The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

by Ami Pedahzur

  FIGURE 1.1 FEDAYEEN ATTACKS, 1952–1957

  Source: NSSC Dataset on Palestinian Terrorism, www.nssc.haifa.ac.il

  In Camp Sataf in the hills of Jerusalem, Sharon and his deputy Shlomo Baum started shaping the Israeli counterterrorism doctrine. They trained their soldiers in land navigation, survival, and close-quarters combat. Sharon led the unit, which had been recruited by means of the friend-brings-a-friend method, with an informal atmosphere that was very similar to the Palmach units and later became the trademark of IDF elite units. While during the course of training great demands were made on the soldiers, back on base they enjoyed a number of rewarding perks. They were allowed to walk about with an unkempt appearance and were not required to adhere to the prevailing military discipline. Sharon and his men would also spice up the typical drab IDF menu with meals cooked from the wild animals they hunted in their leisure hours. The decision to introduce behavioral precedents that were different from the conventional IDF ones was not arbitrary. The militia nature of Unit 101 also enabled the political echelons to deny the fact that commando operations were in fact carried out by IDF soldiers.

  Despite the highly qualified military capabilities displayed by soldiers of Unit 101, the inaugural special force was in fact incorporated into the Paratroopers Brigade a little while after its establishment. This was mainly due to the criticism leveled at Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Ariel Sharon, commander of the unit, in the wake of the operation at the Qibya village in Samaria on October 14. The raid on Qibya was carried out in retaliation for the murder of members of the Kanias family—a mother and her two children—by infiltrators. The Israeli public demanded a fitting act of retribution; however, this time as well, the Paratroopers Brigade was reluctant to lead the operation. Sharon, on the other hand, showed full readiness to carry out the action. Ultimately, the strike team consisted of a platoon of Unit 101 and two and a half Paratroopers platoons. Sharon led the forces, which overpowered the village after four hours of heavy fighting. At that point, the act of retribution was executed. Sharon first selected a number of buildings in the center of the town, including the school, the police building, a coffeehouse, and residential homes. Next, a Unit 101 cell commanded by Shlomo Gruber cleared out the buildings and sabotaged them. Hurrying, the soldiers did not check to see that the buildings had been vacated. At 3:20 in the morning, when the forces began their march back to Israeli territory, the ruins of forty-two buildings remained behind them in Qibya. The next day, it became evident that during the course of the operation sixty-nine Palestinians had been killed, half of them elderly people, women, and children. Many of the victims had been inside the buildings while they were blown up. There was an outcry of world public opinion, and ten days after the operation, the United Nations Security Council condemned Israel.

  To the world, Ben-Gurion argued that Israeli civilians, refugees from Arab countries, or Holocaust survivors had taken the law into their own hands and carried out the operation. Domestically, his tone was quite different. Sharon was summoned to a meeting with Ben-Gurion and was required to provide explanations. Despite the overall positive impression that Prime Minister Ben-Gurion had of the young officer, the first IDF commando unit was disbanded. From an operational point of view, the unit had not succeeded in reducing the level of fedayeen terrorism (see figure 1.2), and after it was dismantled Palestinian violence continued in full force. This was demonstrated most notably in the infamous attack at the Maale Akrabim road in March 1954, when a bus commuting from Tel-Aviv to the southern city of Eilat was ambushed and attacked by Palestinians who breached the Jordanian border. The terrorists killed twelve passengers, while a child and a woman who had played dead were the only ones to survive.18

  FIGURE 1.2 PALESTINIAN TERRORIST ATTACKS, 1952–1956

  Source: NSSC Dataset on Palestinian Terrorism, www.nssc.haifa.ac.il

  At any rate, the dismantling of the unit did not hurt Sharon’s military career—quite the opposite. Unit 101 was not fully disbanded, and Sharon was appointed as the commander of the 890 Battalion of the Paratroopers. His soldiers from the unit joined him, and together they turned the conservative Paratroopers Battalion into a unit that specialized in retaliatory attacks against fedayeen strongholds.

  The raids undertaken by Unit 101 were not the only manifestation of the Israeli inclination toward the war model. By the mid-1950s, Israel performed the first counterterrorism-related assassination. The target was Colonel Mustafa Hafez, who held one of the most sensitive positions in Egyptian intelligence, namely commander of the Palestine unit. His position included mounting espionage missions in Israeli territories and thwarting Israeli intelligence efforts at recruiting and activating agents in the Gaza Strip. In the spring of 1955, Hafez’s range of authorities was extended. The commander of the Egyptian army, General Amar, put him in charge of six hundred fedayeen fighters who had been assembled into a battalion and trained for action by Egypt. Under his brazen leadership, Hafez’s soldiers were transformed from a nuisance into a genuine security risk. At its worst, during the week of April 1—7, 1956, dozens of cells numbering some two hundred soldiers were able to penetrate Israeli borders. They attacked civilians and soldiers in Lod, Kfar Habad, and the moshavim of Shafrir and Stariya and even reached the main road from Tel Aviv to Ramla. The terrorized citizens of Israel were afraid to leave their houses.

