Value of Israel’s Assassination Policy Debated : Killing of Wazir Ruthless and Efficient

Khalil Wazir, the stocky chief of military and terror operations for the Palestine Liberation Organization, was working late in the second-floor study of his white stucco villa outside the Tunisian capital of Tunis at 1:30 a.m. Saturday when he apparently heard the soft but unmistakable sound of shots from silenced pistols on the floor below.

Wazir, a pistol in his hand, rushed into the hall and found himself face-to-face with three men wearing military uniforms and carefully positioned in an arc outside the study door. The three--commandos following a long-established pattern--opened fire instantly, hitting Wazir 70 times with submachine-gun bullets as his wife and 14-year-old daughter looked on in horror from a nearby bedroom.

The gunmen, part of a team of nine assassins including a woman who reportedly videotaped the entire operation, left quickly, rejoining 20 colleagues who had provided surveillance, cover and communications. Traveling in three rented vehicles, they returned to the then-deserted stretch of Mediterranean beach on which they had landed in rubber boats not long before. Minutes later, the vehicles stood empty, keys in ignition switches, and the team was aboard its mother ship, sailing away.

High above them and farther out to sea in international airspace, a specially equipped command and control plane also headed home.

Wazir, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Jihad, or “father of the holy war,” was the second-ranking official of the PLO and the latest of some two dozen top PLO officials liquidated over the last 15 years, in attacks from Beirut to Paris to Warsaw using guns, exploding packages, remote-controlled car bombs and even a booby-trapped telephone.

The world concluded immediately that Abu Jihad’s killing was ordered by top Israeli officials and carried out by Mossad, the feared Israeli secret service, along with teams of elite Israeli navy and army commandos.

The raid--like nearly all Mossad operations--was breathtaking in its daring, efficiency and ruthlessness. Intelligence professionals around the world acknowledge Mossad’s unparalleled prowess in the black arts of assassination, infiltration and disinformation.

Yet a subdued but serious disagreement exists among intelligence experts, government officials and policy specialists outside of Israel--as well as inside Israel itself--about whether that nation is well advised, or justified, in pursuing such a campaign of death against its enemies.

Disagreement on Effectiveness

And even among those who accept the premise that Israel is at war with its Arab and Palestinian enemies--and thus operating under the sterner rules of combat--there is disagreement about whether stalking and killing the leaders of the PLO is an effective means of bringing peace to the Middle East or advancing Israel’s long-term interests.

Among proponents of such operations, assassinations are viewed simply as acts of war and are justified first, in terms of the long history of Arab terrorism against Israeli citizens--often civilians and children--and second, on tactical grounds.

“There are no moral compunctions” among Israeli officials about assassinating PLO leaders, according to Avner Yaniv, an Israeli government professor spending a year at Georgetown University. “It all flows from the assumption this is war. The rules are the rules of war.”

“Counterterrorism is not retaliation,” a former Israeli counterterrorism agent said in an interview this week. “It’s an ongoing offensive. You have to prove to the other side, mentally, that when they have the guts and strength to undertake something against you, that it’s the exception and not the rule.

‘Keep Them on the Defensive’

“The object is always to keep them on the defensive, to have as many commanders as possible spend their time guarding their soft, vulnerable parts instead of working to injure you,” he said.

Others argue that, despite the provocation of Palestinian and other anti-Israeli terrorists, the adoption of assassination as a matter of official policy sets Israel apart from the ethical traditions of its Western allies and over time makes it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve stable, peaceful relations with those who are now its enemies.

George A. Carver, former deputy CIA director, said Israel is probably alone in the world in “the assertion that they have a right to be judge, jury and executioner and carry out sentences anywhere in the world.”

The KGB, East Bloc intelligence services influenced by the KGB, notably Bulgaria, and North Korea use assassination as freely as the Israelis, but they do not publicly proclaim the right to do it, he said.

