Operation Salt Fish - Part One

Or how Ariel Sharon, Raful Eitan and Meir Dagan almost bombed Yasser Arafat to bits in Beirut.

An incredibly Happy Diwali to all my wonderful readers here. My apologies for radio silence over the past couple of weeks; real life interrupted in a significant way. In addition to the many other things that happened, we ended up adopting a 6-weeks-old puppy a few days ago. But you’re obviously not here to read about my life, so let’s begin.

London

On 3 June 1982 at the Dorchester Hotel in London, a currency-printing company -- De La Rue -- hosted a black-tie dinner for diplomats and executives. After dinner Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to the UK, was walking back to his car.

Shlomo Argov

He was accompanied by Detective Colin Simpson, his British bodyguard. Shin Bet weren't allowed to operate in the UK. Simpson and he had covered the 30-odd yards from the hotel entrance to his car, and Argov was about to step in when he was shot in the head by Hussein Ghassan Said, a member of a Palestinian terror group.

Simpson bundled him into the car and instructed the driver to drive to the nearest hospital. Then he chased after Said who was rushing towards a car nearby in which two friends were waiting. Said fired at Simpson but missed. Simpson fired back, hitting Said in the neck and bringing him down. His friends were caught less than an hour later.

MI5 had penetrated the terror cell that Said had been part of. They had been warned by their asset inside it, but the tip-off about the assassination attempt had not been analysed on time. In any case, the Israeli ambassador had been shot in the head on British soil by Palestinian terrorists. A response was sure to follow.

Tel Aviv

Argov survived, but he was paralysed due to the injury. The assassination attempt was the handiwork of Abu Nidal, the nom de guerre of Sabri al-Banna.

Abu Nidal aka Sabri al-Banna

Although Nidal was Palestinian, he was hostile to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Israeli intelligence also learnt that Abu Nidal had executed the assassination attempt on instructions from Barzan al-Tikriti, the head of Iraqi intelligence and half-brother of Saddam Hussein. The assassination was intended to spark hostilities between Israel, PLO, and Syria and, if Saddam was extra lucky, embroil Iran in it as well.

Barzan al-Tikriti (2nd from left) talks to Saddam Hussain while Uday and Qusay walk past.

One would think that with Israeli intelligence knowing this, Saddam's plan would fail miserably. But Ariel Sharon, who was then Israel's Defence Minister, and other hawks in the Israeli cabinet appeared to share Saddam's interest. The cabinet ignored intelligence about PLO's lack of involvement and ordered aerial bombardment of Beirut and PLO bases in Southern Lebanon.

Ariel Sharon

Arafat couldn't ignore this, and the PLO rained artillery fire on twenty-nine communities in Northern Israel. This provided Sharon with the excuse he needed. Operation Peace for Galilee was presented to the Israeli cabinet as a 40-kilometre thrust into Lebanon to remove the threat posed by PLO artillery, but Sharon's objective was grander.

He wanted to utilise the IDF and Phalangists - a Lebanese Christian militia - to conquer Lebanon from the border to Beirut, destroy the PLO, and inflict severe damage on Syrian units deployed there. With Phalangists in charge, Palestinians would be deported to Jordan where they would then become a majority and establish a Palestinian state. With Jordan now a state for Palestinians, Sharon expected the demand for a Palestinian homeland carved out of territories claimed by Israel to die out. There was one other element to Sharon's plan: Get to Beirut, find Arafat, and eliminate him.

This plan was opposed by both Mossad and AMAN - Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate. Both anticipated Sharon's larger gambit behind the 40-kilometre incursion and knew that the situation would escalate. Both organisations warned the Menachem Begin, the PM, but he ignored their concerns. The IDF invaded Lebanon on 6 June.

Lebanon

Since both AMAN and Mossad had infiltrated the PLO, the IDF received excellent field intelligence and was able to achieve most of its objectives. Most PLO commanders fled, leaving their men to fight the IDF and die. Syria reacted, and the IDF used that opportunity to maul the Syrians badly. But the incursion did not stop at 40 kilometres. Sharon kept justifying to the cabinet and ordered the IDF to drive deeper into Lebanon.

Sharon's greatness was that he knew how to describe, in the most vivid way, why it was necessary to advance another few kilometres, because otherwise tomorrow morning the Syrian Army would be sitting on some hill and endanger our troops. That's how he managed to extract authorisation from the cabinet for the creeping invasion.
-- Brigadier General Azriel Nevo, Begin's Military Secretary

By the end of the month the IDF had encircled Beirut and begun a siege.

Siege of Beirut

At the same time Lt Gen Raful Eitan, the IDF's chief of staff, set up a task force with Meir Dagan called Operation Salt Fish. Their job was to locate Arafat - or Salt Fish - and have the Air Force bomb him to smithereens.

Meir Dagan, front and centre

AMAN's tech spooks were drafted into action. They tapped into the PLO's communications and intercepted conversations in real time. This was then corroborated by covert observation, often carried out by IDF special forces and Mossad operatives, and a detailed picture of Arafat's organisation as well as hideouts was built. Then the task force sprang into action. As soon as they'd hear Arafat's bodyguards talk about his arrival a specific location, they would order an Air Force jet into the air. More than once, the bombs razed the designated building but missed Arafat who had left the location moments earlier.

As bombs rained down on locations he had been at, Arafat figured out what was happening. He broke his routine. His security detail took additional precautions. His bodyguards would talk about meetings at multiple locations at the same time. Paranoid about Mossad having penetrated his organisation, Arafat spread misinformation among his own people. As Arafat doggedly survived each new building razed, the Salt Fish task force's desperation increased.

In early July, when an Israeli magazine announced that they would cross over into Beirut with two other colleagues to interview Arafat, the Salt Fish team tracked their location. The leadership debated the ethics of taking out Arafat during the interview and were apparently willing to sacrifice three Israelis to get the PLO chairman. Luckily for Uri Avnery, Sarit Yishai, and Anat Saragusti, the PLO's countermeasures were adequate. The Salt Fish team lost track of the journalists in south Beirut, and Arafat survived one of the most serious attempts on his life.

Continued in Operation Salt Fish - Part Two.

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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.