Harpoon

by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner

  Dagan and Uri were kindred spirits—both larger than life, gregarious souls with a dry sense of humor. Both looked like knuckle draggers, but each relished academia and art. Dagan enjoyed the company of professionals who were sharp and dedicated, who could combine courage and innovative thought to create battlefield solutions. If you won his respect, you had it forever.

  Dagan and Uri hit it off the first time they met. Dagan saw promise in Uri’s theory on waging financial war against the terrorists, and he asked if the two could meet regularly. Their encounters would blossom into a lifelong friendship and working relationship.

  Both understood that if Israel could disrupt the money, the bloodshed would stop. They pondered how to change the minds of the powers that be, who often viewed outside-the-box thinkers with skepticism and suspicion.

  Hamas perpetrated its first suicide bombing in an Israeli city on April 6, 1994. It was the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, a somber day when Israelis fall silent to commemorate the six million Jews killed by the Nazis. At just after 11:00 AM, a nineteen-year-old Palestinian drove a car straight into a crowd of students about to board a bus in the center of the northern city of Afula. Infamous Hamas bomb maker Yehiya Ayyash (aka “the “Engineer”) had fitted the car with seven gas cylinders, antipersonnel grenades, and 1,100 rusty carpenter nails. Detonation resulted in a quick and blinding flash of fire followed by black, acrid smoke and widespread devastation; fire and shrapnel spread across a horrific kill zone. An eyewitness was quoted as saying that two boys were burning like torches.23 Eight people were killed in the bombing and close to one hundred others were seriously wounded.

  The Afula suicide attack elicited half-hearted condemnation from Arafat. The 1993 Oslo Accords gave his Palestinian Authority control of Gaza and the major urban areas of the West Bank. For Oslo to work, Arafat’s iron fist had to pound the radicals inside his own organization, as well as hammer the Islamic fundamentalists. But the Palestinian leader merely gave his standard condemnation of the violence; he had no intention of embarking on a civil war in order to preserve Israeli favor.

  A week after the Afula bombing, a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus at the Central Bus Station in the small central city of Hadera. Five were killed in the attack and dozens wounded. This time, the bombing took place on Memorial Day, when Israel honors its fallen soldiers and innocent victims of terror.

  Most Israelis were never under any illusions that the Oslo Accords would bring peace in their time, but they had hoped for a de-escalation of violence. The numbing images of the dead and wounded at suicide bombings in the heart of Israel were almost too much to bear. There seemed to be no end in sight to the bloodshed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Closed Accounts

  Three more suicide bombings took place in Israel in 1994. The worst of the attacks was on October 19, on the No. 5 bus in the center of Tel Aviv. The attack coincided with the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. At just before 9:00 AM, a young Palestinian male detonated nearly ten kilograms of homemade explosives and prepackaged shrapnel as the bus passed by the bustling Dizengoff Circle. The blast was so powerful that shards of glass and body parts were strewn hundreds of feet away; a bus passing in the other direction was also hit.

  First responders, even hard-nosed combat veterans who had seen war close up, were paralyzed by the extent of the carnage. Once bomb squad techs determined that no more threats existed at the crime scene, the dead, including the driver, were removed from the blackened skeleton of the red-and-white bus. Orthodox Jewish volunteers hunted with tweezers for human remains that required burial under Jewish law.

  Twenty-two people were killed and fifty others were seriously wounded in what was the worst terrorist attack in Tel Aviv’s history. Hamas claimed responsibility just as they had for the other bombings that year. The terrorist came from the West Bank town of Qalqilya, and Hamas erected a celebration tent outside his home so that his family and much of the town could celebrate his martyrdom. Lambs were slaughtered for the feast that would come, and women cooked rice and vegetable delicacies to feed the throngs of well-wishers; sweets were purchased by the truckload. The refreshments provided were expensive—costing more than the raw materials he used to build his lethal device.

  The bloodshed continued into the New Year.

