BELATEDLY carrying the can for failing to prevent the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the chief of the Israeli Shin Bet domestic security service resigned yesterday.
The security chief who remains in his post until a replacement is appointed, and who may thus still only be identified by the Hebrew initial "Kaf" under Israeli censorship restrictions had originally tendered his resignation within days of Mr Rabin's murder last November murder by an Orthodox Jewish extremist.
But although it was clear that a string of appalling Shin Bet lapses had enabled assassin Yigal Amir to carry out the killing, `Kay' was asked by Mr Rabin's successor, the Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, to stay on and help rebuild the agency's shattered morale.
Last month, the commission of inquiry investigating the assassination sent a warning letter to "Kaf" and several other top Shin Bet officers, indicating that they are likely to come in for extremely heavy criticism when the inquiry's findings are issued. "Kaf" is expected to be held personally responsible, as the head of the service, for the failure to target Amir, a known extremist, as a potential assassin months before the killing, and for the series of failures on the night itself the missing bodyguards, the improperly sealed off car park where Mr Rabin was shot, and more. These enabled Amir to reach his target and fire from point blank range.
"Kay" therefore knew that his hold on his job was tenuous, and yesterday's decision is a case of his jumping before he was pushed.
What's more, by choosing the timing of his own departure, as the Israeli legal commentator Moshe Neghi noted last night, Kate has been able to go out on something of a high.
When he inherited the top spot at the Shin Bet on March 1st, 1995, he identified the capture or elimination of Hamas's master bomb maker, Yihya Ayash, as the agency's primary mission. Ayash, said by Israel to have organised a series of suicide bus bombings in which more than 50 Israelis died, was assassinated last Friday, when a mobile phone on which he was speaking from a Gaza hide out exploded, blowing his head off.
While Israel has not formally acknowledged it, there is no doubt that Ayash's killing was a Shin Bet operation, and it is believed that the man who gave Ayash the mobile phone the uncle of the friend in whose home Ayash was hiding out had been working for the Shin Bet for some years.
In his resignation letter to Mr Peres, "Kaf" noted that one of the key challenges facing the agency was the struggle against Hamas and other Islamic radicals. In leaving the Shin Bet, he wrote, he was now confident that "the agency is on the right track ready for all its missions".