Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response

by Klein, Aaron J.

  The Palestinian agent, allegedly recruited by the Israelis, was a double agent for the Jordanians. It was not a classic double-cross, rather a unique Middle Eastern phenomenon where a unity of interests in the war against Palestinian terror converged. The Israelis did not really care at whose behest their agent planned on killing Abu-Iyad, or for what additional sum of money.

  According to the Palestinian double agent, he had received information about Abu-Iyad’s residence, his Egyptian security detail, and his daily routine. The agent confessed that he was supposed to kill Abu-Iyad two days earlier, at the entrance to the government radio station. Abu-Iyad, the hunted, thanked the young man profusely, but remained circumspect. He took the man’s contact information and said he would be in touch soon.

  The plot thickened when the Egyptian Mukhabarat was asked by Abu-Iyad to enter the picture. During a covert search of the man’s room they discovered several suspicious items, including a small, hermetically sealed suitcase that they could not pry open. “Three days later, at 0700, one of the bodyguards wakes me to tell me that the same youth wants to see me immediately. My curiosity was piqued and I agreed to meet him. Immediately when he entered the guest room I noticed that he was carrying the small suitcase that the Egyptian policemen described to me. I demanded that he open the suitcase immediately. He turned pale as plaster, murmuring, and, finally, breaking. He confessed to me that the suitcase held enough explosives to destroy the whole house and to kill my wife and six children. He had been instructed to hide the explosive device under the couch before he left. The first visit and the confession were to gain my trust and get familiar with the place before executing the second and final stage of the operation, as planned by the Israeli and Jordanian security forces. I turned him over to the Egyptian police. Till this day, he sits in a Cairo jail.”

  Abu-Iyad claims that twice his children were given boxes of chocolate that were connected to explosive devices. “To our good fortune, my wife and I taught our children to be alert. They are so suspicious that they don’t even open candy packages that I send with somebody to hand-deliver to them when I am abroad.”

  The Israelis hunted Abu-Iyad for years to no avail. Abu-Iyad did not travel to Europe, his schedule followed no observable routine, and he kept a cadre of guards around him at all times. After the Palestianian leadership was expelled from Lebanon by the Israelis in 1982, he relocated to Tunis, and remained there, rarely venturing beyond its borders. “We were very close to Abu-Iyad a number of times but we had to stop in our tracks because the risk to the combatants on the ground was too great or we lacked a solid operational scheme,” Colonel (res.) Yossi Daskal, the former head of the Terror Division at Military Intelligence, told me. But for Daskal, a veteran officer, a professional used to making cost-benefit analyses with human lives on the line, the chase may not have been worthwhile. “The hunt for people no longer central to terror rings and operations puts a burden on the collection wings of our intelligence agencies. Many Mossad katsas spent a lot of time looking for information on these people.”

  Abu-Iyad, in stark contrast to his peers, the founding fathers of Fatah, softened his stance on Israel over the years. In February 1974, he was the first to publicly declare the need to establish a Palestinian state on less than the entirety of their homeland, alongside the state of Israel. In August 1988, he was still far ahead of his time in declaring his willingness to accept the state of Israel alongside the Palestinian state that was to come. “If you give me the West Bank and Gaza—I will take it; and if you give me less than that—I will take it too.”

  This slide into moderation angered Palestinian extremists. Chief among them was Sabri Al-Bana, aka Abu Nidal, a sadistic zealot. He led a group of loyal followers called the Revolutionary Council of Fatah. The group, which sometimes called itself by the more catchy name “Black June,” assassinated moderate Palestinian officials in Europe and across the Middle East. Abu Nidal claimed it was his duty to save the Palestinian resistance movement from Arafat and his colleagues who had strayed from the path of liberating all of Palestine through armed struggle. Abu Nidal’s organization murdered at least sixteen Palestinians he deemed too moderate. He branched out on occasion. In 1976, under pressure from Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein, his organization tried to assassinate the president of Syria, Hafez Al-Assad, Saddam Hussein’s bitter rival.