  On the morning of January 22, 1995, hundreds of soldiers gathered at Beit Lid Junction, a series of bus stops and transit points for rides to bases throughout northern Israel. Just as many Israeli civilians huddled behind bus shelters to protect themselves from the winter winds. The junction, especially on Sunday, the start of the workweek, was always busy. Soldiers were returning to base after weekend leaves; commuters were waiting for buses to take them to their jobs in Haifa to the north and Tel Aviv to the south. Beit Lid was also near Tulkarm, a West Bank city under full Palestinian Authority civil administration and security control.

  Many of the soldiers were huddled around a snacks kiosk while awaiting their buses when the young Palestinian, disguised as an Israeli soldier, detonated fifteen kilograms of high explosives. The massive blast ripped the kiosk apart. Bodies, army boots, and a rainbow of colored berets were blown in all directions. Military policemen on security detail at the bus depot warned others to be wary of secondary devices.1 But many soldiers ignored the warnings, eager to help those who were still alive. But they were cut down by a wave of fire and a storm of shrapnel that came three minutes after the first blast, when a second suicide bomber, also disguised as an Israeli soldier, detonated his own lethal payload. Twenty-two troops and one civilian were killed in the bombings; one hundred more were seriously wounded. Military rabbis were busy all day knocking on doors to bring the grim news to parents that their sons and daughters were dead.

  The Beit Lid Junction massacre was one of the worst attacks in Israel’s long and bloody history of terror. This time, though, Hamas did not claim responsibility. The group behind the carnage was the Palestine Islamic Jihad. The PIJ was similar to Hamas in its desire to establish an Islamic state in all of Palestine. It was considered more radical than Hamas and less political, more about armed struggle than any coherent political vision. The PIJ was founded in Gaza in 1981 by a pediatrician named Dr. Fathi Abdel-Aziz Shiqaqi. The doctor learned the art of terrorist compartmentalization and covert tradecraft during his days at Egypt’s Zagazig University, a nerve center for the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.2 Copying the Egyptian Brotherhood’s tactical setup, Shiqaqi established small, secretive cells drawn mainly from clans, where blood was stronger than religious and political affiliation. Shiqaqi was imprisoned by the Israelis in 1985 and deported to Lebanon several years later.

  Unlike Hamas, the PIJ did not offer social services of any kind.3 Much of its command structure was based in Damascus, Syria—far from the long arm of Israel. Much of the PIJ’s funding came from Iran, which over the years would assume the lion’s share of the PIJ’s operational budget. The PIJ also had a very strong connection to the United States. One of its founders was Gaza-born and British-educated Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, a professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. From there, Shalah continued to serve the PIJ.4 He planned violent operations, earmarking cash, and making political decisions as he marked papers and enjoyed a State of Florida paycheck.

  The PIJ struck again just after midday on April 9, as the No. 36 bus from Ashqelon navigated roads connecting Jewish settlements dotted around the Palestinian Authority–controlled Gaza Strip. As the bus neared the Kfar Darom settlement, a van moved alongside it, as the Palestinian driver detonated close to twenty kilograms of high explosives. The blast blew out the bus windows and peeled its side open. Passengers were thrown into the air, and the dead were everywhere.5 The acrid black smoke made it difficult for first responders to remove the injured and the dying. Later that afternoon, the PIJ released a statement identifying the bomber as a twenty-four-year-old from a Gaza refugee camp.6 Eight people were killed, including Alisa F
latow, a twenty-year-old Brandeis University student from New Jersey who was visiting Israel.7 Flatow was the first American to die in what would be the opening wave of Palestinian suicide terror. Another American citizen, Seth Ben-Haim, was grievously wounded. Flatow’s murder would ultimately get the Federal Bureau of Investigation involved and surreptitiously establish new, covert levels of cooperation between the United States and Israel on fighting terror. It also created new avenues for victims of terror themselves to fight back.

  The bloodshed of the day was not over. Hours after the Kfar Darom attack, Hamas also struck in Gaza, though there were no fatalities in the suicide bombing against a convoy of Israeli civilian vehicles. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin convened an emergency security cabinet meeting. There had been a sense inside the government that they were due a respite from the violence. Rabin had staked his political future on a go-for-broke end to the stalemate between the State of Israel and the Palestinians. Israelis were persuaded there would be an end to the bloodshed and the start of a new reality of cooperation and coexistence. Instead, the fanatics had assumed control of the narrative. The blood flowed, more than ever.

