by Mike Kelly
Sheik Yassin was not among the four hundred Hamas operatives transported to Lebanon. He was in jail in Israel during that deportation. But from his prison cell, Yassin issued a series of proclamations to his Sunni followers in support of suicide martyrdom that had previously been embraced only by Shiites. In later research on this theological and tactical change in warfare, a number of academics concluded that Yassin, along with several other Islamic clerics—notably the Egyptian-born Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi—had formed the foundation for what would be a devastating terror campaign against Israel that would last more than a decade.
That campaign began on an April afternoon in 1993, at a dusty roadside cafe in the Jordan Valley, just north of the ancient city of Jericho. Hamas, in what some reports claim was an alliance with Islamic Jihad, staged its first suicide attack with a homemade bomb designed by one of its first converts to the new theology of suicide martyrdom—Yahya Ayyash.
A Hamas operative parked a truck next to a tourist bus and detonated the bomb. Although only the driver died, Ayyash learned from the attack how to build bigger, more powerful bombs. That first bombing was only the beginning.
Among the four hundred suspected Hamas loyalists rounded up by Israeli security forces and deported to Lebanon were two of Salameh’s brothers—or so Salameh said. He told his Israeli interrogator in that first interview at the hospital that both brothers had been arrested before and were living in a camp run by Hezbollah.
In early 1993, Salameh said he left the Gaza Strip on a journey to visit his brothers. According to this account, Salameh said he embarked on almost two years of traveling, though this was not just a personal journey to find his brothers. Salameh visited several Hamas offices.
What is missing from Salameh’s story is whether he had been ordered by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip to visit his brothers or other Palestinians he saw during his travels across the Middle East in 1993 and 1994. It seems unlikely that Salameh simply floated in and out of various Hamas offices without a plan or orders.
But Salameh never explained the decision-making behind his travels or made it clear that he was asked. Nor did he say who financed his travels. He worked several jobs during that two-year period of traveling, but not the kind of work that would allow him to cover airfare, meals, and lodging. It’s likely that Salameh’s journey was financed by Hamas.
“In early 1993, I left Gaza and crossed Allenby Bridge to Jordan,” he told Sergeant Ohayon. “I stayed for one week and then left for Sudan.”
In Sudan, Salameh said he contacted the head of the Hamas office and was hired as “the night guard.” After eight months, he traveled to Syria. “In Damascus, I went to the Hamas office,” he said. The director of the Hamas office in Damascus then drove him to Marj al-Zohour, a Lebanese town near the Israeli border where many of the four hundred Hamas deportees were living. Salameh said he stayed there a month, then returned to Damascus and moved in with a relative whom he did not name. He did not say if he actually saw his brothers.
What is noteworthy about Salameh’s life in Damascus after he returned from Lebanon is that he did not get a job as he had done in Sudan. “I did not work but I underwent military training,” he told Sergeant Ohayon.
Salameh said his instructors were from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that dabbled in Leninist-Marxist ideology while also focusing on strategies to attack Israelis. “They trained me in assembling and disassembling weapons and in preparing both small and large demolition charges,” he said. “I was in training every day in Syria”—which was about twelve months, according to the transcript of his interrogation by Sergeant Ohayon.
Salameh offered few other details about his training. And there is no indication that Sergeant Ohayon pressed him for those details. For example, Salameh did not reveal names of his instructors and only said “the trainers were Palestinians.” He also did not describe the types of weapons he trained with or what sorts of explosives he was using. Finally, he said nothing about whether he spoke to anyone in Sudan, Syria, or Lebanon about the new strategy of suicide bombing that Hamas has embraced.
As it turned out, he was not telling the whole truth.
Salameh said he returned to the Gaza Strip in December 1994. But as he crossed the border into Gaza from Egypt, he was arrested by Yasser Arafat’s security forces. He spent the next six months in jail.
