Authors: Matthew Levitt
162.
Israeli Government, Office of the Prime Minister, “ISA Arrests Senior Hizballah Terrorist.”
163.
Bell,
Cold Terror
, 116.
164.
Etgar Lefkovits, “Terror Suspect Given Six Months’ Administrative Detention,”
Jerusalem Post
, February 22, 2001.
165.
Bar, “Deterring Nonstate Terrorist Groups,” 469–93;
Mikdad
.
166.
Israeli intelligence report, “Hizballah’s International Terrorism.”
167.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Details of Arrest of Jihad Shuman,” press release, February 21, 2001.
168.
Ibid.
169.
UK Parliament, Alexander Home, “The Terrorism Act 2000: Proscribed Organisations,” Standard Note SN/HA/00815, House of Commons Library, December 7, 2011, p. 25.
170.
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, “Hezbollah (part 1): Profile of the Lebanese Shiite Terrorist Organization of Global Reach Sponsored by Iran and Supported by Syria,” June 2003.
171.
Jason Groves, “Hezbollah Will Avenge Iran Strike,”
Sunday Express
(London), November 25, 2007.
172.
Anthony Loyd, “Tomb of the Unknown Assassin Reveals Mission to Kill Rushdie,”
Sunday Times
(London), June 8, 2005; UK Parliament, “Pursue, Prevent, Protect, Prepare: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International Terrorism,” Her Majesty’s Government, March 2009, 29 (presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Home Department.)
173.
Buenos Aires, Argentina Judicial Branch, AMIA Indictment, Office of the National Federal Court No. 17, Criminal and Correctional Matters No. 9, Case No. 1156, March 5, 2003, 39, 210–11, 275.
174.
Israeli intelligence report, “Hizballah Leader’s Visits to Europe,” undated, author’s personal files, received August 28, 2003.
175.
Author interview, British intelligence officials, London, April 15, 2010.
176.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Details of Arrest of Jihad Shuman.”
177.
Ibid.; United Press International, “Israel Jails Hezbollah Man with British Passport,” February 21, 2001.
178.
Bell,
Cold Terror
, 85.
179.
Schweitzer, “Export and Import of Suicide Bombers.”
180.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Details of Arrest of Jihad Shuman.”
181.
Israeli intelligence summary, “The Logic of Action and the Mode of Operation of the Hezbollah,” author’s personal files, November 29, 2011.
182.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Arrest of Hizbullah Agent from Kalansua,” press release, August 6, 2008.
183.
Israeli intelligence summary, “Logic of Action.”
184.
Alexander Ritzmann, “Hezbollah’s Fundraising Organisation in Germany: The Orphans Project Lebanon Promotes Martyrdom in Lebanon with German Taxpayers’ Money,” European Foundation for Democracy, July 2009.
185.
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, “Hezbollah, Part 1: Profile of the Lebanese Shiite Terrorist Organization of Global Reach Sponsored by Iran and Supported by Syria,” Special Information Paper, July 2003, 92.
186.
US Department of the Treasury, “Twin Treasury Actions Take Aim at Hizballah’s Support Network,” July 27, 2007.
187.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Arrest of Hizbullah Agent from Kalansua.”
188.
Ibid.
189.
Israel Security Agency,
Data and Trends in Palestinian Terror
, “Palestinian Terror in 2008: Statistics and Trends,” December 2008; Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Arrest of Hizbullah Agent from Kalansua.”
190.
Israel Defense Forces, “Israeli Arab Indicted in Hezbollah Plot to Assassinate Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi,” August 31, 2009.
191.
Ibid.
192.
Amost Harel, Jalal Bana, Baruch Kra, “Bedouin Officer Says He’s Innocent of Spying for Hezbollah, Drug Dealing,”
Haaretz
, October 25, 2002; “Israeli Colonel Jailed for Spying,”
BBC News
, June 19, 2006; author interview, former senior Israeli official, Washington, DC, August 22, 2011.
193.
Author interview, former senior Israeli official, Washington, DC, August 22, 2011.
194.
Yaakov Katz, “Israeli-Arab Indicted for Hizbullah Plot to Assassinate Ashkenazi,”
Jerusalem Post
, August 31, 2009.
