Tzachi Hanegbi

Tzachi Hanegbi (Hebrew: צחי הנגבי, born 26 February 1957) is an Israeli politician and security expert. Hanegbi serves as chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the Knesset. Among the top cabinet positions he previously held are Minister of Justice ,Minister of Internal Security and Minister of Intelligence and Nuclear Affairs. Hanegbi was also the Minister in charge of Israel's strategic relations with the United States.

Biography

Yitzhak (Tzachi) Hanegbi was born in Jerusalem in 1957. His mother is Geula Cohen, a prominent member of the 1940s underground group Lehi and later MK for Likud and Tehiya. His father, Immanuel Hanegbi, was the Operations Officer for the Lehi. After his military service in the paratroopers corps, Hanegbi studied international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As president of the Hebrew University Student Union in 1980, he received a six-month suspended sentence for leading an attack on Arab terrorists. Despite this incident, he became president of the National Union of Israeli Students later that year, holding that title until 1982. After his undergraduate stuides, he went on to study law, obtaining an LL.B.

Hanegbi lives in Mevaseret Zion, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Political career

Hanegbi was first elected to the Knesset in the 1988 elections, and headed the Prime Minister's Bureau under Yitzhak Shamir. He retained his seat in the 1992 and 1996 elections, and was initially appointed Minister of Health in Binyamin Netanyahu's government, becoming Minister of Justice in September 1996 and dropping the health portfolio in November that year.

He lost his ministerial portfolio after Ehud Barak won the 1999 elections, but returned to government when Ariel Sharon won the special election for PM in 2001. Hanegbi was appointed Minister of the Environment in March 2001, adding the Transportation portfolio to his duties later in the year.

After Likud's convincing win in the 2003 elections, Hanegbi was appointed Minister of Internal Security. In September 2003 he was appointed by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon as minister in the Prime Minister's Office in charge of Israel's intelligence agencies -the Mossad and Shin Bet, and supervised Israel's Atomic Energy Agency.

When Sharon broke away to form Kadima in November 2005, Hanegbi was appointed interim chairman of Likud. On the following day, Hanegbi announced that he was also switching to Kadima, and resigned from the Knesset on 10 December. However, he reappeared in the Knesset in April 2006 after winning a seat in the 2006 elections. Currently he is the Chairman of the Knesset's Security and Foreign Affairs Committee.

Placed fourth on the party's list, he retained his seat in the 2009 elections.

Quotes

• "As far as I'm concerned, they can strike for a day, a month, until death." — in reference to convicted Palestinian prisoners announcing a hunger strike.
• "We have switched from defense to offense and in this battle all the members of the Hamas leadership are legitimate targets," Public radio, 23 March 2004.
• "Where there is a fence, there is no terror. Where there's no fence, there is terror." — 31 August 2004, on public radio after the twin suicide bombings in Beersheba
• "In his actions was a crude trampling of the law and of proper administrative rules, politicization of the public service, and the use of public resources to advance personal and political interests". — Israeli State Comptroller and Judge Eliezer Goldberg on Tzachi Hanegbi in his annual report, published 24 September 2004.

External links

Tzachi Hanegbi on the Knesset website