  Another deviation took place on June 3, 1982, when Abu Nidal sent men to kill Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to Britain. That act was used by Prime Minister Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, as an alleged final straw that demanded an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The invasion grew into the Lebanon War and devolved into a two-decades-long guerrilla conflict.

  Abu Nidal’s cruelty was legendary. Myths and stories circulated through the ranks of Fatah. People claimed the man enjoyed killing. One of his favorite execution techniques was to place a bound victim inside a pit and then pour concrete into the hole, burying the man alive.

  One of Abu Nidal’s final missions was the assassination of Abu-Iyad and his close aide Fakhri Al-Omri on January 14, 1991, the day before the first Gulf War commenced. Operation Desert Storm overshadowed the event. On the evening before the war officially commenced Abu-Iyad and Fakhri Al-Omri, a man also thought to be deeply involved in the planning and execution of the Munich attack, had dinner at the Tunis home of Ha’il Abed el-Hamid, aka Abu-el-Hul, a close friend and top operations officer for the Western Wing (charged with carrying out attacks in Israel) of Fatah. Over dinner, they discussed Saddam Hussein’s brutal conduct in Kuwait, Arafat’s support of the Iraqi dictator, and the imminent invasion by the allied force. Everything proceeded smoothly until close to midnight, when Hamza Abu-Zaid, a simple bodyguard, walked into the living room, where the three sat, smoking and drinking. He passed a note to Abu-Iyad and made his way back to the door. Without warning he spun around and opened fire with the automatic weapon in his hand, killing all three men. He tried to escape, but was stopped, jailed, and later executed. Abu-Zaid, a Fatah operative, had been secretly recruited by Abu Nidal’s people and tasked with killing the traitor.

  So fell Abu-Iyad, the man more responsible than any other for the Munich Massacre, by the hand of a compatriot, for his dovish views. Israel received the news with ambivalence. On the one hand, he was responsible for the murder of innocent Israelis; on the other, he had gone where few dared on the Palestinian side, offering the possibility of diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In January 1991 diplomatic negotiations between the two warring sides sounded like a pipe dream, but after the war, in October of that year, they met in Madrid, Spain. Israeli and Palestinian delegations sat face-to-face in what was the official beginning of diplomatic negotiations.

  As fate would have it, the security officer of the Palestinian delegation was Atef Bseiso, Abu-Iyad’s protégé, who, in his role as Fatah’s liaison officer with European secret services, tended to the security of the Palestinian delegation.

  35 CROSSING THE JORDAN

  ALLENBY BRIDGE, ISRAEL-JORDAN BORDER CROSSING THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1996, 1000H

  On Thursday morning, March 28, 1996, Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu-Daoud, the man who twenty-four years earlier planned and commanded the Munich attack, walked—slowly and ceremoniously—over the Allenby Bridge, crossing from Jordan into Israel. Abu-Daoud entered the joint Israeli-Palestinian terminal. He shook hands with an Israeli colonel before entering the office of a Shabak representative, who verified his documents and sized him up, interviewing him about his future plans. At the Israeli border crossing he was secretly photographed from several angles, entering the Israeli defense establishment’s archives as he filled out application forms for a Palestinian ID card. He accepted a temporary ID document and made his way to the VIP room, where he fell into the arms of Tawfiq Tirawi. Tirawi kissed him on both cheeks before ushering him into one of a fleet of BMWs. They drove southwest, toward Gaza, where Yasser Arafat and many other Fatah colleagues had their
offices. Abu-Daoud had not seen these men in two years, since May 1994, when the PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, allowing, among other things, the return of Fatah activists to Gaza and the West Bank.

  In the spacious leather interior of the BMW, Abu-Daoud fretted. Maybe the Israelis were waiting. Maybe they would let him get to the gates of Gaza and then arrest him for his role in the Olympic attack. He, the wanted murderer, as the Israelis called him, the terrorist who admitted to his pivotal role in the attack, had shaken hands and made small talk with Israeli officers. Who would have believed it? He smiled—So far, so good, he thought. He was in Palestine, preparing to take part in the most momentous period in his homeland’s history. For twenty-four years he had been on the run, afraid of Israel’s long reach, looking over his shoulder, fearing a Mossad assassin at his back. For twenty-four years he got into bed not knowing if he would wake up in the morning. Al-Yahud, the Jews had tried to kill him several times. They might well try again.