  It was dark when the ferry between Malta and Tripoli, Libya, docked in the Port of Valetta on the night of October 28, 1995. One passenger, Ibrahim Shawish, clean-shaven and dressed to look like a middle-aged professor, carried a brand-new Libyan passport. He cleared immigration and customs easily and hailed a taxi. His destination was the Diplomat Hotel in the waterfront Valetta suburb of Sliema.

  Ibrahim Shawish wasn’t his real name, and the passport, while genuine, was provided by Libyan intelligence. Shawish was in fact Dr. Fathi Shiqaqi, returning to Syria allegedly following a cap-in-hand visit to Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar Qaddafi to ask for money. The PIJ had escalated its war with Israel, and Shiqaqi needed money for more weapons, more explosives, and more stipends to the families of suicide bombers; paying monthly allowances to the families of dead operatives was a financial drain, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. It isn’t clear how much money Shiqaqi managed to extract from the Libyan dictator, if any. He had traveled to Libya with three representatives of other Palestinian terror organizations, also seeking cash.8 The oil-rich princes, emirs, dictators, and despots were used to such visits, usually handing out a few million dollars to make the supplicants go away.

  Malta was an island crossroad connecting the Middle East and North Africa with Europe. Like Casablanca during the Second World War, it was also a hub for spies of all stripes. Upscale Sliema, known for its shopping district and cafés, was far from the bars and brothels of Valetta and an easy place to monitor any surveillance. The Diplomat was a modest hotel on the corner of the Tower Road. In a small sitting area at the front guests could enjoy a drink while watching people pass by.

  Shiqaqi left his hotel for a shopping excursion early on October 29. As lunchtime approached, he started walking back toward his hotel, still unaware of the constant surveillance teams that kept him in sight every step of the way. Shiqaqi failed to detect the man of Middle Eastern appearance behind him as his hotel came into view, nor did he pay attention to the two men on the motorcycle, and he certainly did not see their hidden submachine gun.9

  Policemen from the Pulizija tá Malta, the oldest police force in all of Europe, were soon standing over the body of the man with the Libyan passport. A sheet had been thrown across his face, hiding the multiple shots to the head. His body would be back in Damascus by nightfall; President Hafez al-Assad had sent a military plane and an honor guard to retrieve the body. On October 30, 1995, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad formally announced that Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, a thirty-eight-year-old academic, had been unanimously named as Shiqaqi’s successor, during secret consultations between leaders of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Damascus.

  As a matter of policy, the State of Israel neither acknowledges nor denies any involvement in overseas assassinations. When asked, government ministers and intelligence chiefs might opine that the world was better off, but would never publicly admit culpability even as specifics were often leaked to the Israeli press in intimate details.10 Numerous sources attributed the killing of Fathi Shiqaqi to the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, in particular its elite special operations unit known as Kidon, or Spear. Although great secrecy shrouds the unit, it supposedly consists of a small group of men and women trained in combat, intelligence, and covert action.11 The Shiqaqi operation must have taken months of planning, apparently involving a dozen people12 and a motorcycle stolen in Malta months earlier. What is clear is that those behind the operation were professionals. Maltese police couldn’t find a single spent shell near Shiqaqi’s body.13

  When asked about Shiqaqi’s death, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin merely said, “I would not feel sorry about the killing of a man whose existence could not be tolerated by civilized societies.”14 According to Der Spiegel, Rabin had personally ordered the hit in the wake of the Beit Lid bombings.15

  Any celebrations in Israel over Shiqaqi’s violent end would be short lived, however. Ten days later, Rabin himself was assassinated by a Jewish zealot’s bullets as he departed a pro-peace rally in the heart of Tel Aviv.