‘Cannot Go on Forever’

And, in the larger context of Israel’s long-term interests, Yaniv said: “Ultimately, there is no escape from some sort of dialogue with the Palestinians. If that’s the case, Israel cannot go on forever liquidating Palestinian leaders.”

“In the long run,” agreed an American who served with the CIA in the Middle East, “it doesn’t probably help them very much. But Israel has always been a short-term society: ‘Take care of today’s problem today, and then worry about tomorrow.’ In the long run, though, it just makes people sore. And the Arab culture lives with a very long-term outlook.”

These arguments have been heard a thousand times in Israel. But a succession of Israeli governments spanning the political spectrum have concluded repeatedly that the benefits of their shadowy war against the PLO leadership outweigh the costs--the occasional failures, the international condemnation, the continued Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians and the ever more bitter feelings between Arabs and Israel.

Long Marked for Death

Abu Jihad was marked for death long ago, an Israeli intelligence source said this week. Year after year, his movements have been tracked and operations against him planned in excruciating detail, while Mossad officials awaited permission from political authorities to proceed.

Such training involves repeated dry runs--”time-motion studies,” one Israeli agent called them--by all members of the assassination, cover and surveillance teams involved in an operation. The practice runs are videotaped and studied. Each piece of the operation is timed to the second, this official said.

On April 13, when word came down from Jerusalem that the Abu Jihad hit was approved, Mossad was ready. It put agents into Tunis with Lebanese passports and accents to match. The agents rented two Volkswagen minibuses and a Peugeot 305 sedan to transport commandos from the beach to Abu Jihad’s villa in the fashionable Tunis suburb of Sidi Bou Said.

Piecing Operation Together

While many details of what followed remain veiled in secrecy, the following account has been pieced together from Tunisian authorities, PLO aides, Israeli government officials and the Israeli press:

The commandos were lowered into black rubber dinghies from an Israeli missile boat offshore in the Mediterranean sometime around midnight Saturday.

The hit squad, wearing Tunisian national guard uniforms, were members of an elite army “reconnaissance” unit known as Sayeret Matkal that reports directly to the Israeli general staff, according to sources in Israel.

An Israeli air force Boeing 707--painted to look like an El Al commercial jetliner, according to one account, and equipped with the latest communications and electronic jamming gear--flew overhead providing command and communications. The plane also served as the link between the commandos and the mother ship.

Links to Outside World Cut

The plane flew just outside Tunisian airspace in traffic lanes controlled by Italy, according to Israeli accounts. During the operation itself, the plane’s electronic gear interrupted Tunisia’s communications links with the outside world.

American intelligence officials say that they were not advised in advance of the Israeli operation. They also insist, remarkably, that they heard absolutely no radio traffic that would indicate such an operation was under way.

An Israeli intelligence source said that such raids often are conducted in complete radio silence, using only hand signals and flashlights for communications. However, it is possible that Israel has developed radio communication methods that are undetectable to American electronic eavesdroppers or that U.S. listening devices in the Mediterranean and North Africa were not focused on the area Saturday night.

According to accounts in the Israeli press, Gen. Edud Barak, the former head of military intelligence and now deputy chief of staff, was aboard the plane directing the operation.

Barak also commanded an April, 1973, operation in which about 30 Israeli commandos went ashore in Beirut and assassinated three top Palestinian military figures. That raid, too, used operatives on the ground who posed as businessmen and rented cars used to ferry the commandos to and from the beach. As in Tunis, the rental cars later were found parked on the beach, ignition keys left in place.

Superb Planning

Both operations also were marked by superb planning and precise intelligence about the victims’ movements.

Just after 1 a.m. Saturday, the three rented vehicles approached Wazir’s villa and an estimated 20 commandos secured the area, cutting telephone lines to the local police station and preparing a safe exit route for the gun squad.

