Sharon even considered disseminating a videotape filmed by Romanian intelligence in the late 1970s. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former head of DIE (the Soviet-Romanian intelligence organization)—who said of Arafat, “I have never seen so much cleverness, blood, and abomination combined in one man”—recalled that his men had installed hidden cameras in the official guesthouse where Arafat stayed after meeting with President Nicolae Ceauşescu, and that these cameras documented Arafat engaging in homosexual relations with his bodyguards. Sharon told his aides that this documentation had reached the hands of Israeli intelligence and that he considered disseminating it anonymously on the Internet.
Sharon dropped this distasteful idea when Israel achieved its objective through other means—by convincing the American administration that Arafat was incorrigible. Israel acquired unequivocal proof of Arafat’s involvement in smuggling weaponry on the Karine A ship from Iran to terror groups in the Palestinian Authority. After Flotilla 13, in Operation Noah’s Ark, seized control of the ship at sea, and its crew was arrested and interrogated, implicating a close associate of Arafat’s, the president of the Palestinian Authority denied that he or any of his staff were involved in a special letter to President Bush. However, intelligence information—including wiretaps, documents, and interrogation transcripts—taken to the White House by a senior AMAN officer, in a briefcase chained to his wrist, was much more convincing. When Bush learned that Arafat had brazenly lied to him, he declared the Palestinian president irrelevant and on June 24, 2002, called upon the Palestinian people to elect a new leader.
In November 2002, in the wake of several horrific attacks against Israelis, Sharon gave an order to encircle the Mukataa, Arafat’s headquarters, and to leave Arafat and some of his men besieged inside. His instructions were to make life miserable for “the dog from the Mukataa,” as he called him—sometimes cutting off electricity, sometimes cutting off the water supply. Sharon then ordered a company of armored D9 bulldozers to demolish another wall of the compound every few days.
Even still, there were disagreements about what, finally, should be done with Arafat. Some thought he should be made a target for liquidation and that Israel should strike against him. Some thought he should be hit covertly, without connecting the action to Israel. Others were in favor of exiling him, while some said he should be left alone “to rot” in the Mukataa.
After a grave attack in April 2002, Sharon and chief of staff Mofaz were overheard conducting a private conversation. They sat near microphones at a public event, unaware that a television crew was already connected to the microphones and was filming them from afar.
MOFAZ: We’ve got to get rid of him.
SHARON: What?
MOFAZ: To get rid of him.
SHARON: I know.
MOFAZ: To take advantage of the opportunity now. There won’t be another opportunity. I want to talk with you now.
SHARON: When we act…I don’t know what method you use for this (chuckles). But you put everyone to sleep…(becomes serious). We have to be careful!
It is unclear precisely which “act” Sharon was referring to here, but the IDF and the intelligence community did prepare contingency plans for each potential Arafat strategy. The commander of the air force, Dan Halutz, who was an enthusiastic proponent of exiling Arafat, picked out two small islands—one near the coast of Lebanon and the other near Sudan—as potential new homes for the president. In his view, Arafat should be dispatched there with two aides and a little food and water for the trip, and then Israel would announce his whereabouts to the world. Special infantry units were slated to seize the Mukataa and proceed to Arafat’s room. Israel considered launching sleeping gas into the compound prior to the raid in order to spare lives.
Ultimately, the operation was canceled, because “we couldn’t ensure that Arafat would come out of all this alive,” recalled the head of the trauma unit of the Medical Corps, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Amir Blumenfeld. “After all, we were dealing with an old man who had lots of medical problems, and with the possibility of a battle erupting with the soldiers who came to abduct him.”
The deliberations surrounding Arafat eventually reached Washington. Bush administration officials feared that, just as Sharon had decided to liquidate Yassin, he would also order the assassination of Arafat. In a meeting at the White House on April 14, 2004, Bush demanded that Sharon promise not to harm Arafat. According to one of the participants in the meeting, Sharon told the president that he understood his request (“I see your point”). Bush saw that the prime minister was prevaricating, and he pressed on until Sharon explicitly promised not to kill Arafat.
Even before this promise, Sharon, in consultation with the heads of the IDF and the intelligence community, had reached the conclusion that Israel must not be seen as being involved in the death of Yasser Arafat in any way. This became even more important after he made the promise to President Bush.
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AND THEN, SUDDENLY, THE man who had managed to elude death so many times succumbed to a mysterious intestinal disease and died. Laboratory tests conducted at the initiative of various parties came to different conclusions. According to some tests, there were traces of polonium, a radioactive material used in assassinations, on Arafat’s clothes and remains. Other experts determined that he had died a natural death. Arafat’s medical file from the French military hospital near Paris, where Sharon permitted him to be flown so that he wouldn’t die in an area under Israeli control, raises many questions and does not rule out the possibility that he died from AIDS.
Israeli spokespersons categorically denied that Israel was in any way involved in Arafat’s death. “We didn’t kill Arafat,” senior members of the intelligence community and political echelon have solemnly repeated.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the timing of Arafat’s death was quite peculiar, coming so soon after the assassination of Yassin. In his book Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait, Uri Dan, Sharon’s loyal spokesman, claimed that in a later meeting with Bush, Sharon said that he no longer considered himself bound to his earlier promise not to kill Arafat, and that the president offered no response. During that period, Dan complained to Sharon, asking why he didn’t exile Arafat or put him on trial: “So, Arafat has complete immunity?”
