How good are assassinations for Israel?
Regional, Military, 8/31/1998

To say that the Shiite Amal movement has already retaliated for the assassination of its operations officer, Hussam Al Amin is not certain. The barrage of Katyusha rockets that fell on northern Israel last week may have been the Amal answer to the assassination. But more may come.

Senior officials in Israel, both politicians and military strategists, tend to believe that Amal might launch further attacks on northern Israel, not only to avenge the assassination of Al Amin but also to return to the battlefield after a considerably long period of absence, leaving the grounds to its rival, Shiite Hizbollah (Party of God).

Al Amin was killed when his BMW was destroyed by a guided missile launched by an Israeli Air Force assault helicopter on August 25. Immediately afterward, Katyusha rockets fell on Israel's northern settlements, causing, in addition to heavy destruction and a few wounded, a major split within the Israeli society in general and within Israel's top military and political echelon in particular.

Was the cold-blooded murder unavoidable? Could Israel live without assassinating a middle-class military commander in Amal or was his assassination so vital that even the price was disregarded? There is no question at all that the assassination of Al Amin has failed to foster the traditional consensus in Israel, which usually praises the government for "brave" decisions of this kind. This time, the military command and political leadership found themselves at odds in evaluating the operation. A feeling dominated many Israelis that there was a major fiasco at the top because the military failed to warn Israelis living in the northern border settlements against possible Katyusha rocket attacks from Lebanon.

The dispute started between the prime minister's office and the Defense Ministry after the former claimed that guidelines were already issued by the prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, to the chief of staff asking him to send Israelis living in those northern settlements into shelters soon after the raid was carried out. Sources inside the Defense Ministry said it was not the prime minister's job or responsibility to pass orders to the chief of staff while bypassing the defense minister. The ping-pong blame continued as the publicity of both the prime minister and his defense minister eroded day after day.

The media was busy in analyzing the pros and cons in cases of political assassination. The argument eventuated from an old debate on whether or not assassination operations employed against political powers are useful in the long run. Whereas the immediate impact of those assassinations would serve the assassin's quest for higher morale or for scores against political foes, the aftermath, which usually comes in the form of retaliatory attacks, could be largely devastating for the power itself that stood behind the assassination.

When Islamic Jihad leader Fat'hi Sheqaqi was assassinated in Valetta, Malta, in October 1995, many Israelis argued that the movement was semi-paralyzed and its capacity to launch attacks was minimized. But when Mossad and Israeli military special units back in April 1988, raided in Tunis the house of former PLO military commander, Khalil Al Wazir, they failed to achieve their main goal of maiming the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli military occupation. After Abu Jihad's assassination, the PLO had suffered a dire blow but still managed to lick its wounds and carry on with the fight. The assassination itself, moreover, served as a new and strong motivation for Palestinians to take to the streets and not to fear the Israeli reaction.

Another example on how assassinations never helped Israel in the long run could be found in the killing of former Hamas chief bomb maker Yihya Ayyash, better known among Palestinians as "the engineer." Israeli agents sent Ayyash a booby-trapped mobile phone and detonated it at a time when he answered an incoming call. Ayyash's assassination pushed Hamas into high gear. Suicide bus bombings wracked the main cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, killing dozens of Israelis and injuring many more. Not even in his worst nightmares had then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres imagined that what seemed to be a brave decision to take out Ayyash was in fact a fatal mistake that dealt a crippling blow to his political career in a turbulent term which followed Rabin's assassination.

Another instance, which provided harsh and painful testimony to this effect, was the assassination of Abbas Mussawi, Hizbollah's secretary general, in 1992. Two days after Israeli assault helicopters hit the car in which Mussawi was traveling, Hizbollah fired dozens of Katyusha rockets at the northern border settlements. A while later, an Israeli security officer in the embassy in Ankara, Turkey, was killed. Ten days later, a car bomb, with dozens of explosives aboard, exploded outside the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killing 31 people and injuring at least 252 others.

Previous Stories:
  Terrorism and Israeli threats to blow up Lebanon   (8/28/1998)
  Libya questions Britain about Gaddafi assassination attempt   (8/17/1998)
  Former Mossad officer sought by Norway   (11/29/1997)

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