Operation Salt Fish - Conclusion

With each operation ordered by Sharon to eliminate Arafat pulling the IDF leadership further from military ethics and the voice of their own conscience, something had to give.

Continued from Part Two.

Martyr’s Square, Beirut, 1982

The swift operation promised by Sharon had, predictably, become a bloody civil war. As June turned into July and then into August, the humanitarian crisis unleashed by the war on Lebanon caused great revulsion within the IDF and Israeli society in general.

“I knew friends, comrades in arms, who really believed that someone should go and kill Sharon, who actually contemplated assassinating him, to save the State of Israel.
—Uzi Dayan

Even internationally, Israel’s position was precarious. As each assassination attempt on Arafat failed, the international community’s opinion of Israel as a military power destroying a sovereign nation to kill a single man solidified. A victory — however pyrrhic — had to be salvaged.

Beirut

The IDF began August with a 72-hour artillery bombardment, and the air force carried out 100+ bombing sorties to persuade Arafat and the PLO to withdraw from Lebanon. That they did on 13 August with a US-mediated agreement for the PLO to leave Lebanon without further harassment.

U.S. Marines of the 32d Marine Amphibious Unit and legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment form a joint security guard during the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut, Lebanon.

On 30 August teams of Shin Bet, Mossad, and Salt Fish took up positions on rooftops overlooking the port in Beirut. The PLO’s convoy of vehicles approached the port. The rooftop teams caught sight of the famous kaffiyeh as Arafat stepped out of the car and into their sights, standing among a crowd of his supporters.

“We were 180 metres away. At that range, with the sniper rifle that our team was holding, it’s hard to miss.”
—Moshe Yaalon, Salt Fish team member

Arafat was in the sights of at least five snipers at that point. The commander of the team radioed Raful Eitan and sought permission. Eitan delayed giving a response. The commander reiterated his request, warning Eitan that Arafat was going inside and would be out of their sight within seconds. Eitan held off for as long as he could, then finally replied:

“Negative. I repeat: negative. There is no authorization.”

Prime Minister Menachem Begin had firmly instructed Sharon after the US-mediated agreement was in place that Arafat was not to be targeted. And so, Arafat once more scaped certain death. To prove that Israel had stuck to the letter and spirit of that agreement, Begin later provided the US mediator with a photo of Arafat in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. But by then Arafat was already in Athens.

Operation Goldfish

Sharon and Eitan did not give up on their goal to kill Arafat, though, and Operation Salt Fish transformed into Operation Goldfish, with the same team now given top priority by both the Minister of Defence and, particularly, the Chief of Staff who met senior members of the team every day in his office.

Arafat, meanwhile, was travelling all over the Middle East and Europe, securing support and moving funds. AMAN found out that he travelled in a private jet provided by Saudi Arabia. But just as the team began thinking of blowing him up in the sky came intelligence that both pilots held American passports.

“Nobody touches Americans.”
—Amos Gilad, AMAN

AMAN recommended that they wait until Arafat settled down semi-permanently, but Sharon did not accept that. To him the destruction of an aircraft up in the sky over deep water was an acceptable, even preferable outcome. He instructed the commander of the air force, General Ivry, to keep fighter planes ready to intercept at moment’s notice. Ivry was wary and anticipated that such an operation could quickly become a disaster in the event identification was incorrect.

The opportunity arose in October. Agents reported that Arafat would be travelling from Athens to Cairo on October 23 in a private plane. Other agents were dispatched to verify the intelligence and get more details. Meanwhile the air force kept two F-15s on alert.

Ivry was cautious and briefed the pilots himself.

“You don’t fire without my okay. Clear? Even if there’s a communications problem, if you don’t hear my order you don’t open fire.”
—General Ivry

One of the agents sent to corroborate the intelligence reported positive identification at 2pm. It was Arafat. The agent reported that he had seen Arafat — now with a longer beard to mislead operatives like those sent by the Mossad, but definitely him — and his men preparing to board a DHC-5 Buffalo, a twin-engine cargo plane. The agent also mentioned the registration number.

A DHC-5 Buffalo

But other intelligence conflicted with this report. Specifically, there was nothing to suggest why Arafat would be travelling to Cairo. Ivry was concerned that Arafat had nothing to gain by going to Cairo at that time, and even if that were ignored, Ivry wondered why he would travel in a cargo plane. He asked Mossad to verify identity again. The agents in Athens reiterated that it was indeed Arafat.

The plane took off at 4:30pm. Eitan ordered Ivry to shoot it down. Ivry ordered his F-15s in the air on an intercept course over the Mediterranean. Ivry reminded them of their precise orders:

“Hold your fire. If there’s no radio contact, do not open fire.”

Eitan kept calling him for a status update, and asked, each time, if the order to fire had been given. Each time Ivry replied that they did not have positive confirmation that it really was Arafat.

He also told AMAN and Mossad that he needed another independent confirmation that it was indeed Arafat on that cargo plane. Meanwhile the F-15s picked up the slow, lumbering aircraft on their radars and began flying around it. Visual identification of the tail number was completed. They had found the correct aircraft.

They radioed and sought permission to fire. Ivry did not give it. Stalling for time, he ordered them to wait. Meanwhile the Chief of Staff was breathing down his neck, demanding that they shoot the cargo plane down. It was obvious that he was running out of time: either he would have to order his pilots to shoot it, or he would have to answer to Eitan and Sharon as to why he himself hadn’t followed orders.

Just before 5pm the encrypted line in his bunker rang. It was the Mossad officer who had conveyed confirmation earlier:

“Doubts have arisen.”

A different Mossad source close to Arafat had confirmed that the latter was nowhere near Greece that day, and could not, therefore, be on that cargo plane.

As the F-15s kept circling the cargo plane like sharks in the water, Ivry radioed fresh orders:

“We’re waiting for more information. Keep eyes on the target and wait.”

That information came in at 5:23pm from separate Mossad and AMAN sources. It was Yasser Arafat’s younger brother Fathi Arafat on that cargo plane. Fathi Arafat was a physician. On that plane with him were thirty wounded Palestinian children. Arafat was escorting them to Cairo for medical treatment. A relieved Ivry recalled his aircraft.

Fathi Arafat (right) with his brother.

Postscript

Yasser Arafat began flying commercial soon after. When this was reported by Mossad, Sharon had the air force draw up plans to shoot down the commercial airliner over the Mediterranean.

The air force went along as far as drawing up those plans was concerned. There were five occasions when intelligence was received on time, but no Israeli jet fired even a single missile.

On one occasion, the reason was technical: the command post had set their radio to the incorrect frequency and were therefore unable to communicate with the F-15s and F-16s dispatched to execute the mission. On another occasion Gen Gilboa claimed that intelligence about Arafat’s presence on the flight wasn’t reliable. During the third mission Eitan was informed that the plane had been identified too late and bringing it down would have made the act visible on the radars of another Mediterranean country. On the other occasions the air force wasted time until the commercial airliner was out of the zone in which it was to be brought down.

The Israeli air force and General Gilboa — the head of AMAN research — succeeded in repeatedly sabotaging the plan until Sharon’s power was eroded through a judicial enquiry established by PM Begin into a massacre at the Beirut refugee camps. The commission recommended that Sharon be fired, and when he refused to resign, that is exactly what PM Begin did.

I drew most of the details of this story from Ronen Bergman’s phenomenal book “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations”. I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

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You will also enjoy reading my spy novels: Let Bhutto Eat Grass & Let Bhutto Eat Grass: Part 2 deal with nuclear weapons espionage in 1970s India, Pakistan, and Europe.