Uri and Shai played good cop–good cop—they told Adnan how much they wanted to help him and to make sure his business was clean and above the terror nonsense. He asked if he could go to the bathroom; the lemonade had rushed through his system quickly. The Israelis wouldn’t let him go until his bladder nearly burst.
The banker returned from the men’s room looking pale. His hands shook. He stammered like a skipping LP record. Adnan was so nervous, in fact, that he grabbed a kiwi from the bowl of fruit on the table and began to eat it like an apple, skin and all. The worst that Hamas could do was kill him. The Israelis could slowly but surely unravel his fiefdom built on gold and dollars. The man understood that he had little choice but to work with the Israelis. Uri and Shai walked away with the information they were after.
The intelligence gleaned from the banker about the terrorist accounts in his bank was very useful for Harpoon. But larger Palestinian banks operated inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as indigenous Islamic banks that served the community. There were also banks, headquartered throughout the Arab world, that maintained vibrant branches in the West Bank and Gaza. Of all the banks, the Amman-based Arab Bank was the largest and, for Israel’s war on terror, the most problematic.
The Arab Bank was established in 1930 in British-mandate Palestine and was the first private-sector bank in the Arab World. The Arab Bank’s founder was Abdul Hameed Shoman, who was born in 1890 in Beit Hanina, at the time a village halfway between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Shoman immigrated to the United States in 1911, making his fortune in New York City in textiles. A fervent Arab nationalist, Shoman returned to the Middle East to open his bank—launched with 15,000 Palestinian pounds—and headquartered it in Jerusalem, then under British control.
The bank ceased operations in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa following Israel’s victory and achieving independence in 1948. Shoman made sure that account holders who had their savings in those branches were reimbursed, a promise that endeared him in the eyes of Palestinians, and many throughout the Arab world. Even in times of political violence and revolution, the financial institution boasted that it never defaulted on a single payment to any of its customers.1 The Arab Bank moved its headquarters to the Jordanian capital, following Israeli independence; the bank flourished in Jordan. It expanded markets and revenues as an oil boom hit the region. The construction projects that the bank oversaw were Herculean in scale; the financing that the bank offered enabled many projects—from the Persian Gulf to the sands of North Africa—to emerge from blueprint to sky-rise glitter in a way that only an endless flow of petro-profits could produce.
Shoman was a religious man, and he injected Islam into many of his business dealings. The Arab Bank’s world headquarters, on Prince Shaker Street overlooking Queen Noor Street, was designed to look like the Kaba in Mecca—a black glass cube situated on a base of desert-colored stone. Shoman remained a presence in the operations of the bank until his death in 1974. His body was laid to rest at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
The day-to-day running of the bank was then left in the hands of Shoman’s eldest son, Abdul Majid Shoman. Born in 1911, Abdul Majid first met his father at the age of fourteen in New York, and joined the bank in 1936.2 Like his father, the younger Shoman was a Palestinian nationalist who, at one time, maintained the Palestine National Fund. Abdul Majid was also a banker, and he used the Oslo Accords to bolster his institution’s business in the West Bank and Gaza. Abdul Majid Shoman was Arafat’s personal banker and handled all of the PA president’s investments and holdings. Arafat reciprocated by enabling Shoman’s bank to operate freely in the West Bank and Gaza: The Arab Bank opened twenty-two branches in fifteen Palestinian cities, eager to be part of the boom that was expected in peace and guaranteed to become the largest financial power in the PA. The economic explosion promised by the peace process never came, though; quite to the contrary, the bank floated loans to Arafat that helped pay the PA salaries. The loans, of unspecified amounts, were a small part of the Arab Bank’s global empire: The bank created “to serve the Arabs of Palestine and their national welfare” in the 1930s ultimately fielded 278 branches in twenty-seven countries across the world with combined assets valued over $35 billion.3
Shoman made a point to visit Palestinians hurt in the intifada who were transported to hospitals in Amman for treatment. In addition, Arab Bank employees were subjected to a tax on their salaries called the “Support the al-Aqsa Intifada fee.” The money amounted to 5 percent of every paycheck and was sent back to the PA, or Hamas, as well as foundations to support the intifada.4 The funds were substantial. But the greatest amount of money that the institution handled for the intifada came from outside sources.