The nine-member hit team slipped onto the grounds of Wazir’s home, quietly killing a bodyguard as he dozed in the victim’s car. According to PLO officials, the commandos burst in the front and back doors. Four gunmen secured the ground floor, killing two guards with silencer-equipped weapons. The second team rushed up the stairs, where they were met by the 52-year-old Abu Jihad, gun in hand.

Wazir’s 14-year-old daughter, Hannan Wazir, told a television interviewer that her father got off one shot before he fell in a flood of bullets. One account said his gun hand was almost severed by concentrated gunfire.

Reason for Heavy Gunfire

An Israeli intelligence official explained that the heavy gunfire was not the result of blind rage or trigger-happy gunmen. Such attacks are designed to be completed quickly and surely, with no chance that the victim will survive. Three gunmen take up positions in a semicircle facing the target and empty their Uzis, he said.

The method is designed to avoid a repeat of an attempted 1981 assassination in which an Israeli agent failed to kill a PLO official in a Warsaw coffee shop, despite hitting him with five bullets. The intended victim was Mohammed Daoud Odeh, better known as Abu Daoud, a founder of the Black September terrorist group and believed to have been a planner of the 1972 murder of nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

“They were operating on the assumption they had very little time,” the Israeli intelligence source said. “They could not afford, having gone to such lengths, not to succeed in the mission. They had to leave him as dead as dead can be.”

The hit team scooped up the papers on Wazir’s desk and in his file cabinets and headed for the doors. Wazir’s daughter said that her mother leaned her head against the wall, waiting to be shot. One of the gunmen said in Arabic to the girl, “Go tend to your mother,” and the team was gone.

Old Testament Spirit

Assassination has been part of Israel’s anti-terrorism arsenal at least since the Munich massacre. It was that massacre that inspired the Israeli campaign of assassination, driven in part by an Old Testament spirit of retribution, in part by practical considerations.

As the independent Israeli newspaper Hadashot commented in an editorial last Sunday: “Israel has not completely ruled out a policy of eliminating terrorist organization leadership. The elimination of such leaders creates internal tensions and rivalries, mutual accusations, financial problems and disrupts operations.

“The elimination of leaders constitutes a component of deterrence, functions as a punitive device and contributes to national morale,” the newspaper concluded.

Flagging morale in Israel, particularly among young troops assigned to quell the Palestinian uprisings in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and among Israeli citizens troubled by the brutal treatment of the protesters, may have hastened the decision to eliminate Abu Jihad. The PLO leader was considered a key coordinator of the riots and the essential glue in an always fractious Palestinian movement.

Army Needed a Lift

“The army needed (the operation) because the army had so many blunders” in the occupied territories and in fighting recent terrorist raids, said a source close to the Israeli government. This includes the sense of military “impotence” during the four-month-old intifada (uprising), especially during the first weeks,” he said.

Now comes this nice, “sterile” operation--one that reached the intended target without killing any Israelis or innocent bystanders--something that brings back the glory days of the Israeli military, this source said. “The army is very proud about it.”

The death of Abu Jihad, a charismatic leader as well as a master tactician, may also have been sped by the Israeli belief that he was on the verge of becoming the operational leader of the PLO--its brains--while Arafat, whom the Israelis regard as incompetent, was to remain the symbolic leader.

Abu Jihad was working to bridge the gap betwen Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad. But as a result of his killing “the whole unity effort collapsed, because it was based on Abu Jihad’s credibility and his personality,” a former Israeli official said. “Look for yourself. Assad wouldn’t even let Arafat attend Abu Jihad’s funeral” in Damascus on Wednesday.

Will Disrupt Contacts

In the short run, at least, Abu Jihad’s death is expected to disrupt contacts between the PLO leadership and operatives in the West Bank and Gaza--disruptions that could be reflected in the course of the Palestinian uprising.

“In the short run, inevitably, undoubtedly, it will have a very big influence, because he was quite crucial,” an Israeli security source said. “He pulled a lot of strings in the field of communications and connections between the leaders of the riots and outside supporters.”

