Israel’s Botched Assassination Attempt Surfaces After Saddam Hussain’s Capture

By Richard H. Curtiss

Israel’s mysterious Nov. 5, 1992 “training accident” at its Tse’elim military base in the Negev finally has been unveiled—but is it the whole truth, or yet another cover story? The Israelis had never fully explained the unbelievable botch-up. First described as a “training accident,” it soon became necessary to invent a plausible cover story that the world might accept.

Let’s start from the beginning. The Israelis wanted to become involved in the first Gulf war against Iraq in 1991. Washington, however, was desperate to keep Israel out of the war, lest it so anger the other Arab states that the carefully crafted coalition might quickly unravel.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, meanwhile, was firing Scud missiles at both Saudi Arabia and Israel—also in an attempt to break up the alliance. Day after day the United States warned Israel not to retaliate for the attacks.

The Israelis complied—and, in fact, only two Israelis, one Saudi, and 28 Americans were killed, despite the fact 39Iraqi missiles were fired.

The Israelis, however, thirsted for revenge, and set out to get Saddam Hussain. The plot was an ingenious one—but, as usual, too clever by half.

The mechanics of the scheme were first suggested on Oct. 2, 1992 by Israeli intelligence officer Nadav Zeevi. Then-Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin approved the plot, but also insisted on signing off a second time, when the timing had been perfected.

israel’s elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal was put in charge of the plot to assassinate the Iraqi leader—dubbed Operation Bramble Bush.

Then, a large group of Israeli dignitaries were invited to see a dress rehearsal of the assassination attempt. As Zeevi described it, “It was basically a show for the generals.” Israelis wearing Iraqi-like uniforms and playing the part of Hussain and his entourage took their places as the rehearsal began.

Incredibly, however, the Israelis made a ghastly mistake. Somehow, they used a real missile rather than a dummy one. In the huge explosion that ensued, five Israelis were killed and another five injured.

The audience members scattered and headed for home. Even today there is some confusion as to who all of the dignitaries were, but stories had it that then-Chief of Staff Ehud Barak did not even wait to see which actors had survived and who had been slaughtered. The VIPs’ main concern was to distance themselves as much as possible from any negative consequences of the fiasco. Barak was elected Israeli prime minister in 1999.

Military censorship clamped a very tight lid on the entire incident. Even more importantly, the Israelis came up with a totally false scenario to explain the rumors that kept circulating about the accident. Claiming that they had tried but failed to assassinate a Shi’i notable in Lebanon, they artfully concealed the fact that Saddam Hussain was the actual target.

Thus the story stood until Saddam Hussain’s recent capture, after which details of the story finally were released.

“If the operation had not ended in an accident, it would have caused a world war.”

According to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, the original plan called for commandos to be flown into Iraq and split into two groups. One would serve as lookouts, signaling to their colleagues that Saddam had arrived for the funeral of a relative. The second group would be 13 kilometers away, from where they would fire two custom-made “Obelisk” guided missiles. When the missiles exploded, the Israelis would attempt their escape. If they were unsuccessful, the elite commandos were instructed to go down fighting and not be caught alive. According to the plot, one or perhaps two helicopters would be waiting at a temporary airfield near Tikritand would leave immediately.

Critics of the planned operation in 1992 included Shimon Peres, then Israeli foreign minister and current head of the Labor Party. “If the operation had not ended in an accident,” Peres told the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, “it would have caused a world war.”

The Sayeret Matkal commando unit has figured prominently in past Israeli actions. It undertook the 1976 raid on Entebbe that released Israeli hostages from a hijacked plane in Uganda.

Now 13 refuseniks from the elite military commando unit have said that they will no longer serve in such operations in the West Bank and Gaza. According to these elite soldiers, they were taking the dramatic step of publicly criticizing Israel’s policies “out of deep fear for the future of the state of Israel as a democratic, Zionist and Jewish country and out of concern for its moral and ethical image.”

Their condemnation of Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip echoes similar remarks by 27 reserve pilots, four former chiefs of Israel’s security service, and the Israeli military’s current chief of staff, as well as a separate list of 584 army reservists. The statements by all the refuseniks are being organized by a group calling itself “Courage to Refuse.”

An Unusual Protest

An open letter of protest by a military unit with a history of involvement in many of Israel’s most sensitive operations is highly unusual, Israeli analysts say.

“This is the number one military unit in Israel,” said Yagil Levy, author of a recent book on the Israeli military. “Until 10 years ago nobody could even mention its name publicly because it was covered by censorship regulations. It is a very mysterious unit responsible for the most heroic missions the Israel Defense Forces have ever made.

Some of Israel’s most prominent former members of the commando unit include former Prime Minister Barak, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, armed forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, and Avi Dichter, director of the Shin Bet security agency.

This criticism from within the Israeli military establishment has unsettled the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Rather than being confined to the military, moreover, it adds to the discontent expressed in previous months by many other segments of Israeli society over Sharon’s handling of the Palestinian uprising, now in its fourth year.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.