rollston publicly questioned whether the inscription itself was ancient, with Rollston arguing that carbon-dating the papyrus substrate did not establish the age of its writing. The IAA acknowledged the limitations of ink dating while maintaining confidence in the find and making the artifact available for further scholarly examination.[15]

Maariv's account of Hasson's involvement in operations against Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash and a Hebron terrorist cell did not specify his precise role in those operations.[7] Sources also differ on the length of his Shin Bet service, with N12 citing 23 years and Globes reporting more than 25.[2][4]