His death also will disrupt substantially the internal dynamics of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction, probably touching off a struggle for control and influence inside the organization, Israeli sources suggested.

According to officials close to Israeli intelligence, Abu Jihad’s career marked him almost from its outset. He was considered directly responsible for numerous acts of terror in Israel, including several spectacular and deadly attacks such as the March, 1978, hijacking of a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway. In that hijacking, 35 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinian commandos who landed by boat from Lebanon.

Sabotaged Water Tanks

In the 1950s, Wazir was arrested by the Egyptians for laying mines in Gaza, where he grew up. His first anti-Israel guerrilla operation was the sabotage of water tanks in southern Israel in 1955. In the mid-1960s, he conducted military raids on Israel from Syria’s Golan Heights.

With Chinese, Algerian and Soviet support, he established the camps in Lebanon where killers from every major terror group in the world were trained. Israeli intelligence officials have linked him to the notorious terror bands of the 1970s and 1980s, including the Italian Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Islamic Jihad and the organization run by the terrorist known as Carlos.

Israeli officials considered him to be the PLO’s ambassador-at-large to every remaining terror group and every country sworn to the destruction of Israel.

“I know for many years that they are after him,” a military source in Israel said. “There were ups and downs, but always there were people who were on this special assignment. Always. For years. . . . It shows you the atmosphere, if always there is a team that sits on him. It shows that someone is looking for him.”

Decision to Kill Made

Israeli officials decided in March to kill Abu Jihad because of his assumed role in the March 7 bus hijacking in the Negev desert, in which three terrorists who infiltrated from Egypt killed three Israeli civilians before they were themselves wiped out by a special police anti-terror squad. Wazir’s Fatah organization claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to Israeli government sources, the final go-ahead was given Wednesday, April 13, at a meeting of the 10-member inner Cabinet. One member of the group, Ezer Weizman, the Labor Party minister without portfolio and an Israeli war hero, has publicly expressed reservations about the killing.

Such an operation could not have proceeded without the approval of Israel’s co-leaders, Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Inner Cabinet was brought into the process in part to spread the blame if the operation blew up, Israeli sources said.

There was “a debate, a tough debate” in the Cabinet, one knowledgeable Israeli source said. The arguments against the assassination were “mainly on the political level,” he added.

Some Argued Against

Chief among the arguments against the killing were that it would encourage extremism in the PLO, that it would lead to an escalation of violence on the West Bank and Gaza and that the timing was wrong.

This last was reportedly Peres’ point. “Peres was afraid the Americans would see this as an obstacle to their diplomatic efforts,” said an Israeli political source, referring to Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s Middle East peace initiative.

What won the day for taking out Abu Jihad, according to a military source in Israel, was extraordinary intelligence that pinpointed his location and movements, including the fact that he was to leave Tunis the next morning.

“Of course, if you need the final go, you need a political approval,” the military official added. And that came because the intelligence about his movements was so good.

‘99% Intelligence’

“Militarily, this was a brilliant operation, and the most important part of it was the intelligence--99% intelligence,” the official said. The whole thing falls apart “if you don’t find the person, and you don’t know where he is, and you don’t know when he comes and when he goes, and what’s going on around him, and how many people watch him, and how they take care of him, and who stays with him at home, and in which rooms, specifically, where he spends most of his time, and all those sorts of little details.

“A hundred mistakes can take place in any single stop,” he said.

Despite Mossad’s extraordinary record of effectiveness, such breakdowns have occurred in the past. In the 1973 Beirut raid, Mossad gunmen stormed into the apartment of their most wanted terrorist target, Ali Hassan Salameh, and riddled his bed with bullets. The bed was empty, and it was almost six years before Mossad tracked him down again and killed him with a remote-controlled car bomb on the Rue Madame Curie in Beirut.

Humiliating Blunder

Perhaps Mossad’s most humiliating operations fiasco came in July, 1973, when an Israeli hit squad--again seeking Salameh--saw a man they thought was their target leaving a theater in Lillehammer, Norway, with a pregnant woman after watching the Clint Eastwood movie “Where Eagles Dare.”

