At the same time, the media started screaming that Israel had tried to kill Marwan Barghouti, which of course, it hadn’t. I knew the organization had taken care to avoid killing him. But everybody believed the newspapers and Al-Jazeera, so Marwan Barghouti decided to make some political capital out of the rumor. He began boasting, “Yes, they tried to assassinate me, but I was too smart for them.”
When Abdullah Barghouti heard the news in prison, he believed it, too, and sent a few of his special bombs to Marwan’s assistant to be used to unleash a terrible revenge on the Israelis. Marwan very much appreciated the gesture and felt indebted to Abdullah.
Abdullah’s arrival had marked a dramatic change in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. First, his bombs were dramatically more sophisticated and devastating than anything we had seen before, making Israel a lot more vulnerable and increasing pressure on the administration to stop the bombers.
Second, the Al-Aqsa Intifada was no longer confined to Palestine. Barghouti was an outsider, born in Kuwait. Who could tell what other threats to Israel might lie in wait beyond its borders?
Third, Barghouti was not somebody who was easy to keep track of. He wasn’t Hamas. He wasn’t PA. He was just Barghouti, an anonymous independent death machine.
Soon after Abdullah’s arrest, the PA asked Marwan to talk to him about any future attacks he may have planned.
“Okay,” Marwan said. “I’ll have Hassan Yousef talk to him.”
Marwan knew my father felt strongly about political corruption and had heard about his efforts to make peace between Hamas and the PA. He called my dad, who agreed to go talk with Abdullah.
My father had never heard of Abdullah Barghouti, who certainly wasn’t a member of Hamas. But he warned Abdullah, “If you have anything planned, you need to tell the PA so we can stop it for now and take off some of the pressure we’re getting from Israel, at least for the next few weeks. If there is another explosion like the ones at the Dolphinarium or Sbarro, Israel will come into the West Bank in force. They’ll get tough with the PA leaders, and they’ll take you.”
Abdullah admitted that he had sent several bombs to Nablus, where some fighters were planning to load the explosives into four cars, surround Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres while he was traveling, and assassinate him. He also revealed that Hamas operatives in the north were going to blow up a number of Israeli lawmakers. Unfortunately, he didn’t know who the bombers were, who they had targeted, or who was planning to assassinate Peres. He had only a telephone number.
My father came home and shared what he had learned with me. We were now privy to information about a plot to assassinate one of Israel’s highest-ranking officials—the foreign minister. The ramifications were chilling.
Obviously, there was nothing to do but place a call to Abdullah’s contact. Marwan Barghouti didn’t want Abdullah to use his phone, and my father didn’t want him to use his either. We all knew that the Israelis would be listening, and neither man wanted to be connected with the terrorist operations.
So my father sent me out to buy a disposable cell phone on which we could make the call before throwing the phone into the trash. I bought the phone, wrote down the number, and called it in to the Shin Bet so they could trace the call.
Abdullah called his contact in Nablus and told him to stop whatever he was doing until he heard otherwise. As soon as Israeli intelligence learned what had been planned, they put extra security on every member of the Knesset and the cabinet. Finally, after a couple of months, things began to calm down a little.
In the meantime, Marwan continued to work toward Abdullah’s release, not only because Abdullah had provided him with bombs, but also because he wanted him free to kill more Israelis. In addition to being one of the leaders of the Second Intifada, Marwan Barghouti was also a terrorist who was personally shooting soldiers and settlers.
Eventually, the PA did release Abdullah Barghouti. The Shin Bet was furious.
Then everything got really crazy.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE GAME
Summer 2001–Spring 2002
On August 27, 2001, an Israeli helicopter fired two rockets into the office of Abu Ali Mustafa, secretary-general of the PFLP. One of the rockets struck him as he sat at his desk.
The following day, more than fifty thousand outraged Palestinians, along with Mustafa’s family, attended his funeral. Mustafa had opposed the peace process and the Oslo Accords. Nevertheless, he was a moderate like my father, and we had gone together to hear him lecture many times.
Israel credited him with nine car-bomb attacks, but it wasn’t true. Like my dad, he was a political leader, not a military leader. Israel had absolutely no evidence against him. I knew that for a fact. But it didn’t matter. They assassinated Mustafa anyway—perhaps in retaliation for the carnage at the Sbarro restaurant, or perhaps because of the Dolphinarium massacre. More likely, they simply wanted to send a message to Yasser Arafat. In addition to his role in the PFLP, Mustafa was also a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee.
Two weeks later, on September 11, nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jetliners in the United States. Two crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Another crashed into the Pentagon in Washington. And the fourth went down in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. All told, 2,973 people died in addition to the terrorists themselves.
As the news media struggled to keep up with the unbelievable events continuing to unfold, I sat with the rest of the world watching again and again the reports of the Twin Towers collapsing, white ash covering Church Street like a February blizzard. I felt a rush of shame when I saw the footage of Palestinian children celebrating in the streets of Gaza.
The attack reduced the Palestinian cause to ashes, too, as the world shouted with one voice against terrorism—any terrorism, for any cause. In the weeks to follow, the Shin Bet began searching for lessons to be found in the rubble of what would come to be known simply as 9/11.
Why had the U.S. intelligence services not been able to prevent the disaster? For one thing, they operated independently and competitively. For another, they relied mostly on technology and rarely collaborated with terrorists. Those tactics may have been fine in the Cold War, but it’s pretty tough to combat fanatical ideals with technology.
Israeli intelligence, on the other hand, relied mostly on human resources; had countless spies in mosques, Islamic organizations, and leadership roles; and had no problem recruiting even the most dangerous terrorists. They knew they had to have eyes and ears on the inside, along with minds that understood motives and emotions and that could connect the dots.
America understood neither Islamic culture nor its ideology. That, combined with open borders and lax security, made it a much softer target than Israel. Even so, although my role as a spy enabled Israel to take hundreds of terrorists off the streets, our work couldn’t begin to put an end to terrorism—even in a tiny country like Israel.
About a month later, on October 17, four PFLP gunmen walked into the Jerusalem Hyatt Hotel and assassinated Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi. They said it was revenge for the Mustafa assassination. Despite his seemingly apolitical portfolio, Ze’evi was an obvious target. He publicly advocated a policy of making life so miserable for the three million people in the West Bank and Gaza that they would voluntarily move to other Arab countries. Mixing his metaphors, Ze’evi reportedly once told an Associated Press reporter that some Palestinians were like “lice” who should be stopped like a “cancer spreading within us.”[8]
8
“Obituary: Rehavam Zeevi,” BBC News, October 17, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1603857.stm (accessed November 24, 2009).