195.
Author interview, former senior Israeli official, Washington, DC, August 22, 2011.
196.
Israel Defense Forces, “Israeli Arab Indicted in Hezbollah Plot”; Katz, “Israeli-Arab Indicted for Hizbullah Plot to Assassinate Ashkenazi.”
197.
“Former Shin Bet Official: Iran Knew of Israeli Arab Shadowing Ashkenazi,”
Jerusalem Post
, March 9, 2009.
198.
Ofra Edelman, “Israeli Arab Gets 5 Years, 8 Months for Spying on IDF Chief,”
Haaretz
(Tel Aviv), June 4, 2010.
199.
Indictment of Ameer Makhoul in Haifa Regional Court (Hebrew), author’s personal files. See also Dan Izenberg and Yaakiv Lappin, “Israeli Arab Charged with Spying,”
Jerusalem Post
, May 27, 2010; “Makhoul Exposed Location of Mossad Facility,”
Ynetnews
, May 27, 2010; Dan Izenberg, “Makhoul Sentenced to 9 Years for Spying for Hizbullah,”
Jerusalem Post
, July 26, 2011.
200.
Indictment of Ameer Makhoul; Izenberg and Lappin, “Israeli Arab Charged with Spying”; “Makhoul Exposed Location of Mossad Facility,”
Ynetnews
; Izenberg, “Makhoul Sentenced to 9 Years.”
201.
Israel Security Agency, “Hizballa Activity Involving Israeli Arabs,” undated report; Margot Dudkevitch and Yaakov Katz, “Dane Recruited by Hizbullah: Shin Bet Reveals He Filmed Security Sites from Train in North,”
Jerusalem Post
, January 27, 2005.
202.
Israel Security Agency, “Hizballa Activity Involving Israeli Arabs”; Dudkevitch and Katz, “Dane Recruited by Hizbullah.”
203.
Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Air Operations in Israel’s War against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting It Right in Gaza,” RAND Corporation, Project Air Force, Prepared for the United States Air Force, 2011, pp. 154– 57.
204.
Daniel Sobelman,
New Rules of the Game: Israel and Hizballah after the Withdrawal from Lebanon
, Memorandum No. 69, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, January 2004.
205.
Barak Ravid, “Senior Wanted Person Arrived 5 Minutes from the Philadelphia Corridor,”
Maariv
(Hebrew), September 23, 2005.
206.
Ali Waked, “PA Fears Hezbollah Infiltrating Fatah,”
Ynetnews
, December 28, 2009.
207.
Ali Waked, “Tennenbaum’s Kidnapper Recruiting for Hezbollah,”
Ynetnews
, August 26, 2010.
208.
Yaakov Katz, “Hezbollah Threat Prompts Security for Ashkenazi,”
Jerusalem Post
, December 22, 2011.
209.
United Press International, “Israel Fears Hezbollah Targets Top General,” January 16, 2012.
AT THE ISRAELI
National Security Council’s Counterterrorism Bureau, located at a military base not far from Tel Aviv, one particular stream of threat reporting commanded the nearly singular focus of senior officials for several weeks in the summer of 2008: kidnappings. And those kidnappings were happening on one particular continent: Africa.
Ever since the October 2000 kidnapping of Elhanan Tannenbaum, Israeli intelligence regularly uncovered information suggesting that Hezbollah was planning more such kidnappings. The targets, as with Tannenbaum, were Israeli business-persons, most of them former military officers or government officials. In February 2002, for instance, Hezbollah considered kidnapping an Israeli businessman in Belgium, and in April, Hezbollah agents planned to abduct an Israeli businessman in the Netherlands. Another plot, which spanned several months starting in November 2002 and running into 2003, targeted an Israeli national in Spain.
1
By late 2003, Hezbollah operational planners shifted their attention south. In December 2003, they were plotting to kidnap an Israeli military-officer-turned-businessman in Cyprus.
2
The Cyprus plot was foiled, but Hezbollah planners were already focused on kidnapping opportunities in Africa. Perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, targets in Africa proved plentiful.
In October 2003, Israeli intelligence officials warned of a Hezbollah plot to kidnap Israeli businesspersons and diplomats in the Horn of Africa.
