In a report that military censorship in Tel Aviv allowed to publish, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper released details of a plan to execute one of the largest terrorist operations in history by assassinating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and other Fatah movement figures in January 1982.
According to the report, the plot aimed at bombing the Beirut Stadium during a festival to mark the start of the Palestinian Revolution.
It said the operation was cancelled the last minute.
Journalist Ronen Burgman, an expert in security and terrorist affairs and who is also a staff writer for The New York Times, said in a report to be published Friday that the plan was put in Tel Aviv at the end of 1981 in response to a series of Palestinian armed operations carried out in Israel.
He said the event that triggered Israel to plan the plot is when in 1979, a Palestine Liberation Front team led by Samir Qantar, infiltrated the coastal city of Nahariya in the northeast of the country, killed a police officer and kidnapped a father, 31-year-old Danny Haran, and his 4-year-old daughter, Einat, before killing the two during clashes with Israeli forces.
According to the Bergman report, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Rafael Eitan, and commander of the northern region General Yanush Ben-Gal met immediately after the funeral for the dead Israelis and decided to retaliate against the PLO leaders and to kill them all.
The mission was handed over to General Meir Dagan, who was known for the bomb squad that he had set up in 1971 in the army and for leading the Israeli army in the occupied Lebanese south in 1980.
The report reveals that Dagan put a plan for the bombing of the Beirut Stadium during the event scheduled to be held by the Fatah movement on the occasion of the start of the revolution. The target was to kill all PLO leaders expected to attend the ceremony along with hundreds and possibly thousands of Palestinians.
The plot set up enough explosives under and around the stadium to cause damage that, according to a senior military officer at the time, would have been “unprecedented, even in terms of Lebanon.”
However, then Prime Minister Menachem Begin fell short of proceeding with the plan at the very last moment. On the same morning, Begin summoned the army commanders who were aware of the plan and ordered them to stop the operation.
Although no one knows why Begin took such decision, it could have been due to the presence of non-Palestinian figures in the ceremony, such as leaders of the Lebanese National Movement and representatives of the Soviet Union, other socialist states and some European political figures.
