Hamas Leader Describes Attack

Looking fit a week after a high-tech attempt on his life, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal told reporters at his home in Jordan on Friday that God had saved him from death at the hands of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

“It is clear that what happened to me eight days ago was an assassination attempt by the Israeli Mossad,” Meshaal said. “I almost became a victim, but God allowed me to survive.”

In Israel, analysts called the assassination attempt the worst bungle in the history of the country’s intelligence operations, and suggested Meshaal’s life may have been spared by Israeli incompetence.

The attack, coming on the heels of a failed clandestine military operation in Lebanon that left 12 Israeli soldiers dead last month, has shaken Israeli confidence in its security forces.

In a gray business suit and neatly trimmed beard, Meshaal, a spokesman for the Islamic extremist movement Hamas, recounted details of the attack that has infuriated Israelis with its recklessness and damaged relations with Jordan--Israel’s closest Arab ally--and Canada.

Meshaal said he had arrived at his office in the Jordanian capital, Amman, by car on the morning of Sept. 25 and was approaching the building on foot when two “foreign-looking” men came up from behind and attacked him with a strange, unidentified weapon.

“They used a newly developed device. One of them held it in his hand and attacked me from my left ear. At that point, I realized it was an assassination attempt, but without using gunshots. The device is real. I felt a ringing in my left ear and something like an electric shock through my body,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure whether it was electrocution or poisoning. . . . About two hours later I started vomiting and lost my sense of balance and was taken to the hospital,” he said.

The weapon has not been found or publicly identified, although it is assumed that Meshaal was shot with a poison chemical. Without naming Israel, Jordan’s King Hussein has told editors in Jordan last week that “the side” that attacked Meshaal was forced to help doctors with the antidote.

According to accounts from Meshaal and Jordanian journalists, one of Meshaal’s bodyguards knocked the attacker’s hand away and scuffled with the assailants before they fled in a waiting rental car. He followed them in Meshaal’s car and, unbeknownst to the attackers, a second bodyguard also pursued them in a taxi.

When the first guard peeled off to return to Meshaal, the attackers apparently believed that they had lost their tail. But the second guard shadowed them for another mile, until they stopped to change vehicles, and then got out to fight them.

By coincidence, according to a Jordanian journalist, the son of a former Palestine Liberation Army chief saw the fight and recognized Meshaal’s bodyguard. He brought Jordanian police, who arrested Meshaal’s attackers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to comment.

The assailants in Jordanian custody reportedly carried forged Canadian passports, prompting Canada to recall its ambassador to Israel for consultations.

A third man, also carrying a Canadian passport, was reported to have been involved as well, but his whereabouts are unknown.

Meshaal, whose organization opposes the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has claimed responsibility for multiple suicide bombings in downtown Jerusalem this summer, described him as one more member of a Mossad “cell.”

King Hussein, who is said to have threatened to break diplomatic ties with Israel over the assassination attempt, instead pressured Israel to release its most valuable political prisoner, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

The United States also is said to be irked over the attack, which would have to have been approved at the highest level in Israel.

Israel television reported Friday night that, after the bombings, Netanyahu asked Mossad for a list of potential Hamas targets abroad.

Israeli intelligence analysts have publicly condemned the operation as unnecessarily risky and incompetent and demanded to know how Netanyahu could have approved an undercover assassination attempt in the Hashemite Kingdom, particularly as King Hussein has stuck by Israel.

“The stupidity of doing this in Jordan is unbelievable, even if it had succeeded,” said Yossi Melman, an Israeli expert in military and security affairs.

Israel has had other intelligence fiascos, such as an episode in 1954 when Israeli agents planted bombs in Egyptian movie theaters and other public places, Melman said. Several agents were caught and two were hanged in that case. But the difference, Melman noted, is that the countries were in a state of war.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994.

Melman said the Meshaal case was not only a political error but also operationally poor.

“The agents were not as good as they were supposed to be. Maybe they were not as good at procedure. Maybe they did not have enough information. They didn’t know they were being shadowed. . . . They were complacent or not in their best element,” he said.