Middle Eastern Terrorism. Mark Ensalaco

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      TWA flight 841 arrived in Athens after strict passenger screening in Israel had put it forty-five minutes behind schedule. Security in Israel was tight; it should have been rigorous in Athens. The previous August, terrorists had killed three in the passenger terminal there. But Athens was notorious for its security breaches. For the fedayeen, Greece was the transit point for weapons transfers to Europe. Athens was the first of three stops before TWA flight 841 was to reach its final destination in New York. Thirty minutes after leaving the Greek capital, the captain reported the flight reached its cruising level. It was his final transmission. The crew of Pan Am flight 110 en route to Beirut from Rome witnessed the final moments of TWA flight 841.

      The captain of Pan Am 110 was the first to catch a glimpse of TWA 841 seven miles away approaching from the east some 3,000 feet below Pan Am 110. It was a beautiful evening over the Ionian Sea. The visibility was unlimited, and the scattered clouds below did not obscure the sea. All was routine. He looked away for a moment and in that instant the bomb that destroyed TWA 841 exploded. When he saw TWA 841 again the plane was climbing steeply, one of its engines was falling away, fuel leaking from the wing was leaving a whitish vapor trail, and luggage blown out of the rear baggage compartment was forming a cloud of debris in the wake of plane's and fluttering back to earth. The climb was so steep that in those moments it took the two planes to close from seven miles to a mile and a half, TWA 841 was nearly level with Pan Am 110. Then TWA 841 rolled over to the left, plunged into a steep descent, and began to spiral slowly toward the sea. It passed behind Pan Am 110 and from its passengers' and crew's field of vision. No one saw the impact with the water.

      The crash of TWA 841 killed all 79 passengers and 9 crew members aboard the plane, 17 of them American. The next day, a U.S. warship recovered 24 bodies and enough wreckage for the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause of the disaster. That same day, Abd al-Ghafur's Nationalist Arab Youth Organization for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the destruction of the jet. The organization's communiqué reported a Chilean national of Palestinian descent detonated the bomb killing him and a number of Mossad agents who were aboard the plane. If the claim was true, this was the first time Palestinian terrorists had resorted to a suicide bombing. No one has ever confirmed that Israeli agents died aboard TWA 841; it is certain that seven children and two infants were killed when the plane plunged into the sea.⁵

      TWA 841 was Abd al-Ghafur's attempt to embarrass Arafat on the eve of the Arab League summit in Morocco in October. It was also al-Ghafur's final act of terror in a campaign that began the previous spring. Four days after the TWA disaster, Fatah assassins killed al-Ghafur in Beirut on Arafat's orders.⁶ Arafat denounced the terror operation in Paris and Rome in September and December and vowed to punish the men responsible. But Arafat ordered al-Ghafur's death not for terrorism but for breach of discipline. Arafat did not denounce Black September's terror when it served his aims. His calculations were different now. Abu Iyad, who as intelligence chief kept in contact with the more radical PLO factions, later lamented al-Ghafur's assassination because, he said, it turned internal disputes about strategy into a violent struggle for power.⁷ Iyad was especially worried that al-Ghafur's assassination would prompt his confederate, Abu Nidal, to seek revenge. In fact, Abu Nidal had already resolved to assassinate PLO moderates. In June, Fatah intelligence had thwarted the assassination of Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, the man who accompanied Abu Iyad to Baghdad to confront Abu Nidal after the seizure of the Saudi embassy in Paris. For whatever reason, Abu Nidal believed Mahmoud Abbas's death was imperative. No one doubted that Abu Nidal's ultimate aim was the assassination of Arafat himself. In October, a month after the TWA atrocity, a Fatah tribunal tried Abu Nidal in absentia and sentenced him to death. Fatah never carried out the death sentence. Instead, Abu Nidal did most of the killing.

      That same month, October, the Arab League reconvened in Rabat, Morocco, to consider the state of the Arab world. Eleven months earlier, during the Algiers summit, the League recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Arafat could count the declaration as a diplomatic triumph. But the Algiers declaration was under attack. King Hussein, with Kissinger's firm support, held out for recognition of his kingdom's right to represent the interests of the nearly one million Palestinians living in Jordan. Anwar Sadat, who was by then committed to U.S. mediation, had endorsed this reinterpretation of the Algiers declaration in July. Arafat was determined that Arab League reaffirm the PLO's—and Arafat's—exclusive right to speak for all Palestinians. The Arab heads of state who traveled to Rabat in October were keenly aware of the risks of angering the PLO. In the weeks before the Arab League summit, Moroccan intelligence arrested a number of Palestinians who entered the country under aliases. Abu Iyad had sent them to assassinate King Hussein, but wild rumors about a conspiracy to assassinate any representative who did not reaffirm PLO's representation of the Palestinians swirled around the Moroccan capital. Abu Iyad later boasted of his involvement in the Palestinians plot to assassinate King Hussein—“I assume full responsibility for it and the honor of supporting their action”—but indignantly denied the rumors about a conspiracy to kill other Arab heads of state.⁸ In the end, the Arab League reaffirmed the PLO's unique status and proclaimed the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland. Even King Hussein, who had risen to the floor to deliver an impassioned but ultimately futile defense of Jordan's territorial rights over the West Bank, voted in favor of the resolution. Henry Kissinger was crestfallen: “the collapse of the Jordanian option,” he lamented, “was a major lost opportunity.” Because the PLO rejected Israel's right to existence, and because the PLO remained committed to terror, the Rabat decision “guaranteed nineteen years of impasse on West Bank negotiations.”⁹

      Arafat at the United Nations

      Arafat was riding a rising tide of diplomatic success. He had convinced the PNC to endorse his desideratum of a Palestinian authority in the West Bank in June, and he had won the Arab League's reaffirmation of the PLO's right to speak for all Palestinians in October. In November, he triumphed again, this time in New York. On 13 November, Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. In a lengthy speech that aired Palestinian grievances, Arafat promised the Jews living in Palestine the opportunity to live in Palestine in “peace and without discrimination,” but without a state of their own. Speaking as chairman of the PLO and “leader of the Palestinian revolution” Arafat offered Jews “the most generous solution, that we might live together in a framework of just peace in our democratic Palestine.” Although the maneuvering in Cairo demonstrated his still secret inclination to achieve a Palestinian state through negotiations, Arafat could not explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist within secure borders per Resolution 242. The most generous solution he could offer was not the most reasonable solution that could be envisioned: separate Jewish and Palestinian states. The most Arafat could offer Jews was the opportunity to live in a democratic Palestine under PLO rule. Because Arafat's speech had to resonate with the PLO rank and file, the leader of the Palestinian Revolution could not abandon the rhetoric of violence, so he concluded with a threat: “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.” It was not an empty threat. Arafat would not explicitly renounce violence for another thirteen years when the political terrain shifted still again, and even then violence forever remained an option for him. Still, Arafat understood the path to the creation of a Palestinian state wound through the labyrinth of American-brokered negotiations. The address before the General Assembly was a triumph. After the speech the General Assembly bestowed observer status on the PLO, placing it on the same plane as the Vatican.

      Arafat's triumph was an affront to Israel. The General Assembly had rewarded terror by recognizing an organization whose members practiced it. After the General Assembly granted the PLO observer status, a PLO spokesman conceded “now that we are observers at the United Nations, we will think more deeply and thoroughly regarding armed operations.”¹⁰ Arafat had tried to distance himself from the terror of Black September, and in recent months had missed no opportunity to disavow the terror operations of PLO organizations hostile to him. But his personal connections with Black September's commanders were undeniable. Abu Iyad, a founding member СКАЧАТЬ