The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

by Ami Pedahzur

  Rabin did not hesitate. He sealed all borders with the Gaza Strip, immediately suspended the peace talks with Arafat, and had Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the U.S. ambassador to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Dennis Ross, apply pressure on him. Rabin demanded a quick end to the crisis, and the pressure paid off. Arafat instructed the heads of the Palestinian security forces to hunt for the soldier vigorously, and that night ninety Hamas operatives were detained. The next day, Wednesday, a second cassette arrived at the Reuters Gaza office; this time Wachsman himself appeared next to one of his kidnappers. The kidnapped soldier, apparently in good health, addressed his government with these words: “They want their prisoners released. If not—they will kill me. That is all.” The appearance of this videocassette only strengthened the assessment that Wachsman was being held in Gaza. Consequently, the Israeli security apparatus disregarded messages from Arafat’s secretary, Nabil Abu Rodaina, and from Shams Oudeh, the Reuters photographer who had received the cassette, indicating Wachsman was being held in the West Bank. The pressure on Arafat increased and detentions in the Gaza Strip continued.

  Despite the assessment that Wachsman was being held in Gaza, GSS agents in the Jerusalem region continued to look for leads. The breakthrough came on Thursday. Following their assumption that the kidnappers had used a rented vehicle, a thorough survey of all vehicles rented in the days preceding the kidnapping led them to an agency in East Jerusalem. One name immediately caught the eye of investigators: Jihad Yaghmour, a well-known Hamas operative from Beit Hanina in northern Jerusalem. Although there was nothing to link Yaghmour to the kidnapping, Carmi Gillon, acting GSS head, asked Attorney General Dorit Beinisch to have him arrested and interrogated using “special means.”7 In the early hours of October 14, Yaghmour broke down and revealed all the details of the kidnapping, including the exact location where Wachsman was being held.

  When these facts were received, a meeting was called in the prime minister’s office, during which the GSS convinced Rabin that, in light of the intelligence information and familiarity with the cell members, a rescue operation should be immediately planned. The task fell to Major General Shaul Mofaz, commander of the IDF West Bank Division, responsible for the Bir Nabala village. By early morning, the first phase of the operation had already begun with the gathering of visual intelligence on the house and its environs by a surveillance team from the operations branch of the GSS. At the same time, Sayeret Matkal and Yamam fighters were called to the IDF West Bank Division headquarters. Investigators from the GSS briefed the officers of the two units about what Yaghmour had divulged during his interrogation, providing precise details about the layout of the house, Wachsman’s exact location, the daily routine of the guards, and how they were armed. The commanders of the units were given the go-ahead to prepare plans for the attack and were asked to present them to the division commander at 2:00 p.m. First, Yamam Deputy Commander David Ben-Shimol made his presentation, leaving a poor impression on his audience. Ben-Shimol sounded hesitant, offered no practical solution for penetrating the village area, and could not offer a backup plan in case something went wrong and the operation took longer than expected. To the surprise of those present, Ben Shimol also demanded improvements and additions to the strike force. From their point of view, this was an unreasonable demand in light of the tight time frame. The presentation made by Sayeret Matkal commander Shachar Argaman was much more promising. Mofaz, a former deputy commander of the Sayeret, and other officers, including former Sayeret commander and incumbent chief of staff Ehud Barak and former Sayeret deputy commander Danny Yatom, weighed both plans and decided to adopt that of the Sayeret.

  After the decision was made preparations went into high gear. At the same time that the Sayeret soldiers were being given their final briefing at the West Bank Division headquarters, army and rescue forces were being deployed in Gaza to give the impression that a rescue operation was about to take place there. At 6:00 p.m., the Sayeret soldiers were given orders to begin moving slowly in the direction of the house. Thirty minutes later, when they were already very close, they noticed a Mercedes parked in front of the building. The force was ordered to retreat and apprehend the driver. At 7:15 p.m., the car began to move. It was stopped a safe distance from the house in order to prevent Wachsman’s captors from seeing what was going on. Soldiers interrogated the driver, Zacharia Najib, a Hamas activist who had brought dinner to the house, and he confirmed the details they already had.

  The special force was divided into two teams, one led by Captain Lior Lotan and the other by Captain Nir Poraz. They received permission to advance toward the house. When they were only a few yards away from it, they hid behind the fence surrounding the building and carried out their final preparations. According to the plan, the raid was to have begun by simultaneously blasting two doors on the ground floor and another one leading to the kitchen on the upper floor. At 7:45 p.m., the three devices went off, but only one breached the building. Nir Poraz was the first to enter. A kidnapper in the living room opened automatic fire on him from a distance of three yards, and Poraz fell. As a result of the ensuing exchange of fire, six more soldiers from Poraz’s team were injured, among them the unit commander who had joined the attack forces. At this juncture, the team ceased to function. In the meantime, after a one-minute delay caused by the failure of the initial explosion, Lotan and his soldiers reached the upper floor and gathered in front of the door of the room where Wachsman was being held. One of the two kidnappers guarding Wachsman yelled from inside that if the soldiers did not leave immediately, he would kill the captive. Lotan continued according to plan. He fired at the metal lock, but the door remained secure. An explosive device placed next to the door also failed to blow off the lock. Four minutes later they managed to break down the metal-reinforced wooden door and shoot and kill the two kidnappers. To their deep regret, they found Wachsman dead, shot in the neck and chest a number of times.

  There were two IDF losses in the operation—Wachsman and Poraz—and ten officers and enlisted men had been wounded. During the press conference held by the prime minister that same evening, the nation of Israel was told the bitter news. In the days following the failed rescue attempt, besides their sincere regret, sharp criticism of the decision to assign the operation to Sayeret Matkal was heard from within the ranks of the Yamam and even from the IDF.8

  SUICIDE ATTACKS

  In 1993, shortly before the signing of the Oslo Accords, suicide bombing replaced traditional Palestinian terrorist tactics, among which hostage-taking was prominent. The new method originated in Iran during its war with Iraq, and it quickly made its way from Lebanon to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. While suicide bombers employed in Lebanon by Hezbollah and other organizations in their battle against military forces drove truck or car bombs to compound the damage, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) developed a different method. Most of the suicide bombers sent to Israeli cities were young individuals—75 percent were under the age of twenty-four—wearing explosive belts around their waists. The Israeli government placed the responsibility for eliminating this phenomenon on the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, cooperation between the Israeli intelligence services and former rivals from Fatah who had become the intelligence officers of the Palestinian Authority seemed to carry some promise. However, the threat of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to the stability of Arafat’s government in effect prevented his forces from confronting them head-on. At the time suicide terrorism had grown to be the most complicated challenge the Israeli security forces had ever faced.9

  The transfer of control in Palestinian urban concentrations and villages from Israel to the Palestinian Authority as part of the implementation of the Oslo Accords dealt a harsh blow to the GSS, which was urgently looking for a solution to the suicide-bomber threat in these areas. Many GSS informants severed ties with their operators, and the intelligence portrayal of political and terrorist activity in Palestinian territory became increasingly blurred. No le
ss problematic was the fact that unlike the PLO, which during its years of operation from Lebanon had maintained a paramilitary structure that included brigades and battalions, the terrorist activities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad came from the heart of the refugee camps. Even though the organizations set up military wings, the similarity between them and a paramilitary group was minimal. The technological arms of Israeli intelligence, which had easily followed the activities of PLO battalions in Lebanon, had difficulty contending with these amorphous structures, a fact that once more highlighted the importance of human intelligence.10

  Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin saw the growing frustration of the Israeli public after the optimism of the promise of peace. He wanted to halt the wave of suicide terrorism at any price. Rabin understood that Israel’s best remaining tool was interrogations of Hamas and PIJ activists whom the GSS was able to arrest. Rabin rejected the restrictions the attorney general imposed on the GSS with regard to the interrogation techniques used against the prisoners “What kind of attorney general are you?” Rabin shouted at Michael Ben-Yair. “I need to fight terrorism, and you are constantly telling me what not to do. Damnation, tell me what I can do, not what I can’t.”

