Rise and Kill First

by Ronen Bergman

  On the face of things, “Shamir could have made do with his own order to do away with Abu Jihad,” says Nevo. However, Shamir was aware that Abu Jihad was no ordinary target, and the reactions to hitting him could be out of the ordinary. He decided not to take sole responsibility and instead to bring the matter to the security cabinet for its approval. The Likud and Labor each had five ministers on the panel. Shimon Peres, head of the Labor Party and then serving as foreign minister, declared that he was firmly opposed to the assassination. “My information was that Abu Jihad was a moderate,” he said. “I thought it would be unwise to kill him.” The four other Labor members—including Rabin, who had already approved killing Abu Jihad earlier—expressed apprehension about the international condemnation that would be leveled at Israel, as well as the danger to Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives, and they joined Peres in opposing the operation. Shamir and the four Likud representatives voted for it. A tie meant there would be no operation.

  Finance Minister Moshe Nissim, of Likud, decided to try persuasion. He asked Rabin to join him outside the meeting room. “Look at what the Intifada’s doing to us,” he said. “The public’s mood is very despondent. The IDF has in the past executed actions with great resourcefulness and creative thinking, but it hasn’t happened for a long time. We have to renew the sense in the world, in the international community—but first and foremost, among the citizens of Israel—that the IDF is the same IDF that has done marvelous things over the years. We have to carry out this mission for the sake of the national morale.” Politics, the withering of the national morale, demanded a blood sacrifice. Killing Abu Jihad, at least the way Moshe Nissim saw it, was an act more symbolic than practical.

  Rabin was persuaded. He returned to the cabinet room with Nissim and announced that he was changing his vote. By a vote of 6 to 4, Operation Introductory Lesson was given the green light.

  Nissim, who was the son of a chief rabbi of Israel, would never regret that he’d persuaded Rabin. “In the whole world,” he said, “there isn’t another army that is as meticulous as the IDF about values and norms of conduct and assuring that innocent people aren’t hurt. But there is a Talmudic precept: ‘If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.’ ”

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  ABU JIHAD’S HOME IN Tunisia, Israeli intelligence operatives believed, was the perfect place to kill him. It was located on one of the prettiest corners of a well-tended and exclusive development of private homes and broad, clean streets, just a few thousand yards from the beach, which gave a team of assassins relatively easy access. Tunisian police patrols would need to be avoided or distracted, but otherwise Abu Jihad was protected by only two men. “It was a relatively isolated location, only lightly guarded,” said Nahum Lev, the deputy commander of Sayeret Matkal. “Furthermore, Abu Jihad returned there each night when he was in the country. It was a superb place to lay an ambush. Abu Jihad simply never believed that someone would reach him there. The Mossad had operated in Beirut or Syria or Europe, but never in Tunisia. So Abu Jihad felt relatively safe.”

  Killing Abu Jihad in his home, Israeli intelligence believed, would also be suitably menacing, suggesting to the Palestinians that no one is safe anywhere, even in his own bedroom.

  The plan to assassinate Abu Jihad in Tunisia had been developed by Caesarea over the previous year. Three Caesarea operatives disguised as Arab businessmen had scouted routes from the beach and mapped the neighborhood in detail. The Mossad and AMAN’s Units 504 and 8200 tracked Abu Jihad’s movements, charted his travels, noted his habit of buying tickets on multiple flights to make it difficult to know when he would be traveling and where. His home and office phone lines were monitored. Oded Raz, then an officer in the section of AMAN’s Research Division that dealt with terror, said that, “in following Abu Jihad, I came to know and respect the man we were facing off against. True, he was a terrorist, but also a model family man and an authentic leader who had the good of his nation in mind.”

  Still, the Israeli political and intelligence leadership wanted to kill him. The good of the Palestinian nation, to their minds, was a direct threat to the good of their own country. As they saw it, Abu Jihad was—and about this there can be no argument—the man behind the deaths of hundreds of Jews.