  The intense activities of the young Egyptian intelligence officer were a source of great concern for Moshe Dayan, who by then was the chief of staff. He saw Hafez as directly responsible for the fedayeen battalion’s successes and applied pressure on the chief of Aman, Colonel Yehoshafat Harkabi, to deal with the problem. Harkabi did not waste time. He approached Rehaviah Vardi, commander of the 154th Unit of the Intelligence Corps, and asked him for ideas on how to eliminate Hafez. Avraham Dar, a Mossad operative who was sent to Egypt in 1951 to establish a network of informants in the Jewish community there, was designated to help Vardi plan the operation. He had a personal incentive to take part in this operation. His Egyptian network was exposed in July 1954 in an attempt to plant a bomb in a movie theater in Alexandria. Two of its members were executed, while the others were put in prison for life.

  The main obstacle was the tight circle of security that surrounded Hafez after an earlier assassination attempt by Unit 101 had failed. The two officers rolled up their sleeves and produced a series of plots that were designed to get around Hafez’s bodyguards. Among other ideas, they proposed that a letter bomb or a poisoned fruit basket be delivered by post to Hafez. These schemes were rejected for fear of harming other innocent persons. Then Dar had an inspired idea. One of the operatives engaged by the southern unit of the 154th, twenty-five-year-old Suleiman Al-Talalka, turned out to be a double agent who was also in the service of the Egyptian intelligence. Israeli intelligence did not inform him that his cover was blown; instead, they decided to exploit the young Bedouin’s loyalty to Egyptian intelligence to their own benefit. Early in the summer of 1956, Al-Talalka was summoned to the 154th Unit’s headquarters in Be’er Sheva. The officers awaiting him appeared troubled, a fact that clearly piqued his curiosity. After much pleading, the Israeli intelligence people were finally “kind” enough to inform him that they were planning a top-priority operation in the Gaza area and that they were debating whether to saddle him with the grave responsibility of carrying it out. The double agent could hardly contain himself in his efforts to persuade his superiors that he was worthy of executing the operation, and, after much deliberation, they seemed satisfied. Al-Talalka became even more excited when he learned of the goal of the operation—consigning a new code to the most senior Israeli agent in the Gaza Strip. Al-Talalka was simply stunned when he heard the identity of the “agent”—Lutfi Al-Akawi, the chief of the Gaza Police. In fact, Al-Akawi never colluded with Israeli intelligence, and the story was a pure fabrication.

  In the late afternoon hours of Wednesday, July 11, 1956, two agents of the 154th accompanied Al-Talalka on his way from B
e’er Sheva to the Gaza Strip. Among his belongings, he carried the autobiography of the renowned German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. As far as Al-Talalka was aware of, the book contained the codes that were being sent to Al-Akawi. His dispatchers even showed him a copy of this book before wrapping it up in order to satisfy his curiosity. One detail not made known to Al-Talalka was that the copy of the book he saw with his own eyes was not the item he carried. The package among his effects contained a copy whose inner pages had been carefully removed; in their place was an explosive device.

  The double agent did not disappoint his Israeli dispatchers. After parting and wishing him good luck, they continued to follow him closely for a long while. Instead of making his way to Al-Akawi’s house, he set off for an Egyptian army outpost. There Al-Talalka demanded that its commander, Lieutenant Faraj Ismail, contact his intermediary in Egyptian intelligence. The telephone line at the outpost was out of order, so Al-Talalka was rushed to the Egyptian intelligence offices in Gaza. While Al-Talalka waited for his direct handler, who was busy at the time, word that he was carrying highly valuable information reached Colonel Hafez. Although he had heard rumors about Al-Akawi being complicit with Israel, Hafez found it difficult to believe and therefore asked to see the package that Al-Talalka carried. The two began to argue. Al-Talalka was afraid that if Hafez opened the package, it would not be possible to return it to its original state. But Hafez demanded to see concrete evidence of the betrayal by the senior police officer.

  At six in the evening, they peeled the wrappings from the book. Hafez and Al-Talalka had time enough for one last glance at a small slip of paper that fell from the pages of the book. Then there was a tremendous explosion. Eleven hours later, Hafez died at the hospital in Gaza. His deputy, Amro Al-Haridi, was severely wounded but survived the explosion, while Al-Talalka was blinded for life. It was the first state-mandated assassination in Israeli history. In the absence of Hafez’s leadership, the organizational backbone of the fedayeen battalion and its activities were significantly hampered and its capabilities diminished. Three and a half months later, Israel initiated the Sinai War, which to some degree came as a response to the attacks by the fedayeen squads.19

  The war brought the fedayeen saga to an end, but soon afterward terrorism began to crop up in other locations. Israel had no explicit counterterrorism doctrine, but its actions in the first decade after the state’s establishment, which included military offensives as well as assassinations in retaliation to terrorism, indicated a clear tendency toward the war model. While some policymakers, including the first prime minister, doubted the effectiveness of this policy, Israeli counterterrorism architect Ariel Sharon and his followers were the ones to set the tone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE PATH TO THE DEFENSIVE MODEL AND BACK