The Arab Bank was the bank of choice for many who were fighting Israel—especially for governments eager to finance the intifada. The “Saudi Committee for the Support of the Al Quds Intifada” used the institution’s accounts as pipelines to funnel large sums of monies, through charities and known terrorists in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who were associated with Hamas, the PIJ, Islamic Jihad, and other groups responsible for the violence. Beginning in December 2000, and continuing for years into the violence, some two hundred thousand transactions resulted in more than $90 million, sent to a multitude of Arab Bank accounts. The monies, the bank would later contend, were destined for the unemployed and the infirm; the donations were supposed to help Palestinians harmed by Israeli security forces.5
But in fact the funds provided pensions, insurance payouts, and support to the families of suicide bombers, operatives killed in clashes with Israeli forces, and those serving sentences in Israeli maximum security prisons.6 They were a type of death-and-dismemberment fund. The family of Sa’id Houtari, the sixteen-year-old suicide bomber of the Dolphinarium Discothèque bombing, and the family of Izzedine al-Masri, the hippie-disguised suicide bomber who eviscerated the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, received cash payouts through Arab Bank accounts.7
Both the Shin Bet and military intelligence had developed a unique expertise in unraveling the human makeup of a particular terror organization, from the top political leaders down to cell commanders and the knuckle-dragging muscle they employed. Arabic-speaking analysts laboriously followed flow charts linking men to other men who were linked to masterminds. Family ties were examined, as were cellular phone logs and even school and mosque connections. Dagan, when he sat in on the biweekly Harpoon meetings that included the delegates from the Shin Bet, the IDF, and even the Israel Prison Service, directed that forensic analysis and detailed charts be drawn up connecting the commanders of the various terrorist organizations with their sources of income.
Dagan wanted to try new ideas, including fine-tuning Israeli efforts to mirror the antiracketeering efforts that the United States Department of Justice had so successfully used against organized crime connecting illegal enterprises to proceeds. Dagan had visited the FBI and other U.S. federal law enforcement agencies during his tenure as head of the Prime Minister’s Counterterrorism Bureau and enjoyed hearing stories about how organized crime and other nefarious enterprises were taken down as a result of financial improprieties. “It was all about follow the money,” Uri recalled. “In fighting terrorism, the Arab Bank was like a solar system—every solar system we discovered led to new stars, new planets, and new universes. The money was at the root of everything.”8
Analysts and forensic accountants, together with some of the best investigators in Israeli intelligence service, created an organizational chart of the most dangerous men in Hamas, the monies they held, and the attacks those funds financed. The Arab Bank turned out to be the common denominator. By the fall of 2002, accounts in the institution’s branches had been tied to a dozen suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, including the Dolphinarium Discothèque, the Sbarro pizzeria, and the Park Hotel in Netanya.
One of these belonged to a man named Ibrahim Hamed. Born in 1965, Hamed was a relative of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and the Hamas Ramallah commande
r.9 He had been on Israel’s most-wanted list since 1998. Arrogant and cocky, Hamed refused to be photographed and had been responsible for organizing multiple suicide bombings during the intifada, including the Café Moment bombing and the suicide bombing of a billiard hall in the city of Rishon Le’Tzion that left fifteen dead. Hamed had masterminded a grandiose attempt to incinerate the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of heavily populated Tel Aviv, in a weapon-of-mass-destruction attempt that could have left hundreds, if not more, dead. In the summer of 2002 one of Hamed’s cells, a group of petty thieves from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan known as the Gang of Death, offered to bomb the Hebrew University. Hamed’s cell had recently received a gift from the Palestinian Authority—the arbitrary release of Abdullah Barghouti, Hamas’s top bomb builder. Barghouti had been held by the PA, on the demand of American and Israeli authorities, over his role in the Sbarro restaurant bombing. Angry at Israelis, however, Arafat decided to release Barghouti back to his work as explosives mastermind. Hamed’s cell received Barghouti’s bomb and withdrew funds from his Arab Bank account to carry out an attack against Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.*
At just after 1:00 PM on the afternoon of July 31, 2002, a powerful explosion punched through the crowded student cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra Building of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. The device, a powerful bundle of homemade explosives wrapped in nails and screws, was hidden in a bag and placed on a table to be detonated by remote control. Most of the students grabbing a quick lunch were from overseas, enrolled in Hebrew-language classes before the start of the fall semester, and were not aware of the “if you see something, say something” campaign that the Israel National Police had run on television, on radio, and on billboards and on placards in buses for years. The explosion turned the cafeteria inside out—the fiery blast and puncturing shrapnel were followed by suffocating black acrid smoke. “The force of the blast blew windows and glass facades to bits and tore panels from the ceiling. The stench of smoke and burned flesh wafted through the air,” a witness recalled.10 Israeli bomb squad officers walked among the wreckage.
The bombing attack killed nine people and wounded one hundred. Five American citizens were among the dead: Marla Bennett, twenty-four, a vivacious young woman from San Diego who had fallen in love with the State of Israel; Benjamin Blutstein, a twenty-five-year-old hip-hop DJ who was studying to be a teacher; and David Gritz, twenty-five, who was studying philosophy. In addition, the bomb also murdered two Hebrew University employees: Janis Coulter, thirty-six, from Massachusetts; and Dina Carter, thirty-eight, from North Carolina. Carter’s father had to identify his daughter by her fingerprints. Eighty-five people were wounded in the bombing.
The attack, yet another on a growing list of bloody strikes against Israeli civilians, convinced Meir Dagan that decisive action was necessary against the Arab Bank.
Meir Dagan had always hoped to use a velvet glove rather than a granite fist to deal with the Shoman family—even before he was appointed Mossad director. The Shoman family bank was a pillar of the Jordanian economy, and Jordan was in many ways a strategic and regional ally of Israel. There was day-to-day urgency needed to do whatever could be done to stop the bombings. But Israel had long-term strategic interests with Jordan that transcended the day-to-day. It was sometimes difficult for Harpoon to balance these divergent interests.
