Yasir Arafat Eluded Israel’s Assassination Attempts For Decades

Yasir Arafat in 1970. Image by Getty

By Ari Feldman January 23, 2018

“If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This was one of the reasons given by many people in Israel familiar with the government’s long-standing efforts to find and assassinate Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

A New York Times article details how Israeli intelligence and its military coordinated efforts for decades to kill Arafat, who had long advocated the dissolution of the Israeli state. The PLO was considered a terrorist organization by the United States until 1991; the group has had observer status at the United Nations since 1974.

Arafat, who died in 2004, often eluded Israeli plots by looking not quite like himself, or being ensconced in a civilian population. The decision over whether to kill him or let him survive struck at the heart of Israel’s fundamental nature as a democracy. Commanders and generals routinely argued over Arafat’s death as a kind of proxy test for the democratic nature of the country.

In the 1960s, Israeli intelligence considered Arafat’s elimination a “precondition” to a peace process with the Palestinians. In 1968, they tried to brainwash a Palestinian into doing it for them. (The man turned himself in to local police.)

Ariel Sharon, during his tenure as Defense Minister, put fresh vigor into the quest to kill Arafat, at one pointing hatching a plan to bomb a soccer stadium in Lebanon to kill the PLO’s leadership.

Arafat eventually died in 2004, at 75, after contracting an infection that led to a stroke. It remains an open question if Israel — and Sharon — were involved.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO