The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

by Ami Pedahzur

  TOWARD A DEFENSIVE MODEL

  Between 2000 and 2004 there were 157 suicide attacks in which 507 Israelis were killed (see figure 8.1). The combination of the intensity of these attacks, the difficulty in obtaining ample information on the cells that had initiated them, the futility of the assassination policy, and the serious physical and moral damage to the Israeli home front led the GSS to advocate the introduction of a defensive model. The most ambitious effort was the construction of the Separation Fence. The primary goal of the fence was to create a physical buffer between the West Bank and Israeli territory and thereby prevent the infiltration of suicide bombers into urban centers. The erection of the fence began in May 2002 despite the opposition of the military intelligence, which claimed that the fence would not be effective enough and argued that Israel continue to employ mostly offensive measures. In June 2003, Israel completed the northern part of the fence and in the ensuing months was also able to build a concrete wall surrounding Jerusalem.17

  FIGURE 8.1 SUICIDE ATTACKS AND TARGETED KILLINGS DURING THE AL-AQSA INTIFADA

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

  Indeed, the construction of the fence has proved its effectiveness in halting suicide terrorism. From June 2003 to April 2007, there were thirty-seven suicide attacks in Israel. Only on three occasions did a suicide bomber penetrate the fence. All other attacks occurred inside the West Bank or were perpetrated in the central and southern parts of the country. Previously, between 1993 and mid-2003, 34.6 percent (35 out of 101) of the suicide attacks occurred in northern Israel, areas that from mid-2003 were protected by the Separation Fence. In addition, Jerusalem, which until 2003 was the most attractive target for suicide attacks, became a relatively safe area after the erection of the wall on the city’s eastern border. While between 1993 and 2003 the city suffered thirty suicide attacks, the number was reduced to three in 2004 and to zero in the ensuing years.

  It was evident that the erection of the fence, combined with IDF repeated blockades on areas and cities in the West Bank, proved to be an effective strategy against the Palestinian suicide-attack campaigns. The problem is that political considerations took over the process of building the Separation Fence—specifically the Israeli government’s desire to include a large number of Israeli settlements in the area west of the fence. The inevitable result was an extensive Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories and the consequent inability of many villagers to reach their own fields or nearby villages. An obstacle that succeeded in protecting Israeli residents in the short term became another significant factor in increasing Palestinian enmity toward Israel.18

  The disappearance of the suicide attacks from the Israeli streets should be credited also to complementary defensive mechanisms that were implemented alongside the erection of the fence. Several municipalities adopted laws obligating restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and businesses that involve public gatherings to post a security guard at the entrance to their establishments. These guards were added to thousands of other guards who have been protecting public buildings such as government offices, hospitals, and shopping centers since 1998, following the passage of legislation in the Knesset. In some cases this proved to be very effective, as on April 29, 2003, when a security guard in a coffee shop in Tel Aviv prevented a suicide bomber from bursting into the shop, eventually leading to an explosion at the entrance. Although three people died in the event, the head of Israeli police in the Tel Aviv District admitted that the guard had saved the lives of dozens, who would have died if the perpetrator had been able to set off the explosion inside the coffee shop. This was not the only case; between 1993 and 2007, on fourteen different occasions, guards prevented attacks or were able to force the suicide attacker to detonate before arriving at his destination.19

  In addition, public transportation security was intensified. In 1994, when suicide attacks on buses began to spread to the cities of Israel, the Ministry of Transport established the Unit for the Protection of Public Transport. Approximately four hundred graduates of IDF combat units were enlisted into this unit. The training of the unit’s recruits was based to a great degree on terrorist-identification procedures developed by the GSS in the 1960s and 1970s in response to the wave of plane hijackings by Palestinian organizations. Three years after its formation, there was a temporary decrease in suicide attacks, and the Unit for the Protection of Public Transport was dismantled, its functions transferred to the Yoav, Horev, and Nitzan police units. However, toward the end of 2001, following an increase in suicide attacks, the unit was reconstructed. While the unit guards covered only a small number of the bus lines (less than 5 percent), their presence on main bus lines helped somewhat to reduce the public fears and gave it the feeling that some security measures were being implemented in order to defend Israel’s most popular form of public transportation.20

  COUNTERING THE FINANCING OF TERRORISM

  Another method that falls under the defensive category is the attempt to block the flow of money intended for terrorist purposes. During the course of Operation Defensive Shield, the GSS and Aman were able to seize documents that revealed a small aspect of the fundraising complex of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the countries of Western Europe. To the satisfaction of the Israeli intelligence services, in several cases it was possible to draw a direct line between a “charitable society” that operated in Europe and local terrorist cells. For example, a Hamas foundation that was active in Great Britain, Interpal, transferred funds to the families of suicide bombers. The same society was also employed as a Hamas conduit for transferring donated money from Palestinian charitable societies in Switzerland, South Africa, and Belgium. On another occasion, evidence led to a Palestine solidarity fund (Compagnie Beneficent de Solidarité avec Palestine) in France that supplied millions of dollars to Hamas each year. This intelligence information served as a basis for a series of appeals that Israel submitted to the relevant countries in the attempt to prevent the continued operation of the foundations in their jurisdiction. In some of the cases, the appeals were heeded. In August 2002, the German Interior Ministry ordered the closing of the German branch of the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa Charitable Foundation, one of the organization’s money raising centers in Europe. Ten months later, the government of the Netherlands also announced that it would not allow the foundation to continue to raise funds on its territory. Denmark and Belgium were the last countries to restrict fundraising activities in their territories after the European Union declared Hamas a terrorist group in September 2003.21

  Across the Atlantic, actions taken against financiers of terrorism were even more adamant as reflected in the story of Sami Al-Arian, professor of computer science at the University of South Florida. Al-Arian was for many years the object of the keen interest of both American and Israeli intelligence agencies. He was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family in 1958 and at the age of seventeen immigrated to the United States after being accepted for engineering studies at Southern Illinois University. His impressive academic achievements paved the way to a doctoral program at the University of North Carolina. After completing his studies, he obtained a teaching position at the University of South Florida and was soon promoted to full professor. Along with the cultivation of an impressive academic career, Al-Arian also became a prominent spokesman for the Palestinian cause in the United States, and in 1991 he founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). During the course of the 1990s, there were growing fears both in the United States and Israel that the institute was providing patronage to the activities of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization in the United States. Furthermore, they suspected that Al-Arian stood at the head of a group of Palestinians who were raising funds earmarked for suicide operations in the cities of Israel and aid to families of suicide bombers. On February 20, 2003, FBI agents arrested Al-Arian. His trial, which a prosecutor called an “Israeli-American coproduction,” lasted more than two years. A substantial part of the case was based on evidence th
at American authorities received from Israeli intelligence agencies, which, over a significant length of time, had intercepted correspondence and phone calls Al-Arian had conducted with his colleagues in Damascus and Ramallah. Although in the court of first instance Al-Arian was acquitted, in the retrial, completed in April 2006, the scales were tipped against him. Al-Arian was sentenced to fifty-seven months in prison for offenses related to the financing of terrorist activities. He is slated for deportation from the United States at the end of his prison term.22 The case of Al-Arian seems to demonstrate that a major portion of the cooperation between intelligence and law-enforcement agencies concludes in the filing of an indictment pertaining to offenses associated with the financing of terrorism.

  Other actions taken by Israel have included raids of banks in the West Bank and the seizing of funds from accounts suspected of financing sources for terrorist networks. The most famous action against Palestinian banks was conducted on February 5, 2004, against a branch of the Arab Bank in Ramallah. This bank held the accounts of more than one hundred families of suicide bombers. According to Israeli sources, the Palestinians and their supporters in Arab and Western countries have found circuitous means of keeping the embers of the struggle burning by transferring large sums of money to charitable funds and straw companies. In a local political reality based on primordial ties, it is very difficult to prevent the head of a charitable organization from transferring money to a brother or cousin active in a terrorist cell. In many cases the same charitable funds were actually involved in humanitarian activities.23

  On January 25, 2006, the Palestinian Authority conducted a general election in which Hamas won 76 out 132 seats and subsequently assembled a new government with Ismail Haniya, head of Hamas, as its prime minister. The economic embargo imposed on the Hamas government stimulated Palestinians to find creative ways to transfer funds. In a few cases, cash was smuggled on the bodies of leaders returning from visits to other countries. For example, Sammy Abu Zahary, a Hamas spokesman, tried to smuggle in hundreds of thousands of euros hidden in a money belt while returning to the Gaza Strip from a trip to Qatar in June 2006. That December, Mahmoud A-Zahar was not allowed to enter Gaza Strip after he tried to smuggle $20 million in his luggage. In other cases, the relatively uncontrolled border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip and the tunnels dug between the Egyptian and Palestinian sections of Rafah provided a route for smuggling activities. GSS efforts to avert the transfer of these funds can be compared to Sisyphus eternally rolling his boulder up the hill.24

  If the construction of the fence ostensibly showed that the Israeli understood that the Palestinian groups had adopted a nonhierarchical structure and that local cells had become the driving force behind most of the suicide attacks, the targeted assassinations and, to some degree, the attempt to stop the flow of resources into the hand of the terrorists, should have raised eyebrows. The elimination of leaders, which back in the 1970s and 1980s had proved severely limited in its deterrent effect, became a truly double-edged sword during the years of the Al-Aqsa intifada. Attacks on prominent figures in the Palestinian leadership heightened the desire for revenge against the Israelis and were a shot in the arm for the localization of terrorism. The national leaders lowered their profiles and slackened what little control they still had over the local cells. Thus, the GSS found itself operating against groups such as the Popular Resistance Committees, a militia based on the Samhadana clan from Rafah, and the Army of Islam, from the Darmush clan in Gaza City, which, among other things, was responsible for the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in July 2006.25

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SECOND LEBANON WAR AND BEYOND

  ON FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006, the Al-Jazeera television network reported that a Mercedes coupe had burst into flames in Sidon, a coastal city in southern Lebanon. The two passengers in the car were Mahmoud al-Majzoub, also known as Abu Hamza, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and its liaison in the southern Lebanon area, and his brother Nidal al-Majzoub. Both were severely injured in the explosion and a short while later died of their wounds. Conflicting news reports were broadcast throughout the course of the day on the various communication networks. The PIJ claimed that Israeli intelligence agents had laid a large explosive device along the route usually taken by Abu Hamza and detonated it with a remote control mechanism as his car passed by. In contrast, Lebanese security sources said that the bomb was rigged up in the car itself and activated when he started the car.