  ON JANUARY 13, 1965, four Palestinian men approached the water pumps of the National Water Carrier in the Netofa Valley and rigged an explosive device up to one of them. On their way back they encountered an IDF patrol, and a gunfight broke out, injuring one of the Palestinians. Although the device did not explode, Fatah hastened to release a memorandum from its office in Beirut announcing the success of the operation. The failed attack was just a small sign of bigger things to come. On May 25, three Fatah members penetrated the Israeli border from Jordan and attached explosives to the walls of four houses on the eastern side of Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh. In the dead of the night, several sharp reports shook up the peaceful community, and four residents of the kibbutz were slightly injured in the explosion.1

  On October 7, 1966, it became clear that not just settlements on the periphery of Israel were vulnerable to attacks; the Israeli capital was also at risk. On that night, Fatah members hid explosives at the entrances to several buildings on Gadera Street in the Romema neighborhood of Jerusalem. Seven residents were injured, and many apartments were severely damaged. It was now quite clear to the Israeli political leadership that these Palestinian forays demanded a serious response. Prime Minister Eshkol declared, “The notebook is open and the hand is writing,” meaning the offenders would pay for their deeds. Indeed, a week after the attack in Jerusalem, an IDF force crossed the Jordanian border and infiltrated the village of Samoah, a known Fatah base. The force blew up many of the buildings on the base, killing dozens of Fatah operatives and Jordanian soldiers.2

  Despite the growing number of terrorist attacks in those days, the Israeli leadership could never imagine that the troubles would mushroom into one of the major concerns of the Israeli security establishment.

  THE 1967 WAR AND NEW SECURITY CHALLENGES

  In May 1967, the tension between Israel and Egypt mounted to new heights. Egypt imposed a blockade on the Tiran Straits, preventing Israeli ships from passing between the port of Eilat and the Red Sea, and deployed its army in the Sinai Peninsula, violating the bilateral cease-fire agreements between the two countries. Israel decided to strike first. On June 5, in a surprise attack, the Israeli air force wiped out the Syrian and Egyptian aerial forces while most of the planes were still parked at their air bases. Enjoying complete aerial superiority, the IDF conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in less than six days. Having ended its military control just two years earlier over the 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside its borders after the 1948 war, Israel now ruled over a much larger area and a Palestinian population that was then three times the size of the Israeli-Palestinian one. As a result, the need to prevent the emergence of terrorism from this new, hostile population became a major objective on the agenda of the Israeli security establishment.

  The Israeli government’s decision to maintain its rule in the areas conquered in June 1967 required the GSS to deepen its familiarity with Palestinian society beyond sovereign Israeli territory and to lay out a HUMINT network in the occupied towns and villages. In order to accomplish this task, the GSS adapted the same model it had applied to Israeli Palestinian citizens, making the most of the advantages of the military administration. The occupied territories were divided into subdistricts controlled by three or four intelligence handlers who would pick out potential recruits, mainly Palestinians who needed assistance or special permits. In addition to the assistance they required, collaborators received various benefits, including permits for travel and hospitalization in Israel when necessary. However, their favorite form of remuneration was periodical cash payments. These informants monitored Palestinian neighborhoods and villages for the GSS and immediately reported any irregularities in people’s daily lives that might indicate preparations for hostile action. In order to contend with its new tasks, the GSS had to initiate a vast recruiting operation that included the reenlistment of retired GSS personnel, the “borrowing” of Mossad men, and the grooming of new young operatives. Naturally, its budget also increased, and the organization rebuilt its status within the security establishment.

  The GSS was not the only organization to conduct recruitment in the occupied West Bank. The Fatah also gained major momentum in the summer of 1967. About a month after the cessation of fighting, Yasser Arafat was able to infiltrate the West Bank and began to take on volunteers for Fatah’s ranks. The GSS received information on Arafat’s arrival, but he managed to fool Israeli intelligence, which had not yet been able to build an effective network in the region. In one instance, Arafat traveled by bus from Nablus to Ramallah disguised as a shepherd. Israeli policemen received information that he was on the bus and even checked the papers of its passengers, but they were still unsuccessful at singling out the Fatah leader, who carried a forged identity card.

  Several weeks later, GSS headquarters received information that Arafat was hiding out in a single-story house in Ramallah. Israeli intelligence handlers, led by Jerusalem Regional Commander Yehuda Arbel, arrived with military reinforcements, but much to their disappointment, all they found in the building was a mattress with rumpled sheets and a radio that was still on. It turned out that Arafat, who realized he was being hunted down
, had managed to escape from the house just in time. While military forces were conducting the search, he hid in a Volkswagen parked beside the road leading to the house. At the end of his recruitment campaign in the West Bank, during which he ignited the fire of the struggle among many young Palestinians, Arafat returned to Jordan, this time crossing the border disguised as a pregnant woman.3