As with his training in Syria, the details of Salameh’s arrest and imprisonment are scant. He does not describe what crime he was charged with. Nor does he say where he was imprisoned. No independent account or set of records are available to corroborate Salameh’s story of his arrest. The transcript of Salameh’s interrogation indicates, however, that he may have been carrying a rifle or a pistol when he tried to cross into the Gaza Strip. Again he does not describe what sort of firearm he carried, only that he wanted to keep it after he left prison. “After my release,” he told Sergeant Ohayon, “I applied to the Palestinian Authority, along with all the other Hamas activists, for a license for my weapon.”
By the mid-1990s, the Gaza Strip had become a furnace of Palestinian dissent and nationalism, and Salameh saw his future as a Hamas operative. His return to the Gaza Strip also coincided with the return of one of Hamas’s most notorious leaders, Yahya Ayyash.
Unlike Salameh, who tried to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt and was reportedly apprehended, Ayyash successfully sneaked across the Gaza border from the West Bank and avoided Israeli Shin Bet agents. Ayyash’s elusiveness and bomb-making skills were becoming legendary. And while Ayyash had been born on the West Bank, Shin Bet intelligence analysts had long assumed that he would try to make his way to Gaza. Ayyash’s wife and son were living on the Gaza Strip, along with other members of his family. By the spring of 1995, as Hassan Salameh was finishing his prison sentence in a Palestinian jail, Shin Bet agents had already begun to piece together Ayyash’s whereabouts in the Gaza Strip.
It’s not clear from that first interview at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center whether Salameh met with Ayyash. Salameh does not describe a meeting. But Ayyash’s assassination on January 5, 1996, was a turning point for Salameh in the story he told to Sergeant Ohayon. Ayyash had been a key figure in the al-Qassam brigade, the military wing of Hamas. After Ayyash died, he was replaced by bomb-making protégé Mohammed Deif, who grew up in Khan Yunis, the same Gaza Strip community as Salameh’s.
Deif was born in 1960 and was eleven years older than Salameh. In his interview with Sergeant Ohayon, Salameh did not say whether he knew Deif during his boyhood in Khan Yunis. But after Salameh’s release from prison in June 1995, he linked up with Deif. The two, after all, seemed to be on the same path within Hamas’s military wing—both as bomb-makers, with Deif learning his trade directly from Ayyash.
After Ayyash’s death, Salameh said Deif asked for his help. “I was contacted by Mohammed Deif who told me that because Yahya Ayyash was killed, we would commit terrorist attacks,” Salameh said.
Until this point in the interview, Salameh had offered only sketchy details about his exploits from 1992 to 1996. That tone changed, however, with the mention of Mohammed Deif and the plan to stage terrorist attacks to avenge Ayyash’s death.
For several hours, Salameh outlined the plot that led to the suicide bombings on February 25, 1996, of the Number 18 bus on Jaffa Road, then at the bus stop in Ashkelon, and a week later the suicide bombing aboard another Number 18 bus on Jaffa Road. He described how Deif ordered a “squad” of Hamas operatives to infiltrate Israel from the Gaza Strip and how Salameh followed “through the same break in the fence.” He mentioned the rendezvous with the Hamas squad in an orange grove near the port city of Ashdod and the explosives he carried—“three suitcases with thirteen kilograms of TNT explosives in each,” a total of almost ninety pounds. He also shed light on some of the financing of the bomb plot, explaining that Deif initially gave him “1,520 Jordanian dinars,” or approximate
ly $2,200.
Salameh described how he linked up with Hamas members in the Jerusalem area, how he tried to assume the identity of a college student at Birzeit University in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, and how he recruited “three youths for committing suicide attacks.”