  Abu-Daoud’s arrival was coordinated and prearranged. He came to Palestine just before the Palestinian National Council convened. They were set to eradicate the article in their charter calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. The authorization of Abu-Daoud’s entry to the Palestinian-controlled areas came from deep within the corridors of power—Shimon Peres signed off on the decision. The prime minister claimed that Abu-Daoud’s entry, like that of numerous other high-level terrorists, offered two benefits: one, Abu-Daoud would play a role in annulling the charter calling for Israel’s destruction; two, Peres felt it was better for men like Abu-Daoud to take up residence in Gaza, where terrorism was being renounced, rather than in Damascus, where it was supported.

  Once in Gaza, Abu-Daoud met with old Fatah friends, interested to see what sort of senior position they had reserved for him as payment for his service to homeland and organization. Abu-Daoud received a Palestinian passport/laissez-passer and a green Palestinian ID card, printed and prepared by the state of Israel, number 410448807.

  But Abu-Daoud had stepped on too many toes and the loot—the financial monopolies and the government posts—had already been taken by Arafat and his cronies in the Palestinian Authority. No one was willing to offer him the payment he sought for his years of service. After three years in his homeland, Abu-Daoud chose to exile himself. On June 2, 1999, he left Palestine, angered and embittered, through the Rafah crossing to Egypt. He settled in Damascus, to finish his memoirs.

  In 2003, Abu-Daoud’s passport/laissez-passer was renewed by Israel. Two years later, almost sixty-eight years old, Abu-Daoud sent a formal request, via Palestinian Authority Minister of Internal Affairs Muhammad Dahlan, to return to Palestine. “He wants to come back to be buried in Palestine. It’s his last wish,” a friend explained. The Israelis sent a succinct message back to Dahlan—it’s best for all involved that he not show up at the bridge. Abu-Daoud could have shown up at the border crossing at any time, presented his passport to the Israeli officers, and continued to the Palestinian-controlled areas. The signed agreements guaranteed his safety from Israeli prosecutors and prisons—he had a Palestinian ID card and passport. Nor could they arrest him for the thirty-three-year-old massacre. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, signed by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in Washington on September 28, 1995, clearly states on page 19, under the title “Confidence Building Measures,” Article XVI, Section 3, that a “Palestinian from abroad whose entry into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is approved pursuant to this Agreement, and to whom the provisions of this article are applicable, will not be prosecuted for offenses committed prior to September 13, 1993.” Moreover, Abu-Daoud had not been involved in terrorist activity in roughly twenty years, thus forbidding Israel from barring his entry or stripping him of his Palestinian citizenship. Though well aware of the law, the Israeli government hoped that Abu-Daoud’s enduring fear of assassination would convince the old man not to present himself at the border. No one in Israel needed the embarrassment of his return, least of all Shimon Peres, who had let him in the first time around.

  The source of Abu-Daoud’s deep-seated suspicion was the unshakable fear he lived with from 1972 to 1996. Up until the mid-1970s he was deeply involved in planning terror attacks. In February 1973, four months after the Munich Massacre, he was arrested in Amman, Jordan, his design to overthrow the king foiled. Abu-Daoud received a death sentence, which was mitigated to life in prison. Several months later, the politically astute king, who ruled over a country where 60 percent of the populace was Palestinian, pardoned him altogether.

  An attempt on his life was made in Warsaw, on August 2,1981. A lone assassin walked into the Hotel Intercontinental’s restaurant, spotted Abu-Daoud, and fired five shots. The hit was amateurish: the weapon most probably used in the assassination attempt was found nearby; the assassin acted alone, in contrast to professional assassins, who work in pairs, covering each other; and the target was shot in the stomach and chest, not the head, which guarantees death. Nonetheless, Abu-Daoud was seriously injured and taken to a local hospital, where multiple life-saving surgeries were performed. The man with nine lives survived yet once more. Several weeks later he was transferred to a hospital in East Germany, where he began his rehabilitation. Abu-Daoud stayed in East Berlin till the fall of the Communist regime. In 1990, after years of preferential treatment, he left for Tunis and made his way to Syria.

