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A report published by the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot revealed that Israel planned to assassinate the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and several Palestinian leaders, by bombing a football stadium in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in 1982.
The newspaper said today that Israel planned in January 1982 to bomb the football stadium in Lebanon to eliminate Yasser Arafat and the prominent Fatah movement leader Khalil al-Wazir Abu Jihad, but withdrew shortly before implementation.
He noted that Israel called the operation “Olympia” and aimed to blow up the entire Beirut football stadium, adding that “if this operation had been launched, the Middle East would have looked completely different.”
The Israeli newspaper indicated that the date of the operation was January 1, 1982 and that the objective was to eliminate Minister Yasser Arafat and the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization present at the scene.
The newspaper revealed that Israeli intelligence agents had hidden several kilograms of explosives under the seats, and another 3 car bombs with two tons of explosives were supposed to be parked next to the runway.
As the terrified survivors arrived, he said, the VBIED was to be activated remotely, leading to the great bloody end of the operation.
Responded to Operation Kantar
The newspaper noted that the idea for the operation came in response to the assassination of the Israeli Haran family by Lebanese Samir Kuntar, which took place in April 1979 under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Front, a faction of the Organization. Liberation of Palestine, in the city of Nahariya, according to the newspaper, which resulted in the murder of an Israeli and his daughter.
The newspaper said that following the completion of the family’s funeral ceremony, then-Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan ordered the commander of the Israeli army’s northern region, Janusz Ben-Gal, to kill them all. “.
The newspaper noted that Ben-Gal had asked the officer, Meir Dagan, who later served as the head of the Mossad’s foreign intelligence service from 2002 to 2011 for help.
The newspaper added that the bombing of the stadium did not pass all the usual ranges and approvals, and was designed in the shadows, by a small number of secret partners, and was stopped at the last moment, hours before the specified time, the planners of the operation were summoned to then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was sick in his bed and decided to cancel it.
Until his death in 2016, Dagan believed that Israel had missed a golden opportunity, saying: Had it passed, the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization would have been out of the game that day.
The newspaper noted that a super-secret unit, led by Dagan, with the knowledge of the Chief of Staff, but almost without the knowledge of the rest of the General Staff and the Intelligence Division, worked to carry out attacks and guerrilla warfare operations. and killings of Palestinians, most of which were hidden from the prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin.
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