  The ambiguity in regard to the details of the assassination was not due to journalistic carelessness. The full story was made public only weeks later. An announcement issued by Lebanese Minister of Defense Elias Murr revealed that the assassins had used particularly sophisticated means. As the Lebanese security forces suspected from the very beginning, a highly powerful explosive device had indeed been planted in the car, specifically, in the car door. However, it did not go off as the car’s ignition was turned on. Abu Hamza had been filmed on the ground as he walked toward his car, and then the same film reverted to a real-time image of an Israeli Air Force (IAF) plane hovering above. When it was clear that Abu Hamza had taken his place next to the steering wheel, the plane transmitted an electronic signal that activated the bomb and blew up the car and its occupants.1

  Murr’s announcement was made only after an intense investigation that led to the discovery of a group of twenty Lebanese civilians who were Mossad collaborators. Members of the network received the booby-trapped car door from Israel. Two Israeli specialists with forged identities arrived in Sidon and installed the door in Majzoub’s car with the help of network members. The architect of the network was Mahmoud Kassem Rafa, a fifty-nine-year-old Druze from the town of Hasbaya. Before the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, he served in the South Lebanon Army (SLA) at the rank of colonel. Rafa’s past as an SLA officer placed him high on the list of targets of Lebanese military intelligence, but his wanted status did not prompt him to take the requisite precautions. His ostentatious and lavish lifestyle stood in direct contrast to the meager means one would expect from a former SLA officer. This standard of living only fueled the suspicions against him, and after a long period of surveillance and wiretapping his phone calls, security officers raided Rafa’s villa and arrested him. A search of his house uncovered sophisticated visual-intelligence equipment and forged documents that he used to help Mossad people infiltrate Lebanon. During his interrogation, Rafa divulged that Israeli forces had recruited him as far back as 1994. The mission he had been assigned was the mobilization of Lebanese civilians to Mossad operations all over the country.2

  The killing of Abu Hamza had been the swansong of the network’s activities. This was preceded by a series of other assassinations, which included high-ranking Hezbollah officials Ali Hassan Dib, a senior Hezbollah operative responsible for Hezbollah administration over the southern Lebanon area, and Ali Hussein Saleh, a senior Hezbollah operative who was responsible for the connection with terrorist groups in the West Bank. A third target was Jihad Jibril, the son of Ahmad Jibril, the founder and commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command. Jihad Jibril was in charge of PFLP-GC operations in the West Bank at the beginning of the second intifada.3

  THE ROAD TO THE SECOND LEBANON WAR

  Three years earlier, there was renewed hope that nearly a decade after Dirani’s kidnapping, the pressure on the Hezbollah leadership was beginning to have some effect. A three-stage deal between Israel and Hezbollah was drafted. In the first stage, Israel agreed to release nineteen Lebanese detainees who were held as bargaining chips, with Dirani heading the list. These detainees were kept away from the public eye in a one-story structure in the heart of a military base near Kibbutz Metzer. Aman Unit 504 was in charge of running the detention facility, called Barak 1391. These nineteen were to be joined by more than four hundred security prisoners held in Israeli jails. In exchange, Hezbollah promised to release the bodies of three Israeli soldiers who h
ad been abducted by the organization in October 2000, as well as a kidnapped Israeli civilian, Elhanan Tannenbaum. The three soldiers had been snatched while on a routine patrol along the security fence at the Lebanese border on the morning of October 7, 2000. After a number of roadside charges were detonated as their vehicle drove past, Hezbollah militants seized the mortally wounded soldiers. Hezbollah refused to disclose any information regarding the condition of the Israeli soldiers throughout the duration of their captivity. Tannenbaum was an IDF reserve colonel whom Iranian intelligence personnel had kidnapped in early October 2000 while he was visiting Abu Dhabi. The Iranians then turned him over to Hezbollah. His abduction was part of a complex plan Hezbollah had concocted to kidnap a senior Israeli army officer. After Hezbollah learned that Tannenbaum was involved in drug dealing, an Israeli Arab contacted him, and the two became partners. Tannenbaum did not know that this partner, Kais Obeid, also had close contacts with Hezbollah. In October 2000, after the two had met in Brussels, Obeid convinced him to go to Abu Dhabi to close a highly profitable drug deal.4