Jordan River from the West Bank, from which a fledgling group called Fatah

Jordan River from the West Bank, from which a fledgling group called Fatah, under the command of Arafat, had been staging a series of raids. In one of their most recent attacks, they’d planted land mines, one of which destroyed an Israeli schoolbus, killing the driver and one of the teachers and injuring nearly a dozen children. The so-called Battle of Karameh was our single most significant operation since the 1967 war. In pure military terms, it succeeded. But at a price: more than two dozen Israeli soldiers dead. It also had a major political impact. It caused shock among many Israelis, still wrapped in a sense of invincibility from the Six-Day War, as well as a feeling in the Arab world, actively encouraged by Arafat and his comrades, that compared to the great armies Israel had defeated in 1967, Fatah had at least shown fight. Fatah had drawn blood. I had just turned 26 years old. I was finishing my studies in math, physics and economics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and had joined my Sayeret Matkal comrades the night before the assault. It was a huge operation: ten battalions, including crack infantry units. Our own role was relatively minor. We were to seal the southern entrance to the town. But it proved a tough slog just to get there. Our vehicles got bogged down in mud. By the time we arrived, Fatah fighters, although many were in civilian clothes so we couldn’t be sure, were racing past us in the other direction. One of them, we were later told, was Yasir Arafat. On a motorcycle. It would be nearly three decades before the two of us actually met — shortly after the assassination of my longtime comrade and friend Yitzhak Rabin, when I had become Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and his fighters had been expelled by King Hussein’s army from Jordan and were re-based in Lebanon. Arafat was becoming a significant figure on the Arab and world political stage, and an increasingly uncomfortable thorn in Israel’s side. I was head of Sayeret Matkal by then. Over a period of months, I drew up a carefully constructed plan — a raid by helicopter into a Fatah-dominated area in southeastern Lebanon, during one of Arafat’s intermittent, morale-boosting visits from Beirut — to assassinate him. My immediate superior, the army’s head of operations, was all for our doing it. But the chief of military intelligence said no. Arafat, he insisted when we met to discuss the plan, was no longer the lean, mean fighter we had encountered in Karameh. “He’s fat. He’s a politician. He is not a target.” 6 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011477