As the couple walked up the street, two men jumped out of a Mazda sedan and systematically riddled him with bullets. It was not until two days later that Mossad officials realized the victim was Ahmed Boushiki, a poor Moroccan waiter who had been living in Lillehammer for four years. The woman was his Norwegian wife.

The inexperienced Mossad team was rounded up by Norweigian authorities. Several of them were imprisoned after revealing names of other agents in Europe and all the details of the assassination attempt.

Missed George Habash

Another Mossad intelligence failure took place in 1976, when the Israelis forced down a Libyan airliner in Israel in the belief that George Habash, leader of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was aboard. It turned out to be a major embarrassment: the plane carried several top Syrian officials--and no George Habash.

“Here again, it was a question of intelligence. Someone was not watching them until they got on board . . . and we were very upset,” the military source said.

More tragically, in 1973 Mossad got a tip that Black September was planning to crash an airliner loaded with explosives into Tel Aviv. When a Libyan plane penetrated Israeli airspace, the Israeli air force concluded that it was the kamikaze plane and shot it down.

Inspection of the rubble showed that it had contained 104 people, all civilians, and no explosives. It had been a legitimate Libyan airliner on the way to Cairo.

In the background of the decision to assassinate Abu Jihad, one military source said, is a feeling of frustration that has built up here over recent months at what is perceived as Israel’s loss of the initiative in its struggle against terrorists.

‘Sitting and Waiting’

“We were sitting and waiting for them to come for too long,” he said. In addition to last November’s embarrassing hang glider attack, in which six Israeli soldiers were killed by a lone gunman at an army base near Kiryat Shemona, there have been a series of additional infiltration attempts.

“We were quite successful in blocking them, but that is not enough,” this source said. “The whole idea in the early 1970s, when we were initiating activities, was that we would like them to run, and we would like them to hide and we would like to see them hiding from us, and not vice versa.

“And it was very helpful for a while, because after that operation in Beirut in 1973, they started to move very fast--night after night, from one place to another.”

However, a well-placed Israeli source said, “we have never been involved in such a high-level” assassination as the one of Abu Jihad. “It was quite a tacit understanding that you don’t touch the front-line people--on both sides,” he said.

Way to Protect Leaders

In part, this source noted, this understanding was a way of protecting Israel’s own leadership. “You don’t kill Arafat and he doesn’t try to kill (former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem) Begin. Not that they aren’t very well defended and protected. But the idea is, you don’t touch them.”

That Israel and the PLO draw a line where the killing stops is an idea foreign to most Western countries.

Among Western democracies, the CIA is prohibited by law and presidential executive order from engaging in assassinations. Britain no longer uses assassination as a political strategy, although “you could get an argument about that from the IRA (Irish Republican Army),” former CIA official Carver said.

“The British have a problem in Northern Ireland of people exceeding their brief. But an occasional summary execution in Northern Ireland is different from long-range planning of assassinations. . . . The French have been known from time to time to take a direct hand in speeding from the world people who they think are cluttering it up. But they usually arrange for brakes to fail on mountain roads,” Carver said.

Reserved Praise

“Within its charter,” he added, “the Mossad clearly is very good. Technically, the assassination of Abu Jihad was superlative. You can, of course, ask whether a government should use long-distance murder as a political tactic.”

In Israel today, the debate is not so much whether murder is a permissible tactic in the war against the Palestinians--most agree that it is--but whether this murder, at this time, will serve Israel’s long-term interests.

“It’s easy to find a consensus on who to kill,” said one Israeli politician. “It’s more difficult to find a consensus on who to deal with and what you’re willing to give him.”

Fisher reported from Jerusalem and Broder from Washington. Times staff writers Norman Kempster and Michael Wines in Washington and Robert C. Toth in Moscow contributed to this story.