  Defense Minister Rabin, the punctilious military man, was concerned about many details of the getaway route and the safety of the troops. No less important, he wanted to know what would happen if, “once we get to Tunis with this whole armada, and we break into the house, and then our ‘patient’ isn’t in at all?” The Mossad people explained their plan to make sure that Abu Jihad would be home before the signal was given to commence the raid. Rabin was satisfied, and with the occupied territories in chaos and Abu Jihad, rightly or wrongly, claiming credit, Operation Introductory Lesson finally was authorized.

  IDF deputy chief of staff Ehud Barak was the overall commander of the operation, and a short time before it was scheduled to begin, he led a planning meeting at General Staff headquarters, in Tel Aviv. AMAN officers showed him their scale model of Abu Jihad’s neighborhood. Barak abruptly pointed to the house across the street from Abu Jihad’s.

  “Who lives there?” Barak asked.

  “Abu al-Hol,” one of the AMAN officers replied. “The PLO’s internal security chief.”

  “And who lives here?” Barak asked, pointing at a house nearby but not next door to Abu Jihad’s house.

  “Mahmoud Abbas—Abu Mazen,” a Mossad operative answered, using the real name and nom de guerre of another top PLO official.

  “It’s pretty close,” Barak mused. “Why shouldn’t we visit him as well? What with this entire huge armada going to Tunisia, it’s two birds with one stone.”

  “Ehud,” a senior Mossad official interjected, “drop it. It will only complicate an operation that is really complicated as it is.” A short discussion—an argument, really—followed. Barak insisted on using the opportunity to take out two targets. Such a strike, he maintained, would send PLO morale plunging and could have a desirable effect on the wave of unrest in the territories. The representatives of the Mossad and AMAN were categorically opposed. “We can’t guarantee that both targets will be home at the same time,” they argued. “You are the commander, but we recommend sticking with Abu Jihad alone. It’s quite enough if we give him what he deserves.”

  In the end, Barak gave in. Thus, the life of Mahmoud Abbas, the man who would succeed Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority and whom Barak, among others, in time would come to regard as a bold partner in peace efforts, was saved.

  “It’s difficult to judge such matters in retrospect,” Barak said. “In real time, from the operational point of view, it was very enticing. On the other hand, it was clear that a strike at that level against their leaders would actually have legitimated attacks on our leaders by them.”

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  SIX CAESAREA OPERATIVES ARRIVED in Tunis on April 14, on four different flights from Europe. Three of them—two men and a woman, traveling on bogus Lebanese passports and speaking perfect French—paid cash to rent two Volkswagen Transporters and a Peugeot 305 sedan, all of them white and each from a separate company. Those vehicles would be used to drive the Sayeret Matkal men from the beach to Abu Jihad’s home and then back again. The other three operatives were shadows: They found a clump of trees from which they could monitor the house and make sure Abu Jihad was inside. The drivers would evacuate by sea with the kill team, while the shadows would leave Tunis on commercial airlines once the operation was over.

  Meanwhile, five Israeli missile boats were steaming toward Tunisia, carrying the raiding party, a mobile hospital, and powerful communications equipment. A larger vessel, fitted out as a helicopter carrier but disguised to look like a regular cargo ship, had a reserve Sayeret unit ready to be flown in, should something go wrong.

  The convoy halted twenty-five miles from the Tunisian coa
st, well beyond the country’s territorial waters, on April 15. Below, in the water, the Israeli submarine Gal provided a quiet, invisible escort. Far above, an air force Boeing 707 served as a communications relay station, while also monitoring Tunisian frequencies for any trouble. It was capable of jamming Tunisian radar and air control if needed. Israeli F-15s were patrolling just off the coast as well, ready to intervene if necessary.

  The sun was sinking into the waters to the west when rubber dinghies went over the sides of the missile boats. Each held two naval commandos and six Sayeret Matkal soldiers. They motored quietly toward shore, dusk turning to dark on a moonless night. A third of a mile from the beach, seven Flotilla 13 commandos dived off the dinghies and swam underwater toward the beach. The first to set foot on Tunisian soil was the commander of Flotilla 13’s raiding force, Yoav Galant. The beach was deserted. The commandos set up a broad semicircular perimeter to secure it, while establishing radio contact with the boats and with the Mossad operatives waiting in their cars. The commandos told the Mossad operatives to approach the waterline, then told the twenty-six men in the dinghies that it was safe to come ashore. The Sayeret men hustled to the waiting Caesarea vehicles, where they changed into dry clothes that they’d brought in waterproof duffel bags. They were going to slip into Abu Jihad’s neighborhood posing as civilians—some male and some female—then break into his house and kill him. Still, they all carried POW cards to prove that they were soldiers in case they were captured.