  It was only a matter of time until the increasing pressures of policymakers on the interrogators of the GSS claimed the life of a detainee. On April 26, 1995, security prisoner Abdel Samed Harizat died at the “Russian Compound,” the GSS interrogation facility in Jerusalem. Harizat, who belonged to Taher Kafisha’s terrorist cell, one of the most active Hamas networks in the Hebron region, was arrested by the GSS and refused to talk throughout his interrogation. The interrogators introduced “special means.” They did not take into consideration that Harizat had a disability and was slight of build. On the afternoon of April 22, the second day of Passover, GSS Chief Carmi Gillon approved orders to continue interrogating Harizat throughout the holiday, as the head of the interrogations branch had requested. Over the course of the eleven consecutive hours of Harizat’s interrogation, he was violently shaken twelve times. The interrogation was halted only after a sudden deterioration in his health. He was taken to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, where he died four days later of a subdural hemorrhage. The interrogator who was found responsible for Harizat’s death was summoned for a disciplinary hearing and convicted of overstepping his authority, but he was returned to his position in the GSS.11

  The media’s criticism of the GSS led to the hobbling of the organization’s interrogations branch. The harsh dispute between Gillon and Ben-Yair filtered down to GSS interrogators. They were unable to achieve a balance between the operational demands required of them and the need to protect themselves legally. Ultimately, this resulted in deteriorating quality in the intelligence they gathered. Ami Ayalon, who replaced Carmi Gillon as head of the GSS, clearly expressed the feelings among the interrogators: “We tell the interrogator: ‘Do what you feel is right to save lives and afterward, we will consider whether or not to indict you.’ GSS interrogators can no longer rely on such judgments, and I agree with them.”12

  BACK TO THE ASSASSINATIONS

  Nasser Issa Shakher is a prime example of this difficulty. Issa served as a liaison between the Hamas network in Ramallah and Yehiya Ayash, “The Engineer.” His name surfaced during the investigation of the suicide attack in Ramat Gan on July 24, 1995. He was arrested in Nablus on August 19 and brought in for questioning. Even though he immediately confessed his connection to the attack in Ramat Gan, and despite the high probability that he had information on additional operations planned by the network, his interrogators were not allowed to use “special means” on him. At that point, his cooperation with the GSS interrogators ended. Two days later, on August 21, Sufian Jabarin blew himself up on a Number 26 bus in Jerusalem’s Ramat Eshkol neighborhood. Immediately after that incident, the interrogators received permission to use rougher treatment with Issa. Unfortunately, Issa revealed in this interrogation that he had finished planning the Ramat Eshkol suicide bombing just a few hours before his arrest. He also disclosed information about a bomb laboratory in Nablus, where both of the bombs used in the suicide attacks were built. This information led to the arrest of thirty-seven Hamas network members.13

  The Palestinian groups’ ability to continue to initiate suicide attacks in the Israeli metropolitan heartland during 1995 and early 1996 greatly intensified the frustration of the Israeli political and security establishments. Thus, Rabin, meeting with the heads of the intelligence community in September 1995, defined the PIJ and Hamas terrorist activities as a strategic danger to Israel and to the peace process. He ordered the intelligence organizations to coordinate all their efforts to harm these organizations’ operational capabilities. Little more than a month after Rabin issued his directive, it was clear that its operational meaning was a return to a modus operandi that Israeli intelligence organizations had already experienced in the past. On October 26, 1995, Ibrahim a-Shawish checked into the Diplomat Hotel in the tourist town of Sliema, located in northern Malta. Very few knew that his real name was Fathi Shikaki and that for more than a decade he had been serving as the head of the PIJ. A few hours later, when Shikaki left the hotel and traveled down the town’s main street, someone called out his name. He turned around and was immediately knocked backward by five bullets fired from a pistol, most of them hitting him in the head. A few seconds later, a motorcycle stopped beside the shooter, who jumped aboard, and the two men drove away. Later, it would be revealed that the two were Mossad operatives. In addition, it would soon become clear that this was just the beginning of Israel’s endeavor to strike at the heart and soul of Hamas and the PIJ by eliminating their leaders.14