Sharon responded tersely: “Let me do things my way.” Dan then noted, “Suddenly, he cut off our conversation, something unusual in the relations between us.” Dan went on to say that Arafat’s condition began to deteriorate after that meeting with the president, and concluded by stating, “Ariel Sharon will appear in the history books as the one who wiped out Arafat without killing him.”
If I knew the answer to the question of what killed Yasser Arafat, I wouldn’t be able to write it here in this book, or even be able to write that I know the answer. The military censor in Israel forbids me from discussing this subject.
One can say with certainty that Sharon wanted to get rid of Arafat, whom he saw as a “two-legged beast” and whom he had failed to kill twenty years earlier. If Sharon indeed ordered Arafat’s liquidation, it was done in utmost secrecy, in much smaller forums than with any other targeted killing. Sharon himself defined the goal of such an operation, without admitting it: “Recent events are likely to be a historical turning point,” he said in a special statement following Arafat’s death. “If, after the Arafat era, a different, serious, responsible leadership emerges, one that carries out its undertakings…a fair opportunity will arise to coordinate various moves with that leadership, and even to resume diplomatic negotiations with it.”
Without acknowledging direct involvement in Arafat’s death, all of the senior echelon during that period agreed that the removal of Arafat improved Israel’s security. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who was appointed to replace him as president, and the new Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who had close ties to the American administration, launched
a determined campaign against terror. Even the skeptical heads of the Shin Bet admit that the Palestinians became serious about stopping terrorism after the arrival of Abbas and Fayyad, and that the quiet achieved since Arafat’s death is due largely to the close security cooperation with the two of them.
The war between Israel and the Palestinians that broke out in September 2000—a war of continual retaliations of suicide bombings and targeted killings—gradually subsided until it stopped altogether.
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ISRAEL DEPLOYED A NUMBER of measures in its war against Palestinian terror in the Second Intifada, including IDF ground forays to conduct extensive arrests and the construction of a barrier between the West Bank and Israel that made it more difficult for suicide terrorists to enter into Israel. But while these measures somewhat hampered the terror organizations, statistics clearly show that they continued their attempts to execute murderous terror attacks after those measures were initiated, and that the terror attacks ceased only after a massive number of targeted killings of terrorist operatives and—in Operation Picking Anemones—the assassination of terrorist leaders.
Thanks to its streamlined targeted killing apparatus, the Israeli intelligence community triumphed over something that for many years had been considered unbeatable: suicide terrorism. By investing the resources of an entire country, through dogged persistence and cooperation between the intelligence and operational arms, and under the decisive leadership of Ariel Sharon, Israel proved that a murderous and seemingly uncompromising terror network can be brought to its knees.
The use of targeted killings, however, had heavy concomitant costs. The price was paid, first and foremost, by the innocent Palestinians who became the “coincidental damage” of the assassinations. Many innocent people were killed, and thousands, including many children, were wounded and left disabled for life. Others were mentally scarred or homeless.
A high-ranking Shin Bet officer said, “In the past when it was all secret and of dubious legality, we could carry out very few hits. How many of these can be done without getting exposed? The minute the IDF advocate general made these actions kosher, legal, and overt, we opened up an assembly line for assassinations. So now our consciences are cleaner, but a lot more folks ended up dead.”
Gabriella Blum, as of 2018 a law professor at Harvard, was an officer in the IDF Military Advocate General’s Corps and one of the authors of the memorandum that legalized assassinations. Commenting in 2017, she expressed her serious regrets: “I am deeply concerned that what was originally authorized as an exceptional act to be taken in exceptional cases became a regular practice.”
The targeted killing campaign also did a great deal to further marginalize and delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world. David was once again behaving like Goliath.
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz tried to explain why Israel adopted its targeted killing policy: “This is the basic code of conduct in the Middle East: They realized that we are insane, that we are ready to go all the way, that we would not be prepared to swallow any more.”
Yet although the deaths of two high-ranking figures, Yassin and Arafat, certainly had a dramatic impact on the region, Ami Ayalon was right when he said that while assassinating leaders was likely to divert history onto a new course, it would not necessarily be a better one than the previous path—it might very well be one that ends up prolonging the amount of time before peace is attained.
As it turned out, Arafat was the only person able to keep the Palestinian people united, more or less, under the PA’s control. After his demise, President Abbas failed in this regard, and Hamas took over Gaza and established a second Palestinian entity there. This new arrangement constituted a grave threat to Israel, a threat much greater than Arafat ever was.
Hamas succeeded in gaining control of Gaza thanks to the enormous assistance it received from Iran. Paradoxically, it is hard to believe that Hamas would ever have succeeded in establishing a state of its own in the Gaza Strip if Sheikh Yassin were still alive. Yassin strongly opposed any cooperation or ties with Iran, and he imposed his view on the organization.
