Syria had been quick to support these groups for a self-serving reason: it gave the regime credibility in the Arab world over its long-running enmity toward Israel. But it had become a double-edged sword. While Syrian-sponsored terrorist attacks had indeed finally persuaded Israel to negotiate over the Golan Heights—a precursor for what happened over the removal of the settlers from Gaza—its continued investment in terrorism had reinforced Israeli public opinion not to trust Damascus. Nevertheless, the removal of the Gaza settlements, as the promised precursor for a lasting peace for Israel, had resulted in growing resentment among a population who ironically began to echo the Hamas slogan that attacks would end only when every Jew was driven into the sea.
Mossad’s analysts concluded that one way to win back support for the “road map” to peace was to carefully demolish Yasser Arafat’s legacy. To do so, its Technical Services Department mobilized its skills in using the latest information technology. From the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, Arab terror groups, such as Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, had used the Internet to promote their aims. Easy to set up, free to access, hard to censor, cyberspace had become an ideal place for issuing policy statements, claiming responsibility for terror attacks, appealing for funds, offering weapons and explosives training, and selling anything from suicide vests to the ingredients to create biological or germ warfare agents.
Mossad had been probably the first security service to monitor the Internet; as militants recognized that their mosques were almost certainly under surveillance, Web sites offered a new and relatively safe way to communicate with their followers. Mossad had created a large number of its own Web sites on which they posted carefully constructed disinformation in all the languages of the Middle East.
In the aftermath of Arafat’s death, stories began to appear on the sites claiming Arafat had betrayed his own people for his own aggrandizement and noting his lack of moral probity. The sites claimed that vast sums of money intended to improve the lives of poverty-stricken Palestinians had ended up in Arafat’s private portfolio.
The claims were the work of the dozen psychologists in LAP, Mossad’s Department of Psychological Warfare. It had a long history of creating discord among Israel’s enemies. Arafat’s death had offered a further opportunity for LAP to show its skills.
Working with information from Mossad’s twenty-four stations around the world, the psychologists had proved that Arafat controlled a financial portfolio estimated to be in the region of US$6.5 billion. Yet the Palestinian Authority, which administered the PLO territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, was close to bankruptcy.
LAP had planted a story in a Cairo-based newspaper,
The story swept like a desert storm through the Arab world. A Palestinian lawyer who had investigated PLO corruption said he knew of four Arafat loyalists who held secret Swiss bank accounts. The lawyer provided details of widespread corruption. He revealed (to the author on a guarantee of anonymity): “The deals involved the cement and building industries of the Palestinian territories. The corruption ran into millions of dollars, which Arafat covered up in return for the profiteers giving him a portion. He was the godfather of all the other godfathers.”
The effect was to weaken the PLO at a time when, if it was to establish a bargaining position with Israel’s prime minister Sharon, it needed to provide a strong and united front. By focusing on the undoubted murky world of Arafat’s financial dealings, LAP had also effectively ended further speculation about any role Mossad had in his death. It was a textbook example of what Rafi Eitan had once said (to the author): “Well-placed words are often as effective as a bomb.”
