WASHINGTON – Israel tried numerous times to assassinate Palestinian leaderYasser Arafat over the course of years, an Israeli journalistclaimedWednesday, according to international media outlets.
In his new book calledRise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’sTargeted Assassinations,investigative journalist Ronen Bergman asserts thatIsraeli authorities called off a bid to shoot down a plane after therealisation that Arafat was not travelling in it.
According to Bergman, theIsraeli military had kept on alertfour F-16s andF-15s fighter jets from November 1982 to January 1983 if Arafat was spottedand urgent action needed.
“At least five times, [the jets were ordered] to intercept and destroyairliners believed to be carrying Arafat, only to be called back soon aftertakeoff,” Bergman wrote in the New York Timeslink>.
Of these instances, there was one where the Israeli jets closed in on acommercial aircraft “traveling from Amman to Tunisia before they werepulled off the mission”, Haaretz reportedlink>.
On another, they disrupted a Boeing 707’s communications.
Nevertheless, they had to turn back each time due to the non-presence ofthe Palestinian leader.
Bergman penned in the NYT that another staged operation saw Israelinational intelligence agency Mossad “taking advantage of lax security atthe Athens airport, [whereagents] waited for Arafat in the area whereprivate planes were parked”.
In yet another bid, an Israeli intelligence agencyteam followed Uri Avnery— a noted journalist and activist — when he flewto Lebanon for an interviewwith Arafat, where they intended to kill the Palestinian leader.
The narration turns even more shocking when Bergman mentioned that agentswere ordered to take out Arafat even it meant losing a few Israeli lives.
Yet, Arafat took a different route using his sixth sense and acumen andmanaged to stay safe.
Israeli authorities had believed that assassinating Arafat woulddestabilise the Palestinian cause, resulting in its elimination, but theyeventually failed.