  The naval commandos spread out to keep the beach secure until the Sayeret squad returned. The three Caesarea operatives who’d been monitoring the house watched through powerful binoculars as Abu Jihad’s car pulled up just after midnight. Two bodyguards, one of whom was also the driver, went inside with him. The driver stayed only briefly, then went back to the car and dozed. The other sat in the living room for a few moments, then went down to the basement and fell asleep. In another bedroom, Abu Jihad’s baby boy, Nidal, slept in his crib. His wife, Intisar, and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Hanan, were waiting for him in the bedroom. Intisar recalled their conversation:

  I was very tired. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I asked him to come in to sleep, and he said that he had a lot of work to complete. He sat at the table in our bedroom and wrote a letter to the Intifada leadership. Hanan was with us in the room. He asked her what she had done during the day. She said that she had gone horseback riding. Then she remembered that she wanted to tell him about a dream she’d had the previous night. She dreamed that she was in Jerusalem with a few friends. They prayed at a mosque, and then suddenly Israeli soldiers expelled them and chased after them. She ran and ran until she went outside the city walls, and then she saw her father. She asked him where he was going, and Abu Jihad said that he was going to Jerusalem. She asked him how he could get into Jerusalem, because it was full of Israeli soldiers. He said that he would ride a white horse.

  After she finished telling him the dream, Abu Jihad took off his glasses and said, “Oh, Hanan, yes, yes, I am on my way to Jerusalem.”

  The phone in the villa rang. Abu Jihad picked it up. Israeli agents tapping into the line listened as the aide who handled his travel arrangements told him that he had a seat on a flight to Baghdad leaving Tunis a little after 3 A.M. This was a problem for the Israelis. They’d planned to enter Abu Jihad’s house at about 1:30 A.M. to be as sure as possible that everyone would be asleep. But if they waited until then, it was likely that their target would already be on his way to the airport.

  They couldn’t wait that long. The operation had to happen immediately. Yiftach Reicher, head of the Special Operations Executive, who was also at the seaborne command post, called Sayeret commander Moshe Yaalon on the radio. They spoke in code and in English, in case the conversation was picked up.

  Reicher: “Bogart, this is Richard. You can leave the station. You can leave the station. Do it fast. I say again: Do it fast.”

  Then Reicher realized that, because Abu Jihad was getting ready for a flight, both he and his staff would likely be awake. “Bogart,” he said, “this is Richard. Because the boss is leaving I want to tell you there are people who are not sleeping at the office.”

  Yaalon: “Okay, Richard, I understand.”

  Reicher called one of the Caesarea operatives watching the house from the trees: “Willy, is there anything new near the office, including the red car?”

  Willy: “Negative.”

  Reicher: “Bogart is on his way. Before entering the office, he will call you. If there is any change in the situation, let him know, because he needs the okay. Your okay.”

  The two Transporters hauled twenty-six Sayeret Matkal men, armed with Micro Uzi and Ruger .22 pistols fitted with silencers and laser pointers, into the neighborhood. Two Caesarea operatives, a man and a woman, drove the Peugeot a quarter-mile ahead to scout the road and make sure that the main force would not run into anything unexpected.

  All three vehicles stopped about five hundred yards from the house. The commandos began creeping forward. But final, positive identification still had to be made. Lookouts had seen Abu Jihad’s car arrive and watched him and his bodyguards go into the house. But according to the protocol Rabin had signed, that was not sufficient. Three fluent Arabic speakers from Unit 8200 who’d been co-opted to the Mossad for the mission had put in hundreds of hours studying Abu Jihad’s voice and quirks of speech. Wearing earphones, they sat in the command bunker in Tel Aviv while technicians set up a phone call to the al-Wazir residence via an exchange in Italy, the way he generally communicated with the occupied territories.