Undoubtedly, the killing of Sheikh Yassin was the harshest blow suffered by Hamas in its entire history, and the single biggest factor in its desire to reach a ceasefire with Israel. But it also led to another unlikely twist in the course of Middle East history: Thanks to Yassin’s removal from the scene, Iran, Israel’s most dangerous enemy, forged the last link in its plan to become a regional power.
LEADERSHIP CAME UNEXPECTEDLY TO Bashar al-Assad.
Hafez al-Assad, who seized control of Syria in November 1970, had expected his eldest son, Bassel, to succeed him, but he was killed in a car crash. Assad’s second choice was his youngest son, Maher, who had chosen a military career. But he proved too hotheaded, inclined to fits of rage and violent outbursts. A third son, Majd, suffered from a congenital disease, which later killed him. That left Bashar, who was twenty-nine years old and in London, doing postgraduate training in ophthalmology, when his father summoned him back to Damascus right after Bassel’s fatal accident, in 1994.
Bashar had always been considered the weakest of the Assad sons, somewhat aloof and dreamy, appearing a little intimidated. His father may have been aware of Bashar’s weaknesses, but his concern about the family’s continued rule was his top priority. He sent Bashar to the military, where he quickly rose to the rank of colonel, then appointed him commander of the Syrian forces in Lebanon for seasoning. By the end of the 1990s, Bashar was well groomed for the presidency. Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000. Bashar was elected president the next month.
But Assad’s inheritance was, at that precise moment, a problematic one. The Soviet Union had dissolved a decade earlier, the Cold War was over, and Russia at that time wasn’t nearly as influential in the Middle East as it had been. The global stage was being reset, and Bashar al-Assad had to find Syria’s place on it.
The Syrian economy, however, was in worse shape than ever. The state’s coffers were empty, and its army, though one of the largest in the region, was partly outdated and in urgent need of modern weaponry. Most important, Israel still held the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967. It was a deep and open wound, and national pride would not allow it to clot.
In the middle of 2000, Assad had a choice: to align Syria with the United States, the last remaining superpower, or with Iran, the emerging regional power. This was not a difficult decision. Ten years before he died, President Hafez al-Assad had stunned the world by agreeing to join the alliance the United States forged against another Arab state—to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He hoped for something in return—economic benefits, removal of Syria from the list of states involved in terrorism and the drug trade, and pressure on Israel to completely withdraw from the Golan Heights. He received none of these.
Three months before he died, Hafez al-Assad met with President Bill Clinton in Geneva, the climax of an American diplomatic effort to broker a peace accord between Syria and Israel. Clinton brought a message to Assad from Prime Minister Ehud Barak that included the best offer he had ever received from Israel: a nearly complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, except that no “Syrian soldiers would splash their feet in the waters of the Sea of Galilee”—that is, there would be no permanent Syrian presence on the shore. Assad heard Clinton and torpedoed the summit shortly after it started.
For Israel and the United States, this was proof of Hafez al-Assad’s illogical intransigence, perhaps attributable to the stomach ailments and dementia from which he suffered. In the eyes of Assad, a great devotee of conspiracy theories, the summit was additional proof that the United States was just a satellite of Israel, not the other way around, and that he would never receive all of the Golan Heights or any other significant benefit from his connection with the United States.
And Israel seemed weakened.
Ehud Barak pulled out unconditionally from Lebanon in
May 2000, which, from Assad’s perspective, amounted to a humiliating defeat. To him, it proved that effective use of guerrilla warfare could force even the most powerful military force in the region to surrender.
Hafez al-Assad exhorted his son Bashar to retrieve the occupied Golan Heights. But he also advised him to avoid head-on military confrontation with Israel, from which Syria almost certainly would emerge the loser. Iran, however, already had proxy terror groups—Hezbollah chief among them—waging an asymmetrical war against the Jews. Bashar al-Assad believed it was better, then, to let the radicals fight a dirty war that might force Israel into concessions. Why shed Syrian blood when the jihadists were so willing to spill their own?
Assad accordingly made the link with Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran the central component of his security doctrine. Syria and Iran signed a series of agreements on mutual defense, arms supplies, and weapons development, and Tehran gave Assad $1.5 billion to rebuild his army.
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MANY OF THE TOP theocratic Iranians considered Assad and his Alawite brethren to be heretics, traitors to holy tradition, infidels who offended Allah. On the other hand, Syria had a strong military, a border with Israel, and more international credibility than Tehran.
The Iranian government also had some problems of its own. The state was in the throes of a severe economic crisis, and there were acute rifts in Persian society and growing resentment toward the ayatollahs. Along with North Korea and Iraq, Iran had become among the most isolated and ostracized countries in the world. In his State of the Union address in January 2002, President Bush would describe these three countries as the “axis of evil.” Thereafter, the American administration tightened sanctions against Iran.
Bush did not include Syria in the “axis of evil” because the Americans still hoped it could be pulled toward the West, in part because Syria maintained friendly relations with many Western states—France and Germany, in particular. “We tried to cooperate with him [Assad] against the terrorists who were fighting us in Iraq,” said Michael Hayden, chief of the NSA and the CIA during the first decade of the twenty-first century, adding that such hopes were soon dashed.
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