Israel Says Its Proof Is ‘Absolute’ on Arafat’s Role in Hijack Plans

Senior Israeli officials intensified their campaign Thursday to lay the blame for the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro at the door of Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“We have absolute, complete and irrefutable proof that Arafat knew about this operation before it was to begin,” David Kimche, director general of the Foreign Ministry, told correspondents at a special briefing here.

In Tel Aviv, Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, the chief of military intelligence, told reporters that team leaders of one or more of the PLO units most closely associated with Arafat gave “orders and guidance” to four groups of terrorists involved in recent attacks on Israelis.

Barak said these terrorist groups include the hijackers of the Achille Lauro, the gunmen who killed three Israelis last month in a Cyprus marina, the killers of two Israeli merchant seamen whose bodies were found Wednesday in Barcelona, Spain, and a gang that was smashed near the West Bank city of Hebron last weekend. That gang was responsible for killing five Israelis and wounding 18 others over the last year or so, Barak said.

Unusual Briefings

The unusual, on-the-record briefings by Kimche and Barak added emphasis to charges that had been made less directly in the past two days by lower-level Israeli officials.

Arafat has publicly denied any prior knowledge of the Achille Lauro hijacking, which he has condemned as an attempt to discredit the PLO.

Kimche and Barak offered only circumstantial evidence to support their statements. They said that to divulge any further information might compromise Israeli intelligence sources.

Barak charged that Arafat is trying to have the best of both worlds. He said Arafat wants to keep lines open to his hard-line opponents in the Arab world by showing that his diplomatic efforts are not preventing him from carrying on with the “armed struggle” against Israel, and at the same time, by denying involvement, he hopes to reap political benefits in the international community.

In Washington, a State Department official said there is some evidence to support Israel’s charge that the hijacking was carried out by a PLO faction loyal to Arafat--contrary to the PLO chairman’s denial--but no clear evidence of a direct link to the guerrilla leader. He refused to divulge what the evidence is but said, “It’s nothing conclusive yet.”

Attack Planned on Port

Kimche also said, “We know for a fact that the (hijackers’) original idea was to make their way to Ashdod (an Israeli port south of Tel Aviv) to carry out an attack.” The liner Achille Lauro was scheduled to call at Ashdod after it stopped at Port Said, Egypt.

The plan went awry, he said, apparently after the four terrorists were discovered on board the ship. He said an Israeli couple who left the ship at Alexandria before the hijacking, to take a bus trip to the Pyramids with most of the other passengers, told officials at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo that they had taken notice of the four and suspected they were Palestinian terrorists.

He said that the couple, identified as Reuven and Ilana Pacher, had reported their suspicions to members of the ship’s crew.

The newspaper Maariv reported Thursday that the hijackers’ plan was to seize control of the ship’s bridge and radio room, black out communications and steam silently into port at Ashdod. It said the plan failed when the ship’s captain became suspicious and radioed Egypt.

Intelligence Data Cited

Kimche told correspondents that Israel had had intelligence information that pro-Arafat PLO terrorists planned to strike at ports in Israel.

Kimche, a former intelligence officer, did not disclose the source of this information, but it is known that Israel has captured a number of Palestinians in encounters at sea over the last six months.

In the biggest of these, which took place last April, the Israeli navy sank a freighter with 28 passengers on board.