A twilight war battle in sunny Damascus

Monday, September 27, 2004

The ex-paratrooper was no brainy intelligence gatherer, certainly not the kind of gray ‘George Smiley-like’ spy that Ephraim Halevy was. Halevy’s years as Mossad chief were quiet – by Israeli standards. There would be no more ‘twilight wars’ – shadowy gun duels between Israeli agents and Palestinian gunmen in the streets of Europe or Arab capitals, certainly not after the Mossad botched the mid-1990s assassination of Khaled Mashal in the streets of Amman, a costly failure that freed Ahmed Yassin from jail, propelled Hamas to the forefront of the Palestinian war against Israel and forced then-premier Binyamin Netanyahu to name Halevy as Mossad chief.

Dagan was to be a very different Mossad chief. His first priority was to resurrect the Mossad’s capabilities for wet operations, not merely the intelligence gathering that Halevy favored. Dagan was known as a proponent of car bombs as a weapon of choice against terrorist targets. Car bombs sent a message not only to the terror organization, but to the government that sheltered the terrorists. Usually, that meant Beirut. This week, it means Damascus.

The killing of Azadin Sheikh Khalil, a Hamas officer based in Damascus and reportedly in charge of Hamas weapons smuggling operations from Sinai into Gaza, was meant to send several messages.

irst of all, since it was the first time that at least for the first 20 hours, Israel did not officially deny that it had anything to do with the car bombing (which apparently very deliberately killed only the target with only broken windows in suburban Damascus as collateral damage), it sent the message that yes, Israeli agents are back on the streets. True, there have been at least five similar bombings in Lebanon in the past few years, but Israeli officials always took care to deny involvement even though it seemed that Israel was the likely culprit. Yesterday, at least according to the Israeli military correspondents and Arab affairs correspondents, no effort was made to deny Israeli involvement.

Secondly, the bombing sent a message to higher up Hamas officers that if Syria hasn’t evicted them from Damascus, they better get out on their own. The two top Hamas officials in Damascus – Khaled Mashal and Imad Alwali apparently already had departed the Syrian capital, under pressure from the Assad regime. But Hamas officials from both the political and military wings of the movement continue to live in Damascus, providing guidance, financing and instructions to Hamas in Gaza. Israel wants them out – so the message was also directed at Assad – if you won’t stop harboring terrorists, we will.

That, at least, is how the Israeli press was reporting the incident this morning. Trouble is, by this morning, Israeli embassies worldwide were instructed to notch up their security alerts; Israeli travelers overseas – and there are an estimated 250,000 of them traveling during his month of holidays – may now become targets for the Hamas (which under Ahmed Yassin – himself assassinated by Israel earlier this year -- refrained from turning Europe or elsewhere into a battlefield); and on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, the assassination only added fuel to the furor of the Palestinians under occupation.

And Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman, pretty much the only foreigner right now capable of speaking to both Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon on the same day, canceled a trip to Israel that had been slated to go over the details of the emerging Egyptian plan to train Palestinian security officers for a post-disengagement Gaza.

here is another important element to the assassination that should not go overlooked. Reports last week in London’s Arab press said that Dagan had asked some Arab intelligence agencies for as much intelligence as they could provide on Hamas operatives based in Damascus. A mission like the bombing yesterday in Damascus presumably takes a lot of planning –and cooperation with other intelligence agencies. During the 1970s after the Munich Olympics Massacre of 1972 when Israel and the PLO conducted a ‘Twilight War’ in Europe and Arab capitals and then in the 1980s, when that war moved to Lebanon and then North Africa, there were no Arab intelligence agencies to which Israel could ask for help. Nowadays, both as a result of the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, the Oslo accords, diplomatic ties with Gulf states and North African countries, and especially because of the American war on terror, Israel can reach out for help to several Arab intelligence services, as well as its more traditional intelligence allies in Europe, let alone Washington. And that might be the most important of the unspoken messages sent in yesterday’s cellular phone call that set off the bomb that killed Khalil.

You're reading 'The Situation' Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg The text on the Ariga Home Page changes Monday-Friday, around 2 P.M. Tel Aviv time (GMT+2, EST+7, PST+10). Photo of the Day, courtesy of BauBau changes on average once every 12 hours Paintings by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted) change weekly.

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