Even though Israel is a country full of minority groups and it constantly absorbs new people and sports an ethnically diverse population, it is viewed as an almost impenetrable intelligence target. To date, no foreign espionage group has ever managed to recruit a high-level Israeli figure from the ranks of the governmental elite. Israeli society is very cohesive, and the fact that the country is surrounded by hostile states and still subject to an ongoing existential threat turns any kind of treason against it into an especially treacherous option.

Anti-Israel espionage entities occasionally try to recruit a high-quality agent from a minority group, or someone in the context of an academic conference, but with little success. Thus, the fact that Gonen Segev, a former energy and infrastructure minister and member of Israel’s Security Cabinet (1995-1996), allegedly served as an Iranian agent since May 2012 constitutes a harsh slap in Israel’s face. However, no significant damage apparently was accomplished through this prestigious recruitment because Segev had been removed from Israel’s hubs of information and decision-making for more than two decades. “It is still a slap in the face,” a high-placed Israeli intelligence source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “but except for some aches and pains, no damage was done. No teeth were broken, no hemorrhage; in a few minutes, the pain will dissipate, too.”

The winds in Israel have been stormy ever since the public was notified of Segev’s arrest June 18. In the 1990s, Segev quit the Tzomet right-wing party that had brought him into the Knesset with two other Knesset members in order to allow Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to pass the Oslo II Accord (the 1995 Interim Agreement, which followed the 1993 Declaration of Principles) with a majority vote. Now the right is using that fact to further harm the legitimacy of whatever still remains of Israel’s left: A traitor elected on right-wing votes who defected to the left now betrayed his country. The fact that Segev voted against the first Oslo Accord, before his defection to the left, is hushed up. Now he has become another form of deadly ammunition in the hands of Israel’s growing right, which continues to undermine the left.

Segev, trained as a physician, was an unknown when Rafael Eitan, former chief of staff and war hero, founded the Tzomet Party that raked in eight seats in the Knesset elections of 1992. Segev’s acquaintances say that even though it was only due to Eitan that Segev became a member of the Knesset, Segev attempted to subvert his patron from the very beginning.