  The technicians played crowd noises in the background. “Ya, Abu Jihad,” one of the voice experts shouted into the receiver. “They’ve arrested Abu Rahma! And now the sons of bitches want to take the whole family to prison!” He added an Arabic curse: “Inshallah yishrbu waridat al-nisa!” (“May they drink menstrual blood!”) Abu Jihad tried to calm the speaker down so he could get more details. In the meantime, the technicians in Tel Aviv kept the conversation going until all three experts raised their hands to indicate that they had identified the voice for certain.

  “Introductory Lesson, you have a green light,” the command bunker in Tel Aviv radioed to the forward command post at sea. That message was immediately relayed to the force on the ground. Nahum Lev and another soldier dressed as a woman went first. Lev was holding a large box, apparently of candies, but inside was a pistol with a silencer. He walked up to the guard sitting in a car next to the house, showed him a hotel brochure, and asked him how to get there. The sentry studied the brochure. Lev pulled the trigger and shot the man in the head.

  Lev signaled the rest of the squad. A small detail moved forward with a hydraulic jack to force open the door. In training sessions, the door had opened silently. Now, though, it creaked. The fighters tensed. But there was no reaction from within the sleepy house. One of the team signaled to the men in the other cars that the coast was clear. The rest of the fighters took up positions around the house. One detail circled into the backyard.

  The Sayeret Matkal men burst through the door and down the front hall. A few rushed to the basement, where the second bodyguard had just awakened. They shot him before he had time to cock his rifle. Then they saw another sleeping man—the family’s Tunisian gardener, who had decided to spend the night. They shot him, too. “He really hadn’t done anything,” Lev said. “But on a mission like this, there’s no choice. You have to make sure that any potential opposition is neutralized.”

  Upstairs, Abu Jihad’s wife, Intisar, woke up to the sound of men shouting below. Abu Jihad was sitting by his desk. He pushed it back, got up quickly, and took his pistol from the closet.

  “What happened?” Intisar asked him. “What happened?”

  A Sayeret Matkal man, clad in black, his face masked, bounded to the top of the stairs. Lev, the commander, followed close behind. Abu Jihad pu
shed his wife farther into their bedroom.

  The first Israeli shot him. Abu Jihad fell. Then Lev fired a long burst. Abu Jihad was dead.

  Intisar crawled to her husband, wrapped her arms around him. A commando put a pistol in her back, shoved her hard to the wall. She was sure she’d been shot. Instead, she’d been moved out of the way so she wouldn’t be.

  A third commando came in and shot Abu Jihad again. He stood aside, and a fourth Israeli shot him once more.

  Nidal, the baby boy, was awake and screaming. Intisar was sure he’d been hit, too. A voice downstairs was yelling, “Aleh! Aleh!”—Faster! Faster!

  Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Yaalon stood over the body and fired, the fifth man to do so.

  “Bas!” Intisar cried. Enough!

  Abu Jihad had been shot fifty-two times. Twenty-three years after Golda Meir signed the first red sheet on his life, he was dead.

  Recalling the assassination many years later, in 2013, Yaalon, at that time minister of defense, said, “Listen, it certainly wasn’t a pleasant scene. The woman was standing there, wanting to rush forward, and only because one of the men was pointing a gun at her she didn’t move, and we are firing into her husband, over and over. It is impossible to say that it didn’t bother me or make me feel very uncomfortable. On the other hand, it was clear to me that it had to be done, although it was in front of the wife and the daughter.”

  Yaalon had no regrets, however. He called the operation “the perfect hit” and added, with characteristic cynicism, “I don’t understand why they say why we, Israel, are losing the war for minds. If I put a bullet between Abu Jihad’s eyes, right in the middle of his mind, doesn’t that mean I’ve won?”

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  ALL OF THE ISRAELIS escaped Tunisia unharmed. The local police were busy responding to multiple, bogus reports made by the Caesarea operatives of a fleet of cars racing from Abu Jihad’s neighborhood toward downtown Tunis—exactly the opposite direction from the one taken by the assassins. The police set up roadblocks and searched dozens of cars. Three hours later, they found the rented Volkswagens and Peugeot abandoned on the beach.