He talked of traveling from Jerusalem to Ramallah, to Hebron, and back to Jerusalem. He mentioned that he spent at least one night in a college dormitory—and how he linked up with a Hamas contact on campus by using a password, “fanhales.” He described how he scouted the locations for the bombings “where a lot of Jews would die,” how he eventually befriended Mohammad Abu Wardeh, who helped Hassan Salameh to recruit his cousin, Majdi, and another teenager from the al-Fawwar refugee camp as the first suicide bombers. He even outlined how he was able to obtain more money from Hamas. Each Friday, a messenger from Mohammed Deif would make his way to the prayer services at the al-Aqsa mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The messenger would then pass money and other written messages to Hamas couriers who would then contact Salameh at one of his hideouts. “I do not know the name of that messenger,” Salameh told Sergeant Ohayon. “Through this messenger, Mohammed Deif forwarded letters and funds to me.”
It also seems that Salameh was able to communicate back to Deif by passing messages to the Hamas courier who came to the al-Aqsa mosque. Salameh told Sergeant Ohayon that he even took the risk of notifying Deif of the impending suicide bombings—which may offer a hint of how Arafat learned that an attack was planned and why he urged Terje Roed-Larsen to avoid Jerusalem on Sunday, February 25, 1996. Whether Salameh communicated in a code is not clear. “Prior to that first attack I notified Mohammed Deif in a letter about the attacks that were scheduled for Sunday,” he admitted.
In the days leading up to that fateful Sunday, Salameh described how he met with the bombers at a mosque in Ramallah and again at a safe house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis. He explained how he built the bombs—in particular, how he “wrapped the explosives with large and small nails,” and how Majdi Abu Wardeh was “dressed in new civilian clothes” to blend in with the students and commuters who joined Matthew Eisenfeld and Sara Duker on the Number 18 bus.
Finally, Salameh mentioned how he heard that the bombs he had assembled had been detonated. He had gone to Ramallah. “On Sunday morning,” he told Sergeant Ohayon, “I heard on the radio about the attacks that had taken place.” He did not say if he felt exhilarated or sad or even whether he knew of the high death toll.
After radio report of the attacks, he reached out for Mohammad Abu Wardeh and arranged another meeting at a mosque in Ramallah. “I told him that I wanted one more guy for committing an additional attack,” he said of a bombing that would take place the following Sunday aboard another Number 18 bus on Jaffa Road. He also found a new hiding spot for his stash of explosives—in the home of Rizzek Rajoub.
As with his meetings with the other suicide bombers, he did not describe how long he counseled the young men, whether they asked any questions about their fate or whether they demonstrated any reluctance. Salameh offered only a matter-of-fact synopsis of the conversation that, in retrospect, seemed more akin to a mundane business transaction than a mission that would result in the death of the bomber and many others. “We met near the mosque,” Salameh said. “I proposed to him to commit a suicide bombing attack, and he agreed.”
After the third bombing on March 3, 1996, Salameh shifted strategy. “There was an order from the Hamas headquarters to stop committing suicide terrorist attacks and begin kidnapping soldiers,” he told his interrogator.
At the same time, Salameh was also aware that he and other Hamas operatives who carried out the bombings were the subject of one of the largest manhunts in Israeli history. He told Sergeant Ohayon how he narrowly escaped arrest on several occasions during the three months he was on the run in the West Bank. He also described the series of homes where he hid—including supplying the names of Palestinians who offered him refuge and the false name he adopted. “Throughout that whole time I had a nickname,” Salameh said. “I was not called ‘Hassan’ but only ‘Abu Hasar.’ ”
Salameh added, however: “Everyone knew that I was Hassan Salameh.”
The kidnapping of a soldier never took place. Salameh described at least one attempt—in Jerusalem—that was “unsuccessful.” But he offered no details—nor is it clear if Sergeant Ohayon asked for any. When he drove to Hebron with Rizzek Rajoub on that Friday evening in May and was stopped at a checkpoint, Salameh said he was attempting to pull together another plan to capture an Israeli soldier and was on his way to a meeting at a mosque in Hebron to talk to other Hamas operatives.
“A soldier stopped us and fired at me,” he said.