3
The warning included both general threat information related to Hezbollah activity in East Africa—focused in particular on Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania—as well as detailed intelligence identifying at least one specific diplomat as a target. According to Israeli officials, the warnings came from a number of sources and were given extra attention in light of threats by Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah to “work day and night to abduct more and more Israelis” if a prisoner swap then being mediated by the Germans was not imminently concluded. (On January 29, 2004, the same day a Hamas suicide bomber struck downtown Jerusalem, Israel released several hundred prisoners in return for Tannenbaum and the bodies of
three Israeli soldiers.) Asked in October 2003 if such a prisoner swap would not embolden Hezbollah to kidnap more Israelis in the future, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon replied, “If they could kidnap someone right now, you think they wouldn’t do it? They would kidnap now and they will try to kidnap in the future.”
4
Later that year, Hezbollah operatives sought to kidnap a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) colonel and diamond trader in Cameroon.
5
Israeli officials feared the kidnapping threat was especially acute in the Horn of Africa: “For Hezbollah, Africa constitutes a very comfortable base of operations. On the one hand, there is a strong base for extremist Islamic groups there and, on the other hand, the local security forces and intelligence agencies are very lenient.”
6
Describing Hezbollah’s financial support activity in West Africa, one US official cautioned that even such support networks are “always a bit operational.”
7
It therefore should not surprise that Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau officials saw the development of an effective traveler-warning system—one that would protect sensitive sources and methods while earning and maintaining the Israeli public’s trust—as one of its highest priorities. Officials built such a system and later partnered with a major Israeli research university to study whether the public trusted and followed the warning system. Sometimes the warnings were general; other times, they were incredibly specific and warranted a detailed briefing to the intended target. In one case, an Israeli living in Madrid was on Hezbollah’s radar as an easy target. In another, the European lover of an Israeli businessman was working with friends in Hezbollah who planned to kidnap the Israeli when the two spent a weekend away.
8
Hezbollah’s interest in kidnapping Israelis appears to have been an Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) innovation—a new take on an old tactic—executed as a means of collecting intelligence and securing the release of comrades incarcerated in Israel’s and other countries’ jails, completely different from the classic model of kidnapping for ransom.
In summer 2008, six months after Imad Mughniyeh’s assassination, the Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau issued a warning specific to Hezbollah plots to attack Israeli citizens in West Africa. Unlike in previous cases, the bureau did not issue a general travel advisory warning against traveling to Africa. Instead, Israeli security officials traveled to specific communities in West Africa to warn visiting or resident Israelis about actionable threat information related to specific persons or communities. By now, Israeli officials worried about not only attacks against prominent individuals and significant targets but also low-profile attacks on targets of opportunity. With hundreds of Israelis working across the continent in endeavors ranging from large construction projects to the diamond trade, Africa provided a target-rich environment.
9
The following month Israeli military officials intentionally leaked to the press the recent foiling by the Israeli security services and their local counterparts of five Hezbollah kidnapping plots in West Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, respectively. The plots, Israeli security officials reported, were part of “a concerted effort by Hezbollah, backed by Iran,” to avenge Mughniyeh’s
assassination. “Hezbollah is scouring for prey, and it’s going country by country” looking for a target of opportunity, an official told the press. While the assumption was that the individuals in question were targeted for kidnapping, authorities feared some or all the plots may have been attempts on their lives. “Several businessmen owe their lives and their freedom to this emergency operation,” one Israeli security source noted, adding that all the operations were conducted jointly with foreign intelligence agencies.
10
Kidnapping threats persisted throughout 2009, with warnings issued about Hezbollah plots in Europe in April and in Egypt that summer. In the latter incident, only a technical malfunction saved a busload of Israeli tourists in the Sinai, en route from Taba to Sharm el-Sheikh, from a roadside explosive device that, if properly wired, could have killed dozens. Among the chief concerns of Israeli authorities at the time was the prospect that Hezbollah operatives would kidnap Israeli tourists, perhaps grabbing wounded survivors after a roadside attack, and smuggle them into the Gaza Strip through one of the many tunnels that snake their way under the border at Rafah.
11