  YEHIYA AYASH

  Yehiya Ayash, “The Engineer,” was considered the father of suicide terrorism in the West Bank in the early 1990s. Widely admired, Ayash specialized in preparing explosives and training Palestinian youths to build explosive belts, and he even recruited potential suicide bombers to the ranks of Hamas. Most of the suicide attacks against Israeli targets in the period following the signing of the Oslo Accords were attributed to Ayash, and he became the Israeli security forces’ most wanted man. In June 1995, after almost a year of repeatedly evading Israeli forces, who spared no effort in their attempts to track him down, Ayash felt he had found a safe haven. He moved into the home of a former classmate at Birzeit University, Osama Hamad, who lived with his mother in Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip.

  Ayash seldom left the small room they gave him. Constantly being on the run from his pursuers had taken its toll on him, and he preferred to spend most of his time reading and praying. Yet even the keen senses of “The Engineer,” who was known for his meticulous precautions, were subject to the test of time. He did not pay attention to the fact that his friend’s uncle, Kamal Hamad, a successful building contractor, was a collaborator with the Israelis and a close friend of Mussa Arafat, commander of Palestinian military intelligence in the Gaza Strip. This was apparently also the reason why Ayash ignored the hiring of his friend Osama as a clerk at Kamal’s construction company and as a private tutor for his children. In fact, there was nothing coincidental in Osama’s employment—it was ordered by the GSS. Kamal reported to GSS officials that Ayash had sought refuge at his cousin’s home and provided precise information about his daily routine.

  Osama, who was unaware of the tightening contacts between his uncle and the Israeli forces, was pleased with the new job offered him. He was even more delighted by the cell phone, a rare possession in those days. Kamal had given it to him, telling him it was for “keeping in touch” at all times. Ayash also benefited from the use of the cell phone, particularly after the landline in the house stopped working, and he lost communication with his family in Rafat, a village on the West Bank. Osama’s suspicions were not aroused after his mother’s telephone line was inexplicably disconnected, nor by his uncle’s request to bring him the cell phone from time to time for adjustments or other reasons. Kamal, who gave the cell phone to his GSS operator
s, was convinced that the purpose of the “adjustments” was to check on the listening device installed in it.

  Just before dawn on Friday, January 5, 1996, Ayash returned quietly to his room after a meeting with Hamas members in Gaza. He prayed and then lay down to sleep. At 8:00 that morning, Osama entered the room, the cell phone in his hand. Ayash’s father had called to speak to his son. Osama left the room and stepped away from the door to allow Ayash to speak to his father in privacy. Neither Osama nor Ayash heard the unmanned aerial vehicle that was hovering above the house or the signal it sent to the device Ayash clasped to his ear. Ayash managed to exchange a few sentences with his father before a loud noise split the air. Osama rushed to the room and found his friend lying on the bed, just as he had left him—but now there was a hole in his skull. This wound and the blood spattered on the wall left no doubt that nothing could be done to save “The Engineer.”

  In retrospect, the decision to eliminate Ayash resulted from several factors. From an operational perspective, it was evident that he was the driving force behind the Hamas suicide-bombing campaign. Prime Minister Rabin had made it clear to GSS leadership in late September 1995 that catching Ayash or eliminating him was one of the organization’s first priorities. After Peres replaced Rabin as prime minister in November 1995, GSS constantly kept looking for the operational window of opportunity to complete this task. This opportunity evidently appeared in the last few weeks of 1995.