Long history of Israel's 'covert killing'

PLO second in command Khalil al-Wazir (left) was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunisia

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Jerusalem

The Islamic movement Hamas claims that the death of one its senior commanders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, is the latest in Israel's history of assassinating individuals it believes to have been behind attacks on its citizens.

Israel's general policy is to neither confirm nor deny allegations about the activities of its intelligence agents but it is notable that many of its enemies meet suspicious and violent deaths.

"We are witnessing an intense intelligence struggle, most of it is covert, some of it overt," said Ronen Bergman, author of By Any Means Necessary, and other books and articles on Israel's covert operations. Among the best documented of Israel's assassinations were a wave of killings of pro-Palestinian militants in Paris, Nicosia, Beirut and Athens, carried out in response to the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics in 1972 which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis.

Methods used included a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed, and a raid in Beirut in which current Defence Minister Ehud Barak dressed as a woman.

There are even claims that a poisoned chocolate was later used to kill a commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in East Germany in 1978.

In 1987 Israel made no attempt to disguise their assassination of Khalil al-Wazir - known as Abu Jihad - the Palestine Liberation Organisation's military leader and second in command.

Israeli commandos crept into Tunisia, where the PLO's exiled leadership was based, and shot him several times in his own home before escaping by sea.

It was an operation in which Mr Barak is also believed to have been involved.

Covert failure

In 1997 during the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term in office, one special operation went humiliatingly wrong.Israeli agents tried to kill Khaled Meshaal, who was then a fund-raiser for Hamas based in Amman.

Disguised as Canadian tourists, they injected poison into his ear - but he was rushed to hospital before it took full effect.

Mr Meshaal's life was literally saved by Jordan's then King Hussein, who was outraged by the attack and - boosted by pressure from then US President Bill Clinton - demanded the Israeli government hand over the antidote.

The agents - who had been arrested - were exchanged for an Israeli apology and the release of 20 prisoners, including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Hamas's spiritual leader.

Mr Meshaal has gone on to become Hamas's Damascus-based leader.

Targeted killings

As the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, raged in the years after 2000, Israel turned its sights on militant leaders within Gaza and the West Bank.Militant groups sent waves of suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilian targets such as buses and cafes.

Part of Israel's response was the controversial policy it described as "targeted" killings - Amnesty International described them as "extra-judicial".

Palestinians say dozens of militant figures, including Sheikh Yassin and another senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, were killed, in many cases by missiles launched from helicopters.

But in 2008, allegations of Israeli action farther afield intensified with the death of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, implicated in numerous bomb attacks and a wave of hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Hezbollah wasted little time in blaming Israel for his death in a car bomb in Damascus.

The group is thought to have been trying to avenge his death ever since.

'Revenge'

Investigative journalist Mr Bergman says the past three to four years have seen the Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria alliance "far more exposed" by Israeli intelligence, and on the defensive.

Even in recent weeks, the deaths of two Hamas members in a bombing in Lebanon, an attempt to bomb an Israeli diplomatic convoy in Jordan, and the mysterious killing of an Iranian scientist - though a quantum physicist, not a nuclear specialist - offer more material for speculation.

Targeting Mr Mabhouh would fit with Israel's historical policy, Mr Bergman adds.

"In some cases Israel has decided to close the circle and take revenge on people who were behind symbolic acts of terrorism - not necessary the most violent or lethal acts," he said.

And this can happen years after the incident in question.

Hamas claims Mr Mabhouh is the mastermind of the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in 1989.

Sgt Sasportas's body was located seven years later, from a sketched map supplied by the Palestinians, and dug up from underneath a road that had been built over it.

The incident was an emotional one for the public in a country where most people serve in the military.

Mr Mabhouh's brother said Israel had been trying to kill him for years, and had unsuccessfully attempted to poison him six months earlier in Beirut.

But the reports remain confusing, with allegations that he was electrocuted, suffocated and poisoned all circulating - as well as reports that Hamas initially announced that he had died from bone disease a week earlier.

And this incident, like many before it, may remain shrouded in mystery, even as Hamas vows to take revenge.

Hamas Official Murdered in Dubai Hotel Room

New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: January 29, 2010

SANA, Yemen — A senior Hamas official was murdered in a Dubai hotel room last week, the Palestinian militant group said on Friday. Hamas accused Israel of the killing and vowed to retaliate.

The official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, lived in Syria and was a founder of Hamas’s military wing, which has carried out hundreds of deadly attacks against Israel since the 1980s, Hamas officials said. He had survived several previous assassination attempts, relatives said, including one three months ago that left him in a coma for 24 hours.

The Dubai police issued a statement saying that Mr. Mabhouh was killed hours after arriving in the city on Jan. 19 by a “professional criminal gang” that left Dubai before the body was discovered. The killers had been tracking him since before his arrival in Dubai, and most of them traveled on European passports, the statement said.

There were conflicting reports about how Mr. Mabhouh was killed, with some relatives saying Hamas officials told them he was electrocuted and others saying he was poisoned or suffocated. Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman in Lebanon, said “we will not talk about the details until we have put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

Israeli officials declined to comment.

Assassinations are rare in Dubai, a polyglot business hub on the Persian Gulf where deposed foreign leaders sometimes sought shelter among the city’s skyscrapers and luxury hotels. But that began to change last year after a former Chechen rebel was shot dead in an underground Dubai parking lot.

“The myth that Dubai is the eye of the storm, and no one will touch it because everyone has an interest, is being blown apart,” said Christopher Davidson, the author of two books on the United Arab Emirates, to which Dubai belongs.

Mr. Mabhouh is said to have organized the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian uprising in the 1980s. He was imprisoned several times by Israel.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006, but its political leaders are also based in Damascus, Syria. There have been a number of attempts on the lives of Hamas members. Last month two Hamas officials were killed in a mysterious explosion in southern Beirut, near the headquarters of Hezbollah. In 1997, Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the group’s Damascus politburo, survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Amman, Jordan.

Mr. Mabhouh was buried on Friday in the Al Yarmouk Palestinian camp, near the Syrian capital, on Friday afternoon. Television images showed large crowds of Palestinians in attendance, as pallbearers carried his coffin, draped in a green Hamas flag.

Hamas officials visited the Mabhouh family home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza and vowed to avenge his death.

Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, kissed Mr. Mabhouh’s father on the forehead and described his son as a hero. Another senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, told reporters at the Jabaliya home that Mr. Mabhouh was “not the first one the Mossad’s hand has reached.”

“We reserve our right to respond to this crime in a suitable time and place,” Mr. Hayya said. But, he added, “We in Hamas emphasize that our battlefield is the land of Palestine and our battle with the enemy is in Palestine,” and not on foreign soil.

Mohammed Abdel Raouf al-Mabhouh, the brother of Mahmoud, said in an interview that he had last seen his brother in May 1989. Mahmoud felt that he was in danger, according to his brother, because of his involvement in the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers in separate incidents that year.

Mahmoud escaped Gaza without telling his family where he was going. Mohammed said he had not been back in Gaza since, but that his wife and children had visited there in 2007.

On Jan. 20, according to Mohammed, Mahmoud’s wife called from Syria to say that Mahmoud had been found dead in his hotel room in Dubai, hours after his arrival there.

“We were sure there was something mysterious about his death,” Mohammed said, adding that his brother had been the target of several assassination attempts before.