  Today, Abu-Daoud, like so many Palestinians, is still convinced that the Mossad, with its long reach, elephantine memory, and unwillingness to forgive, was behind the attempt on his life. That is part of the myth that both Israelis and Palestinians believe in. But the assassination attempt in Warsaw was probably executed by Abu Nidal’s agents or another adversarial group within the PLO. It was not the Mossad that came to kill him.

  For years after the assassination attempt Abu-Daoud went by the name Tariq and lived comfortably behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, Poland, and Bulgaria. During that period it was nearly impossible for the Mossad to reach him; his name was hardly ever mentioned in the assassination forums.

  In early January 1977, three and a half years before the assassination attempt in Warsaw, less than five years after the Munich Massacre, the Paris police were forced to arrest Abu-Daoud. In France to attend a friend’s funeral, he carried a forged Iraqi passport with the name Yousef Raji Hanna. His entry visa had been inserted by officials at the French consulate in Beirut, as part of a PLO delegation. His presence and his cover were leaked. West Germany formally requested his extradition, hoping to try him in the still pending case of the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Israel issued no such appeal. Bereaved family members of the athletes issued a private extradition request to the French embassy signed by a lawyer. A widely publicized picture of the children of the murdered athletes holding pictures of their dead fathers made little impression on the French authorities. They released Abu-Daoud, whisking him off to Algeria, where he received a hero’s welcome. The French government explained its actions: the West German request had not arrived in time.

  According to a distinguished well-placed person who lived through the era and has taken part in shaping Israeli policy, the fact that Abu-Daoud is alive today is an Israeli failure, a blight on the defense establishment. “He should have been killed for his role in Munich,” this person argued, “but too many people were insufficiently determined to follow through.” Abu-Daoud, and two of the perpetrators of the massacre, are still alive. The mission was never fully accomplished, nor will it ever be. Their names were taken off the list a long time ago; today, their files sit in the Mossad archive, collecting dust.

  EPILOGUE

  Israel’s intention after the Munich Massacre was to strike back at Fatah’s senior Black September officials, to identify and kill those who had sent the murderous squad to Munich—as well as anyone else who persistently targeted Israelis abroad. That message, delivered with a bullet or a bomb, would, it was hoped, deter and hinder
terrorist capabilities, and, certainly, satisfy Israel’s thirst for revenge and punishment. Munich was the trigger, and for many years, assassination became a new tool in the war on terror.

  However, members of the intelligence community soon realized that despite their unwavering devotion to the cause, which they saw as a mission of national importance, they were unable to exact a price from the top-level leaders. Men like Abu-Daoud, the commander of the Munich mission, and Abu-Iyad, deputy to Arafat and the true architect of the Olympic terror attack, remained beyond reach, unscathed. The combination of poor intelligence-gathering capacities on the one hand, and the flight of top leaders underground on the other, made operational plans against them nearly impossible. When, on rare occasions, the Mossad was ready to go, the risk to Caesarea combatants suspended the mission, often at the last minute.

  The inability to strike back at Fatah’s top Black September leaders was at odds with the rousing calls, from the defense establishment, the Knesset, and, primarily, the public, to settle the score. A compromise of sorts was born from this untenable situation: the government agreed to allow the Mossad and Military Intelligence to conduct their target search a few notches beneath the Fatah’s shrouded upper echelons, thereby enabling a seemingly fitting response, but one that, from 1972 to 1973, claimed the lives of numerous low-level, easily accessible activists—along with the more significant targets killed during Operation Spring of Youth.

  Those targeted during those years were not directly connected to the Munich Massacre. Yet they were profiled in ways that implied direct culpability. One would be presented, through leaks to the media, as the “senior Black September representative in Paris,” another as the “Black September leader in Italy.” Such titles not only satisfied the prime minister’s and the nation’s desire for revenge and resolution, but also eased the bitterness of the pill that European nations were forced to swallow, as Israel, with considerable chutzpah, disregarded their sovereignty time and again.