  Meir Dagan was in one of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia when Rabin was assassinated. He had been racing up and down dunes with his dear friend Yossi Ben-Hanan, on a long-planned jeep trek in the far reaches of the Silk Road, over unchartered hills and stretches, that fateful night when Rabin was shot and killed. Dagan had retired from active duty months earlier, ostensibly following in the footsteps of his mentor Ariel Sharon and hoping to be named the head of Southern Command.16 But when Dagan was not among the generals slated for promotion, he put in his retirement papers. After thirty-two years in uniform, spending more nights in Lebanon and stuffy command posts than he did at home with his wife and three sons, Dagan entered the civilian world, retiring with the rank of major general.

  Those closest to Dagan knew that retirement wouldn’t be an easy transition. At fifty he was still at the top of his game and by no means ready to fade away. He also wasn’t ready to don a new uniform of white shirt and slacks to become a senior manager or, worse, a salesman, at one of the country’s bustling defense and high-tech firms. The general still had a lot to contribute to his nation’s defense—and if it wasn’t going to be on the front lines it would be somewhere his decisions mattered.

  Veteran Labor Party leader and Rabin heir Shimon Peres, who assumed the office of prime minister and defense minister following Rabin’s assassination, inherited a nation rocked to its core. To help the country’s military, intelligence, and law enforcement entities effectively battle terror, Peres created the Prime Minister’s Counterterrorism Bureau. The bureau was designed to coordinate all government agencies involved in combating terrorism and establish closer cooperation, as well as contain the egos of the men who led them. Peres tapped Ami Ayalon, the decorated former Navy commander, to lead the bureau. Ayalon was a no-nonsense special operations veteran, an analytical thinker with a far-reaching—and many have argued left-leaning—view of Israel’s predicament vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Peres named Meir Dagan as Ayalon’s deputy.

  The sense at Shin Bet headquarters following Rabin’s assassination was one of failure. The famed service had failed in one of its most important missions. They had failed the prime minister and the state. Officers in military intelligence and the police felt the same despondence, wondering if they could defeat the next threat. Meir Dagan, however, thought of Fathi Shiqaqi.

  For its part, the PIJ announced forty days of mourning to honor Shiqaqi, its slain leader, vowing a wave of terror the likes of which the State of Israel had never seen before. Communiqués from Damascus, distributed in the mosques of Gaza, warned: “This ugly crime will make every Zionist, wherever he may be on the face of the earth, a target for our amazing blows and our bodies exploding in anger. We shall take revenge and set the ground on fire under the feet of the Zionist criminals.”17 But re
tribution never came. The Gaza-born doctor might have been a potent terrorist commander, but he proved to be a terrible manager. Shiqaqi took many of his secrets to the grave, including details of the banks and accounts where the PIJ kept its operational funds.

  The PIJ had dozens of bank accounts in Lebanon and Syria, as well as in Iran. PIJ accounts also existed in financial institutions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. After Shiqaqi’s death, Israeli intelligence learned, PIJ operatives in the field weren’t receiving their salaries. Weapons and explosives weren’t being purchased, and safe houses weren’t being rented. The parents and wives of suicide bombers and jailed terrorists also began to complain that their monthly stipends weren’t being paid.

  Shin Bet chiefs monitoring the PIJ in the territories couldn’t understand how could Shiqaqi be so operationally agile yet so logistically haphazard. Some hypothesized that Shiqaqi must have been embezzling funds; others thought he believed that his survival was best secured by being the only one to know where the money was. Either way, when Ramadan Abdullah Shalah rushed to Damascus from Florida to assume command of the PIJ, the organization had virtually no access to its money.

  Meir Dagan read the intelligence reports from Gaza and Hebron, and from outside Israel’s frontiers. He understood that regardless of intentions, cash was vital for continuing terrorist attacks. Dagan understood that if Israel focused on the money that fueled the organizations that dispatched the suicide bombers, it could achieve long-term tactical and strategic results. “Hamas and the Jihad were definitely not like the classical national liberation terrorist armies who waged war in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East in the 1970s,” Lavi S. recalled. “It was important at that stage, in fighting the Islamic organizations, not to think of fighting terror simply as a struggle to kill a mosquito here and there. If you wanted to end of infestation, you had to dry out the swamp where they lived and multiplied.”18