Tuesday April 6' 2004

By Solomon Kebede

Assassinations Plc

Assassinations, or as they are termed in Israel, "targeted killings," are nothing new to the Israeli intelligence community. But over the years, at least until the 1970s, they were considered a last resort, a means to be employed rarely and wisely.
There were a few reasons for this caution. First, many in the intelligence community thought over the years that espionage was not mafia-style Murder, Inc. More important, the policy of targeted killings is a double-edged sword. What you do to your opponents, they can do to you.
The first time Israeli intelligence carried out an assassination was on July 11, 1956. Colonel Mustafa Hafez, Egyptian commander of military intelligence in the Gaza Strip and the man responsible for sending the fedayeen infiltrators to Israel, was killed when a book he received exploded.
The use of mail bombs became a central tool in the 1960s, especially in harassing and assassinating German (former Nazi) scientists who were involved in developing advanced weapons for Egypt.
After the Six-Day War, the fight against Palestinian terror, both in the territories and beyond the borders of Israel, moved assassinations up the ladder of Israeli intelligence priorities. But the watershed was the murder of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972 by "Black September," a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) front. Then Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered Mossad head Zvi Zamir to embark upon a campaign of targeted killings of anyone directly or indirectly connected with the athletes' murder.
It was the first time in the history of Israeli intelligence that it had been directed to initiate a "project"--not a one-time killing but a systematic elimination of dozens of people.
A pattern was set in motion at that time that became the basis for similar operations to this day. Intelligence compiled a list of targets; today it is known as a "bank". A special, limited forum known as the "X Committee" had the authority to approve Mossad requests to eliminate a person on the list. The X Committee would consult the attorney general, who served as a one-man court, sentencing the suspect to death.
This was also the first time that the motive for the assassination was revenge. Although it was couched in lofty terms like "deterrence" and "future prevention" of terror, it was clear that the urge to avenge the deaths of the Israeli athletes was the main reason for the decision.
The systematic assassination campaign suffered a near fatal blow in July 1973 in Lillehammer, Norway, when Mossad gunmen, out to eliminate Ali Hassan Salameh, who was believed to be the brains of Black September, mistakenly shot and killed a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Boushiki.
The failure in Norway brought several questions into sharp relief: Are targeted killings worthwhile? If so, who should the targets be? Although clear answers have never been formulated, a kind of tacit understanding was reached whereby targeted killings are permissible, in certain circumstances, but the use of this weapon must be cautious, wise and rare.
It was advisable that only senior operational commanders should be targeted, those whose deaths would result in a serious impairment of the organizations' operational capabilities. Responsibility should not be taken publicly so that Israel would not appear to be using terror itself, and so that its relations with other countries were not damaged, as they were with Norway and with Jordan after the attempt to assassinate Hammas leader Khaled Mashaal in 1997.
The intelligence community also assumes that it is possible, even desirable, to hit leaders of small organizations, those that are no more than a "one-man show." Fathi Shikaki, leader of the Islamic Jihad, was killed in October 1995 on the assumption that killing him would put an end to the capabilities of his small organization. His presumed successor, Abdullah Ramadan Shalah, was considered ineffectual and lacking in leadership capabilities.
Those assumptions were proved wrong. Shalah proved to be a capable leader, and Islamic Jihad in Gaza has produced some of the worst suicide bombings of recent years. The most important element that is always taken into consideration in discussions between the intelligence chiefs and the political echelon is the cost-benefit ratio. If the assassination leads to a severe response on the part of the terror organizations, then it was a losing proposition.
This consideration was apparently either forgotten when it came to the targeted killing of the director-general of Hezbollah, Abbas Moussawi, in southern Lebanon in 1992, or those who made the decision operated on the basis of mistaken assumptions. Hezbollah's response was stinging: two car bombs in Buenos Aires, against the buildings housing the Israel Embassy and the Jewish community organization, in which more than 100 people were killed and many were injured.
With hindsight, there is no doubt that many in the intelligence community believe that the 1988 decision to hit Khalil al-Wazir, Yasser Arafat's deputy, also known as Abu Jihad, was a mistake. Looking back, it is clear to many that his death left Arafat alone at the leadership level of the PLO, without the counsel of a talented and pragmatic strategist.
Always, even at the height of assassination wars, there was a kind of silent agreement on both sides not to hit "national" leaders. Here and there, exceptions cropped up, like the failed attempt of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to kill then former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion during a visit to Scandinavia in the 1960s, or plans devised already in the late 1960s and again in Lebanon in 1982 to kill Arafat.
Already in 1998, after the failed attempt against Meshal, the subcommittee for intelligence and security services of the Knesset which investigated the case published an unprecedented critical statement in which it said, "for many years the governments of Israel have not formulated policies in the war against terror organizations that are based on fundamental thought processes and continuity...".
But over the last three years, and especially with the unwise decision to kill Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, all the basic assumptions and past lessons have been forgotten or abandoned. From a weapon of last resort, assassination has become the most available of weapons; from wise and cautious use, it is now widespread and wholesale.
This change has damaged another, mainly psychological, assumption: the mystery that surrounded previous assassinations cast fear into the hearts of the enemy by their very rarity and sophistication. That mystery dissipates the moment the act becomes routine. This, more than anything else, shows the long road the Israel Defense Forces and the intelligence and security forces have traveled, from daring and creativity to paralyzed thinking. There is also another victim of the assassination Plc. Israel’s economy is in great danger.
 

Solomonkebede@yahoo.com
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