Salameh’s story at this point seemed credible. He listed places he visited, names of his hosts, jobs he held, and a schedule of his travels. In that first interview at the hospital, Salameh stopped twice to take naps, once for a nurse to tend to his wounds, and one more time for a physiotherapist to check on his overall condition. What is notable about that interview, however, is the length. The session with Sergeant Ohayon concluded with Salameh confirming the translation of his statement and signing his name in Arabic. It was 5:50 in the evening, more than seven hours after Sergeant Ohayon walked into his hospital room and announced to him, “You do not have to say a word unless you wish to.”
Six weeks later, Salameh talked again.
His second interview, on July 2, 1996, began with two questions that had not been asked in the initial session at Hadassah Hospital.
“Is the testimony you gave from the hospital true? And were you conscious of what you said?” the Israeli interrogator asked.
“Yes, what I said was true,” Salameh answered, then quickly added: “Maybe I forgot a few things. I was pretty frightened when I testified.”
What Salameh “forgot” to mention in that first interrogation on May 21 at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center was hardly inconsequential. Besides traveling to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Sudan, he made one more stop before returning to the Gaza Strip to formulate plans for his bombing campaign: He went to Iran.
Chapter 8
When a murder occurs, police often forge long and deeply intimate relationships with families of victims. Many experienced investigators routinely reach out to relatives for help in sorting through leads to track down a suspected murderer. Sometimes hard-driving detectives and beat cops view these connections with victims’ families as an opportunity to offer comfort. Occasionally, they even look to families for support and inspiration for themselves as they encounter the inevitable pitfalls and frustrating dead ends that are part of almost every complicated investigation.
Whatever the case, the relationship between cops and victims’ families is understandable and inevitable, say psychologists. Relatives of murder victims suddenly find themselves in painfully vulnerable positions, with few confidants other than police officers with whom they can share their sorrow, anger, and pain.
That relationship takes on more profound dimension when police finally catch a killer. After an arrest, cops often notify the victim’s family before calling a press conference. For many officers, it is a matter of pride to tell families that a killer has been caught. It’s also an opportunity for cops, steeped in the routine of dealing with crooks and collecting evidence, to help a family bring closure and context to its grief. Many relatives of victims—especially the parents of murdered children—say they feel relief knowing that a killer has finally been captured and is facing justice.
None of this happened after the deaths of Matt Eisenfeld and Sara Duker or, for that matter, when Alisa Flatow was killed. In each case, a variety of Palestinian operatives were captured by Israeli and Palestinian security forces.
The suspects included Hassan Salameh. But the Duker and Eisenfeld families heard nothing about him during that first year.
The Flatow family foun
d itself in a similar predicament. There had been a telephone call to Stephen Flatow in the fall of 1995 from the New York–based Israeli Consul General Colette Avital about the assassination of a Palestinian leader in Malta who was linked to Alisa’s murder. But what sort of link was it? As Flatow hung up the phone after Avital’s call, he considered this new information vague and imprecise. The killing seemed like the work of Israel’s Mossad spy service, but the Israelis were not admitting involvement. Meanwhile, the dead man, Fathi Shaqaqi, was a well-known leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had taken responsibility for the bombing that killed Alisa. But had Shaqaqi actually planned the bombing or recruited the bombers, or built the bomb? What about the actual bomber and the others who participated in the plot?
Flatow had no idea. In the ensuing months, he heard little more. He had no inkling, for example, that Israeli police had already arrested several members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the bombing. The same was true with information not shared with the Duker and Eisenfeld families. In addition to Salameh, other Hamas operatives had been apprehended, including Mohammad Abu Wardeh, who encouraged his cousin Majdi to be the suicide bomber. But that news never reached the Dukers or Eisenfelds.
Salameh’s arrest in Israel was covered by Israeli’s media. But the American press barely mentioned it and instead focused most of its attention on Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had defeated Shimon Peres in an election in late May by a margin of 1 percent—about thirty thousand votes.