The direct diplomatic effort between Harpoon and the Arab Bank began with simple one-on-one meetings in 2003 and 2004. Uri and Shai were dispatched to meet with Arab Bank executives in the West Bank and Gaza, much in the same way that Uri and Shai met with Adnan the Banker. The sit-downs were cordial, yet serious. They were all carried out in Arabic. The Israelis explained to the men they met that the situation was intolerable and that a bank that did business freely in the PA—and with Israeli banks—in all sorts of routine and innocuous transactions could not continue to do business with terrorists responsible for so much bloodshed. Some of the bank managers were sympathetic, but, as they explained, powerless to do anything; after all, the head office dictated bank policy. Other bank managers did not take kindly to any attempts at coercion by the Israelis. The Harpoon emissaries received what amounted to a “Fuck you” from the indignant bank officials.
A similar response came from Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Minister. Fayyad, who was educated at the American University in Beirut and had earned a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, had previously worked as the regional manager for the Arab Bank in the West Bank and Gaza.11 Fayyad knew everything about Arafat’s finances; he certainly knew about the Hamas accounts that ran through his bank.
The Hebrew University bombing was, in many, ways, a turning point for Harpoon and its campaign against the Arab Bank. President George W. Bush condemned the deaths with visceral rage, declaring, “There are clearly killers who hate the thought of peace, and, therefore, are willing to take their hatred to all kinds of places.”12 Most important, though, the mass murder of Americans in terrorist attacks enabled a new tactic in the war against terror money: fighting terrorism financing through the U.S. legal system. The September 11, 2001, attacks created new legal provisions to fight terrorism, including the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which expanded the federal government’s ability to monitor the financial activities of criminals under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The new legislation was designed to prevent banks from being used to launder and dispense monies to known terrorist entities.13 Terrorists were not allowed to bank with institutions that did business with and in the United States.
An operation, nicknamed Show Me the Money, focused on bank account information and the transfer of funds from Lebanon, Syria, and Iran to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The data that was gathered was analyzed by specialists who were able to connect the dots that linked dollar transfers made into various Arab Bank accounts that paid for the murders of the terror victims. The money had been wired into the Arab Bank from the Islamic Republic of Iran. But beyond the moral complicity of helping to facilitate the murder of Americans and Israelis, the Arab Bank was in direct violation of the American laws by maintaining accounts in the names of eleven globally designated terrorists and terror organizations.* These included Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan, the Holy Land Foundation, the al Aqsa Foundation in Germany, the al-Salah Islamic Society, and Interpal in Great Britain.14
Of all the Harpoon leadership, Uri racked up the most frequent-flier miles. In the early days, when it operated under the Counterterrorism Bureau and then the NSC, Uri was the chosen for one-on-one networking with the Americans. He was dispatched on numerous occasions to Washington to meet with U.S. officials to close down the pipeline of hundreds of thousands of dollars that flowed monthly from the Holy Land Foundation in Texas to the West Bank and Gaza for Hamas military activity. The transatlantic flights increased following the passage of the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act. The Presidential Executive Order had greatly expanded the Treasury Department’s ability to target terrorist money—it froze the U.S. financial assets of known terrorists and prohibited transactions with organizations, individuals, corporations, NGOS, and banks that were in association with terrorist groups. Shortly after the order was issued, Under Secretary of Treasury for Enforcement Jimmy Gurulé began to block suspected terrorist money.15 But in bilateral meetings, talks about the Arab Bank topped their agenda.
Dagan had two objectives in mind when he targeted the Arab Bank. First and foremost was the hope that he could convince the bank managers and its board of directors to cease and desist enabling internationally recognized terror organizations from maintaining accounts.
A second objective was to make the movement of money more expensive. If bank transfers—indeed, bank access—was removed from the terror arsenal, money would have to flow in through other means—smuggling, money changers, and crime. These methods of moving large amounts of money from Point A to Point B were effective but they were expensive; money changers
would, of course, charge a steeper premium to move a million dollars if they knew that the client had no other options available to them. Risk came at a premium, Dagan knew. Transferring money solely by these means was not foolproof. There were seizures by corrupt border guards in Jordan and Egypt; some of the seizures were by the Arab intelligence services acting on tips from Israel. Egyptian border guards noticed increased smuggling attempts along the frontier with Gaza in 2002 after Israel closed the accounts of some Hamas commanders.16
Sometimes Israeli troops seized large bundles of cash coming across the borders. Physically carrying the cash across the border was risky business. Dagan wanted the million-dollar donation earmarked for Hamas from a wealthy Saudi sheikh to lose much of its value as it crossed borders and war zones earmarked for the terrorists. Diluting the money that flowed into the terrorist coffers meant less violence.
Harpoon’s failure to get the Arab Bank to stop its tacit support for Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist groups forced Dagan to think of other options. In discussing these possibilities, Dagan quoted the old Turkish proverb: “If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.”17
CHAPTER EIGHT
Operation Green Lantern
Harpoon Page 11