Aaron Klein - Striking Back

So fell Abu-Iyad, the man more responsible than any other for the Munich Massacre, by the hand of a compatriot, for his dovish views. Israel received the news with ambivalence. On the one hand, he was responsible for the murder of innocent Israelis; on the other, he had gone where few dared on the Palestinian side, offering the possibility of diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In January 1991 diplomatic negotiations between the two warring sides sounded like a pipe dream, but after the war, in October of that year, they met in Madrid, Spain. Israeli and Palestinian delegations sat face-to-face in what was the official beginning of diplomatic negotiations.

As fate would have it, the security officer of the Palestinian delegation was Atef Bseiso, Abu-Iyad’s protégé, who, in his role as Fatah’s liaison officer with European secret services, tended to the security of the Palestinian delegation.

ALLENBY BRIDGE, ISRAEL-JORDAN BORDER CROSSING

THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1996, 1000H

On Thursday morning, March 28, 1996, Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu-Daoud, the man who twenty-four years earlier planned and commanded the Munich attack, walked—slowly and ceremoniously—over the Allenby Bridge, crossing from Jordan into Israel. Abu-Daoud entered the joint Israeli-Palestinian terminal. He shook hands with an Israeli colonel before entering the office of a Shabak representative, who verified his documents and sized him up, interviewing him about his future plans. At the Israeli border crossing he was secretly photographed from several angles, entering the Israeli defense establishment’s archives as he filled out application forms for a Palestinian ID card. He accepted a temporary ID document and made his way to the VIP room, where he fell into the arms of Tawfiq Tirawi. Tirawi kissed him on both cheeks before ushering him into one of a fleet of BMWs. They drove southwest, toward Gaza, where Yasser Arafat and many other Fatah colleagues had their offices. Abu-Daoud had not seen these men in two years, since May 1994, when the PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, allowing, among other things, the return of Fatah activists to Gaza and the West Bank.

In the spacious leather interior of the BMW, Abu-Daoud fretted. Maybe the Israelis were waiting. Maybe they would let him get to the gates of Gaza and then arrest him for his role in the Olympic attack. He, the wanted murderer, as the Israelis called him, the terrorist who admitted to his pivotal role in the attack, had shaken hands and made small talk with Israeli officers. Who would have believed it? He smiled—So far, so good, he thought. He was in Palestine, preparing to take part in the most momentous period in his homeland’s history. For twenty-four years he had been on the run, afraid of Israel’s long reach, looking over his shoulder, fearing a Mossad assassin at his back. For twenty-four years he got into bed not knowing if he would wake up in the morning. Al-Yahud, the Jews had tried to kill him several times. They might well try again.

Abu-Daoud’s arrival was coordinated and prearranged. He came to Palestine just before the Palestinian National Council convened. They were set to eradicate the article in their charter calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. The authorization of Abu-Daoud’s entry to the Palestinian-controlled areas came from deep within the corridors of power—Shimon Peres signed off on the decision. The prime minister claimed that Abu-Daoud’s entry, like that of numerous other high-level terrorists, offered two benefits: one, Abu-Daoud would play a role in annulling the charter calling for Israel’s destruction; two, Peres felt it was better for men like Abu-Daoud to take up residence in Gaza, where terrorism was being renounced, rather than in Damascus, where it was supported.

Once in Gaza, Abu-Daoud met with old Fatah friends, interested to see what sort of senior position they had reserved for him as payment for his service to homeland and organization. Abu-Daoud received a Palestinian passport/laissez-passer and a green Palestinian ID card, printed and prepared by the state of Israel, number 410448807.

But Abu-Daoud had stepped on too many toes and the loot—the financial monopolies and the government posts—had already been taken by Arafat and his cronies in the Palestinian Authority. No one was willing to offer him the payment he sought for his years of service. After three years in his homeland, Abu-Daoud chose to exile himself. On June 2, 1999, he left Palestine, angered and embittered, through the Rafah crossing to Egypt. He settled in Damascus, to finish his memoirs.

In 2003, Abu-Daoud’s passport/laissez-passer was renewed by Israel. Two years later, almost sixty-eight years old, Abu-Daoud sent a formal request, via Palestinian Authority Minister of Internal Affairs Muhammad Dahlan, to return to Palestine. “He wants to come back to be buried in Palestine. It’s his last wish,” a friend explained. The Israelis sent a succinct message back to Dahlan—it’s best for all involved that he not show up at the bridge. Abu-Daoud could have shown up at the border crossing at any time, presented his passport to the Israeli officers, and continued to the Palestinian-controlled areas. The signed agreements guaranteed his safety from Israeli prosecutors and prisons—he had a Palestinian ID card and passport. Nor could they arrest him for the thirty-three-year-old massacre. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, signed by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in Washington on September 28, 1995, clearly states on page 19, under the title “Confidence Building Measures,” Article XVI, Section 3, that a “Palestinian from abroad whose entry into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is approved pursuant to this Agreement, and to whom the provisions of this article are applicable, will not be prosecuted for offenses committed prior to September 13, 1993.” Moreover, Abu-Daoud had not been involved in terrorist activity in roughly twenty years, thus forbidding Israel from barring his entry or stripping him of his Palestinian citizenship. Though well aware of the law, the Israeli government hoped that Abu-Daoud’s enduring fear of assassination would convince the old man not to present himself at the border. No one in Israel needed the embarrassment of his return, least of all Shimon Peres, who had let him in the first time around.

The source of Abu-Daoud’s deep-seated suspicion was the unshakable fear he lived with from 1972 to 1996. Up until the mid-1970s he was deeply involved in planning terror attacks. In February 1973, four months after the Munich Massacre, he was arrested in Amman, Jordan, his design to overthrow the king foiled. Abu-Daoud received a death sentence, which was mitigated to life in prison. Several months later, the politically astute king, who ruled over a country where 60 percent of the populace was Palestinian, pardoned him altogether.

An attempt on his life was made in Warsaw, on August 2,1981. A lone assassin walked into the Hotel Intercontinental’s restaurant, spotted Abu-Daoud, and fired five shots. The hit was amateurish: the weapon most probably used in the assassination attempt was found nearby; the assassin acted alone, in contrast to professional assassins, who work in pairs, covering each other; and the target was shot in the stomach and chest, not the head, which guarantees death. Nonetheless, Abu-Daoud was seriously injured and taken to a local hospital, where multiple life-saving surgeries were performed. The man with nine lives survived yet once more. Several weeks later he was transferred to a hospital in East Germany, where he began his rehabilitation. Abu-Daoud stayed in East Berlin till the fall of the Communist regime. In 1990, after years of preferential treatment, he left for Tunis and made his way to Syria.